Tuomas_Lehtinen

Tuomas_Lehtinen

Have you ever felt that you were in a funk? That for some reason, you felt down about yourself for no reason. When in fact, you should feel the opposite. I have found myself in just that place for the past week or two.  To be truthful, I should be feeling good about myself.  I have a husband that loves me and two young adult daughters that are well behaved and not rebellious.  Plus, I have recently reached one of my writing goals for the first draft of my first novel.

But instead of feeling good about myself and my accomplishments, I found myself sinking into a mild depression, hounding myself with words of self-condemnation.  Words like “You will never be good enough” and “Who do you think you are, anyway?”  It was while I was in this funk, that I began to realize that these words belonged to someone else.  They actually belonged to the enemy of my soul, the father of lies himself.

So why was I listening to that voice?  At first, I did not recognize the voice.  It had disguised itself as my voice.  The second was probably because my energy was low.  I was reminded of Elijah in I Kings 19.  Elijah experienced a major victory against the prophets of Baal.  God had shown Himself mighty in a battle of the “gods”.  Yahweh had shown Himself as the only one worthy of the name, God.

Elijah should have come out of this victory confident and exultant but instead, he cowers in front of the queen of Israel, Jezebel, and runs.  He pleads with God to take his life.  But God, not done with Elijah, sends an angel to minister to Elijah with food and water.  The angel then tells Elijah to sleep.  After sleeping, the angel repeats the process.  It is then that God sends Elijah to a place where He talks to Elijah.

I realized that in the past two weeks, I have been busy with the start of a new semester and had not gotten the sleep nor the nutrition that I needed.  I had plans to eat well.  In fact, my goal is to start eating healthier at the beginning of February.  Instead, I had started eating more junk food in an attempt to assuage my flesh before I disciplined my eating habits.  I needed to start changing my eating habits now.  So I began with a large salad of lettuce and raw veggies.

The second thing that I realized, that I had slacked off in my quiet time with the Lord.  I had not filled myself with words of life from the Bible.  It was no wonder that the words filling my mind were not coming from the Lover of my soul, Jesus.  I looked to Joshua, who received words of encouragement before he went into the Promised land to lay claim to what the Lord had promised him and the Israelites:

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.  For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Have I not commanded you?  Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”  Joshua 1: 8 & 9 NKJV

So, I needed to take some time to take care of myself.  By taking care of my physical body and speaking words of life over my life from the Bible, I am now making moves forward through the fog of funk which I had sunk into.