Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome to the thirteenth part of our series on spiritual transformation. Last week we looked at the affirmative lifestyle of true believers, and the five steps we need to take to be sure of, that:

• 1. Decide how you view life - positively or negatively? Optimistically or pessimistically?
• 2. Surrender your negative attitudes to Yahweh;
• 3. Decide to be a 'Yes' person in Yah'shua (Jesus);
• 4. Remove negative words and phrases from your vocabulary; and
• 5. Let Yahweh reformat your mind by spending quality time in prayer and Scripture study.

That concludes, for the present, what I wanted to share with you about transforming the mind. Now we shift our attention to something very important but often poorly understood - the emotions or feelings. In these chaotic days of secular postmodernism, society has to all intents and purposes abandoned clear thinking and supplanted that with the hegemony of raw, spontaneous emotions. Reality is defined by feelings. Were humans to be redesigned along postmodernist lines, the heart would be in the head and the brain would be in our chest like some strange new alien species. That image alone tells us that something is seriously messed up when we place the emotions before thinking. Yahweh-Elohim, our Heavenly Father and Creator, designed us to be thinking creatures first of all, and feeling creatures, second. The head was designed to lead and moderate the heart.

Interestingly, the ancient Egyptians had such a low regard for the brain, at least as far as the afterlife was concerned, that embalmers scooped it out of the cranium and threw it away whereas they preserved the heart of the deceased in an alabaster jar because the heart was regarded as the seat of the soul. Yet as early as 1600 BC they did know the brain was was where the thoughts emanated from. In the 4th century BC the ancient Greeks posited that the heart was the source of life and in 500 BC the Roman physician Galen asserted that nerves are connected to the brain. However, both agreed that the heart created the emotions. This was taken up my mediæval Catholicism which asserted the heart was the principle place where goodness and holiness were manifested.

That said, there are those - particularly Christians/Messianics, not to mention intellectual secularists - who believe that emotions don't matter or that they don't need transforming too...along with our minds. There are two equally dangerous extremes here to beware of:

• 1. That the belief the emotions don't matter and are somehow automatically 'fixed' by fixing the mind alone; or
• 2. That once you fix your feelings the mind will automatically fix itself.

Part of the confusion lies in understanding the different default programming in the genders. Though we need to be very careful with generalisations and over-simplifcations, I think most would agree that women tend, on balance and by nature, to be more emotion-centred and men more thought-centred. There are exceptions, of course, because there are all kinds of people, and so you can, and do, find a spectrum wherein may be found very emotional men and very intellectual women. The way that works is complex but is a combination of genes and upbrinbging, education and culture, experiences in life (including trauma and the coping mechanisms used for dealing with emotional pain...and personal choosing in general). We have enough trouble with gender dysphoria or confusion these days (21st century), though, that I really don't want to focus on the very real problems of our modern dysfunctional societies. That's for another time. What I want to do is look at mind-heart issues in a purely human framework without regard to gender differences. That's not to say they're unimportant, because they are (it's why men and women often have problems understanding one another), but we need to map out the 'big picture' with a metaphorical telescope before we start dissecting and determining differences using a microscope.

The emotions are important and they have rightly been described as the driving force of personality. We aren't just biological machines though the way some people have shut-down their hearts you would be forgiven on occasion for think so, however mistaken that notion might be. So your personality is a function of your feelings...very much so. Without emotions you would have no personality. You would not be a 'person'. Machines do not have a personality even if we may project our feelings into them as onto a much loved car. The loved car cannot reciprocate those feelings which is why it remains a machine even if the designer put some of his feelings into the design. Robots and androids (a robot with a human outer form) wouldn't know how to laugh or weep even though the atheist writer of the Star Trek wanted us to believe that one day a microchip would be invented to give an android like Lore human emotions. And though the character Commander Data was portrayed as emotionless, he betrayed human feelings all the time. It is as difficult for a human actor to portray an emotionless, independent android operating on AI (Artificial Intelligence) as it would be an actual robot or android to imitate human feelings. That is not to say demonic entities might not gain control of such a machine and inject emotions into it but then it would no longer be strictly a machine but an extension of the demon in much the same way that an artificial limb is an extention of a human being.

