Mourn! Or Your Failing God! Kelly
Durant
Ecclesiastes 3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time
to mourn, and a time to dance; Ecclesiastes 7:2 It is better to go to the house
of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all
men; and the living will lay it to his heart.
2. How many of you have been in a funeral and everyone is sad
sitting around in a room and then it was time for giving testimonies so then
someone gets up to tell a funny story? Well, I remember what Joe did one time;
One day he said he would cook for everybody but he came early that so no one
would know he bought the food and he pretended that he cooked it putting it
into a pot. Nobody knew he bought the food until months later!
Sometimes these memories help ease the pain, and I think it
is our human nature to want to get people to see others happy and laugh when
they are grieving and mourning but there is a time for everything. Sadness is
not something that we enjoy, and most all of us want to run from it, but denying
or ignoring pain is not what brings healing when there is a loss. Life has
sobering serious moments and we must accept them.
Within all of God’s creation, what we must conclude is that sadness
is a part of what we must go through in this life so we can learn certain
lessons that are needed to prepare us to appreciate the joys we will have
forever in heaven. Here is one of my favorite verses: Revelation
21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no
more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.
3. Today we are looking at Ecclesiastes 3:4 ‘A time to weep,
and a time to laugh; a time to mourn,’ and 3:2 ‘A time to be born, and a time
to die’, and What does it all mean? Life has its cycles and we just have to
accept them. There is ‘a time to be born and a time to die’ and we as God’s
creations do not get to choose either of those times. What is important is to
recognize that we must be ready all the time to leave it all behind because we
do not know where we are on God’s clock. Are you at 6 pm or and 5 minutes to
midnight? Only God knows. We fool ourselves into thinking that we may have a
decade or three to live, but that is human nature denying reality!
When someone passes on to promotion with the Lord it usually
makes most everyone sad and afraid. We are reminded that we are not in control
of what God is going to do in any of our lives. You and I never plan at what age
we will die. No person, no matter their
religion, power, or wealth can stop God’s timing and order cycle of life. The
best thing we can do is to ‘fear God and keep His commandments’, and just
accept His will knowing that all things are going to be alright taking place in
His time.
How are things going to be alright? Because we can peace in
the midst of the storms of heartbreak if we lean on God’s strength trusting in
Him because we belong to him. Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according
to his purpose.
4. When in sadness and mourning all we can do is remind
ourselves that God is good all the time! The sadness and the storm will pass.
None of us ever fully get time to prepare to leave and it seems every time someone
passes on quickly we are always surprised. When you consider some people do not
get to live to be older we must always count each year as a blessing!
In the time of Jesus, with the Romans civilizing the world
with brutality, most people died in their 30s! Life was that hard and
dangerous! The Lord actually intended for us to live long enough to see
grandchildren and to learn to become wise and simple like children in our old
age. Psalm 90:10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by
reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and
sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
This verse says and ‘we fly away’, what a beautiful image!
Our spirits leave behind this old, weak, and problematic body like a change of
old clothes and we fly free of the weights of life up to unite with our
heavenly creator.
5. So why does it say in Ecclesiastes 7:2 ‘It is better to go
to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting:’? Because God
through sufferings brings us close together with Him and closer together to
each other! Some families only get together when someone dies, how sad, right?
We need to accept God’s wisdom that he wants us to cry,
grieve, and be sober and mourn when we need to! We are creatures, created to
feel emotions, and we must let them be a part of who we are. The loss of a
loved one is not just a family loss, it is a loss for the entire church (or
Corps) and community! It is not just sadness for a few, it is a sadness for the
whole interconnected body!
James 5:13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is
any merry? let him sing psalms. When one
person is grieving, it should make us all grieve. We are all like a tapestry,
all the threads are connected, and when one is sad, we all are sad! Also when
one is in trouble, or one causing trouble, it affects all in one way or
another.
