AKA I am a converted Christian but unbroken!

I hope your week has been nothing short of fantastic?

Remember in this post, I said; ‘In due time’, the part 2 of Help! I cannot rejoice with those that rejoice will be posted? Well! Today is that due time and rightly so.

Can I be honest with you? When I said: In due time, I said that because I knew that I needed a personal ministration/revelation of what it means to mourn with those that mourn. If I had published a post on this topic earlier than today, I would’ve been feeding you skeletons, no flesh. What I learnt from this is: Walk with the Spirit of God. Be honest with yourself and God. Wait on His timing, it is ALWAYS perfect.

You will be shocked to know that it is indeed more difficult to mourn with those that mourn, than to rejoice with those that rejoice. You may say: why is that?

It takes a lot to mourn than to rejoice. More is given up when we mourn with those that mourn. There’s an expectation of inconvenience that comes with mourning with those that mourn. And tell me, who loves inconvenience? Be honest!

Personally, I knew that I struggled with this area, worse than when I realized that I could not rejoice with those that rejoice. If I was getting a B for rejoicing, I was getting an F for mourning. [It’s just an illustration, no mark keeping is done]

The word ‘mourn’ in the bible should not be read superficially/literally. Yes! It entails grieving and loss but it’s much deeper than that. As we delve further into this post, you will understand.

I went for a Women’s Retreat last weekend, and the first speaker [A woman] got on the podium to speak, she started sharing some of the things she and her husband do back in Los Angeles. They run a center that caters for the need of the community and beyond. She began to talk about how she had met a young boy who was being sexually abused by his father and his friends were preys as well. That touched me as it did everyone else, but something else struck me. The speaker was crying as she was talking about the tragic incident, like literally welling up.

And then it hit me….. She was mourning with those that mourn. It wasn’t really so much about the tears, I could feel her heart bleeding. That was when I realized that more work needed to be done on my heart.

I watch movies and tragic things happen in a scene and I cry like an onion had been peeled by my side, but how many times has my heart bled when such tragic things happen around me? That was a question I asked myself.

Romans 12 v 15b says

….Mourn with those who mourn [NIV]

….Share tears when they’re down [MSG]

To mourn with those that mourn,  is not just empathy. It is understanding what a person is experiencing and stepping in, in your capacity to ‘ease’ the pain.

You may not be someone who tears up easily, truly speaking, it is not so much about the tears, but does your heart bleed as Christ’s heart bleeds?

You see most of us [Christians] are converted but are unbroken, that is, Christ has not fully been formed in us. We are all about the spirituality of Christianity, but feel the practicality is not significant. LIE! Religious belief without true love is bondage.

Remember the story of the Good Samaritan in the bible [Luke 10 v 25-37], A priest and a Levite [close to God, know His word] passed by the man attacked by robbers. A Samaritan [a racial minority despised in Israel] was the one who showed love to the man. Most of us are full of knowledge of the Word of God, but are lacking in the application [Wisdom].

Only a broken heart can mourn with those that mourn. Lady B walks up to a Christian lady (CL), tells her about how she does not have money to buy food to eat, and CL says is; It is well. The Lord will provide, let’s pray. And she has money she can spare for LB to buy something to eat, but she is thinking of the dinner outing with the ladies in the church scheduled for tomorrow. Then she adds: It is possible God is teaching her a lesson on how to be wise and make wealth. I won’t be a stumbling block in the work of God. Interesting! OR I cannot just give anybody money, I don’t know what they will do with it.

A heart that is able to mourn with those that mourn is one that is able to step out of their comfort zone into the inconvenience zone to show the love of Christ. Even the disciples of Jesus Christ did not get it, if we read the story of the Bread and Fish for five thousand in Luke 9 v 12-17, the disciple wanted to dismiss the crowd without food because they did not want to be responsible for their welfare, after all, they were in the middle of nowhere. That was their excuse, but Jesus wasn’t having it. And if we want to be more like Christ, we need to know that Jesus Christ is not having any of our excuses.

Being able to mourn with those that mourn entails loving the lost where they are. You may ask; How are they mourning? They don’t know Christ. Being in darkness is grief. I have also come to understand that some unbelievers ‘mourn’ the state of not knowing Christ. They wish they could understand what we mean when we say; Christ loves you. Christ is my Lord and Savior.

2 Corinthians 4 v 4 says…

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God  [NIV]

If we get to understand the helplessness of unbelievers and reach out in love, with the help of God, then the blindfold can be taken away. If we prayed and loved them as much as we picked out their faults, the world will be a different place filled with God’s love.

When I read my bible, I read about Christ reaching out to the sick, the misfits. But today, we run away from them. If our hearts are broken, we will understand that they need Jesus. We should strive to love them for who they are, and not who we think they should become. If Christians walked by Christians, who would walk by the lost?

No one is saying engage in sin to reach them. No! But trust me, when we ask God for avenues to reach them, He drops amazing ideas of how. When Christ commissioned us, He said;

Go into the world. Go everywhere and announce the Message of God’s good news to one and all. Mark 16 v 15 [MSG]

He did not say go into the church. We have become so great at judging than loving. Can we, for a minute, be reminded of where grace brought us from?

The world needs more broken Christians than converts. We need our hearts to bleed as Christ’s heart bleeds for the poor, the abused, the lost etc.

I am not comfortable with just preaching Christ, I need to reflect Christ through love; and that will require a lot of inconveniences, and that should be fine.

To be able to mourn with those that mourn, a broken heart that feels as Jesus Christ feels, is the primary tool needed. Once we are able to see a person through the eyes of Christ, we are able to love like Christ.

The truth is, if we cannot mourn [step into the boat of discomfort] with our fellow Christians, we cannot mourn with the unbelievers.

We cannot be broken without the help of Christ. It takes Christ working on our hearts to be able to feel as He feels.

So today, I am challenging myself. I am challenging you as well, to step out of our comfort zones and ‘mourn with those that mourn’. It will require our time, our emotions and our finances; but all we do in Christ is always gain.

Today, I cry out to God for myself and for you as well, that our stony hearts be broken and they be more like Christ’s. Amen!

Stay gracious!

Till next week…

Lots of love!

Do you have an additional branch to add to what it means to mourn with those that mourn? I’m eager to read them in the comments section..

PT QUOTE OF THE DAY

Only a broken heart can love like Christ.

Missed my last post?

Missed the Part 1?

Have any questions/suggestions: preciousthoughts2013@gmail.com

Princess Okechukwu!