The way we feel is what makes us uniquely human, and to a much lesser extent, animals. And given that as humans we are made in the image of Elohim (God) (we are small versions of Him), we know that Elohim (God) has emotions too. Our Heavenly Father is not just pure supernatural mind or impersonal life force as some religions believe. He is a feeling being, and that is why we have feelings too. We are able to love because He loves. We are able to grieve because He grieves. Machines cannot ever do these things even if in the future their human designers attempt to make them mimic human feelings. Only spiritual beings can feel, and the spirit is not a material substance. Feelings are natural and right but like thoughts they can be 'natural' (untamed, fallen) or transformed, they can be ugly or beautiful, they can be negative or positive, they can reflect maturity or immaturity. Only Elohim (God) can create spirit because He alone is the source of all chayim (life). Life never arose spontaneously out of matter no matter what the evolutionists may wildly claim.

I think at this point, before we go any further, we should inject some scriptural persepctive so let's start with a little biblical wisdom literature. Turn with me to Proverbs chapter 14, beginning at the first verse. Our emphasis will be on the 10th verse:

"The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish pulls it down with her hands.

"He who walks in his uprightness fears Yahweh, But he who is perverse in his ways despises Him.

"In the mouth of a fool is a rod of pride, But the lips of the wise will preserve them.

"Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; But much increase comes by the strength of an ox.

"A faithful witness does not lie, But a false witness will utter lies.

"A scoffer seeks wisdom and does not find it, But knowledge is easy to him who understands. Go from the presence of a foolish man, When you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge. The wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way, But the folly of fools is deceit.

"Fools mock at sin, But among the upright there is favour.

"The heart knows its own bitterness, And a stranger does not share its simcha (joy).

"The house of the wicked will be overthrown, But the tent of the upright will flourish.

"There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.

"Even in laughter the heart may sorrow, And the end of mirth may be grief.

"The backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways, But a good man will be satisfied from above" (Prov.14:1-14, NKJV).

"The heart knows its own bitterness, and a stranger does not share its simcha (joy)" (v.10, NKJV) or as another translation renders this verse, "Only the person involved can know his own bitterness or joy - no one else can really share it" (v.10, TLB). In other words, this is a self-conscious living entity. It has consciousness. It is sentient. Feelings occupy a different space to thoughts. They obey different rules, they have their own unique form of intelligence, even if they are inter-connected. If allowed to drive your life in wrong or contrary directions to the mind, or to emet (truth) itself...and remember that 'truth' stands above the emotions in the cosmos, being built into the very fabric of creation...then the personality becomes a battleground instead of a healthy coordinated whole being.

Perhaps we should begin by defining what an emotion is otherwise we will end up talking and thinking about different things because the mind does have to be involved. Mind and heart are in a marriage-like relationship - they have to cohabit the same soul or living entitity! And since a marriage can only properly work and be fruitful if husband and wife are echad or one, so too must the mind and heart. We were, if you like, made 'married' - in the end you can't put 'mind' and 'heart' into separate boxes and treat them as different species capable of living independent existences, at least not if you wish to remain a human. You can't, in studying them, apply the scientific reductionist method, because they were designed to be integrated. If you try to separte and isolate them so that you can put them under the metaphorical 'microscope' you end up destroying both. The mind-heart synthesis are greater than the sum of their parts...of mind and heart which is why you can never take a computer and 'add' feelings to it.

