Dave’s Monday Blast – March 18, 2024
As we examined last week, disappointment and discouragement is part and parcel to humankind. We shared four examples from the word affirming this truth: Job, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Peter demonstrated the discouragement happens to even the strongest and best of people.
It is critical for followers of Christ though to make certain that these debilitating emotions don’t get the best of us. INTENTIONAL men of God know that their best must always be available for Kingdom work. To that end, Biblestudytools.com
1. Be honest. It does no good to pretend you don’t feel what you feel. You can’t take action against a negative feeling until you first admit you have it. A strong Christian is not someone who never experiences negative feelings. It’s someone who has learned what to do with them and how to process them biblically.
2. Take care of your body. If your body is unhealthy, your mind, emotions, and will also be unhealthy. I love how God tended to Elijah’s body first before addressing anything else, and provided ravens to feed him. Sometimes the circumstances of life drain us dry, and we need to press pause, stop doing, and simply rest and refresh. (Selah)
3. Pay attention to your thought life. Maturing as believers means we learn to think truthfully (Philippians 4:8) and to take captive our thoughts to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
All of us attempt to make sense of the things that happen in our lives. We try to figure out why they happen and what it all means. It’s crucial that we pay attention to what stories we are telling ourselves about ourselves, about others, about God or a particular situation, and whether or not those stories are actually true.
For example, if you look at what Elijah was telling himself after he became discouraged, much of it was not true, yet because he thought it, it added to his misery (1 Kings 19). Jeremiah was also telling himself things about God that were not true but because his mind believed his version of reality instead of God’s, he lost his hope. Read through Lamentations 3. Notice in verse 21 Jeremiah begins to have a change of heart. He says, “This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope.” When his thoughts changed his negative emotions also lifted, even though his circumstances stayed the same.
Next week: Training ourselves to “see” and “press close” into Him.
