Each Sunday evening, I study God's word with a very diverse and wonderful group of women. Each lady is unigue in personality and has something interesting to add to our discussion. We just started a new book study on a Women of Faith book called Managing Your Moods. I can almost hear you laughing at the title of this book! We're women...we have moods. And depending on what week it is, my mood varies. I can go from sweet to crazy real fast. I'm complex. That's how God made me. So are you. As I am going through this book, listening to the stories and studying God's word, I have experienced light snickering, guilt, encouragement, laughter, feeling like God is stepping on my toes and more side splitting laughter. We're women! We have some good stories! Our hearts are "a bundle of emotions.""People can be described as hardhearted, softhearted, coldhearted, fainthearted or even heartless. Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. We know what it's like to lose heart, take heart, have our heart set on something, have a change of heart, and have our hearts skip a beat. We know what it's like to do something to our heart's content. We can be heavyhearted, halfhearted or lighthearted." We've known heartache, we've been heartsick. "We read God's Word and take it to heart."
Tonight we talked about two moods, happiness and anger. I will discuss anger next week when I'm not so angry. Just kidding. Happiness. Can we be happy always? We all experience the emotions listed above. There are times that we are just not feeling happy...but we can have JOY in the midst of any emotion. I think God explains it best.
People will say, "just trust your heart." But our hearts AND emotions deceive us. Deuteronomy 11:16, "Take care lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside..." Turn aside...from what? Our pure devotion to God. To what? You fill in the blank.
We can't handle our "mish-mashed" moods, but God can. And He can help us. Psalm 34:18, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Whatever the mood is...cry out to Jesus. He wants to heal our humble and contrite heart. He wants to be our rescue.
and...drum roll...my favorite verse for the week...
Hebrews 10:22, "let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." So why are our hearts a bar of soap. Because that is the treasure trinket we were given this week. A Bar of Soap - to remember that our hearts are slippery, no matter how much we want to hear from God and do His will.
Stay on guard this week and remember this each time you look at a bar of soap.
