Are you tired of sin – not just of its consequences, but also that it keeps happening?
Are you tired, not just of the consequences of your sin, but also that it keeps happening? Do you mourn over the fact that your desire to be good does not always come forth in what you do and say? How can you be “filled with the oil of gladness?”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 7:10, “For godly sorrow produces repentanceRepentance is the act of regretting sincerely the sin in your past with the goal to never do it again. It is making a decision to turn away from evil and to serve God. Repentance is one of the requirements for the… leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.” Godly sorrow comes when we rightly see ourselves in the light of the Word of God and see how short we fall in relation to divine nature – God’s nature.
Godly sorrow is accompanied by an acknowledgment of my own sin or lack, and produces repentance, which helps me advance on the way of salvation and transformation. If I sorrow over this, it will drive me to work out my own salvation and on cleansing myself so that my nature becomes more and more like God’s nature. This is why it is written in Ecclesiastes 7:2, “Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting.”
You will be comforted: The comfort that Jesus offers to all who mourn with a godly sorrow is that the sin that they repent over can come to an end in their lives. Isaiah 61:3 says that Jesus came with glad tidings: “To comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning.” Are you one who mourns in Zion? Are you tired, not just of the consequences of your sin, but also of the fact that it keeps happening?
Are you brokenhearted over your inadequacy to be genuinely good to others? Do you see how far you are from living the life described in the Bible? Do you grieve that you are bound and are a prisoner of the sin that dwells within you? If you can answer yes, you will be comforted because your godly sorrow will produce repentance, which leads to action, to obedience and, ultimately, to salvation – to life. This is why it is written in Ecclesiastes 7:3, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better.” Your mourning will be replaced with the oil of joy and gladness. (Isaiah 61:3, Hebrews 1:9)
Written by Thomas Baby
