January 10, 2011

  • the house of mourning (Ecc. 7) ~ grieving to the glory of God ~ "pleasing pain" (David Brainerd)

    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. 3  Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. 4  The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

    It is better!?

    Is it better – to go to the house of mourning?!
    Isn't it better to go to the house of feasting?

    Is sorrow is better than laughter?!
    Isn't laughter better than mourning?

    By sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better?!

    Better!
    Yes, better!

    Oh, yes, the heart of flesh balks at and rebuffs sadness and mourning!

    But the new heart from God accepts and embraces sadness and mourning for the new heart has full assurance that all mourning, all sadness, all time in the house of mourning is all according to the counsel of God the Father's will and comes through the loving wisdom of God's sovereign heart to the heart of His adopted children for their good – for all mourning, all sadness, all time in the house of mourning – all of that is all God's ordained means for us to embrace Him and love Him with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength and all our mind!

    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.

    ALL things...
    including mourning...
    including sorrow...
    including sadness...

    The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning!

    From Strong's Concordance, the Greek word for "good" there is agathos, meaning "good" (in any sense, often as noun):--benefit, good(-s, things), well.

    All things are working together for the benefit of the children of God. This may not and often does not mean things will turn out in the way we think will be "good," but it will mean that our souls will benefit through God's workings – each and every time! No exceptions. What a comfort to His dear children! What a comfort to His own who are in that house of mourning today! What a comfort to me this day!

    O, this is the Spiritual wisdom of our God, the wisdom which is understood only by the Spirit of God! But thanks be to God, all the children of God have the Spirit of God indwelling us so we might know the deep things of God (I Cor. 2:6-16) and receive His comfort in our mourning, sorrow and sadness for we can have full assurance God's is continuing to work all things for our good and His purposes are not being thwarted, that His love for us is continuing and unfailing, despite what we may see or may feel.

    If God be for us, who can be against us? ... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
    (Please see Romans 8:31-39)

    Mourning, sorrow, sadness – how opposite are these ways and thoughts are from our own earthly ways and thoughts!

    If given a choice, none of us would ever choose to be sad. If given a choice, none of us would choose the house of mourning.

    And yet for those of us who are children of God, His Spirit bears witness in us so we might know God's ways and God's thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts and trust He is continuing to work all things for our good and His glory.

    Yet we know that our mourning, our sorrow, our sadness – our time in the house of mourning – all of it is to our benefit, God's appointed means to make our hearts better, to purify and sanctify them, to conform us to Christ's image and to draw us into greater and deeper and higher fellowship with Him.

    This is what I have found happening in my own heart in the past few days. As many of you know, one of my best friends passed into glory a few days ago.

    In the past, I have told others who have been grieving and mourning to ask God to help them to grieve and mourn to the glory of God.

    And so in recent days, the tables have been turned, the teacher has become the student – and I have been asking God to help me to grieve and mourn to His glory.

    While we find ourselves in that hard and heart-wrenching place of sorrow and sadness, in that house of mourning, and we end up in the wonderful place of hungering and thirsting more for God and being swept up in seeking the face of God and drawn into the presence of God, it is then that we are grieving and mourning to the glory of God! And so, using the apostle Paul's words, I will say I have been sorrowful, yet rejoicing. How could I say anything less – for despite the grief, tears and sadness, and through the grief, tears and the sadness – I have been drawing closer to the Lord – and so how could I not rejoice!

    To borrow a phrase from David Brainerd, I will call my time in the house of mourning as one of pleasing pain, for certainly anytime God's children are drawn into closer communion with the living God, that is indeed a pleasing thing – but as it comes to me in the midst of a time of such great grief and loss, it is also a painful thing.

