Are you in the dumps?

When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse everything I know of you, From Jordan depths to Hermon heights, including Mount Mizar. Chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of whitewater rapids. Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers crash and crush me. Then God promises to love me all day, sing songs all through the night! My life is God’s prayer. (Psalm 42:6-8 MSG)

When my soul is in the dumps. Does that ever happen to you? Do you get in the 'mulligrubs' from time to time? I tend to find myself in those times when I don't even know what the cause of the 'discontent' or 'discouragement' is. It is like they can creep in unawares. I don't know about you, but when those times come, I find myself calling out to God because I know when I "rehearse everything I know" about who he is and what he has done in my life, my mood soon begins to change.

God promises to love us ALL DAY LONG. Not just when our mood is the greatest or our circumstances seem to be going as they should. We can count on that love even when we drift into a sullen, or sometimes even an ill-tempered mood! What? Christians get into 'ill-tempered moods'? Yup...you and I can both find ourselves kind of with one last nerve on occasion and something or someone is just about to get on that one very frazzled and discontent nerve! We don't want to react in an unkind or unseemly manner, but before we know it - wham! The mood catches us, we go with it, and there we are...in a muddle.

I cannot over-emphasize how frequently our emotions can play against us. We don't even need 'stuff' to happen at times - it is as though our very body, and all its hormones are playing against us. Before long, we get so inward looking that we cannot see the very thing that can bring us out of those mulligrubs. The longer we look inward, the more we nurse those negative emotions, the longer we will struggle in the 'chaos' of our soul. God never recommended we live 'soulish' lives - he calls us to live 'spiritual' lives.

In other words, when our soul is wreaking havoc over our lives, it is time to turn our eyes again toward the one who 'sings songs all through the night over us and loves us all through the day'. We need to rehearse God's goodness and recount his grace. I cannot emphasize that enough - God's goodness 'rehearsed' is more than enough to break the bonds of our soulish 'dumpy' attitude. The issue with the soul is that it is selfish. All it sees is what it wants to see - and that is usually why we become discontent and disconcerted in our emotions.

When we take control of the mulligrubs by turning our thoughts, prayers, and praises toward God, the emotions begin to follow. Don't wait for the emotions to drive you to God. They won't always be reliable in doing that, my friends. It takes a conscious 'turning' of one's attention away from the 'bad feelings' toward the one who can and will change the 'chaos' of those feelings once we refocus on him and his goodness. Just sayin!