A computer is an entirely different entitity to a human mind. We aren't mere 'biocomputers' as evolutionists would have you believe even though obviously we can do computations. So we have a conceptual difficulty to wrestle with before we even really get going. We can be scientific about this only so far and then the tools of scientific enquiry become redundant. Science is limited, it can only explain material things and processes. The biochemist (which is my field of training) and the psychologist have to be one...which is a tall order since biochemistry requires scientific measurements and psychology is notoriously incapable of yielding itself to precise measuring. You can't put the emotions in a testube and analyse them as you would a physical substance or a chemical reaction. You can make observations about behaviour and make tentatative deductions but you cannot rigorously prove anything as you would in a chemistry or physics laboratory. The problem is, though we may share traits in common as human beings, no two human personalities are ever completely alike. We are utterly unique and more complex than the complexity of the biochemistry of a single organism, let alone a single cell.

So we immediately face limitations but let's make a go of it anyway so that our minds can get some handles on its counterpart, just as men try to understand women, and vice versa, a desirable goal I'm sure you'll agree. How are we going to define an 'emotion'? That will, in part, depend on your worldview. If you are a materialist who does not believe in an invisible spiritual dimension or consciousness apart from chemical and physical interactions, you're going to see it the way the authors of the Star Trek series did and the way my Concise Oxford Dictionary does: "a disturbance of mind", "a mental sensation or state". If that were exclusively true, then you can understand why so many people in my generation were strongly drawn to, or taken with, the character of Mr.Spok in Star Trek, who belonged to an imaginary race of Vulcans who decided emotions were the cause of aggression and violence and so were basically a hindrance to pure thought and needed closing down or else severely limiting, an idea not unlike that of Buddhism which I flirted with for a while before being converted to the Besorah (Gospel). Star Trek fans who are either emotionally immature or who have emotional issues and consider feelings either too hard to handle or a hindrance to getting on with other people often are attracted to the Mr.Spok character whom they then seek to imitate.

Accordingly William James defines an emotion as "the state of mind that manifests itself in a sensible change in the body". There is much truth in that statement too because emotions aren't just linked to the mind but to the physical body too. Moreover, they don't merely influence the body, they produce what William James called a 'sensible (concrete) change' in that body too. This change does not take place in just one part of the body, moreover, because emotions affect every single cell of the body, down to the marrow in our bones - for good or ill. Our physical health is directly related to our emotional state.

I imagine you are all wondering where I am going with this today. Just as it is impossible to separate the actions of the Father, the Son and the Ruach (Spirit) in our experience of Elohim (God), it is difficult to separate human thought from human emotion, objectivity from subjectivity. And I'd like to suggest you never can which means, no matter how scientifically rigorous you are, or think you are, you and I will always have a greater or lesser emotional bias, because the emotions are what drive us, yes, even scientists like myself! No scientist is ever 100 per cent objective, though the mopre objective he is, obviously the better scientist he will be. But he can't escape the fact that even he has a 'wordview' which is the lens through which he sees everything. And that's why a committed materialist can never admit any evidence, even if it's staring him in the face, that might demonstrate the existence of consciousness apart from physicality because that would eventually lead him to God which as an atheist he refuses to believe in. You can't, as I've said several times now, completely separate and isolate the heart from the mind even if some misguided scientists have tried, even though the meditative techniques in Buddhism and in the New Age religion attempt to do so. I studied Raja Yoga many years ago and the people who practiced it always struck me as having lost something vital in their humanity. There was something 'blank' and empty about them.

Before I became a Christian I was seriously investigating Buddhism and there I learned early on that all passion is regardecd as negative and therefore in need of transcendence, and for that reason they wish to silence it completely. The Bible, however distinguishes between two types of passion, the one desirable and the other not, the one good and the other evil. It does not condemn passion itself. To be passionate is to possess strong emotions, it is to eagerly desire something. And we should absolutely pursue love, holiness, goodness, righteousness, truth, and justice passionately, whilst fleeing sinful passion (Rom.7:5; Gal.5:24). We were endowed by the Creator with hormones which quicken us with intense longings for a mate. This is a bewildering time for young people, who get suddenly flooded with them as they go through puberty, who don't know how to handle them without spiritual direction, who have to learn self-control and how top rightly channel these feelings (Tit.2:12). The way the youth, who are particularly vulnerable, their emotions determines the direction in which they mature or fail to mature. As we know, physical and emotional maturity don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. (Oh, and by the way, though they too are linked and overlap, emotional and spiritual maturity are two different things, but, as always that's, for another sermon). Thus we are told to "flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, emunah (faith), ahavah (selfless love) and shalom (peace), along with those who call on the Master out of a pure heart" (2 Tim.2:22, NIV).

