Are you weighed down by soul-cluttering baggage?Angela Gulartie signsandwonders12@yahoo.com
August 10, 2007
"Arise, shine, for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord
is risen upon you!" Is 60:1
"Let Go of Disappointment!"
Grace and peace to you this day!
When I first wake up in the morning and I'm laying in bed, before I start to plan my day and think about the multitude of things to be done, my soul is in a "default" mode. That's the time when I can take an accurate "spiritual temperature check" to see what my subconscious mind is holding on to.
Notice I said my soul, not my spirit.
My soul, like yours, is colored by the left-overs of unfinished business, my thoughts, my fears, my expectancies. These are all issues of the soul.
It's easy to spot the conscious thoughts, fears, expectancies and emotions. It's more important and somewhat harder to spot the unconscious ones. But first thing in the morning, before I've had time to "rev up" my mind with all my plans, the secret things and issues that my subconscious is carrying around rises to the surface for inspection.
To move out of the soul and into the spirit requires intelligent action. It doesn't just happen by accident. I have to practice re-training myself and I know that in time, the process will become more automatic. But right now, I am still learning. .
One of the disciplines Holy Spirit has been teaching me in this new season is to bring the Joy of the Lord in to flood me - spirit, soul and body- before I get out of bed in the morning. When the joy comes in, I have enough energy to get out of bed. And no wonder - the Word of the Lord promises this should be so:
Ne 8:10 "The joy of the Lord is your strength."
Today as I was practicing this discipline, I learned two things.
First, there is no room for the Joy of the Lord to come in as long as my emotional space - my soul - is cluttered by soul baggage.
Second, joy is weightless. I can't receive it while I am weighted down by the disappointments of life that I have been carrying around with me as though they were valuable cargo. The truth is, disappointments are spiritual junk, a toxic form of spiritual pollution that gets in the way of my becoming the person the Lord has purposed me to be.
Disappointment. We each have a lifetime of disappointments of various shapes and sizes and emotional colors that we carry around with us. Some big, some little. Some old, some new. Some important, others insignificant. But all of them are spiritual poison.
Allow enough disappointment to cling to you, and it will be a dead weight that will pull you into the Sea of Despair, part of the torments of hell on earth concocted by our enemy the devil.
Why, you ask, would anyone go to the Sea of Despair? Because we don't realize that we are holding on to disappointments until it's too late and we've already been sucked in by the whirlpool in the waters of despair.
Disappointment has cumulative weight. Many little disappointments, if not properly disposed of, will weigh just as much as one big disappointment.
We remember our disappointments not just in our thoughts, but with our bodies. Memories and emotions store in flesh, causing cancer, paralysis, a withering of muscles, all sorts of horrible things.
Disappointment shows up in the stress lines of our faces ,and causes us to hold extra weight on our bodies.
Disappointment causes us to stop reaching for God's best and to view ourselves in the tarnished mirror of regret. We should be looking at ourselves in the reflection of God's light which is the brightest mirror of all.
God has told us what we are to do with the things that weigh us down.
He 12:1 "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."
So this morning as I lay in bed asking Holy Spirit to fill me with the Joy of the Lord - that is a joy that emanates from my relationship with Him, NOT a joy that derives from my emotions or pleasant circumstances around me! - I noticed after a while, that the joy didn't come.
I tried, and it didn't come. I tried again, and it didn't come. I continued to try, and it still didn't come. And finally, I got desperate and asked God, what was in the way? Why wasn't I filling up with His Joy?
See, accomplishing the transformation God wants for us takes commitment to seeing results, and continuing until we get them. There is no room for quitting, and when we don't see results, we must ask the Lord what is wrong.
Ps 42:5 "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God."
And at the moment that I asked God these questions, I realized I couldn't get sky-bound towards Heaven because I was grounded on earth. And the weight that was grounding me, weight I hadn't even realized I was carrying, was due to a lifetime of collected disappointments.
Hag 1:6 describes the life process of disappointments well: "Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put into a bag with holes."
It is as though we think we have a right to carry around the sufferings of the soul. We don't. Ps 25:1 "Unto thee O Lord, do I lift up my soul." Ps 35:9 "My soul shall be joyful in the Lord."
We are directed to "Serve him with all our heart and with all our soul." De 11:13. We cannot serve him with a disabled, disappointment-filled soul.
Our disappointments may be legitimate but that is not the issue. Whether our disappointments are valid or not, their combined weight will keep us from moving in to the mode where we are operating completely in the Spirit.
As soon as I saw that I just.....let go. An attitude adjustment shifting towards a mind-set of "release", and it was done.
And then the Joy came in. Not a flood today, but certainly more than a trickle. And behind the Joy, something else: A revelation of the Father's love for me. Je 31:3 tells us, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love!"
My anchor - God's love.
If we never "do" anything for God other than fill our tanks everymorning with the joy of the Spirit and minister that in our smiles and attitudes as we encounter people all day long, we will have achieved enough.
Joy is contagious in a world filled with despair. People are attracted to joy. They hunger and thirst for the joy of the Lord like a parched desert seeking rain in the dry season. Feed them enough of that joy, and like the desert after the rain, they will begin to bloom.
But you can't get that joy until you let go of your disappointments.
So I ask you again, what attitudes do you wake up with in the morning? And more importantly, do you keep them or do you replace them with the Joy of the Lord? You can choose the spiritual and emotional climate which lives in you. He will help restore our souls if we make right choice.
So just try it. Tomorrow, before you get out of bed, take a spiritual temperature check. See what attitudes and emotions you've woken up with. Ask Him to show you what kind of disappointment you've been carrying around. And most importantly, ask Him to help you let go of it.
And then watch the Joy of the Lord come in.
Blessings to you this day,
Angela G.
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