Are you ready for 2018?

When a big event is over, whether it is a big wedding, finally getting your degree, or just a big party we begin looking for the next “big thing”!

In the spring I look forward to Braves Baseball and pray we can get to the World Series again and then I start hoping the Falcons can put a good season together. The next big thing I look forward to are the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and when the last of the New Years Eve parties are over and the mess is all cleaned up from our parties, I begin to think about the things we need to get done in the coming year, some call these things their New Year’s Resolutions!

Having done that we sit back and if we are not careful, depression begins to wind its way into our mind like the kudzu vine, the let down feeling that comes with it causes what I call a broken mind. A “broken mind” happens when you let yourself become so stressed over things at hand that you begin to block out the things that hurt too bad to try and resolve.

1 Peter 5:7 “Casting all your care on Him for He cares for you.” I have heard of people who had a “broken heart”, I have even heard it said that a person “died of a broken heart”, that must be a terrible sadness. We “give our heart to the Lord”, the “heart of the King is in the hand of the Lord”, it is said that the “heart is desperately wicked who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9, the Psalmist said, “Try my reigns (heart) and see if there be any wicked way in me” Psalm 139:24, you get a “heart ache”. So then how closely does this relate to the mind?

The heart of a matter is our emotional reaction, the mind however, is the calculator, the part of us that thinks and decides whether we will or will not serve the Lord, and if we will try to do His perfect will.  It is said that if you give a person an inch, they will take a mile. Whoever said that must have been referring to Satan himself. 1Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” 

So whether you have a broken heart or a broken mind, we know that He is the great physician and can make us brand new!

The New Year officially begins Sunday at midnight and if you are like me you have been busy every day since the week before Thanksgiving, we both need to remember to take time to have a “Sabbath”; even God took a day to rest! Happy 2018!