Dear Ones,
Hope you have a blessed weekend. I plan to clean today and then we are going to the funeral of a friend from church who died suddenly. I would also ask prayer for Jack, the dad of Kurt’s friend.  He is a doctor and has a blood clot in his stomach, sepsis, and pneumonia. He is in ICU and needs much prayer.
Devotions from Judy’s heart
We hear and often read about how to have good physical health for our bodies and good mental health for our minds, but not often do we read or hear sermons about the health of our soul. If our soul is healthy, it will be in harmony with itself and capable of love. We need to pay attention to our thoughts and feeling if we want inner freedom in our soul. Wouldn’t we all like to handle our emotions, passions and vices in a balanced mature way, and be reconciled with ourselves?
How good it would be if we all desired to confront those things in our lives and observe our thoughts as we work to gain inner freedom. I am reading “Heaven Begins Within You by Anselm Gruen and he mentions how we can deal with our desires and not be ruled by them but let them lead us to the Lord. He describes the instinct of gluttony that may arise as a replacement for love or because we don’t want to feel and deal with our anger. Some are gluttonous because of a fear of not having enough food and going hungry. But we were meant to enjoy not only our food but enjoy God, becoming one with Him.

Anselm goes on to write about sex when it is used as a satisfaction of lust, not as the expression of love that feels its way into the heart of another. He says that sex can be misused to flee from reality or to satisfy oneself when one is not content. That can pervert sex into a blockade of God. Instead, we need to really meet that other person and give ourselves to him or her as an expression of love for God.

The third thing that Anselm mentions that we need to deal with is greed. We all strive for essential possessions, but we have to take care that our possessions don’t possess us. We can become greedy and desire more and more goods and that hunger for them will never be satisfied. One day we will have to give them all up for we can’t take them with us. Just think of all those in hurricanes or fires who in only a few minutes have lost all their earthly possessions. We must remember our inner wealth is most important for when we find the Pearl of Great Price, we are truly rich. (Matt.13:46)

We must also deal with emotions such as sadness when we cling to the past or don’t get our way; or anger when we feel we were injured or just plain bored in our lives, or envy, pride and a host of other emotions. Let us be honest before God and give Him all those things in our lives that put space between us and Him. Nothing is worth hanging onto at the expense of knowing Him.

Challenge for today: Pray that your eyes would be opened to see yourself as God sees you and repent for those things that you have been blind to in the past.
Blessings on your weekend and prayers and love, Judy