Holy Emotions - Biblical Responses to Every ChallengeSample

If there is one place that God feels at home, it is in your praises. God sits down, puts up His lovely feet and relaxes when a believer chooses to worship. Conversely, when you throw a tantrum and rant and rave and shout out blame toward heaven, God is uncomfortable dwelling in that place. Our hearts are the dwelling places of God and we must be very careful as we determine the kind of atmosphere that we have created for the Lord to live in. I have learned in so many situations in my life, that the Lord is more interested in my heart then He is in changing my circumstances. Because the cry of my heart is to be more like Him every day, then, I, too, must have greater regard and pay more prayerful attention to what is developing in my heart than what is happening in my circumstances. We ask God to change our circumstances when what He desires is for our circumstances to change us. As a believer, you have a choice to either magnify your pain and your disappointing circumstances or magnify your God in spite of your pain. Some of us talk more about our sadness and distress than we do about the Lord whom we serve. I can always tell by what a woman talks about what she has chosen, either consciously or subconsciously, to magnify. As I meditate on the great men and women of God in the Bible who chose to serve Him and were used significantly at their historical time, there is not one who did not have to deal with disappointment. Esther was an orphan raised by a bachelor uncle and yet God used her to save the entire nation of Jews. Joseph was ridiculed by his brothers and was sold into slavery and yet he rose to second in command in Egypt and strategized to save his countrymen from severe famine. Daniel was kidnapped out of his childhood home and was forced into a den of ravenous, fierce lions and yet God used him as a force for righteousness in Babylon. God is not finished with you yet and He works with His children until He wins! Your disappointment does not have the power to disappoint you but may actually place you in a strategic position to be used by God.