Unstable Emotions

Emotions color our lives, but they can also get the best of us.

Emotions and feelings, both essential elements of the human brain, are not technically the same. Emotions are considered simpler and more basic than feelings. They are fast, physiological responses of adaptation to the environment.

Although it is still the subject of much discussion, people have traditionally recognized six basic emotions: surprise, disgust, sadness, anger, fear, and joy. They all play an important role, and they all have something in common: instability. Our emotions can change by just a slight chemical imbalance in our bodies, a simple thought, tiredness, lack of sleep, the season of the year, the weather, or just our daily life expectations.

The concept of Emotional Intelligence has helped deepen our understanding of emotions and promoted awareness of emotional variability, self-knowledge, and assertive expression of our inner emotional world. The Bible gives us a keen insight into our emotions when it says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). Our emotions cannot be the foundation of our decisions. Instead, our existence must be based on something more solid, like the promises of God. The apostle Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us” (2 Cor. 1:20).

Our feelings and emotions can change. They certainly will change. They are unstable. God declares, “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Mal. 3:6). Jesus Himself “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).