I am being taken to school, so to speak, on the topic of emotions. What I feel like doesn't necessarily translate into what I AM like. If this sounds circuitous to you, imagine how it is coming across to me, sitting here with too much lunch around my girth and my second cup of coffee in my hand, bathing in some negative emotions and hoping that I have, well, simply not encountered enough people today to totally dishonor the Lord.
I am turning forty-six this week. That doesn't feel too good. If you send me an inbox message that "it beats the alternative" I will unfriend you. Just kidding. Sort of.
Back to my central theme today. If I feel unspiritual, that does not mean that God has left me. That does not mean that I am cut off. If I feel out of sync with the Holy Spirit, that does not mean that He is not speaking to me, cannot get through my fog to me. I just have to keep showing up in my study and waiting for Him. Just have to keep making myself available. If I FEEL like a useless, boring housewife, I am probably not one. They would not know they were boring and, I guarantee you, would be bent over a baseboard scrubbing with a toothbrush or making a homemade birthday cake, floured up to their eyeballs. They would not be reading this blog and, if they did, "that's stupid" might fly through their curtains-carpet-recipe-laden mind as they quickly clicked away to take a "What Kind of Spider Are You" internet test.
But I, again, digress. As I sat down to pray, my mind was like a ping pong pall in a room full of two-year-olds playing with kittens. Then it hit me: I DON'T HAVE TO PRAY HIGHLY ARTICULATE, ALL-BASES-COVERED PRAYERS EVERY SINGLE TIME I PRAY. I don't have to shout at the devil every time (though sometimes it might be justified). I can just say a few things. I can turn my heart to heaven. I can go on with my day.
Some days we will just plain be uninspired, from an emotional standpoint. Other days, we will be flat-out led astray by our emotions, if we allow them to jerk us into the wrong actions or away from the right actions. This is why knowing that God is right at hand and will help us to finish our tasks every day is so vital to me. I will just keep praying that God will show me how to spend my days, then give me the strength to do what He showed me to do. Some days it will be fun. Other days, like today, my body will feel like dead weight under my lack of excitement. Somewhere under all of that flesh, the Holy Spirit lives. He doesn't leave. He WILL help me.
One day as I either worked on a latch hook rug or flitted about the house, I overheard Dr. Charles Stanley say "This thing of emotions is a big deal." Ummmm, darn tootin'. I think I laughed out loud when he said it, though he was dead serious. Another time I heard Billy Graham say during an interview, or perhaps I read it somewhere, that there were times the weakness in his body, under the pressures of old age and illness, made him want to refrain from his duties as an evangelist. However, God always came through for him, giving him the power he needed to preach.
Two things I can rely on, if I am willing to follow the Lord and don't shrink back from fear of the responsibilities He will give me: He WILL speak to me in ways that I can clearly understand, marking out the way for me to go. He will also supply all of the resources, including the emotional and physical strength I need for the tasks He has called me to.
I am turning forty-six this week. That doesn't feel too good. If you send me an inbox message that "it beats the alternative" I will unfriend you. Just kidding. Sort of.
Back to my central theme today. If I feel unspiritual, that does not mean that God has left me. That does not mean that I am cut off. If I feel out of sync with the Holy Spirit, that does not mean that He is not speaking to me, cannot get through my fog to me. I just have to keep showing up in my study and waiting for Him. Just have to keep making myself available. If I FEEL like a useless, boring housewife, I am probably not one. They would not know they were boring and, I guarantee you, would be bent over a baseboard scrubbing with a toothbrush or making a homemade birthday cake, floured up to their eyeballs. They would not be reading this blog and, if they did, "that's stupid" might fly through their curtains-carpet-recipe-laden mind as they quickly clicked away to take a "What Kind of Spider Are You" internet test.
But I, again, digress. As I sat down to pray, my mind was like a ping pong pall in a room full of two-year-olds playing with kittens. Then it hit me: I DON'T HAVE TO PRAY HIGHLY ARTICULATE, ALL-BASES-COVERED PRAYERS EVERY SINGLE TIME I PRAY. I don't have to shout at the devil every time (though sometimes it might be justified). I can just say a few things. I can turn my heart to heaven. I can go on with my day.
Some days we will just plain be uninspired, from an emotional standpoint. Other days, we will be flat-out led astray by our emotions, if we allow them to jerk us into the wrong actions or away from the right actions. This is why knowing that God is right at hand and will help us to finish our tasks every day is so vital to me. I will just keep praying that God will show me how to spend my days, then give me the strength to do what He showed me to do. Some days it will be fun. Other days, like today, my body will feel like dead weight under my lack of excitement. Somewhere under all of that flesh, the Holy Spirit lives. He doesn't leave. He WILL help me.
One day as I either worked on a latch hook rug or flitted about the house, I overheard Dr. Charles Stanley say "This thing of emotions is a big deal." Ummmm, darn tootin'. I think I laughed out loud when he said it, though he was dead serious. Another time I heard Billy Graham say during an interview, or perhaps I read it somewhere, that there were times the weakness in his body, under the pressures of old age and illness, made him want to refrain from his duties as an evangelist. However, God always came through for him, giving him the power he needed to preach.
Two things I can rely on, if I am willing to follow the Lord and don't shrink back from fear of the responsibilities He will give me: He WILL speak to me in ways that I can clearly understand, marking out the way for me to go. He will also supply all of the resources, including the emotional and physical strength I need for the tasks He has called me to.
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