Grief

If you have not experienced grief in your life, just wait, you will.  We grieve the loss of friends, family, jobs and possessions.  They are all, like us, here for only a short period.

But, there is another kind of grief I want to post about and perhaps something you have never considered before…..

2 Corinthians 7:8-10 but you can read through 12 if you want!

In these four verses, Paul uses the term ‘grief’ and ‘grieve’ eight times!

If you are anything like me you mess up quite a bit, never displaying the spiritual maturity and qualities you are called to.  Oh heck!  I sin!  I willingly, knowingly, and often with premeditation, flat out commit sin!  Grrrrr!  You have no idea how much I hate myself at times!

And when I do mess up, I want to instantly to run to God and seek His Grace.  I want forgiveness!  ‘Cause I suck.  I want to feel better about myself!

But, Paul is talking about something else here, grieving over our sin.  Yeah, honest to gosh sorrow over our failure to be and to do as we should!  As Paul tells us in this passage, grief/sorrow leads to real repentance, which will bring about change in our lives!

We need to understand grief.  We need to have grief in our spirits over our sin.  Without grief, change may not be possible from our sinful ways.

• See grief as a gift from God that will lead you into His Grace.

• Allow God to use grief for His purposes in your life.

• Treat grief as a Yield Sign and not a Stop Sign.

What am I talking about?  Grief is something God can give us to make our understanding of our sin real to us.  We should mourn our failures to God, but that is a healthy – not berating ourselves for years or even dredging up the past sort of mourning.  Understand your sin, be truly sorrowful for you being you, confess and walk away from the sin and your past failures.  Period.  Life goes on.

Often our brothers and sisters can really get wrapped around the axles over who they were and what they have done – that would be the unhealthy kind of grief……