Tag: peace

Thieves Were Here
fellowship with God · joy · peace

Thieves Were Here

RefreshHer2 Comments

I’ll never forget the sinking feeling I had one summer day some years back. I had gone out to get something out of my Jeep, and when I opened the driver’s side door there were my cassette tapes (my model was old!) strewn all over the seats of the car. My first thought was that my husband had made a mad search for something he needed. I came in and asked if he’d been looking for something in my car.

His reply was, “No, why?” After I explained what I’d found when I went out to my vehicle, it was obvious to us both that someone else had been searching through my car in the night. The thief had to be sorely disappointed, because I had nothing of value kept there, and the only tapes they found (and left) were Christian music tapes.

It gave me a truly strange feeling to know that some stranger had been rummaging through my car and my belongings, right outside my bedroom door while I slept! We learned that our neighbors had also been burglarized, some losing valuable possessions. We all began taking precautions against this happening again. I began locking my car and we left on a flood light through the night. These were things that we should have been doing all along, but instead we had left ourselves open to the thief because we thought we were safe.

I think how often I’m robbed of other things – things that I leave unprotected and unguarded, and as a result they are stolen away from me in a moment of distraction.

  • I’m robbed of joy when I am not walking in the Spirit due to unconfessed sin.
    Galatians 5:22a – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, genleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance… When we are in fellowship with God, we have ALL of these!
  • I’m robbed of what the Lord wants to teach me if I don’t discipline myself and make time to be in the Word.
    Proverbs 8:34 Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.
  • I’m robbed of sweet time in my home when I choose to tear down instead of build up. 
    Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands.Proverbs 14:1
  • I’m robbed of peace when I don’t hide God’s Word in my heart. Psalm 119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.

John 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

I have a choice now – to lock up my car and also to leave the light on in hopes of discouraging thieves, or I can leave everything as it was on the day the robbery happened. An even greater choice is the decision to lock up tight, and “leave the light on” in my spiritual life so I’ll be very aware of the thieves that desire to steal precious possessions the Lord wants me to enjoy!

Are you safeguarding against the thieves of your heart?

How Can We Biblically Deal with our Emotions?
Biblical Womanhood · joy · peace · Truth About Women

How Can We Biblically Deal with our Emotions?

RefreshHer2 Comments

Part 2 (You can find Part 1 here)

A good day can turn into a very bad day in a matter of minutes. Here’s how it goes –
1. I allow my feelings to dominate my thinking – (“This is the worst thing ever! I shouldn’t have to deal with this!” Neither of these statements are true.)
2. My reactions then reveal the emotional tidal wave by spilling from my mind into my heart. (I pout, am angry or I retreat)
3. My mouth speaks what I’m thinking. (I may accuse, complain or verbalize in other ways the things I feel)
4. The result is always regret. (Hurt feelings of others, distance in relationships, or spiritual coldness in my own heart)

However, when I begin to feel those emotions (and we will all feel things about our situations or relationships), I must make the immediate choice to deal with it in the three ways I mentioned last week. Then the blessed results of choosing right thinking will follow!
The results are…

  • Joy –   Eve lost her joy when she went on her feelings and failed to trust God. But we can follow Paul’s admonition and “Rejoice in the Lord always.” If there’s no one else or nothing else to think about with joy, our dear Savior is always the best place to meditate. In Him we have so many reasons to rejoice!
    He loves us unconditionally!
    He will never leave us!
    He lives within us!
    He’s made a promise He’s coming again!
    He’s praying for us!
    He has provided us access to the Throne of God!
    For this and so much more, He is the center of our joy.
  • Peace in your own heart and peace with others. Eve, lost peace with God when she sinned. Her relationship with Adam was scarred, too. Paul reminds us in Philippians 4 to “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” This literally means “don’t worry about anything.” That “feeling” you have can become a fretful thing. Pray instead and let the peace of God rule in your heart!
  • Spiritual and emotional health – Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.Prov. 31:25 If we want to be strong spiritually and emotionally healthy, we simply live in the strength that comes from resting in the Lord. We can be like the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:25 and have strength when we don’t lean on our emotions, but on our God Whom we are in awe of. We must realize that we can rest in His sovereign care for all that touches our lives and our feelings. When we have this kind of strength, we won’t end up an emotional wreck – no matter what we “feel.” Instead, we will be a woman of strength and honor.
    We hear a lot about emotional health. Here’s how to have it –

For good emotional health,

don’t depend on your emotions!

