“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”

Ephesians 3:14-19 (NLT)

I hate when Jesus feels distant. Silent. I tend to want to find the reason for it, so I start questioning myself…
What did I do wrong? Did I not listen to Him about something? What’s been distracting me? Did I recently disobey Him? Where’s my focus?

These are all things I’ve been asking myself lately. These and more. And I think I may have gotten an answer yesterday.

I’ve heard so many messages, sayings, quotes, and teachings about attitude. And I’ve heard them many times. But you know how God’s word comes alive while you’re reading it or the lyrics to a song suddenly become louder after hearing it a thousand times? That’s what happened to me. I was watching a sermon on YouTube by Jimmy Evans about how our attitude affects our lives. I could try to summarize it here, but it would pale in comparison to watching it yourself.

Anyway, I don’t remember one specific thing that caught my attention, but I could feel Jesus tapping my shoulder the whole time I listened. As if He wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally tune it out. (I may or may not have just laid down to attempt a nap when I put the sermon on. Needless to say, I couldn’t fall asleep.)

So as I’m listening to this sermon about attitude, I was reminded that I recently had a pretty bad one. I was dealing with some emotions that seemed to come out of nowhere and I didn’t exactly try to hide it. It was written all over my face. To the point that I needed to apologize to some people. I knew I needed to talk to someone about it, but wasn’t sure who that should be. So I prayed that God would show me who and present an opportunity for it to happen. The subject matter was sensitive, so I knew it needed to be a specific type of someone. And God came through. He brought the person to my house and presented the opportunity I had prayed about. And it felt great. It helped me tremendously. Much more than I even expected.

God answered my prayer. Then, I believe through this sermon, He answered my questions of why He was feeling so distant and why these feelings seemed to have come out of nowhere.

I haven’t been choosing Him.

You see, we have a million choices to make every day. Aside from the practical and logistical ones, we have to decide between happiness and misery. Joy and sorrow. Love and fear. Faith and doubt. Hope and discouragement. And so much more.

And every time I choose something that isn’t good and perfect… I don’t choose Jesus. He was using this sermon about attitude to remind me that I have to choose Him not only every day but every hour and every minute. He was reminding me that His gifts of salvation, love, grace, joy, hope, etc. are choices to be made over and over again. Not just once.

Jesus showed me that the bad attitude I had was a result of me not trusting Him. Not trusting Him to know what He’s doing. Not trusting Him to take me through it safely. Not trusting Him to make good on His promises. Not trusting Him to bring good out of bad situations. So much not trusting Him. And I didn’t even realize I was doing it.

Jesus reminded me that it’s ok to feel emotions, but not to dwell in them. When I dwell in sadness, anger, depression, and misery, I’m simultaneously evicting happiness, peace, love, and joy. And as a by-product, His presence. When I dwell in the negative emotions, I can’t dwell in Him.

I pondered on that all day yesterday. Determined to make the necessary changes. Then this morning I read a couple of chapters in Ephesians. I ended up underlining the whole paragraph quoted at the top of this page, but it was one verse that really caught my attention. Verse 17…

“Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.”

Those five words… as you trust in him… Paul is praying for the Ephesian church to be empowered with the Holy Spirit so that Christ will dwell in their hearts… as they trust Him. As long as they trust Christ, He will live in their hearts, allowing their roots to grow deeper into God’s love, keeping them strong. Strong through all the sadness, anger, depression, and misery they may experience. Strong through all the circumstances that threaten to steal their peace, happiness, joy, and love.

What a prayer. And praise God the same is true for us. We can remain strong too… as we trust in Him.