    Brainerd wasn't writing about a particular loss, but I think some of his words here express many of my feelings at this time (some of which I tried to express in my last post).

    from: The Life and Diary of David Brainerd in "Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 2" (boldface, mine)

    “Thursday, Nov. 4 [1742]. [At Lebanon] Saw much of my nothingness most of this day: but felt concerned that I had no more sense of my insufficiency and unworthiness. O it is sweet lying in the dust! But it is distressing to feel in my soul that hell of corruption, which still remains in me. In the afternoon, had a sense of the sweetness of a strict, close, and constant devotedness to God, and my soul was comforted with his consolations. My soul felt a pleasing, yet painful concern, lest I should spend some moments without God. O may I always live to God! In the evening, I was visited by some friends, and spent the time in prayer and such conversation as tended to our edification. It was a comfortable season to my soul: I felt an intense desire to spend every moment for God. God is unspeakably gracious to me continually. In times past, he has given me inexpressible sweetness in the performance of duty. Frequently my soul has enjoyed much of God; but has been ready to say, ‘Lord, it is good to be here;’ and so to indulge sloth, while I have lived on the sweetness of my feelings. But of late, God has been pleased to keep my soul hungry, almost continually; so that I have been filled with a kind of pleasing pain. When I really enjoy God, I feel my desires of him the more insatiable, and my thirstings after holiness the more unquenchable; and the Lord will not allow me to feel as though I were fully supplied and satisfied, but keeps me still reaching forward. I feel barren and empty, as though I could not live without more of God; I feel ashamed and guilty before him. Oh! I see that ‘the law is spiritual, but I am carnal.’ I do not, I cannot live to God. Oh for holiness! Oh for more of God in my soul! Oh this pleasing pain! It makes my soul press after God; the language of it is, ‘Then shall I be satisfied, when I awake in God’s likeness,’ (Ps. xvii. 15. ult.) but never, never before: and consequently I am engaged to ‘press towards the mark’ day by day. O that I may feel this continual hunger, and not be retarded, but rather animated by every cluster from Canaan, to reach forward in the narrow way, for the full enjoyment and possession of the heavenly inheritance! O that I may never loiter in my heavenly journey!”

    These insatiable desires after God and holiness continued the two next days, with a great sense of his own exceeding unworthiness, and the nothingness of the things of this world.

    * * *

    In the beatitudes, the Lord Jesus told us:

    Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
    Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
    Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
    Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

    So often we ask God to bless us (or others), but how often do we pray for Him to bless us (or others) like this?

    Bring me to the place where I am poor in spirit so I might be blessed.
    Bring me to the place where I will mourn, so I might be blessed.
    Bring me to the place where I am meek, so I might be blessed and inherit the earth.
    Bring me to the place where I am hungering after righteousness, so I might be blessed.
    Bring me to the place where I am thirsting after righteousness, so I might be blessed.

    Any place that gets us hungering and thirsting more and more for God is a blessed place, is it not?

    O, for our souls to be filled with the pleasing pain Brainerd spoke of so we might be filled with such unquenchable and insatiable desires for God, so our souls would keep reaching forward for God, press after God and want more of God!

    And so, by the grace of God, as I have come to hunger and thirst more for the living God in my sorrow and sadness, I bless God today for blessing me in this appointed time in the house of mourning, and I can proclaim with Solomon:

    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. 3  Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. 4  The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

    O, Holy Father, God of all comfort, during our times of sorrow and sadness in the house of mourning, be gracious to us, hear our cries and send Your Holy Spirit to illuminate our darkness, to open our hearts and minds and eyes to Your sovereign design, so those times will not cause us to loiter on our heavenly journeys, but rather propel us forward in them! O, Bread of Life and Living Water, even in the house of mourning, may we feel such continual hunger and thirst for You and not be retarded, but rather animated by every cluster from Canaan, to reach forward in the narrow way, for the full enjoyment and possession of the heavenly inheritance – which begins in this life! Sanctify all our times of tears and grief and sorrow and sadness, so we might not waste our time in the house of mourning whining and complaining but grieve and mourn to Your glory, to see our sadness and sorrow as a means of receiving Your greater blessing for Your greater glory! O, may we never loiter in our heavenly journeys! If need be, if we become sluggish and lukewarm in our heavenly journeys, bring us to the house of mourning again so we might once more reach forward to Your house of joy! May we see Your sovereign, loving and all-wise hand at work not only in our feasting, happiness and laughter but also in our mourning, sadness and sorrow. May we not waste a moment of our time in the house of laughter or in the house of mourning.

