Emotions the same has the Heart?

The heart is not the same as the emotions. Think of a large sponge in the cavern of your soul, absorbing the echoes from the heart as well as from the mind; the good absorbed with the bad. When the emotions are in a situation that reminds it of another situation it breathes out the stored feelings and stimulates the mind and body to prepare for the anticipated response. The heart is pure at its source as it is connected to the heart of Christ. When Christmas comes around your sponge breathes out what it anticipates "Christmas" to be. It is not the truth and sometimes not even a fact but a "justified" feeling from the past. The Holy Spirit of God does not manipulate His believers by using the emotions. He fully uses the heart, that is His primary point of contact with us believers.

Emotions can be programed with a strong mind and repetition. I used to throw newspapers. I hated picking up the newspapers from the warehouse. It was full of smoke from cigarettes and some very rough people. They seemed to growl at me for some reason. Well, one day I got tired of not liking it and decided to use my mind to overwhelm my emotions. I lied to myself by saying "I love to pick up the newspapers." Nothing changed but my attitude. Wow. I am dumber than I thought. I began to look forward to picking up the papers. I started talking to different people and found out they were not as rough as I thought nor were they the ones that were growling. While most of life contains deep and powerful grief that must be experienced, so much of life is based upon our ability for our mind to enslave our feelings and our mind's submission to the heart.

Pastor Rod

Choking On Joy

I am gifted by God to help people face their grief. I have helped people face grief that was bigger than they are. Yet my challenge is helping people to face the joy that comes when the grief matures. I have lost more people to joy choking than I have to grief.

I believe that JOY is the air of heaven. It is pure and natural to our human state. We long for the lazy and soul numbing state of happiness, yet we are called to prepare for a complete state of JOY.

God has shown me that grief is what prepares us for JOY so I can surmise that our problem with joy choking has to be with not letting grief have its way with us. We edit grief.

Grief is a gift from God, it is His breath in us that reveals to us that what has happened is wrong and out of place in His world. It is a gentle invitation to share His heart, His pain, His love. The tears and groans are whispers from His Spirit in our hearts binding us together. Thus if we embrace the grief and let it have its way with us, we will be ready for the JOY.

Make a focused effort to release the grief in your heart to be expressed, especially with others. Do not edit or touch the grief, learn to express it in safe environments and appropriately.

The same is true of JOY. There are key places where the JOY of our heart is to be released. JOY is the fragrance of our heart that enthralls the LORD to us. It is the beauty of our heart.