Dear Father,

There was a time in Scripture when the children of Israel cried out for water in the wilderness. You instructed Moses to take his staff and speak to the rock, and it would pour out its water. Yet, instead of speaking, Moses, in anger, struck the rock. In his disobedience, he disrupted a story You were trying to tell. Why strike when the instruction was to speak?

I am, however, interested in the disobedience that resulted from his anger, for it highlights the effect our emotions can have on our spiritual disposition. We may not always discern the spiritual implications of our emotional outbursts as clearly as they appear in Scripture. As a result, it can often feel unfair to deny the flesh a place, seeing that we are but flesh. Yet the problem lies in the unseen effect that a single act of the flesh can produce in the spirit.

Why is the enemy interested in stealing our joy if there is no consequence to our sadness? Why is he hell bent on disrupting our peace, even if only for a short time? Why does he manipulate our emotions to get at us if there is nothing to gain from it? These questions alone reveal that there is more to our negative emotional outbursts than meets the eye.

So, it really is not about fairness or justice as much as it is about consequences. In spiritual matters, I have learned that emotions may explain our actions, but they do not exempt us from their consequences.

Translations;
Slide 1: English
Slide 2: French
Slide 3: Bengali
Slide 4: Hindu
Slide 5: Urdu

#LettertoGod
#flesh
#emotionaloutburst
#consequences
#justice