It's What's Inside

I started working with another new group yesterday for my health and wellness classes, and when we got to the physical activity, the same thing happened that happened last week. I did the same silly physical activity, a game where I sing a song and every time people hear a word that starts with the letter “b” they either sit or stand. When I asked the people in yesterday's group to put their hands over their hearts and tell me what they felt, expecting the usual answers that their hearts were beating faster, one woman said, “Calmness," and she smiled a big smile. She then continued and said that she’s usually so stressed out and is a smoker and eats things she knows raise her blood pressure, so her heart is usually beating really fast in a very unhealthy way. But now, because of a silly song and a silly game for a fun physical activity break, she was feeling calm and peaceful.

The group was in a women’s shelter, a nice one where they try to give the women good food and supportive activities and groups, but it’s a shelter all the same. The women who are there are there for a variety of reasons, some from very difficult backgrounds, some with mental and physical and emotional challenges, some with backgrounds of addictions and trauma. It is so easy to go from living a life that we think of as normal – having a job and a home and a family maybe – to ending up losing something and that leads to something else and then you’re in a shelter. It is so easy for that to happen. I know because that could have happened to me many times over the years. I remember working with a group of men at a shelter, and I said something along those lines, and one of them said, “Yeah, but you didn’t end up homeless. You have no idea how that feels.” He didn’t mean it in a mean way. He was speaking the truth. It didn’t ever go that far for me, even though it got pretty close several times, so I can’t really know how it feels. We can’t ever know how someone else feels unless we are them and we’ve lived their life.

I saw a woman I know the other day who has been acting really strangely lately. She’s been snapping at people and telling lies and causing all kinds of problems for people and generally making the people around her miserable. I said hello and asked how she was doing, and she said with a grin as tight as rigor mortis, “Great! I’m great!” She is so obviously not great, but somehow she thinks she is, or maybe she thinks that saying it will make it so. I don’t think people need to go around saying how terrible they feel if they’re feeling terrible, but saying that you’re great when you’re making everyone else not feel great is a bit strange to me. But maybe that’s what makes her happy – being the cause of misery in the world. Maybe that helps her feel like she’s in control. Or maybe she doesn't even understand what she's doing to other people. Maybe she has no idea how much damage she's doing to people because she's so convinced that she's doing great.

Peace is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and anything that brings less than peace is coming from a very different place. Joy is another fruit of the Spirit, and so is kindness, gentleness and self-control. If you’re losing your temper at people and making them feel bad, if you’re bringing a dark cloud with you wherever you go, if you’re yelling and angry and accusing people of all kinds of things they didn’t do, that’s not coming from the Spirit of God. But it's one of the mysteries of human emotion that sometimes people feel one way and make other people feel another. Sometimes we're really unaware of what's going on around us because whatever we are feeling, whether good or bad, is the only reality we can see. That is why prayer is so important. When we bring ourselves before God, the Holy Spirit can let us know what's really going on, with ourselves and with others. He can help us see ourselves and our situations in a more honest and unbiased way.

I used to be a very angry person. When I’d lose my temper, which was often, I always thought it was because of someone else and what they were doing. People do annoying things, it’s true, and there are things that can still bug me, even though I have strong faith and I know who my God is. I’m still human, and sometimes people get to me, but the anger and frustration and losing it with people, the badmouthing and complaining and finding fault – those things mercifully are being replaced with a new way of looking at the world. If I’m feeling a negative emotion, yes, sometimes it is because someone is doing something that seems designed to push all my buttons. But the bottom line is that I don’t have to lose it, I don’t even have to judge them, and God tells me I shouldn’t, so why not listen to His advice?

Galatians 5:22 talks about the fruit of the Spirit, and verse 5:19 talks about the opposite. Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, envy – there are others in there, but these are the ones that sometimes people gloss over when they’re reading about witchcraft and sexual immorality. They look at those two and say, “Oh, I don’t do that, I’m a good girl or boy, I go to church, I’ve never even thought of doing that!” Or maybe they haven't always been a Christian but now they're saved, so that's in the past and they thank God for their changed lives every day. But what about jealousy and envy? What about losing your temper and yelling at someone, what about causing unhappiness and strife in your home or your workplace? What about selfish ambition? “Oh,” but they’ll say, “I’m not selfish, I tithe, I donate to the clothes closet, I volunteer.” But what’s in your heart? Are you seething with envy, are you talking about someone to put them down so that you can rise above them? Have you lost all sense of self control because you’re trying to control everyone else?

Years ago, before I was born again, I was working in an office as a temp. I was there for a long term assignment when a woman was out on maternity leave. When she came back, she was there on and off, and the woman who was responsible for calling in temps kept calling me back because, she said, “You bring the peace with you.” We are given gifts of the Spirit from the time we are born. God gives His gifts to us without repentance (Romans 11:29). If I brought the peace with me then, I have access to a greater power now that can help me bring peace even when I’m not feeling peaceful. I may want to lose my temper, I may want to argue, I may want to cut someone down, I may want to push someone out of the way so that I can get ahead. But Galatians 5:13-18 tells me I don’t have to do things the way I used to do them, because “You, my brothers and sisters were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled by keeping this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”

Wait a minute, what’s that? If I am led by the Spirit, I am not under the law? How can that be? Isn’t it the law that keeps me from doing things I shouldn’t do? No. The answer is, very simply, no. The law doesn’t keep anyone from doing anything or make anyone do anything either. It is only the Spirit of God that lives in us, that gentle voice that speaks life when we see only darkness, that calling on our lives to live in freedom, not freedom to do what we want, but freedom to live in joy and peace and love and kindness and gentleness. Freedom to be able to control yourself so that your words and actions restore and renew and strengthen those who are weary instead of tearing them down.

What has surprised me the most about the two women who have told me that they feel happy or calm when they put their hands over their hearts after our silly physical activity break is that I am not in a place in my life right now where everything is going my way. In fact, there are lots of things that aren’t, and I have some very big questions about where God is taking me right now. Just last night I was saying to Him that I have so many questions because I just don’t understand what He’s doing. He keeps telling me to trust Him and not worry, and I’m trying to do that, but nothing is making any sense. I know that He has the master plan all figured out, but I just wish He’d show it to me. Instead I’m left with so many questions, wondering how He’s going to get me from here to where He’s promised I’m going, and though I know in my Spirit that it doesn’t matter how as long as I know Him, in the fleshy human part of me, in my heart and my brain, it matters very much. I do teach meditational techniques as part of my classes, but that’s usually much later on. The fact that not one but two women have responded by feeling peace and joy at the very beginning when we are doing something very silly and not meditational at all, at a time in my life when I am not feeling full of peace and joy, has made me realize that there is something much bigger than I am at work.

I remember once having lunch with a Pastor friend and I had to leave the table for a moment. When I was walking back and I saw him sitting there, all I felt was joy. It was all over him, the Spirit of joy. When I told him that, he laughed very ruefully and said, “I wish that were true!” But it was. He didn’t feel it, but it was there. I have another friend who has a gift of healing, and his gift comes from a place of great love. I had a dream about him once that he was a prize fighter, and his colors were the colors of love. When you’re with him you feel so much warmth, like the sun personified, and his smile is like the sun on a cloudless and perfect summer day. I’ve told him this, but I don’t think he believes me, because he doesn’t feel like it’s there. But the gifts that we are given by God are there to help others, and it’s what they feel when they’re around us that lets us know what’s in us.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan