The End Of Me By Kyle IdlemanSample

Mourn to Be Happy

They say life is but a dream, but if so, there are too many abrupt wake-ups in it. I bet you’ve had more than a few. I mean those times when life was on cruise control, but then something happened and you were suddenly in for a rough ride. The end of me often comes when my dreams come to an end.

It works like this. In surprising ways, suffering makes room in our spirit for us to know and experience the blessing of God’s peace and presence. Without suffering, we simply can’t know his comfort. In mourning, we experience the blessing of God’s presence.

Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrases Matthew 5:4 this way: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.”

At the end of yourself you have an opportunity to experience the presence of God in a way you never have before. Maybe you’ve embraced some wonderful things and lost them. But there’s no embrace like the divine one.

Often, people pray for change on the outside, when God cares more about change on the inside. People pray for their desires and realize more and more that God answered in terms of their needs.

There is also the mourning that is our response to the sin in ourselves and in our world. The first kind of mourning is inspired by devastation from without. This one springs from devastation from within—the sinfulness that wreaks havoc on us, on those we love, and on the world around us. Throughout Scripture there’s a connection between mourning over sin—of every kind—and receiving God’s blessing. Israel often mourned together as a nation and received God’s blessing as a nation.

So, let’s be clear. You will fall into sin. Everyone does. And you’ll still be slow to face your mourning. Everyone is. Just understand that in your hesitancy to mourn your sin, you’re also delaying the blessing of God. There is no way to get to that blessing without the mourning that precedes it.

What if you faced the sin in your life this very day with a period of genuine mourning? What if you spent some time meditating, praying, and grieving over the sin in the world around you?

Before you think about all that, think about this: It’s going to change you. It’s going to transform your outlook on yourself and your world in a dramatic way. In essence, you’re electing to see things from Christ’s perspective, from the inside out, and you can’t do that without becoming a little more like Christ.

It’s a far cry from the “have a nice day” faith we tend to preach. I realize that. It’s not too perky or peppy. But it happens to be aligned with truth, and it happens to be the one path to the deepest, fullest joy that God offers. You’ll walk through the valley of the shadow, but I promise you this: you’ll never walk alone.