emotions, emotions, emotions

in those moments where i am totally at peace, but yet also just so human and feel the strong pangs of missing the one i love and can not be with right now, i know that God sees me and reaches out.

and this is where i think we often make the mistake. God took great care in giving us a range of emotions and when the Bible speaks about finding your joy in the Lord, it doesn't mean that we should always walk around with a "haha" happy happy attitude. too often Christians do not get real about how we're really feeling in the hope that others will think that we find our joy and peace in Him, and it becomes a bit of an achievement culture. the happier, the closer we must be to God?

serving Jesus does not mean that i will only have the so-called positive emotions. too often sadness or feeling tired or down is seen as "negative emotions". it is only when satan uses these to keep us in bondage that it becomes a problem.

but the Bible shows us that Jesus felt anxiety and anger and sadness. when he heard that Lazarus had died, he cried. i think he mostly cried for Lazarus' friends and his family, but also for him. i think he also cried, because it made the gap that had come between God and man because of sin, so tangible for Him to see. when He saw what the sellers had done to God's beloved temple, He got angry and chased them out. when He saw how the leaders of Israel were misleading His people, He called them for what they were. when He realised that His time to be separated from His Father and the time to carry the sins of the world was upon Him, He took it to His Father in anxiety, and was sweating blood. He asked God if it could not be different.

And maybe that is what we need to learn - in all our emotions, albeit feeling good or feeling like death, we need to take it to our heavenly Father. He longs to help us carry where we are too tired to go on, He longs to share the moments where life just seems incredibly good, He longs to hold us when it just hurts too much. He longs to walk with us, speak to us, commune with us.

He longs to be there every step of the way, whether we're crying or celebrating. He is our God.

surrendering...

surrender.... we use the word so often, that one could be forgiven for thinking that it is easy. and then i find that it is not...

and although i love God with all of my heart, i find that i still doubt, still try and hold on, still try and figure it out, still try and adjust and control in some sort of way, even if it is just to keep on praying and feeling a bit frantic, and that my actions and my prayers might somehow persuade God to answer...

and time and again, i fall on my face, i bleed, i cry, i wish things were different, i rebel at what doesn't seem fair or right, i worry, and i sometimes even resent not being able to change things around me.

and it's then, when at last i actually just feel like dying, crawling into a corner and never waking up, that God's gentle Spirit whispers into my secret place, there where just Him and I can go... deep down inside I become aware of this: "Surrender".

surrender your heartaches and your battles and your fears and your doubts and your human thoughts and your cries and your needs, because I say "I am the Way". "I am the Jesus that resurrected people from the dead, I am the Jesus that cried with Mary and Martha about Lazarus, I am the Jesus that calmed the storm." "I am the Father that says cast all your anxiety upon Me, because I care for you, I am the God that has good plans for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you." "Even if a mother could forget her only child, I have not forgotten you, I have your name (and his) engraved in the palm of my hand."

"I have loved your with an everlasting love, I have bought you with the blood of my Son." "I will never leave you nor forsake you".

And in that quiet whisper, i know that i am home and nothing i can ever do will change things, but God can. And it's then that i surrender...