HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOODS… AND GROW!
By Frank Eiklor and Cecilia Contreras
LESSON 26 Part 4
INTRODUCTION
This study will conclude one of our more important lessons in life—how to manage, through God’s power, our changing moods. (I suggest you review the first three parts.) Since our emotions act as such powerful forces in our lives, we must learn to survive and conquer our changing moods or they will conquer us. In Part 3, we focused on one major problem that affects our spiritual and mental
lives—hopelessness. We will now study two more of the biggest problems we face and God’s wonderful answer to rise above hopelessness and worry.
HOPELESSNESS
Are you often filled with a feeling of hopelessness? Perhaps it’s because you either have a “little faith” concept of God or a low opinion of yourself. What situation do you think could possibly defeat God? When you think about it, nothing!
But you say you’re different. God is special, but you’re not. Then you really don’t think God is special, because no special person could be a liar—and God is a liar if you’re not special! After all, He calls you an heir and joint heir, a king and priest, a rare and beautiful treasure that He gave His life to redeem!
He didn’t die for dogs so why reduce yourself to one. He didn’t die for worms so why crawl like one? The same God who loves you with an everlasting love has promised to do “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think…”. (Ephesians 3:20) Hopeless moods have us centering in on ourselves (that’s why they’re hopeless) rather than on the God of faith, hope and love. Lift up your head, throw open your heart, confess aloud God’s promises and let the King of glory come walking in. Your hopelessness and discouragement will disappear.
WORRY
There are a million things to worry about if that’s how we want to spend our lives. Crumbling morals. Godless communism. Militant Islam. Spiraling inflation. Possibility of economic collapse. Nuclear war. Suffocating pollution. Diseases with no cures. Crime with no end. Bad as those things are, our great and good God was here first. And He will be here when all else crumbles. That’s why it’s important that you identify your worry and ask yourself “Why?” Worry is sin because it reduces God to mere human size. In fact, worry is really rebellion because it cancels out God’s imperative in Philippians 4:6, “Be careful for nothing” (don’t worry about anything). View worry as a sin and you will not be so willing to allow it to control your life.
When an anxious or sad mood strikes begin singing or saying, “Who shall separate us (me) from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, not any other creature, shall be able to separate us (me) from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35, 36, 38, 39). Make these promises your own personal pillar to lean on when the winds of worry blow and you’ll still be standing when the storm subsides.
THE CHOICE IS YOURS
Whatever your mood, you can not only survive but grow. If you’re discouraged or bored because you think life has passed you by—senior citizens often face this one—don’t believe what people say, but believe God. To senior citizens comes the promise that “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing” (Psalm 92:14). Ask God and others what you can do to make your hours filled with production and meaning. We’re never too old to stop loving others.
At any age, changing moods are really our greatest means to defeat or growth. Negative thoughts will not only control your emotions, if you allow them, but your will and intellect as well. Or you can allow the Spirit of God and the “new you” to run your life rather than those changing emotions and moods. The choice is yours.
Sometimes your moods will want to soar into a euphoria that will leave you so high that, like Humpty Dumpty, you’ll come down with a great fall. Or it may be the reverse—with you filled with such a penetrating sadness that you bring down others in your midst.
You can learn to handle those highs and lows and live somewhere in the balanced middle if you’ll realize that God allows those changing emotions and moods not so that they will be stumbling stones to defeat you but stepping stones to cover new spiritual distance. That’s why He says, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32)
And Jesus also reminds us that, “…In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Recognize that you’re not going through anything that all of us as human beings don’t have to face. Some turn out winners, some losers. Determine to be a winner by conquering your moods—rather than a loser who was conquered by them. And don’t ever blame your problems or emotional characteristics on your past or blood-line. You have a new blood-line—that of Jesus Christ—as well as a personal and magnificent Heavenly Father. Boldly declare His ownership over you and His life within you.
CONCLUSION
Make sure your mood-battling is not being caused by something physical. Change your diet from junk foods to that which is nutritious. Get proper sleep and exercise. Learn to thank God for the circumstances you’re in and, as much as is within your power, change them. Leave the rest in God’s hands and go on singing. Let life’s bottom line be the Scriptures rather than everything you read or hear.
For example, with God’s love and life I no longer fear “growing old” which so many of the “over fifty” folks fear. On the contrary, God is more exciting to me today than He was yesterday, but probably not as thrilling as He will be tomorrow. You see with correct biblical attitudes you and I can not only survive our changing emotions, but they can be our means to greater maturity and spiritual growth.
