Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
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Language
Analytical
Confident
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Social Tendencies
Openness
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Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
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By Pastor Glenn Pease
John Powell, whose books have now sold over 11 million, begins his book The Christian Vision with the request that we run a short home made movie on the screen of our minds.
Imagine that you have come home on a dark night and to your horror you see a long snake on your front lawn.
Your heart begins to pound wildly and the adrenaline starts pumping into your blood stream.
You quickly grab a garden hoe and in your frenzy you hack the wreathing snake into pieces.
Satisfied with your heroic deed you go inside and try to settle your nerves with a warm drink.
Later, lying in bed you still see the wriggling form on your front lawn.
The next morning you return to the scene of the slaying and discover you have chapped your garden hose into a dozen pieces.
It was a garden hose, but now it is green macaroni.
Last night it was a snake.
It was always a hose, of course, but when you thought it was a snake it aroused your emotion of fear and you attacked it like a foe with deadly force.
The point is, our emotions are created by our perceptions.
They are caused by what we think, and the way we think.
Emotions are only as authentic as our grasp of reality.
If we misunderstand or misconstrue reality, we will have motions that are unrealistic.
We will all agree that attacking a garden hose with a hoe is an over reaction.
The whole man is out of order.
The mind is thinking wrong.
The emotions are motivating wrong, and the will is choosing wrong behavior.
This is assuming that you need one long hose and not a dozen real short ones.
What we need to realize is that though emotions are vitally important in our lives, they are not infallible.
Dr. James Dobson has written a book titled Emotions: Can We Trust Them?
His answer is no we can't.
They are not reliable guides because they can be stimulated by so many variables and, therefore, they lack stability.
Not only can drugs affect your emotions, but the internal chemistry in your body can make radical differences in them.
The emotions are too subjective.
They can be aroused and you can be made to feel very strong about something that has no basis in reality.
He gives some illustrations out of his own life.
He tells of the high school where the football team consistently lost to their arch rival in a nearby community.
It was getting depressing and embarrassing.
Finally a wealthy oil producer decided to change things.
He offered each boy on the team and each coach a new Ford if they could defeat their bitter rivals in the next game.
The team went wild with excitement, and for the next 7 days they ate, drank, and breathed football.
The entire school was caught up in the spirit of ecstasy.
Finally, the big night came, and you never saw a more excited team rush to the field.
But they were demolished 38 to zero.
All the whoop-de-do could not compensate for their lack of discipline and practice.
Dobson points out that the Jesus movement of the 1960's did not last because it was too emotion oriented.
These youth were highly emotional, but had little theological and Biblical understanding.
The result was many of them were soon caught up in various cults and sects.
Emotions are just not enough.
Then he tells of his good friend Steve Smith who was with a company of soldiers in Vietnam.
Their first night out they were terrified as the sun went down and they sat in their fox holes on a hill.
At about midnight guns began to blaze away on one side of the mountain and soon all of the soldiers sere firing frantically and throwing hand grenades into the darkness.
The battle raged through the night.
Finally the sun came up and they sent out men for a body count.
Not one enemy soldier was found.
This whole company had fought furiously through the night an enemy who was not even there.
The emotions had stirred up this battle and not the enemy.
His final illustration is of his mother and father who lived in Los Angeles in 1967 when the Charles Manson murders took place.
Everyone was on edge and one night they heard an intruder in their house.
They listened as they breathed shallowly and then another sound caused them to leap out of bed in the dark and head for the door.
Each had their own plan of action.
His mother's strategy was to put her foot up against the door and throw her weight into keeping the intruder out.
His father'' strategy was to throw the door open and confront the intruder head on.
When he pulled the door he met the resistance of his mother, and she melt it was the killer trying to force his way in.
There they stood in the pitch blackness of midnight struggling with each other, and terrified in the thought that they were in a tug of war for their lives.
His mother could feel she was losing the battle and so fled to the window and screamed at the top of her lungs.
His father was then able to open the door and pursue the villain, which he never caught, of course, for he was a product of their emotions.
We could all add some stories of our own of how emotions have led us astray.
But this is not to say that emotions are not an extremely precious part of what God has made us to be.
We are emotional beings and there is no way we can be what God intends for us to be without emotions.
You can be a good computer without emotions, but you cannot be a good Christian without them, for a large part of the Word of God is directed toward Christian emotions.
That which makes a Christian different from the world is largely a matter of emotions.
The passage of Rom. 12 is an excellent illustration of just how emotions are a key element in the Christian life.
The Christian life revolves around the expression and control of emotions.
I find in these few verses a host of emotions.
You have love, hate, brotherly love, inferiority, zeal, joy, hope, patience, compassion, rejoicing, mourning, pride, humility, revenge, and peace.
These are just the main emotions Paul deals with here.
Before we begin to focus on specific emotions we want to see from this passage as a whole some important truths about emotions.
First we want to focus on-
I. THE VALUE OF EMOTIONS.
Just because they are not always to be trusted does not mean they are not valuable.
A diamond watch is not infallible either, and cannot always be trusted to give you the right time, but it is still of great value, and even the cheap watch can serve the purpose of letting you know the approximately accurate time.
Things are not valuable only when they are perfect, for if that was the case there is very little a part from God that would have any value.
Defective as they might be, emotions are among our highest values.
Would you sell your right to feel love, joy, and peace for any amount of money?
There is no wealth that can take the place of positive emotions.
We would gladly pay to have the negative ones hauled away, but as we shall see in our studies, even the bad ones have their positive values.
The good ones, however, are priceless.
The emphasis of Christian psychology is that emotions are not either good or bad in themselves, but have the potential for both good and evil.
Joy in sin can lead one deeper into sin.
All that is pleasurable can be used to lure one to evil.
This does not make the feeling of joy and pleasure evil, for there is joy in serving Jesus also, and the pleasure of the Christian life motivates the Christian to obey Christ and to serve Him more intensely.
Sadness can lead to depression and despair.
It can cause one to surrender to the forces of darkness and evil.
But it can also lead to repentance and to victory over the forces of darkness by surrender to God.
Hatred can lead to murder, or it can lead to confession and control which produces behavior beneficial to all the parties concerned.
The key to all emotions becoming a positive value is Paul's closing verse of this chapter where he writes in verse 21, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
No emotion is evil in itself.
It is what you do with it, or what you allow it to motivate you to do that becomes either evil or good.
The key is in control.
Emotional control is the goal, for by it we can overcome evil with good.
Emotional health and stability begins by recognizing that all emotions are okay.
You cannot feel anything that is evil in itself.
Anger, hatred, resentment, and jealousy can all be felt legitimately, and not lead to evil when they are kept under control.
God made you with the ability to feel these emotions.
They are a part of what it means to be human.
Don't get all bent out of shape because you feel feelings that are negative and potentially dangerous.
It can be an authentic response to your situation.
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