Are you surprised to learn that God wants you to experience sorrow? What kind of loving God is that?!?!?!
God knows humans intimately. He understands everything that makes them tick and one of those things is this deeply ingrained refusal to make necessary changes unless there is sufficient motivation.
Like my dad. He smoked and drank all my life until he thought he was dying from that which killed his father. As he watched the brown crud pump from his lungs, he determined he would never smoke or drink again, and he didn’t.
The fear of real death was sufficient motivation to make this huge life change that changed my life and my mother’s, too. She stopped her drinking and smoking then, following Dad.
God wants us to come to salvation, to have eternal life with Him, but He made it our choice. He desires that we all choose Him and life, but He knows that most of us require motivation. Thus, He wants us to experience sorrow over our sin-choices.
No regrets, either, as we hand all that junk to Almighty God. We will feel sorry that we hurt ourselves and others, but no regrets at dropping our wrongs at the throne for God to take care of. At that point, we experience relief.
Now, the enemy likes to try to thwart this process by telling us God’s forgiveness isn’t real or that He doesn’t really toss our sins into the sea of forgetfulness. He whispers that we’re not really clean and don’t walk in Christ’s righteousness.
Here’s a huge truth for you today:
Satan is a LIAR.
Anytime you are hearing/feeling something that is different than what God’s Word says, drop it like a hot potato! It’s not truth! Remember what He got Eve with? Questioning “did God REALLY say this…?”
Kick that liar in the teeth by telling him you resist him and that you believe God alone.
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Then there are those people who pretend sorrow over their sins. They weep, they stutter, they hang their heads, all the while watching to see if their grief is believed. In truth, they aren’t sorry for their sin, they are only sorry they’ve been caught.
Those folks don’t sorrow over their choices that lead to death, and therefore it is eternal death they choose. It’s really easy to get angry at these, but I think mostly we should feel sorry for them, because as they step into eternity, it won’t be pleasant at all. It will be to a forever separated from God. Eternal spiritual death.
Choose your sorrow, my friend.
Choose well.
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
© 2019 Faye Stoeffler Bryant
