I have never been a landlord in the conventional sense of the word, but I have known people who own and manage properties and have come to realise there are all kinds of tenants, ranging from the near-perfect-causing-no-problems ones to the ones whose behaviour leaves a trail of destruction wherever they go.
Emotions seem to me to be a little like tenants. There are the ones which cause us no problems: joy, peace, faithfulness, for example. But there are many more which leave us with problems to be solved: despair, anguish, rejection, hurt, to name but a few.
Some of these emotions may need evicting from our hearts, but eviction isn’t an easy process in the natural or in the spiritual. There has to be cooperation from a wide range of authorities if a tenant is to be evicted, and in the same way, reason has to be brought into the arena if rogue emotions are to be tamed.
Paul says ‘we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.’ (2 Cor 10:5) Harmful emotions feed on the nourishment of our thinking. If our thinking is sound, then the ‘loose thought and emotion and impulse’ can live in the structure of life shaped by Christ. (2 Cor 10:5, The Message) If our thinking is built on wrong foundations and we allow harmful emotions like resentment, bitterness and unforgiveness to flourish, our lives will soon resemble houses overrun by wild tenants.
Driving out (evicting) wrong thoughts and emotions is a tiring and demanding task. It requires daily prayer and a willingness to allow God’s Spirit to search us and test us, to highlight the loose cannons in our lives and the courage to be ruthless with ourselves. My mother, who battled mental health issues in her life, used to tell me to ‘kick moods into touch.’ We cannot afford to live simply by how we feel, but have to learn to live by the truth God’s Word reveals. Only then will the right kinds of tenants live in us, as the Holy Spirit grows His fruit in our lives. (Gal 5:16-23)