There are certain times when we all have a lot of trouble understanding and dealing with the very deep conflicting, confusing, powerful... sometimes warring dynamic impulses and feelings that just roll through our heart. And we feel helpless and we don't know how we got feeling like that but we know that there's something deeply wrong with it and we don't know what to do about it. The Book of Proverbs speaks to our inner life, as not only being complex and hard to understand, but that it should be a priority to us.
Proverbs 18:14 tells us that the human inner-being or what we would call today, "emotional energy" or "passion for life" ... that which propels us into life and that which makes us want life, to navigate and to deal with life... is important. A crushed spirit is to look out at life and have no desire for it, to have little or no joy in it, have no passion to get out there and to deal with it. There are differing degrees to a crushed spirit. It could be anywhere from listlessness to restlessness, to discouragement to despondency, to being very, very down-cast to being filled with depression with no desire to live at all.
People get down because their favorite team loses. People get affected because of the weather (here in Seattle, we call it, SAD... "Seasonal Affective Disorder"). Others are absolutely crushed because someone they love has passed away. But whatever the cause, people have a crushed spirit at times. Proverbs 18:14 says that there is nothing more important than maintaining one's inner-life. A broken body can be sustained with difficulty by a strong spirit. But a crushed or broken spirit can never be sustained or carried by the strongest body of all.
We have a Savior who had a crushed spirit and a broken body... on the Tree, He died and received the full wrath of God so that we who deserve the crushing and the breaking... could someday be renewed and be healthy emotionally and one day receive a new and glorified body! Now to the degree one lets that melt his or her heart and to the degree that one sees what He has done for him or her... to that degree one will rejoice and experience what someone said, "Joy beyond the walls of the world!"
Use the gospel on your hearts and minds and your emotions... remind yourselves of what He has done for you every single day. Be saturated in His grace and let His Holy Spirit change you from the inside out.
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