This past week, I spoke a bit on the natural way of the Earthly realm.  It is the way of death. When sin entered into the world, death followed.  Adam and Eve had been told if they eat the forbidden fruit, they would surely die, but they did not die physically.  It was spiritual death. More specifically, it was permission for the spirit of death to enter into the hearts of humanity.

We quickly see the result of this spiritual death when jealousy arose in Cain, Adam’s son, and he took his brother Abel out, ambushed him, and murdered him.  It didn’t take long for spiritual death to create emotions and feelings contrary to the truth of God. The spirit of death is the spiritual force working to steal all that God desires for us to have.  It kills our spirit. It kills our love, our peace, our relationships, our churches, our families, our marriages. Spiritual death conjures up pride, anger, jealousy, and hatred within our hearts and these lead to massive division, loneliness, and Hell on Earth.  We all have much to mourn.

We mourn our past, the forgotten and failed dreams, the mistakes, and the pain.  We mourn broken families, broken marriages, depression, and so much more. Mourning, like almost everything else in life, can be healthy and lead us to a better place or it can be destructive for generations.  We must learn to mourn in Christ. And this brings us to the Verse of the Day:

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted.

I remember seeing a mother whose child had died in a car wreck at the young age of 16 at his funeral.  She mourned at a depth I don’t think I had ever seen or seen since. The mixture of rage and misery created a body that could not even stand.  She fell to her knees sobbing. She was not comforted. And we know this is true for so many.

When something is lost whether a relationship or a loved one, many are never comforted.  This statement of Christ, was then not a blanket statement that anyone who mourns will be comforted.  

This is the very beginning of what we call the Sermon on the Mount and the first words out of Jesus’ mouth were, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Everyone is bankrupt spiritually. We are all poor in spirit, but we don’t all recognize it. For those who do, we run to the Lord who fills us to overflowing. When I realize how badly I need the Lord, then I will run to Him and He will fill me with His Spirit and His life.

The next statement is about mourning, but we must look at it in context.  This passage is addressing those who would recognize, in their spiritually bankrupt condition,  they cannot handle the sorrows of their life. They stop trying to handle them on their own and they take them to Christ.  

When we take our sorrows to Christ, He comforts us in our pain.  More than this, He reminds us of how He uses everything for our good.  He illuminates in our understanding of how our sorrows are producing for us strength and the power to overcome grief.  He reminds us that hardship produces perseverance, hope, and faith in God. To keep trusting the Lord, believing in Him and trusting He will use our tragedy for our good is an act of the will.  It is choosing to have faith. It increases our faith. But why is this important?

When we can have faith in the midst of tragedy and sorrow, then we win the battles against the spiritual death of this world.  It is intended to drive us away from God, but when we go to God in our suffering, the enemy’s plan fails as we draw nearer to God. To know this and to believe it is to be comforted by the Lord as we mourn because we know in the end, we will be too strong for death to win in our heart.s

When you are overcome with sorrow, do you take it to the Lord?  Or do you allow it to drive you away from the Lord?

Leave me a comment.  I would love to hear from you and pray for you.