S235P2 – Intentional Christianity: mourn over sin
Jam. 4:7-10
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
His journey to addiction began as something much less serious. He only wanted to let loose on the weekends and party hard because he deserved it after his difficult weeks. The weekends then started to bleed into the weeks, and he had lost control before he realized it. Life had begun to unravel. Very quickly he was too far gone the turn back or to realize that this drug was not doing him any good but was in fact ruining him. It would take an intervention of friends and family for him to see the reality of his problem. Having to look into the faces of those who love him and who were being torn apart by what was happening to him was what it would take for him to realize he was destroying himself.
It breaks the Father’s heart for him to see us still living in bondage to sin. After all, He sent his Son to give us full liberty from that bondage, and his word instructs us on how to walk in that. Yet, we not only stumble into sin but sometimes actively seek it as if we feel we are missing something without it. Some of this is the result of deception, but some of it is the result of a lack of wisdom. When the scriptures tell us to mourn over our sin, they are begging us to understand the reality of what sin is doing in us when we cater to it. Its fruit is death, and there is no other way to say it. Sin brings nothing good, and it only serves to turn us from the Savior we love. God wants us to see the truth of sin that He sees so that our hearts break over our transgressions the way his does.
One of our biggest issues when it comes to sin is our lack of understanding concerning the gravity of remaining in it. Yes, there is forgiveness and reconciliation for our trespasses. However, this does not mean that we walk in our sin willingly with joy and laughter the way the world does. We must have a right understanding of what it means to defy God and what it does to our God’s heart when we turn away from him. Let us humble ourselves before the Lord and mourn over our sin, and He will give us his heart of compassion as He has for what sin has done in the hearts of his children. Father, help us understand what our sin does to your heart and how it ruins us, that we would mourn over our transgressions and desire to sin no more.