You see, every thought has an emotional 'tone' and 'texture'. Two people can say the same word but mean different things by it depending on the emotion behind it. Two people can say, 'I am not guilty' whereas one is and the other isn't, the emotion begind each statement being the indicator of whether they speaking truth or falsehood. Some say we 'think with our emotions' for the mind, as we all know, commonly gathers reasons to justify the emotions. We know in our spirits that mind and heart are connected though we're not always sure how. Maybe you, like me, have experimented trying to find a boundary between them. I have never succeeded because it's too complex. They overlap must as two or more spheres do in a Venn diagram. It always helps to remember that because that's how we are constructed. There's that area of overlap where the two elements or components are impossible to separate out existentially (meaning, the way we experience them). A mind linked to wrong or negative emotional attitudes is unable to think straight. Why? Because the emotions twist the thinking. So to think straight we have to become emotionally straight - not emotionally suppressed or dead but emotionally alligned or integrated like the integrated force field around an electromagnet.

A doctor once wisely said, "If wrong thinking has slain its thousands then wrong emotions have slain their ten thousands." Very true. Emotions are clearly important and we neglect them at the peril of our own well-being. Many a life has been destroyed by the emotions running amok. If this is true...and I think we all instinctively know it is...then Yahweh-Elohim, our Heavenly Father and Creator of our souls, must have, in His infinite wisdom, provided also for their redemption and redirection...their transformation so that they become beneficial instead of a hindrance, and a source of joy instead of a source of grief. The properly integrated feeling life is an indispensible part of human life and it will be with us into the eternities. Those who suppress it in life will find it fully awaken in them in the spirit world and the resurrection so it has to be dealt with or resolved here. We don't shed our emotions when we die and suddenly become pure 'thought' alone. We remain with our personalities, and the way we have chosen to let them develop, intact. We remain unique persons even shed of our physical bodies after death and when we regain our physical bodies in the resurrection we will finally be complete. We will have every aspect of the fullness of being that Yahweh our Heavenly Father designed us for.

Before we go any further, may I reaffirm that emotions are a wonderful divine endowment to our personalities...when directed toward the right ends. Somebody once said: "The feelings or emotions are the driving force of the soul. If properly harnassed they can drive you to great goals; if unharnassed they can drive you 'nuts'." They have to be broken and ridden like a wild horse made tame, with a bit in their mouth, reins, and a saddle on their back for the sanctified spirit to ride. The image of a rider on his or her horse, in full control, is an archetype, or recurrent symbol or motif that pictures the soul integrated and whole, a reason it appears in many peoples' dreams, with a white horse denoting purity. Though we may realise this goal up to a point through shere will-power, as I have discussed in other sermons in this series, it is only in Christ that it is possible to get everything properly functioning the way the Creator designed us to be.

As I said, the emotions can affect every cell of our body - for good or evil. A man, I read about, was carried into hospital with an extremely high heart beat, constant vomiting, and excessive perspiration. He had never been sick in his life, but one morning he walked into his daughter's bedroom to discover that his wife had killed his only daughter, and then committed suicide herself. A nightmare scenario. You hear of such horrific stories in the news, unfortunatly. People do crazy things, often driven by demons that they have admitted into their lives through believing in lies and sinning. Anyway, immediately upon experiencing this dreadful scene, the physical symptoms, which I just described, manifested themselves in that poor man. The organs of his body were structurally the same as they were before he discovered the tragic scene, but now, functionally, they were different. One moment they functioned in health - the next they functioned in ill-health. The emotions made the difference.

