We all know that there are plants and chemicals that can poison our body. We do everything in our power to avoid poisoning our self and our loved ones, even our pets. However, did you know that you could poison your spiritual life as well? Negative emotions are toxic to both our soul and spirit. They are red flags to alert us to some turmoil in our subconscious mind. We are ignoring the thoughts that feed these negative sentiments. Yet, our emotions pick up on them and try to force us to pay attention to and resolve them.
Some people with phlegmatic
personalities are able to process incidents as they occur and forgive and
forget. Yet, some with melancholy personalities hold a grudge and stay bitter
for years. Then choleric people often stuff the incident and move right on
without dealing with the emotional firestorm caused by these conflicts. The
sanguine individual may philosophize and chalk the incident up as the other
person’s problem. No matter what personality type we have, however, we all
experience conflicts in our life that wound us deeply and need to be healed.
If we follow the trail from the
negative emotion back into the past, we find not one, but many instances that
built up over the years to bring us to the place where they are now surfacing
in our daily interactions. Yet, we often continue to suppress them. Our dreams
and nightmares also warn us of these unresolved conflicts, but we ignore them
as well. I came to a place in my life where I could no longer tolerate the
grouchiness, over-sensitivity, self-pity and hair-trigger anger that crept from
my past into my day and spoiled life for me.
Thankfully, I learned to sit in a quiet
place with my journal and to allow God to direct my soul as it empties itself
of its burdens! If we stay quiet long enough to hear God’s Spirit, He will
direct us from one incident to the next that caused the build up of these
negative emotions. Write down in your journal everything that comes to your
mind, even if it does not make sense. Alcoholics Anonymous calls this a
searching moral inventory. God will shine His light on the memories where He
wants you to go in order to achieve the resolution of these unsettled issues.
Prayer:
Father God, we thank You for willingly
exposing the lies Satan convinced us of during the traumatic times in our life.
We thank You for Your truth, which sets us free (John
8:32). Help us to freely forgive the offenders in our
life, or to ask for forgiveness in the areas where we hurt someone else. In
this way, You set us free from bondage to these negative emotions. Even if the
offended party will not forgive us, we are free before You of all of our
offenses.
Thought for the Day:
Following the path of these negative
emotions to the root experience, which is causing them, is the only way to find
spiritual, mental, emotional and ultimately physical health.Thank you, Matt Milligan, for the use of your photo.
http://www.mattmilliganphotography.com/
