Replies to post #63698 on Bible (Bible)

[excel]

He nails it ..............

If you want to be happy, if you want to receive God’s blessing, then you must be poor in spirit. This means recognizing your spiritual poverty apart from God. It means recognizing the simple fact that, apart from the Lord, you’re lost, helpless, and hopeless.

If you want to be happy, then admit your true spiritual state. Blessed are those who see themselves as they really are, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

[plugger]

Steve, how about that, I just spent maybe an hour on Idols & Idolatry, then wrote a short Epistle for the board then hit the cancel key (on purpose)....a very good lesson for me...Anyway your post fit right in there, all your blessed easily fit into idolatry. We think of idol worship/idolatry of yesterdays of long, long ago, but the ole devil has really tricked many into placing your BLESSED into things which come between us & God and also the devil has given us the ability to create great excuses that make us innocent of any wrong doing.

We count our blessings & name them one by one, but I wonder if we ever ask ourselves if we allow any of these blessings to come 1st and place God 2nd......Family, sports, work, savings, health, retirement and the list of blessings go on & on....Do I allow any of these things to be #1 and God #2.....Just a passing thought-----I am sure the ole devil can offer me excuses----but if I may, remember when we take on any of the blessings in our life we need to take God along.....Example, I enjoy my shop, I do best when I share this time with God. God is always right there, and does make for much room for the devil, wherever I may be, God is always right there--- not just in a building we today call the church.

1 John 2:15 & James 4:4

[mathew633]

Happy Are the Unhappy
For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:10 nkjv)

Happy people are unhappy people, because Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In the Beatitudes, the word “blessed” that Jesus used is interchangeable with “happy.”

To put it another way, happy are the unhappy.

“Well, that makes no sense at all,” you’re saying. “Either you’re happy or you’re unhappy.”

No, before you can truly be happy, you first have to be unhappy. You have to see your real state before God, which is a sinful state. And you have to mourn over that state.

Also, the word that Jesus used here for “mourn” is the most severe of nine Greek words for grief that we find in the Scriptures. It’s reserved for mourning the dead. While this verse applies in principle to all who mourn, let’s look at it in context.

Let’s go back to the previous beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3 nkjv). It’s a little scary to see what sinners we really are. But when we cry out to God and mourn over our condition, then we will find comfort.


As commentator Warren Wiersbe has pointed out, “It is as wrong to mourn when God has forgiven us as it is to rejoice when sin has conquered us.”

It’s better to mourn now and laugh later than to laugh now and mourn later. When you really mourn for your condition and repent of it, you can experience the true happiness that God wants you to experience.

Have you ever shed a tear over a sin in your own life? Have you ever done something you were ashamed of and wept over it?

The Bible tells us that godly sorrow will produce repentance (see 2 Corinthians 7:10). This can be a good thing, because that mourning can produce tangible results.

www.harvest.org