Devotional 10-25-19

When we mismanage powerful emotions and fail to completel embrace the pain or release control, the emotions can bury themselves  like the root of a noxious week that sprouts again when most unexpected to spoil the landscape of our lives.  -- Elizabeth Barker

Resentments can destroy your life the same as weeds in a garden and when we think we are just setting things right by letting others know how a person hurt us we are really hurting more than them. We hurt ourselves, we hurt that person’s reputation and we can hurt other’s opinion of them. If we can’t give a person grace, then just shut up and take it to God. He is the only one who can bring peace to any situation or circumstance or heart.

I failed in this regard. Learn to pause. Learn to reign in those powerful emotions that can destroy us. That is when we are our most vulnerable. That is when we will make mistakes. That is when we will fail if we are going to fail. It can sneak up on you. Sometimes it takes a long time to fall. By the time you land face down with dirt packed in your throat, it’s too late for wishing you had controlled your emotions. It’s been years but I still taste the dirt in my mouth from bitterness. Not the bitterness of what that person did but the bitterness of my own hard heart. Take it to God. Never run from God. He is grace. He is never the cause of your pain. He is the rain of love that surrounds and enables us to get through any circumstance or emotion. Pause and Pray. Pause and Pray. Pause and Pray. Don’t run. Stay close to God.

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that "no root of bitterness" springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled. Hebrews 12:15

Barbara Smith Lavalley