I don’t know about you, but I never like it when I’ve had times of emotional upheaval. Thank the Lord for His Divine help that enables us to mature in regards to our feelings.

If this post resonates in your heart at all, and you deal with fluctuating emotions as I have, make it a matter of prayer, asking God to help you apply #1-3 in the first part of this post.

Emotions are part of our make-up as women, but they should never be the boss of our lives! Let Truth override anything you may be “feeling.” Dig to find it in God’s Word. Ask loving questions of others. Then meditate on that truth instead.
You won’t have regrets for doing so.
Ask Eve.

Biblical Womanhood · joy · peace · Truth About Women

How Can We Deal Biblically With our Emotions?

RefreshHer1 Comment

Part 1

I love that God made women to be emotional beings. We feel sentiments, we sense problems, we discern issues. Sometimes we are spot on. Sometimes that intuition and sense of sadness, trouble or even excitement were all correct and we nod our heads, thankful that we followed through to care for ourselves or the other people involved.

However, because we are far from perfect, we don’t always get it right. Let’s face it, sometimes we can be totally off. On those occasions, we can also track our incorrect feelings to our incorrect responses. Been there? Me too! We are not alone, though.

When we open to the first Book of the Bible and see Eve in the garden, we are met immediately with a woman who missed it. When Satan showed her the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Scripture says,

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

She was looking at this whole situation and feeling that God had not been fair. He had withheld something that was good. Next we see that her wrong thinking/feelings, led her to act out her incorrect discernment when she took of the fruit and gave some to her husband, Adam.

There are several ways we can avoid jumping to conclusions as Eve did.

  1. Don’t go solely by your emotions. “I feel like…” Yes, sometimes we get it right, but emotions aren’t called “roller coasters” for nothing! If we go by what we “feel,” we’re very possibly going to end up with more than a crick in our neck. Like Eve, we will injure others in the process. Not going on our emotions is absolutely essential – especially when we are feeling things about God that are unlike His character!
    Elizabeth Elliot said, If you dwell on your own feelings about things rather than dwelling on the faithfulness, the love, and the mercy of God, then you’re likely to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Our feelings are very fleeting and ephemeral, aren’t they?  We can’t depend on them for five minutes at a time.  But dwelling on the love, faithfulness, and mercy of God is always safe.
  2. Seek out the truth. If your feelings are pushing you to do something, find out the truth before you do anything. If Eve would have gone to the Source (God Himself), she would have been spared the awful consequences that followed. Ask loving (not accusatory) questions. You might say something like, “I’m feeling like this is happening. Am I correct or am I in error?”
  3. Believe the truth. It’s easy to ask someone that question, but we can be so convinced we’re right about what we’re “discerning” that if they refute what we’re feeling, we refuse the truth when they state it. Perhaps it’s out of a desire to be right. Or perhaps we’re so sure of our feelings that we think we need to inform the other person.

The truth of this situation is found in Genesis 2:17

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Eve needed to believe that God was so good to her and Adam. He had kept the evil from them! She found that out very quickly, didn’t she? You and I will often invite hardship, too, when we keep pressing into our emotions. What do we do then if we’re told that our feelings are inaccurate? We make a choice. We go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to help us replace our feelings with right thinking. Philippians 4:8 Every time the emotion rushes in, we choose truth instead. It’s like choosing to eat something sweet and delicious, or picking up something disgusting from the sidewalk and popping it into our mouth and chewing on it. It’s our choice to choose.

