Journal Entry ~ 07/30/19

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.  - Psalm 131:1

In order to live in a right relationship with God, to enjoy that peace and contentment, to know true joy and laughter, we need to humble ourselves, acknowledge and repent of our sins. We cannot truly repent of our sins unless we see it as God sees it, and we can’t do that until we humble ourselves. 

When we place the things of this world over God, whether those things be our material possessions or our anxious thoughts, we make ourselves an enemy of God. That should pierce our soul to the very depths with grief. When we take the time to truly look into our hearts at what causes the conflict, and we seek the self-focus that lies deep within us, our hearts should mourn at the way we replace Him with our own passions and desires. We should weep at the way we destroy and kill relationships in our lives because of our own selfish desires. It should wreck us. 

The beautiful part of our relationship with the Lord is that when we humble ourselves before the Lord - when we fall to our knees and weep over the ugliness of our sin - He exalts us. When we go beyond just acknowledging our sin, but we are truly broken over our wrongs - to Him and to the people in our lives - He will lift us up. It is then that we find that peace and joy and laughter. 

Far too often, our pride gets in the way of this process. We may be able to get to the place of recognizing our sin, but we generally don’t let Him take us to a place of true brokenness over our sin. Our pride will justify our sin for one reason or another - she deserved it, he started it, I was having a rough day. We see that we were wrong, but we quickly attach an excuse to our sin. We resist becoming truly broken over our sin because that’s a hard place to go. We have to be vulnerable and allow our heart to grieve, And it’s hard for us to allow that kind of pain into our lives. So, we keep ourselves distracted and we ignore it, thinking that acknowledging it is good enough.

Allow Him to take you to the place of deep mourning over your sin, allow him to show you how He sees your sin. While it is painful for the moment, there is such joy that follows. He will exalt you because he loves you.


Press on ~ you are loved💗

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