The power of the emotions is seen in a scriptural passage I'd like to read to you from the Torah. If you'd like to follow in your Bibles, turn with me to Numbers chapter 5, beginning at the 11th verse - the 16th verse will be the one I want to underline for you. We'll use a better flowing translation, this time, the New International Version (NIV), for clarity:

"Then Yahweh said to Moses, 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'If a man's wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him by sleeping with another man, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure -- or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure -- then he is to take his wife to the cohen (priest). He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder offering to draw attention to guilt.

"'The cohen (priest) shall bring her and have her stand before Yahweh. Then he shall take some qadosh (holy, set-apart) water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. After the cohen (priest) has had the woman stand before Yahweh, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. Then the cohen (priest) shall put the woman under oath and say to her, 'If no other man has slept with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have defiled yourself by sleeping with a man other than your husband'-- here the cohen (priest) is to put the woman under this curse of the oath -- 'may Yahweh cause your people to curse and denounce you when He causes your thigh to waste away and your abdomen to swell. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells and your thigh wastes away.'

"'Then the woman is to say, 'Amen. So be it.'

"'The cohen (priest) is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall have the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water will enter her and cause bitter suffering'" (Num.5:11-25, NIV).

We don't have time to go into the incredibly rich symbolism of this Torah practice in the Old Covenant or to explain how, in the New Covenant, the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) convicts of sins such as adultery, however interesting and correct this ancient practice was in its day (we don't do this today in the Melchizedek Order). But in those days if a woman was suspected of immorality, she was taken to the cohen (priest), and was given dirty water to drink, albeit 'qadosh, holy, or set-apart dust/dirt 'direct' from the Tabernacle. If guilty, she would have pains. If not guilty, there would be no pain. Notice also that her hair was let down, meaning, her headcovering was removed so that she temporarily came under the authority of the cohen (priest) rather than her husband for the purpose of this ordinance. The main point is this is as follows: the intense emotion associated with guilt is what undoubtedly produced those pains - adultery can be concealed like any other sin but because the penalty for this particular sin was death (it being the second most heinous sin against another human being aside from murder), its exposure often required out-of-the-ordinary means. This was, after all, a matter of life-and-death.

Emotional upsets result in functional disturbances. So we see one of the important functions of having emotions: when our mind tries to rationalise sin away (and it's pretty clever at that, you'll admit), then the emotions were, in part, designed as a fail-safe device to make sure we are properly convicted of transgression in our hearts, leading to repentance, and so save the whole soul. You see, the mind can and does fail us sometimes. It isn't infallible or 'better' than the heart. It can be just as devious. So mind and heart compliment one another, each backs the other up. When the heart is out of order, the mind is supposed to step in and declare truth to it. When the mind is out of order because it is believing a lie, the heart is supposed to step in and correct it. And when both fail, then a higher power - the Ruach (Spirit) - has to do some serious shaking in that person, who is then under the bondage of sin, until both mind and heart wake up and confess the emet (truth) because when mind and heart both conspire in sin, the soul is in very, very serious trouble because it is rendered blind. (We'll talk about physical action-responses another time to keep this simple today). That's what the passage which says, "the cohen (priest) shall being [the woman] before Yahweh" (v.16, TLB), is all about.

The Numbers 5 method wasn't the only way to force a conviction of sin, of course, and in any case, was specifically in response to a husband's 'jealousy' or suspicion that his wife was being unfaithful yet lacking any direct proof in the form of witnesses. David's adultery with Bathsheba was exposed by the navi (prophet) Nathan by an appeal to his suppressed conscience using a story about a rich man robbing a poor man of his only lamb (2 Sam.12). That method is more like the New Covenant Melchizedek Way that we are more familiar with. So there we have two scriptural reasons as to why we have ministers, family and friends - to awaken the mind and jolt the heart with Emet (Truth). That is why emet (truth) is so important and why Satan is vigorous in his opposition to it in the world because he wants us to stay blind. And that is why we preach it with unwavering passion because it has a way of dismantling, sometimes spectaculary, all the sophisticated mental and emotional devices our uncrucified fleshy nature erects to conceal our sins...a reason we are supposed to be done with - 'crucify ' that devilish nature.

