Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

God put this book in your Bible, even though it is depressing, and even though most of you will never memorize it, because he wants those of you who suffer to know that he knows how you feel.

It is okay for you to be honest, deeply and soul-wrenchingly honest with God.

Yeah. wrenchingly honest with God. Welcome back to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich.

For some reason, most of us tend to think of good Christians as those who are

always smiling and encouraging others. So whenever we struggle with depression, despair, or

doubts about God, we think there's something wrong with us, or maybe we just don't have enough

faith. And it can be difficult to ask for help. Well, today, Pastor Jady addresses this very real struggle

from a biblical perspective in a new teaching series we're beginning today called Smoke from a Fire,

how our emotions reveal what's really going on. And make sure you stick around until the end

when we tell you more about the matching resource, a five-week prayer guide that

we've been talking about for a few weeks. But for now, let's jump on in. Here's Pastor Jady.

Lamentations Chapter 3, if you got your Bible this weekend. I hope that you do. I hope that you brought it.

Lamentations Chapter 3. I'm going to begin a series called Smoke from a Fire, how our emotions

reveal what's really going on down in our hearts. The title comes from a metaphor from St. Augustine

in the 5th century AD. St. Augustine said our deepest and our strongest emotions function like

smoke from a fire

that you can tell you what's actually going on down in the deep recesses of your heart.

You know, whenever you see or smell smoke from a fire in your house, it's never wise just to

whiff the smoke away. The previous house that I lived in, the fire alarm near the kitchen was crazy sensitive

and crazy loud. So if you burn the bacon by even a little bit, it would sound like air raid

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