Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted. –Matthew 5:4

One Sunday when I was in junior high, my Sunday school teacher drew a line on the board and numbered it from one to ten with one representing absolute coldness toward God and ten, burning hot for God. Then he asked each of us to put a dot on the line that represented where we were with God. I can’t remember exactly where I put my dot, but it was way up there. In reality, this represented not my maturity in Christ but my immaturity. Because the deeper we go with God the clearer our vision becomes about our own coldheartedness toward him. As our understanding of his holiness increases, so does our accurate estimation of our own sinfulness. The mark of spiritual maturity is not an absence of sin but an ever-deepening awareness of it. This is why John wrote, “If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth” (1 John 1:8).

Feeling the pain of sin is good for us, though we’d much rather rush through the sorrow to find solace in the sure promise of forgiveness. But we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry. Our mourning over sin has important work to do before we can go deeper with God. Deep sorrow over sin is a redemptive anguish. It breaks up the hardened ground in our hearts, making us more spiritually sensitive. Mourning means that instead of continuing to deny, blame, and compare, we’ve finally taken responsibility for who we are and what we’ve done. This is the starting place for growth and healing.

Are you so consumed with mourning over the losses in your life that you have no tears for your own sin and rebellion toward God? Mourning over sin is not as simple as a casual mention of our failings. It is a sincere expression of excruciating regret. It is looking squarely at what sin cost us and, more significantly, what it cost Christ, and saying, “I never want to do that again.” It is seeing the offense we’ve caused God and being brokenhearted over how our sin has hurt him.

If you really want to go deeper with God, it is necessary that your sins hurt you a little, that you refuse to rush too quickly into peace. This is the sadness that will make you happy forever.

Holy One, I’ve taken such a casual approach to sin, taken your forgiveness for granted. But no more. I want to allow myself to mourn over the sin in my life along with the hurts in my life. Help me to see my sin for what it is and what it cost so I can repent, and in my repentance, go deeper with you.

DIGGING DEEPER