So much of our sickness is the result of emotional dysfunction, and emotional dysfunction can be caused by unhealed hurts caused by trauma and suppressed emotions resulting from it. More commonly sickness can be the direct result of our willful choice to sin, because the soul does not want to admit transgressions or because it's scared to reveal a dark and troubled past for fear of rejection, social ostracisation, or whatever the reasion(s) may be. Michael de Montaigne tells the story of a man he knew who persuaded his dinner guests that they had just partaken of a baked cat. A particularly tender-hearted young women upon hearing this began to vomit, and, not long afterward, fell into a coma and died. The emotions of this very sensitive woman caused a functional disturbance in otherwise healthy organs. That was so tragic, a reminder we should not mess around with with each others' feeling but treat them carefully because people have different sensitivites and often handle things differently based on their any number of things like upbringing and spiritual nature. However, there are limits, as we know from all the 'safe space' nonsense in our current extreme postmodernist culture.

Interestingly, my first wife attended a wedding dinner of an Indian friend of ours and his Chinese wife in Oxford where we both studied, which I was unable to attend. This man become one of the chief editors of the Straits Times newspaper in Singapore. When she got home she told me that at first the meal had been absolutely delicious until mid-way the host told her she had eaten octopus whereupon she felt extremely nauseous, ruining the occasion for her. (These were the days before we knew anything about Yahweh's kashrut food laws). Whether he should have told her before the meal what she would be eating, or kept quiet about the recipe, is open to debate. Some people react to such things and some don't. It boils down to p+ersonal sensitivities. A princess may feel a pea through a dozen matresses whereas someone less sensitive may not, if I can borrow the fairy tale for illustrative purposes. Again the important point is the powerful rôles our mind and emotions play in our physical well-being.

One doctor claims that most people who have headaches, in which the pain goes down the spinal cord in the neck, have them because of emotional stress. Now obviously there's nothing wrong with the nerves themselves, but rather the messages being sent across those nerves are negative, fearful and shot through with anxiety. John A. Schindler claimed that half the people who have pains that seem like ulcer pains have no ulcer. The mind sends messages of fear, worry, stress, and conflict into the stomach, which, in turn, produces the pains. And the pains are not imaginary - they are as real as if they were structural in origin. This kind of pain is called psychosomatic, meaning it is our invisible psyche which impacts our soma or body.

Doctors have been saying for years that a great deal of high blood pressure comes from the emotions. Most people with high blood pressure, when under an anaesthetic, show normal readings. The origin of the pressure is not some biochemical imbalance - rather, it's caused by the emotions. I believe that is one of the principle causes of fibromyalgia which I suffer from. Many people get up in the morning feeling as if they hadn't even been to bed. And why? Because some emotion is setting up a tension in the subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind is operating in fear even though the conscious mind is asleep. It's a bit like driving your car with the brakes on. The facts are too many to try and escape. We must get our emotions straightened out if we ourselves as a whole are going to be straightened out: "This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones" (Prov.3:8, NIV). So what's a solution, if not the solution? Again Solomon tells us in the Book of Proverbs, chapter 3, beginning with the first verse:

"My son, do not forget my [Torah] teaching,
but keep my mitzvot (commands) in your heart,
for they will prolong your life many years
and bring you prosperity.

"Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Then you will win favour and a good name
in the sight of Elohim (God) and man.

"Trust in Yahweh with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He will make your paths straight.

Do not be wise (clever, a smartalec) in your own eyes;
fear Yahweh and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones" (Prov.3:1-8, NIV).

