GOD IS TURNING YOUR GRIEF INTO JOY!
Live Daily Die Daily Footstool Devotional
April 16, 2023
Read John 16:16- 28, Ephesians 4:25-32
John 16:20 KJVS - Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.
It is good to experience things that break your heart and make you cry all because these experiences are only a true blessing if they succeed in leading you to the Holy Spirit. Life allows things that break our hearts or make us cry to come our way, only so we can be introduced to the Holy Spirit. If we grieve and yet do not place our griefs into the hands of the Holy Spirit, we will tend to become bitter, full of wrath, anger and formulating lies to one another, pretending to be what we are not. If we do not learn to surrender the things that ever make us sad to the Holy Spirit, we will end up losing touch with reality with ourselves and even with the people around us. The Holy Spirit is the best Person who can bring sense, meaning and usefulness into your disappointments. Learn to surrender your discontentments often into God’s Hands, leaving all the baggages of the past at the Cross of Jesus so that you can move on with His invisible Spirit who can become yours through the burial and resurrection. Misplaced griefs, disappointments, unhappiness and sorrows- this is the cause of all the wrongful emotions like lying to one another, pretending to be something when we are not; expressing excessive anger, stealing and refusing to be hardworking so you have have something to give to the poor and needy; saying unwholesome things that do not edify others; bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking and malice. ( Ephesians 4:25-32).
Misplaced griefs are griefs that are not allowed to meet Jesus at the Cross. Take for instance if you grief because your earthly father died, it will leave you in a lot of pain and disappointment if you do not see it in the light of Jesus dying on the cross, being buried only to rise again. If you see it as God taking away something so precious from you and never to give it back to you either in the same way or in another form, you may end up becoming so sad and disappointed that it brings too much worry, and perhaps anger and bitterness to your soul. Everything must be seen through the eyes of Jesus.
Protracted grief is grief that does not make sense. Protracted grief is grief that refuses to kiss Jesus’s tomb and bless the day He died! ( Psalm 2:12 KJVS - Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.) Protracted grief is grief that cannot say thanks for certain things you have lost in life, so that you can move on with the new things God wants to give to you today. Protracted grief is to be too sorry for the things you lose for Christ’s sake, things that won’t do you any good anyway!
When the Holy Spirit comes, there's supposed to be an end of your grief. What makes you cry, broken and disassembled should not be protracted when the Holy Spirit comes. You should not keep crying over lost things or things that you can never have anyway, when God starts introducing new mercies and graces into your life. Prolonged grief( about something you've lost for Christ's sake) in the day that the Holy Spirit has been given fully to you to comfort you and make you happy, ends up making you grieve the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 4:30 KJVS - And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Jesus wept in John 11:35 not because He was weeping for Lazarus’ death, but because the people who were standing by were still crying and having protracted grief, while The Resurrection Himself was standing at the graveyard! Whatever makes you overcry, may the Holy Spirit take it away today in Jesus name! Amen.
There should be a perfect balance between grief and happiness.
