What is in Your medicine cabinet?

It has been quite a while since my last post, but I felt compelled to write. This last week while reading the Parable of the farmer scattering seed in Luke chapter eight, I thought about the four different kinds of hearts represented in that chapter ( a calloused heart, a shallow heart, a distracted heart and an open heart). Every time I have read that chapter in the past the first thought that comes to my mind is that I have an open heart, but this time I really took a hard look at my life and wondered could it be possible that at times I may fall into other categories? and the conclusion I came to was definitely yes!!

 I can recall many times over the years when my heart has been distracted by health concerns, family issues and growing piles of bills, etc.....and I can honestly say there were many occasions when I spent more time worrying about the situation and trying to figure out how I was going to solve everything instead of leaning on God's word in the middle of what I felt was a crisis at the time. Often when we feel there is no hope or life feels like just too much to bare we self medicate or some may call it escaping. For some it may be actual medication, for others self medicating can come in many forms, even normal things people do everyday ( internet surfing, playing games, shopping , alcohol, eating, and even reading).

 It is the motive behind what we are doing. Are we eating because we are really hungry? or are we eating because we are stressed? Are we surfing the internet because we need to find some necessary information? or are we in front of it for many hours killing time because we are trying to drowned out our thoughts and feelings by looking at information that is not going to change our life one bit. When you self medicate chances are you are still going to feel the same when you are done. What we need to medicate ourselves with is Gods word. it says in Romans 15:4(NLT)⁴ Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.