THE SNAKE LINE
A powerful solution to stop worry, fear, self-pity, and other forms of negative behavior.
I happened to hear a portion of a sermon about not controlling your thoughts and emotions.
Babies can’t control their emotions. This is acceptable. It is understood. Mind and emotional control is a learned behavior.
When adults don’t control their words and behavior, it can be assumed they lack emotional intelligence. Screaming obscenities, driving too aggressively and acting like spoiled children is not acceptable behavior.
Did you know excessive heights and bad weather are not the greatest hazards facing rock climbers?
Poisonous snakes are the gravest danger because they blend in with the environment. Often they cannot be seen. A toxic snake bite for a climber on a remote cliff can be life ending for the mountaineer.
Yet snakes cannot survive in high altitudes. Once the climber reaches these elevations where the snakes cannot live, there is no longer a fear of being bitten by a snake who has the ability to poison the climber.
Negative emotions like fear, anger, worry, jealousy, resentment, and self-pity are emotional poisons. They can’t live above God’s, “snake line.”
Emotional poison does not exist where love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control exist.
It is the same way a rock climber is on alert for snakes, emotionally intelligent people are keenly aware of their emotional temperature.
The manual for life’s instruction offers specific directions:
- Know your enemy – 1 Peter 5:7
- Be filled with the Spirit – Galatians 5:22-23
- Dress like a winner – Ephesians 6:10-16
- Expect miracles – Ephesians 3:20
Living above the “emotional snake line” is worth giving up behaviors that are common in the world of untrained children. It’s worth the discipline to know, understand, and obey God’s manual that teaches us to live above board and above the snake line.