Stoicism is not the way to cope with emotional trauma either. We Brits were taught to be stoic in my generation and in the generations before mine, to be indifferent to personal emotional pain and suffering, to rule the passions by shere will-power alone. It is mental and emotional austerity without Elohim (God) and it doesn't work, at least not in the long term. It sounds good and noble on the surface but it is a killer to the one practicing it. It's probably a major contributor to my many physical illnesses because I was taught to maintain a stiff upper-lip and bear my burdens without complaining or seeking sympathy through shere will-power. We were not allowed to say what we really felt. My father was of that school and I never knew him as a person. He took care of me but not of himself. He was fair and generous to everyone but himself. And he harboured a deep trauma that he never spoke of - he was betrayed in his first marriage. Such is the power of tradition inculcated over many generations. Now, to be sure, a leader has to be in control of his feelings if he is to be an effective leader but there is a good way and a harmful way to do that. Have you ever wondered by Presidents and Prime Ministers often go grey-haired so quickly when in office?

Unfortunately Britain as a nation (and many other nations too) has swung to the opposite extreme of indulgence and hedonism and reaped a different set of woes. Britain has rejected Elohim (God) and is coming under judgment for it. The way of Zeno the philosopher, who founded Stoicism in the 4th century BC, is not the Gospel way, even if it may be regarded as selfless and self-sacrifiing in some important ways. As far paganism goes, it had much merit to be sure, and was better than nothing at all, because self-sacrifice and self-control is commendable and far, far better than selfishness and wildness, but it was still a lie because it was, and remains, suicidal in the long run. Stoicism leads to self-control but it is unnatural. We were not designed for it and we can so easily end up sinning against our bodies, the temple of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) (1 Cor.3:16; 6:19) in perpetuating the tenets of this philosophy which seems so Christian in its ambitions for an orderly society. It's fatal flaw is that it omits the heart, the emotions, failing to recognise their fundamental place in human life. Lasting and pleasurable self-control comes only through spiritual transformation, and transformation can only come about through personal and national surrender to Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). I used to think Stoicism was noble, but look at me today. It really is not compatible with Christianity/Messianism, even if it does undoubtedly have noble elements in it which Yahweh used in pagan society in the past to contain the spread of evil. Choose to be self-controlled, absolutely, but don't try to do it exclusively in your own will-power, because your flesh will trip you up time and time again. Let Christ-in-you - in your surrendered soul - align your soul and perfect your emotions, your thinking and thus your whole personality.

We'll take this further next Sabbath and then conclude the topic so let's conclude with a prayer this morning: "Dear Heavenly Father, I realise that if I am to become a completely transformed person then not only my thinking but my emotions must be straightened out too. So I come before You for emotional transformation. You, who made these emotions, help me not to unmake them so that they become disruptive and discreditable or equally badly completely numbed and frozen out of me. Save me from sending across the circuitry of my nervous system messages of fear, anxiety and conflict. Deliver me from psychosomatic, self-imposed illness. Alert me when I an trying to transform myself in my own strength. In this season of teshuvah (repentance), forgive me for all my sins both against others and against my own body, which is the temple of the Ruach (Spirit), and thus against You. Redeem me and make me whole. In Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen."

In eight days' time we will conclude this examination of the emotions. Tomorrow we assemble for Yom Teruah, the Day of Trumpets/Shouting as we enter the Autumn (Fall) Festival Season and I look forward to assembling with you then to hear what Yahweh has to tell us in this critical year. In Yah'shua's (Jesus') name. Amen.

Acknowledgments

[1] Selwyn Hughes, Every Day With Jesus: The Transformed Life (Crusade for World Revival, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, UK: 1979)
[2] Robert W.Witkin, The Intelligence of Feeling (Heinemann Educational Books, London: 1976)

Comments from Readers

[1] "Father, Yahweh. I unite my humble prayer and love with Brother Warren for his deliverance from his ailments and us all from our self-inflicting natures, in the precious Name of our Saviour, Yah'shua, Amen and Amen -- Brother Warren, than you from the bottom of my heart for who you are and the wonderful blessed teaching you bring us" (MW, USA, 7 September 2021)