Posted on by Renee Meyer

What Do We Do With Our Negative Emotions? {Desperate: A Devotional on Psalm 42}

What do we do with our negative emotions? Psalm 42 teaches us to run, desperately to God with our anger, fear, confusion, disappointment. And to say to our souls: Hope in God.

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2)

I’ve sung these words as a lullaby over each of my babies, and you can find sweet, peaceful prints of these words in any Christian store. A sweet fawn tenderly approaching a quiet stream: Lovely.

But that’s not the picture the psalmist is painting. Psalm 42:1 is a picture of desperation.

Joel 1:20 uses the word “pant” to describe animals when the brooks are dried up and the pastures are devoured by fire. Maybe a better translation is:

“As a hunted deer, dying of thirst, pants for water, so my soul longs for You, O God.”

It doesn’t work quite as well for a lullaby or home decor, but I personally need to know that there’s a place for desperation in the life of the faithful.

Whether we like to talk about it or not, we all have negative emotions. Sorrow, grief, disappointment, confusion, anger: At ourselves, at each other, at our circumstances, at God.

And we have a choice: We can ignore these negative emotions. We can bully and bury them with truth. We can eat them to death, drug them, numb them, run far far away from them. We can be so busy we never have to face them. We can settle for living with them, that these negative emotions are all we have, always. We can complain about the reasons for them.

Or we can let them drive us, desperate, to God.

The root sin of humanity is the desire to be God, to live independently from God.

What if the hardships that come from living in this fallen world can help save us from that independence? What if we let those things drive us, desperate, to God?

This is the great lesson of the lament Psalms. Honest, specific, even poetic descriptions of the hardships of life on this earth. The psalmists take their complaints, their disappointments, their grief, confusion, and anger straight to God. And they included these conversations with God in their public worship, coming together to affirm their desperate need for God. Saying together,

Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

What would it look like for you to allow room for negative emotions, in yourself and others?

What would it look like to bring your hard things to God, and wait in the tension between what God says is true of and for us and our circumstances, our felt experiences?

This world is a hurting, broken place. Things are not as they should be, in the world or in the church among God’s people. Things are not as they should be in our own homes and families.

Whether we realize it or not, we are desperately in need of God, the living God.

And now, Lord, for what do we wait? Our hope is in you.

What do we do with our negative emotions? Psalm 42 teaches us to run, desperately to God with our anger, fear, confusion, disappointment. And to say to our souls: Hope in God.

 

Image used in Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash

 

Posted on by Renee Meyer · 1 Comment

Checking in on my 18 for 2018 (yikes.)

Instead of traditional New Year’s Resolutions, this year I made a list of 18 things that will make my 2018 happy/happier. I promised myself that I’d check in on this list, publicly, throughout the year. I wrote “CHECK IN ON 18 FOR 2018” on Thursday 2/22 on my calendar. And when I sat down to write this, I decided that could wait and wrote half of another post before I realized that I was running away from honesty and accountability because I’m pretty sure I haven’t started in on any/many of my 18. Yikes.

This is why people hate New Year’s Resolutions, isn’t it?? I’m reminding myself that I don’t have to do these things, I want to do them, and I chose things I think will legitimately make me happier. Also, I have all year, so it’s no biggie if I haven’t even thought of a few of them, right??

So here we are: It’s 2/22, and here’s how I’m doing on my 18 for 2018.

Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer

Eating Obstacles for Breakfast (No Fear)

Are you facing challenges that make you feel like a grasshopper? Look to Joshua and Caleb and learn to eat those obstacles for breakfast. (No Fear Devotional from reemeyer.com)

Our No Fear study this week continues the story of Moses and the Isrealites, who saw the Lord fight for them, while they had only to be still. After crossing the Red Sea and experiencing the deliverance of the Lord, the Hebrews were ready to enter the land God promised Abraham generations before.

Standing at the brink of God’s promises, at the border of Canaan, the people decide to send 12 spies into the land, to prepare the nation for the battle ahead.

Ten spies return with terrible news:

They gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size… and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.  (Numbers 13: 32-33)

This report causes the people to despair. But there is a voice of hope. Two of the spies have an entirely different view of the land of promise.