6. I Cor. 12:26 And whether one member suffer, all the
members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with
it. 27 Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
I would like to call attention to this, a person who is
indifferent to the suffering of another in our fellowship, in our Corps, is
separating their selves from being a part of our family! Anyone here unwilling
to be serious, sober, humbled, and in a state of mourning when someone is
mourning is showing their self to be selfish, proud, superficial, and insensitive
to the Spirit of God!
All of us in our natural state are terrible! We need to get
humbled by the natural things of life in order to learn to respect and fear
God! Too many people in Miami, and around the world, have the spirit of wanting
to have fun to forget their pain, when God wants them to stop with the laughter
and fun and learn from the realities of the pain of life, and from the pain in
His heart over the pain humanity produces.
7. Imagine right now you get a big cut on your arm while
hiking in the woods. You have to keep moving so you are not able to attend to
it as you should and then after a few days it gets infected. It is then very painful
to clean out but no matter how much the pain is, you have to clean it or the
infection will spread to all the body and kill you! This is why we must allow
the pain and we must bear it. You fail God if you do not mourn and this is what
is wrong with many people in the world and even wrong with some Christians, they
are not blessed because they do not mourn. They never take the time to clean
their infections, and they never get sober, serious, and sad to purify their
sin out of their selves, they remain sick and are accumulating bitterness and judgement.
We must learn to mourn our own death to self and let it go.
James 4:8 ‘Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.
Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9 Be
afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and
your joy to heaviness. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he
shall lift you up.’ Isn’t it true that too
few of you have ever done this process knowing that this is what God wants?
In Bolivia I had an amazing Argentine friend, Lucho Ortiz. He
was an amazing father of 3 girls and a son, a Petroleum engineer, and a leader
in the Charismatic church La Mansion. I use to teach him English at home and
one time he told me his testimony of how he received Jesus. He had been a
communist, a stanch atheist, a Peronista activist that led rallies to change
the government. But one day it hit him how evil he was, he stopped and doubted
his self and all his aggressiveness. He asked God if He was real and God’s
spirit took over Him and all he said he could do was cry for several hours! He
repented many days for his sins and he changed into a totally different Christian
person! I have cried many times too when actually letting God in to show me who
I was. I think everyone who repents reaches this type of humbling and mourning.
Have you ever broken down to let God purge you?
8. If there is one thing I have learned in life it is that
sooner or later you have let yourself break apart and be sad for all the
suffering and death in the world! When you love someone as a brother or sister,
you get affected very deeply when they go through a trial, a purge, a loss or a
pain.
People who have empathy, people who cry with others, are
healthy Godly people. The opposite are psychopaths, and these are people who are
numb to anyone’s pain, these are people controlled by selfish destructive Satan!
Jesus wept over the loss of Jerusalem, over the loss of the people who in
rebellion would not repent, so they were dead to God by their own choice.
God’s heart grieves when people die. God hurts for us that we
have to be a part of this evil system where there is an end to life. In the
Garden of Eden we were created by God to live forever, and in our resurrected
bodies, which Jesus has promised us for faithfulness to Him, we will live
forever again! We know we will be united with loved ones in the future because
God is amazing and He actually does not let die all the spirits that belong to
Him!
9. So if we do not let Jesus break you and me and put us back
together in His image, then we are of no use to Him or anyone! Luke 6:25 “Woe
unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for
ye shall mourn and weep.” But Jesus also said, “Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted!” So start mourning today if you want His blessings!
John 12:24 “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of
wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it
bringeth forth much fruit”.
Pain and death is just a part of what we inherited in this
fallen world but God never intended for it to be that way! The wonderful thing
is Jesus made it right and took the curse of death away! When we go with Him in
heaven we will never die ever again!
So keep your eye on the light at the end of the tunnel. The
dark moment is scary, real, and disturbing but it is only just a part of the
journey; At the end of the journey is God’s comforting city of light and we
live together in a new regenerated body and world full of love and peace
forever!
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