    Related:

    my recent posts on friendship, grief and death:

    my posts on friendship, death and mourning (includes the above and many others)


    God's sovereignty in and our attitude toward losses and trials:


    hungering and thirsting for God:


    examining our prayers:

Comments (8)

  • (( hugs))

    You and your friend's family are in my prayers

  • This mourning is not misery.  It is a time of finding God more than sufficient in our suffering.  I am going through it with Him myself.  The more I am brought low, the more He is there to comfort me....Psalm 116:6.

  • "Through my weakness I find strength in God"

  • @JulieDeer - Thanks dear deer.

    @quest4god@revelife - Amen. And thank you for that verse and taking me once again to Psalm 116. SO perfect!

    @eagleendtime - Amen, brother!

  • Good Afternoon, Karen

    I mentioned this in one of your photos, but this type of spirituality just has not been part of my life----with the possible exception of my 3 weeks in the hospital when I almost died a few times--blue light specials. lol That incident with God was more like conviction of sin and I was sad about it.

    I think some of my friends here, you included, have a relationship with the Lord has is very close and you have a deep desire to please Him whether pain or pleasure.

    I just got started loving the joy side of being born again. I do not seek out mourning as a spiritual experience---maybe, one day I will.

    God throws lots of stuff at me---free trips to Hawaii and 3 week stays in the hospital. He is grooming me to be more like his Son---something that I sure cannot do on my own.

    I just let it fall on the plate of my life and take to God what I don't like.

    I am just not in your league here in many ways, and it is very nice to come here and given something wholesome and spiritual to think about.

    blessings

    frank

  • Came on Frank's rec. 
    Amen and amen.  May God be your comfort during this time.
    My husband felt like he did not know how to "mourn with those who mourn", so on a backpacking trip with my son and the boy scouts,  where each took one beatitude to reflect on, he chose mourning.  I was a bit alarmed as we are one, and felt the shock of knowing mourning would come.  But it was God's blessed preparation as we went into a season of loosing my MIL, Aunt, Father, and now 1 1/2 yrs later my FIL.  My husband was able to mourn and also rejoice as he sat at his Dad's side as he entered eternity with Jesus.

  • @ANVRSADDAY - Hi Frank. Yes, I'd read that comment; sorry for not getting back to you on it. I certainly don't seek out suffering or pain or mourning, but it is one of God's means to sanctify us, and I have found that to be the case in my own life. Those times really get you to consider what you really value.

    Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,

    By the cross are sanctified;

    Peace is there that knows no measure,

    Joys that through all time abide.

    Paul talks about knowing Christ and His power and sharing in His sufferings, which is something we can't ignore at all.

    Philippians 3:10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11  that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

    Not to mention how Jesus Himself was not exempt from suffering and suffered in our place.

    There is a real blessing in being able to praise God and stand firm in the midst of suffering and affliction. Paul spoke about being pushed to rely on God when he was afflicted and glorying in tribulation. It's relatively easy for us to praise God in the sunshine, but the Christian who praises God in the storm is truly a supernatural witness that will stand out to a fallen and dying world. Our great high priest sympathizes with our weaknesses and His grace will always be sufficient, no matter the circumstances.

    Christ's blessings,
    Karen

  • @ABAHM - Thank you SO much and thank you for testifying to God's wonderful workings in your lives to prepare you for the losses to come. The Good Shepherd never fails to feed His flock.

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naphtali_deer

About me...

Christian hedonist in training. Pressing on to know more and more of the joy of the LORD. Pleading with God to rend the heavens and revive and refresh my own soul, as well as His Church, to His praise, honor and glory.

Thank God. He can make men and women in middle life sing again with a joy that has been chastened by a memory of their past failures. ~ Alan Redpath

My other websites

tent of meeting: Prayer for reformation & revival

(See also Zechariah821. Zechariah821 is a mirror site of tent of meeting, found on WordPress)

deerlifetrumpet: Encouragement for those seeking reformation & revival in the Church

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