“For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.” Psalm 27:5
I listened, enrapt, while the story unfolded. As she finished quietly, the journey through the emotions crept over me as I realized how much she sounded like me.
Jesus, the master storyteller, tucks many stories in the Bible that open new worlds of how to handle emotions. Unchanged since time began, reactions to life situations from the Garden of Eden until now are the same.
Betrayal over the death of her beloved children filled Rizpah with sadness. We feel the same way today when our undeserving loved ones die. Her innocent sons died because of someone else’s senseless act, as do ours. And the helpless feeling of being blindsided overcomes us as it did her.
She was determined to honor them in their death, and she may have even realized that God is in control of our whole story—not just the sad parts. He sends treasures into our pits. Her five secrets for looking beyond betrayal and finding treasures in life fill her dramatic story.
The unending boredom and daily hard work under the harsh sun could have caused Ruth to quit, but she loved her mother-in-law and committed herself to caring for her. She had relocated, and all the uncertainties of a new culture, new relationships to be developed, and her future hung in the balance.
Her unknowns loomed large, but she was learning to trust the God of her mother-in-law. She had watched Naomi change her focus from her inability to God’s ability, recognizing Him at work in her life. The new Naomi helped Ruth do the same, and the contrast between their entrance into Bethlehem and the joy of the new baby filled her with hope. Ruth’s five secrets for contentment are contained in her agricultural story.
Fear crawled up her throat as she learned of his wicked plan to kill her and her people. Esther had felt so isolated in her new role and had to remind herself daily of God’s presence. She had almost drowned in the horror, but her godly training with Mordecai had returned her to clarity.
She carefully chose the best spiritual garments to wear to a crisis—the kind where the road of her destiny constantly switched from happy to deathly. Find her five secrets for surviving fear in her story.
Rage, fury, lethal anger—fill our hearts today with like intensity—and often result in similar consequences, just as in the stories of the Bible. In Abigail’s story, the future King David’s anger exploded, and defusing it was left to her responsibility, with life and death hanging in the balance.
How could she save her servants from certain annihilation by David and his soldiers? She remembered how harshly her husband had treated her, but she had weathered his insults. She had trained her emotions against his narcissistic nature, and, in the transformation, the Lord equipped her to quench others’ anger. Abigail’s five secrets for handling anger and acting in wisdom show up in her narrative in the Bible.
Collapsing in despair and disappointment, she sagged to her knees beside His empty tomb. Mary Magdalene’s world dimmed as her hopes of a better future drifted away. Would her negative past overwhelm her again since He was gone? What chaos there was in her life today!
She wished the darkness would turn back into the light of happiness, but she just couldn’t see the bigger picture of what her life should be. How could she find hope again? Her five secrets for handling hopelessness are located right inside her story.
At first, her confusion blotted out the significance of the message from the stranger. But, somewhere in Mary’s mind, she marveled at the three people God had placed in her life to guide her. A powerful assurance surged upward in her soul as she determined to look at this life-changing moment as a victory.
Her mouth opened, and Scripture filled her song with surreal beauty; her anxiety melted away. Did she know that her joyful song would help carry her through the winter of grief when He died? Her suffering would infuse her pain with purpose as others read about her legacy of faith. Her five secrets for handling all these emotions lay quietly in her story.
Essentials for Emotional Resilience, a soon-to-be-published Bible study, contains all 30 secrets for handling emotions, told through the divinely written stories of six Bible women’s lives. Go to MarleneHouk.com to sign up for updates.
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Marlene is an author and teacher of Bible studies. She may be reached at [email protected]
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