Jeff Schreve - Runaway Emotions: Why You Feel the Way You Do and What God Wants You to Do About It

PRAISE FORRUNAWAY EMOTIONS

Emotions are a powerful part of our lives, but often they are the least understood. Jeff Schreves Runaway Emotions offers the help we need for hearing the deeper messages our emotions are telling us and how to enlist Gods help in addressing them. I highly recommend it.

ROBERT LEWIS, PASTOR AND FOUNDER, MENS FRATERNITY

Jeff Schreve understands both the devastating consequences and powerful influences of human emotions. No matter what you may be struggling with, there is real help in these insightful pages. Dont miss this very practical and helpful book.

DR. ED HINDSON, DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF RELIGION, LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

Most people dont suffer from a lack of IQ, instead their main deficit is a poor EQ (Emotional Quotient). Jeff Schreve gives us a primer on how to better understand emotionsyour own and those of friends and family members. If you want to grow your EQ Jeff will equip you to do just that in fresh and practical way.

DR. DENNIS RAINEY, CEO, FAMILYLIFE MINISTRIES

Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones famously said that most of our unhappiness in life is due to the fact that we spend more time listening to ourselves than in talking to ourselves. The Bible refers to this idea as taking every thought captive. My friend Jeff Schreve wants to help us learn how to take every feeling captive, and many Christians in our day need to learn just how to do that.

BOB LEPINE, RADIO CO-HOST, FAMILYLIFE TODAY

As a psychologist, I take a special interest in books dealing with emotional health. In Runaway Emotions, Jeff Schreve provides key insights that will help you turn negative emotions into positive results.

DR. CHARLES LOWERY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, LOWERY INSTITUTE FOR EXCELLENCE, INC.

This book will make your heart sing with joy! Pastor Jeff Schreve helps us to identify those negative emotions we have all experienced. But the book doesnt end there. Runaway Emotions reveals the overcoming hope we have in Christ--the hope that takes us from bound up to breaking free!

BABBIE MASON, SINGER-SONGWRITER AND AUTHOR, WWW.BABBIE.COM

Every pastor has run the gamut of dealing with people whose emotions have stepped into the path, derailing logic, but worse still, derailing the counsel of the Word of God. Jeff Schreve, a gifted pastor and preacher, now provides a way to walk through these emotions and return to the sage advice of Gods Word.

PAIGE PATTERSON, PRESIDENT, SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, FORT WORTH, TX

2013 by Jeffrey B. Schreve a/k/a Jeff Schreve

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE: OLD TESTAMENT. 1962, 1964 by Zondervan (used by permission); and from THE AMPLIFIED BIBLE: NEW TESTAMENT. 1958 by the Lockman Foundation (used by permission). Scripture quotations marked CEV are taken from THE CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION. 1991 by the American Bible Society. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from THE GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION. 1976, 1992 by The American Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version (public domain). Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible. 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Blue Letter Bible, New Living Translation. 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked PHILLIPS are taken from J. B. Phillips: THE NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN ENGLISH, Revised Edition. J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. Also quoted: The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schreve, Jeff, 1962

Runaway emotions : why you feel the way you do and what God wants you to do about it / Jeff Schreve.

p. cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4002-0482-3

1. Emotions--Religious aspects--Christianity. I. Title.

BV4597.3.S38 2013

248.86--dc23

2012043570

Printed in the United States of America

13 14 15 16 17 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

I t is a special delight to me to see Jeff Schreves book, Runaway Emotions, be made available for the many who are interested in the ebb and flow of their emotions. In a way, it is an extension of my own pilgrimage, and my pursuit of answers more consistent with biblical principles.

After studying counseling in graduate school and serving as a pastor for two decades, I wrote The Message in Your Emotions in 1996. My wife, Sharon, and I had been in the process of sorting out our own psychological journeys for several years. We had both come from what are now called dysfunctional families. Our fathers were both alcoholics. We were both firstborn. These factors and others contributed to an interesting mixture of shared hang-ups. I wanted to figure us out and to help others understand themselves.

My efforts to find a workable counseling method were based on two assumptions. First, I believed that the nature of man, like the rest of creation, was reasonable and understandable. There are patterns to Gods creative work. There is a design. So I made notes, recording observations on the wonderful variety of emotions we experience, particularly the painful ones. Somewhere there was a clear trail back to the source of our troublesome feelings.

My second assumption was that the wisdom of biblical principles held answers for emotional distress. I accepted the Bible as authoritative and completely trustworthy and believed there were timeless truths revealed in its laws, history, letters, sermons, and stories. If we could get past legalism on the one hand and skepticism on the other, we could identify universal principles to help us understand the mystery of our emotions.

I had no pretensions that this model for self-understanding would end the search. But I knew that God created us in His own likeness, with finite qualities like His infinite ones. Each of those qualities comes with inherent desires that are part of our being human. In the book I presented an interpretation of negative emotions as a warning system that one of these desires is threatened.