SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/8/2020
12:01 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Godly Mourning”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:4
Message of the
verses: “4
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
There is a big difference in what
the world would tell us to do in order to be happy. “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag,
and smile, smile, smile” is their philosophy, but not what Jesus has to say
about this. Jesus wants us to confess
our sins and then He wants us to mourn, mourn over them and when we do that,
our smiles will be genuine, and the reason why is because our happiness will be
genuine. Godly mourning brings godly
happiness, which no amount of human effort or optimistic pretense, and no
amount of positive thinking or possibility thinking, can produce.
Mourners over sin are the only ones
happy because on mourners over sin have their sin forgiven. Think of this truth “Sin and happiness are totally incompatible.” Where one of these exists the other cannot
exist. Until sin is forgiven and it is
then removed happiness is locked out.
Mourning over sin does bring forgiveness of sin, and then forgiveness of
sin brings a freedom and a joy that cannot be experienced in any other way.
Let
us look at what James has to say about this in James 4:8-10 “8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse
your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep;
let your laughter be
turned into mourning and
your joy to gloom. 10 Humble
yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” I have to say that these are some very
difficult things for anyone to do, but necessary to do if we want to truly life
the Christian life with real purpose. I
heard in one of MacArthur’s sermons from Matthew that there is nothing in the
Scriptures that shows that Jesus ever laughed, not sure if He ever did. There is a great need in our churches today
to be more serious and not laugh so much as sometimes laughter can cause us to
not look at our sin and mourn over it.
John MacArthur writes “God’s counsel to the frivolous happy,
self-satisfied happy, the indulgent happy is:
‘Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into
mourning, and your joy into gloom.” I
said that this portion in James was a hard pill to swallow.
I
am not saying that believers are not to have fun, but fun that causes us to
overlook sinfulness is really not fun at all.
MacArthur writes “The faithful child of God is constantly broken over
his sinfulness, and the longer he lives and the more mature he becomes in the
Lord, the harder it is for him to be frivolous.
He sees more of God’s love and mercy, but he also sees more of his own
and the world’s sinfulness. To grow in
grace is also to grow in awareness of sin.
Speaking to Israel, the prophet Isaiah said, ‘In that day the Lord God
of hosts called you to weeping, to wailing, to shaving the head, and to wearing
sackcloth. Instead, there is gaiety and
gladness, killing of cattle and slaughtering of sheep, eating of meat and
drinking of wine.’ Following the world’s
philosophy, which still prevails today, God’s ancient people said, ‘Let us eat
and drink, for tomorrow we may die’ (Isa. 22:12-13).”
These
are some hard and difficult things to write and to think about and so we will
stop at this point to let all we have written to digest and Lord willing, will
continue tomorrow on this subject.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I am looking for some kind of balance in all
of this so that I can better serve the Lord.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Contentment,
humility and joy are what I am looking for each day.
4/8/2020 12:30 PM
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