Next week I’ll continue this post and I’ll be sharing the result of choosing right thinking over our emotions. For today, ask yourself:

  • Am I going solely on my emotions about the issue bothering me?
  • Am I willing to seek out truth?
  • Will I believe the truth when I hear it?

The roller coaster of emotions make for dizzy days. Guard your heart by seeking out the truth.

Christian Life · Uncategorized

How To Have True Peace

RefreshHerLeave a comment

The house is chaotic.  The grocery store is crazy.  Work is demanding and the traffic makes even your cup of coffee nervous.  Throw in the big city scene with all the violence, and you have many situations for a troubled heart.

Peace!  Where is peace?

As believers, our answers are all in God’s Word. Why would we even try to reason with all our chaos with the world’s phrases, techniques, masks or cliche’s?

First, let’s remember that Jesus said in this world we would have trouble!  That’s why He came.  We are desperate without Him.  Both Eternity and today are hopeless and lacking peace unless we come to Christ.  If you have no peace, could it be because you have never received Christ as your personal Savior?  He loves you and died to prove it!  His peace is yours when you come to Him for salvation from your sin.

Secondly, after we receive Christ as our Savior, we have peace with God and we can also have the peace of God. Philippians 4 reminds us in verses 6 and 7 that when we pray about our troubles, His peace, that passes all human understanding, will gird up our mind.

When we were having our new patio area done out back of our house, the guys put up supports all the way around the edge.  They said that if they didn’t do that, over time the bricks would move and the shape would not hold.  It was a step that was necessary to keep things looking good!  That’s what God’s peace does in our lives.  When we run to Him and trust every care to His keeping, our lives, our thinking and our emotions are all firmed up and He keeps our testimony as a Child of God looking beautiful!  Who believes that life in Christ is the best when they see us falling apart quicker than a brick building in an earthquake??! So if you have no peace, it may be because you’re not praying as much as you need to about those burdens in your life.

Lastly, we must seriously consider what’s in our mind.  Listen to Romans 8:6

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

If you know Christ and you’re seriously praying about your burdens, yet still have no peace, consider your thoughts – on what are they landing? Are you saturating your mind with the things of this world? Do you spend more time thinking about television shows, media, texts, magazines, fashion and news reports than you do God’s Word? There is no substitute for biblical Truth!  You either know it and trust it and have God’s peace because of it, or your thoughts are earth-filled and troubled.

image

Recently while we were working with a group on our church’s bathroom remodel, one of the men came to help with touching up a small area of paint.  When he walked in he was holding a railing that he was going to install in the handicap stall.  As he painted with his right hand, his left hand was firmly gripping the unattached railing.  I asked, “Are you holding onto that thing so you won’t fall down?!”  He didn’t even realize he was holding onto it – much less that he was gripping it so tightly!

We all had a good laugh, but you know, it’s a great picture of what it looks like when we fill our mind with earthly thoughts.  We’re wondering why we have no support, but we’re more attached to the world than we are to God!  We are wobbly, woozy and weak!  Peace will come when we think and meditate on spiritual matters. You can’t help but have joy and rejoicing when you do that!  Find a passage of Scripture to memorize.  Study a passage; dig and write notes about what you learn.  Listen to podcasts of preaching, or a CD of music that will turn your thoughts upward!

So, if you’re realizing that you could really use some peace, wisely consider:

  1. Is Christ my Savior because I’ve received Him as the sacrifice for my sin?
  2. Am I praying more than I am worrying about my cares?
  3. Do I have a greater spiritual mind than I do a carnal one?

These are the three ways to have real genuine peace in your heart!  And you know what?  When you have God’s peace NO ONE can take it from you!

Enjoy the peace that only God can give and

stay refreshed,

8e63c63ac0bc189bf1c68b03c74dbb5f (1)