Devotion for Week Four

Beloved!

Sorry that my blog is late this week. We just returned from California where we were visiting my husbands family out there. But we arrived home safely early this morning, and here I am!

This particular step, to me, has become so much more than just decluttering our homes. Although, hopefully, we are still working on that. I was doing well until summer hit, and then things get kind of crazy. I plan on getting back to it in the fall. This time I think I will start in the basement, I never did get to it in the spring.

This step has become for me a hope, a journey towards living a life filled and controlled by the Peace of God!! Learning how to live through all the stuff of life (and we all go through stuff) without losing my Peace!

We have been talking for the past 3 weeks about change that needs to take place in our lives, spiritually, mentally, and physically. This week I want to talk about emotional change that we should be expecting and striving for in our lives in this journey with Jesus!

First of all, let's look again at Jesus, our example for living. Jesus was balanced emotionally. He didn't suppress His emotions, He expressed them appropriately. Whether it was anger at the money changers in the temple, sadness at the death of Lazarus, or joy at the wedding feast in Cana. He was in control of His emotions, not controlled by them.

As women, it is especially easy to live our lives totally out of our emotions. My poor husband lived with a wife, and four daughters, emotions ran high in our house!! Whether we are happy, sad, depressed, or anxious, it is reason enough to eat! We eat to celebrate, we eat to feel better. Eating becomes a way to deal with our emotions.

God is committed to healing our emotions!! Only by retraining our emotions through God's Word and prayer are we ever going to find wholeness. Trust Him to heal your life and make you a whole person by bringing emotional balance to your life!

As you memorize scripture and learn to pray scripture back to Him, you will begin to experience emotional healing and balance in your life.

Isaiah 42:6-7 says, "I, the Lord, have called you in Righteousness, I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you, and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness."

For too many years I, and maybe many of you, could relate to Paul in Romans 7:15, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."

There is hope Beloved! We don't have to live in that dilemma!

My prayer for all of us is that we will identify more and more with Romans 8:5-6 "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace!

I chose life and peace, and I know you do too! We can expect to live a life of peace as we chose balance in the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional areas of our lives. Let's chose to change in all of these areas with God's help!

Father, bless each of my girls today, and help us all to find balance in our lives that we may live a life that honors you! Change us oh Lord! Amen!

Bye for now, I love you all so much!

Mary/Mom/Grams/Aunt