Caleb and Joshua attempt to calm the people, assuring Moses that the people can indeed take the land as God has promised. As the people weep and wail, wishing they had died in Egypt, Joshua and Caleb beg the people to believe God’s promise.

This fascinates me: How can 12 people have the exact same experience and come to two entirely different conclusions?

The answer is perspective.

Ten spies see obstacles, barriers, giants. Their view of the obstacles is bigger than their view of God: And so they preach fear and fleeing.

Joshua and Caleb see the obstacles, but their view of God is bigger than anything they saw in the land. And so they preach faith. Hope. Trust.

Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes;  and they spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, saying, “The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land.  If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land which flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” (Numbers 14:6-9)

Ten spies see giants. Joshua and Caleb see food, knowing that the obstacles we face by faith strengthen us.

Perspective is a choice.

What choice will we make? As we look to the unknown, to challenges, as we listen to the voices in our heads that cry “I CAN’T”, which is bigger? The challenge? The obstacle? The giants?

Or God?

Perspective is largely a function of focus. In photography, whatever is closest to the camera appears largest. I have a choice where I focus, and what I let be closest to me, as I picture challenges and things that make me afraid.

Is the challenge, the source of fear, standing between me and God?

Or am I looking at every challenge – like Joshua and Caleb – through the lens of a good God, who keeps His promises?

This is an important choice: It will lead us to be grasshoppers in our own eyes, or it will allow us to see obstacles as food for us. And if we’re leaders? It’s the difference between leading people to despair or encouraging them to faith. God WILL keep His promises. No fear.

 

Journaling Prompts:

What obstacles are you facing right now? What makes you feel like a grasshopper, and maybe like you’d be better off anywhere but here?

As a leader (in life, in your job, in your family), in what ways might you tend to focus on challenges and obstacles, letting them be bigger than God in your eyes and the eyes of those you lead? And how are you encouraged in your leadership by Caleb and Joshua’s example?

As you look to the future, things that make you feel fearful, what would it look like for you to see God as bigger than any obstacle or challenge?

Are you facing challenges that make you feel like a grasshopper? Look to Joshua and Caleb and learn to eat those obstacles for breakfast. (No Fear Devotional from reemeyer.com)

 

 

 

 

This post is the latest in the NO FEAR Devotional Series. If this resonated with you, check back every Tuesday, and read the previous posts in the series here.

Photo in cover images by Gouthaman Raveendran and Boris Smokrovic on Unsplash
Posted on by Renee Meyer

Bankrupt Without Love {14 Days of Love}

How would you define love?

Is love a feeling? A choice? Is love weak or strong? Can we live without love?

Bankrupt Without Love: Day 1 from "14 Days of Love: A Devotional Journey in 1 Corinthians 13" (click through for your free PDF!)

 

Our culture (even within the church) idealizes and idolizes romantic love. The love Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians is agape, the love of God (“for God so loved the world…”) and our response of love to God and one another (“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another…”).

My expository dictionary’s entry on Agape says: “Love seeks the welfare of all, Romans 15:2 , and works no ill to any, 13:8-10; love seeks opportunity to do good to ‘all men, and especially toward them that are of the household of the faith,’ Galatians 6:10.” (Hogg & Vine)

In your life and history, which have you valued more, romantic love or this agape love? Why?

 

 

Think about the different activities that take up your time throughout any given week. Your job, your classes if you’re a student, errands you run, tasks you accomplish, relationships in which you invest.

What does it look like when you’re doing those things

With love?

 

Without love?

 

 

And maybe the most important question I could ask:

Do you believe you are worthy of being loved? Really loved, unconditionally, success or failure, for who you really are? Why or why not?

 

Taking a break today from the NO FEAR series to post day 1 from “14 Days of Love: A Devotional Journey through 1 Corinthians 13.” Get your free copy when you sign up for the Reemail, my weekly update newsletter.

Spend a couple of weeks thinking about God's love, and asking how you can RECEIVE God's love and OFFER love to others.