Therefore, submit to God. But resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow.
- James 4:7-9
In every situation we can give thanks, for this is the will of God. We can rejoice in the Lord, always. That means that even during times when we take a good, hard, honest look at ourselves and see where we are, the sins that are still so much a part of our daily and habitual life, and how far we have to go to be even in the neighborhood of perfect as our Daddy is perfect, we can still be grateful for the grace that brought us this far and for the grace that will lead us on. Yes, be grateful and rejoice for what the Lord has done in your life and what He can be trusted to complete.
But there is a time for everything under the sun, and that includes a time to weep and mourn. Even as we rejoice in who He is and His love for us, we experience heartache and sorrow over our sin. For those who use the principles of the 12 Steps to set the frame work of their spiritual house, built on the solid rock foundation of Christ, during and after inventory is an appropriate time to feel such sorrow. Some people do an inventory at the start of each year. I like to do one at Lent. There is none of us that can take an honest look at our self and say w';re getting it right now. Maybe we're getting it a lot right or at least a lot more right than we used to, but if you're still breathing, you still haven't attained full sanctification.
If we ever examine our hearts and are not grieved by the sin we find, than we either need to take another look because we didn't examine under the guidance of the Holy Spirit or with rigorous honesty or we have hardened our hearts by becoming comfortable with our sin and rejecting the voice of the Spirit. We need to sub,it ourselves to God, ask Him to forgive us and to break our hearts of stone and transform them into hearts of clay that He can mold. Soften our hearts, Oh God, that we may no urn and weep and be filled with sorrow at the sins that we have allowed to stay within us.
Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on
February 13, 2016.
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