Now the last part of verse nine:
Let the satisfaction of your gratitude be changed from one nature to another so that you experience your grief, and your happy cheerfulness is turned into intense heaviness.
Yikes! More grief? Heaviness? Let the satisfaction of your gratitude be changed from one nature to another? What does that mean?
Let’s try to understand in light of what has come before. As we go deeper with God, everything we have felt, things like satisfaction and gratitude, is changed from experiencing those things from the perspective of our old nature to the perspective of the nature of our new man in Christ.
In the world, when we are satisfied with something, we’re likely to keep it the same - like the ocean analogy of getting into the water up to your neck and staying there. You can become satisfied with the way things are; you’re grateful, but the tendency of the flesh is to be passive, not active. Why change something if you’re satisfied with it? When the satisfaction of your gratitude is allowed to be expressed in the nature of the new man, it becomes active, spirit-directed, driven by a desire to go deeper and deeper.
We grieve and sob, not because we have just been moved emotionally by a sermon or a song, but because we have been convicted by the Holy Spirit.
Godly sorrow is different because it is an inside-out grief, begun with the promptings of the Holy Spirit. It is the result of a willing heart that has decided to go through the breaking to become more. Consider the butterfly as it breaks free from its cocoon; the process of breaking its boundaries strengthens its wings so it can fly.
The breaking that happens to a submitted heart leads to freedom. This is not a story of defeat and sadness. It is a “on the third day, He rose from the grave” kind of victory. We are reminded of this third day perspective in Psalm 30:5 – weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Lord of empty tomb, I grieve over my distance from You. I trade in the passivity of my old nature for the activity of my new nature. Break me free so that I may fly.
Check out: Psalm 118:5
Let the satisfaction of your gratitude be changed from one nature to another so that you experience your grief, and your happy cheerfulness is turned into intense heaviness.
Yikes! More grief? Heaviness? Let the satisfaction of your gratitude be changed from one nature to another? What does that mean?
Let’s try to understand in light of what has come before. As we go deeper with God, everything we have felt, things like satisfaction and gratitude, is changed from experiencing those things from the perspective of our old nature to the perspective of the nature of our new man in Christ.
In the world, when we are satisfied with something, we’re likely to keep it the same - like the ocean analogy of getting into the water up to your neck and staying there. You can become satisfied with the way things are; you’re grateful, but the tendency of the flesh is to be passive, not active. Why change something if you’re satisfied with it? When the satisfaction of your gratitude is allowed to be expressed in the nature of the new man, it becomes active, spirit-directed, driven by a desire to go deeper and deeper.
We grieve and sob, not because we have just been moved emotionally by a sermon or a song, but because we have been convicted by the Holy Spirit.
Godly sorrow is different because it is an inside-out grief, begun with the promptings of the Holy Spirit. It is the result of a willing heart that has decided to go through the breaking to become more. Consider the butterfly as it breaks free from its cocoon; the process of breaking its boundaries strengthens its wings so it can fly.
The breaking that happens to a submitted heart leads to freedom. This is not a story of defeat and sadness. It is a “on the third day, He rose from the grave” kind of victory. We are reminded of this third day perspective in Psalm 30:5 – weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
Lord of empty tomb, I grieve over my distance from You. I trade in the passivity of my old nature for the activity of my new nature. Break me free so that I may fly.
Check out: Psalm 118:5
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