Have you been wondering why something is not going right for you? Wondering why a relationship seems to be going down heal? Wondering why your days seem to be more stressful? Wondering why you tend to lose your cool more often than usual? Well let me ask you this. Have you checked the condition of your heart lately? Have you took the time to look and see what is going on inside of you? Everything about us starts at the heart. The things that we have in our heart show through our emotions, words, and actions. Any negative energy that we are holding onto in our heart will eventually come out and have an effect on our lives. We have to stay at peace in our heart if we want to be happy and content with life. Today I am going to focus on the things that can cause you to not be at peace because we have to first know what the problem may be before we can work on it.

Negative emotions are at the core of it all. There are many different reasons why we may have the emotion but it is the emotion itself that we first have to reconize. Anger, bitterness, envy, rage, jealousy, animosity, resentment, guilt. shame, and being offended are some of the most harmful emotions. Some of the things that we may do to cause those emotions are judging others critically, complaining, fault finding, hidden sin, sin that you are aware of and have no intention on stopping, fear, a guilty conscience, ignoring hurt or trauma, unforgiveness, blaming others, being upset with God because of how life has turned out or unanswered prayers, unacceptance, and self-pity.

Having a guilty conscience and unacceptance of self can cause all of the negative emotions mentioned above. We can be the cause of our own misery. When we do not do the things that we know we should do we harbor guilt. That guilt can turn to shame and unacceptance of ourselves. We begin to not accept ourselves because we know that we can do better than what we are doing. We know that we should not have done what we did but we did it anyway and we feel bad about ourselves. We start to think less than of ourselves and then we get mad at ourselves. So to make us feel better about ourselves we start to point out the faults of others. We focus on the bad instead of the good in a person. We will find something wrong with them that we do not have a problem with so that we can feel better about ourselves. But when we start to focus on the wrong in others, the things that we may not like about them, it causes us to have bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness towards them. In an attempt to make ourselves feel better about ourselves we end up causing more negative emotions towards others. It will just keep building and building until we explode if we don’t face the issues and solve them.

Sometimes unspoken words can cause us to build up those negative emotions too. We choose to not say how we feel about a situation because we do not want conflict but we cause conflict in our own heart. We choose to not speak truth to someone because we do not want to hurt their feelings but we end up hurting ourselves. We need something from someone but do not want to voice it so the need never gets met and we cause bitterness and resentment to fill us. We do not agree with doing something that someone wants to do but for whatever reason we do it anyway and we cause guilt to invade us. We are extremely hurt by circumstances and events that happened but we never say anything about it to anyone so that hurt continues to build and build in our hearts which causes other hurts.

Having a peaceful heart means that we are not filled with negativity and we are content. We may want to see change but we are able to accept things for how they are right now, in the moment, by knowing that change will come. We are able to put our best foot forward doing the best that we can. We are able to have hope for brighter days ahead because we are not filled with a bunch of heavy negative emotions. We are able to look for the good in things no matter how small it may be. We are able to be thankful and that helps keep out the negative that tries to get in our heart. We are able to handle the day to day things without getting super stressed or aggervated. We are able to keep a smile on our face while handling tough situations. We are able to keep calm in disagreements.

So if you have not checked the condition of your heart lately I suggest that you do so. Sometimes we get a heavy heart from months or years of little things that bother us but we think that we let them go only to find that we have been tucking them away in our heart. We can not have or enjoy the life that Jesus died for us to have if we do not have a peaceful heart. Pray that the Holy Spirit help you find anything that you have been holding in your heart that is hurting you and help you to face it so that you can release it.