Personal Reflection

12/16/2015
These last couple days God has been impressing upon me the importance of
mourning over sin as a healthy and biblical response to sinning and being sinned
against. The mourning over sin that I commit comes easily to me thanks to the
conviction of the Holy Spirit, but mourning over the sin that is committed against
me or by others is not something that I had ever really taken to heart, much less
applied in my own life.
Me
My primary emotional reaction to sins committed against me is anger. Honestly, my
primary emotional reaction to anything uncomfortable or trying is anger. I am an
angry person. As a child I suppressed my anger by isolating myself and internally
harbored all my anger. Most of this anger as a child was in response to grandfathers
who I spent most of my time with who were very belittling. While many people have
the ability to shut out that type of psychological assault, I do not.
My primary emotional reaction to loss is apathy. Defined, apathy is the lack of
feeling, emotion, interest, and concern. It is a state of indifference, or the
suppression of emotions. My first true experience with loss was the accidental
death of my cousin Miguel. He was four, I was 13. I remember watching my family
grieve and mourn. I on the other hand felt numbno emotional response. As a way
to justify this, I formed in my own mind the philosophy of death is just part of life;
get over it. Its like, I know I should be sad right now, everyone else is sad, but I am
not.
Culmination
Thirty-one years is not old, I get that. Deduct from that at least five years to account
for infancy and toddlerhood; the period of ones life where reasoning is minimally
basic and any reasoning that does take place is not influential over the rest of ones
life. So, twenty-six years later, I find myself grappling with who I am, who God is,
and practical application of biblical truths that my brain and conscience both
believe, but that my heart is currently not in sync with all the time. A culmination
has occurred, a brink reached, the e-brake applied by the Holy Spirit (or at least
thats what it feels like), forcing me to stop, take a look around myself, and listen to
Gods testing of my heart.1 The last time this occurred I was 26 and going through a
divorce.
During the divorce God was making me aware of my own depravity. He revealed to
me the roots of my sin, aka my idols. Acceptance and approval are my chief idols. I
1 1 Chronicles 29:17a

find myself constantly struggling to maintain and live out the reality that I am
accepted and approved of by God, and that everything I do needs to be done for
God and not men.2 I found solace in this revelation, especially when coupled with
the fact that Gods approval of me does not ever change because His approval is in
His son Jesus who dwells within me. The awareness is definitely a good thing
because it has opened my eyes to many other sins and idols that I constantly
struggle with. The bad thing is that I fixated on my depravity, not the sins
themselves but the fact that I am totally depraved. This reality and truth is
definitely one that my heart and mind are both in sync on. What I failed to include in
this fixation is the gospel reality that WITHOUT Christ I am totally depraved. With
Christ I have died to sin so that it is no longer I who live but Christ living in me. 3
Remember my apathy towards death? Well here are two deaths that apathy-bedammed! Christs death should bring sorrow and mourning to my heart knowing
that it was sin that made His death necessarymy sin. My own death with Christs
should also bring sorrow and mourning to my heart knowing that it was a necessary
death due to the sins of my ancestors in the gardenGods creation forever
distorted and fallen (pre-new creation 4). These deaths should bring humility to my
heart, knowing that I am unworthy of them and have only received them solely
because of Gods mercy and grace, and His sovereign will. Both deaths should
cause rejoicing within my heart. Because Jesus died as an atonement for my sins,
God chose me to die to sin and live within the atonement afforded by Jesus. This is a
joyous reality! But how does one truly mourn, truly humble themselves, truly rejoice
when their heart is apathetic towards death?
I cannot simply think myself to feel these emotions in my heart. Studying about
them does not bring my heart to feeling them. Doing better and trying harder only
cause disappointment and guilt, not to mention the gross idolatry that they areme
thinking I can effect heart-transformation. The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick; who can understand it? 5 This is a grim revelation and another
suicidal fixation if Im not careful. No. The fixation that I must cling to constantly is
that I am in Christ, and because I am in Christ I have the Holy Spirit, and the Holy
Spirit helps me in my weakness by interceding on my behalf according to the will of
God. The will of God for me is this: to be conformed to the image of His Son. 6 To

2 Colossians 3:23
3 Galatians 2:20
4 Revelation 21:1
5 Jeremiah 17:9

image Christ with my emotions is to be mournful towards death, 7 humbled at being

able to witness the glorification of God,8 and rejoicing in the hope afforded to me in
Christ.9 All that I can do is actively submit myself wholly, and intentionally depend
completely upon He who began a good work in me to soften my heart to these
emotions and ultimately work them into my heart to where I feel them and live
them.10
The other area that I must submit to and depend upon God for heart-transformation
is that of anger. My sin causes me to be angry at myself. When others sin against
me it causes me to be angry at them. Im not talking about that good ol righteous
anger exhibited by Jesus in the temple. 11 Im talking about sinful, hateful, vengeful
anger which I suppress for the sake of approval and acceptance, only to be crippled
by it later on via sins carried out in secret as a means to exert my control over the
uncomfortable situation (all three major idols at playapproval, control, comfort).
God used the divorce to bring awareness to my anger, where it is rooted, and how I
commit other sins as a result. What I have failed to see, until now, is that anger
cannot be dealt with by simply suppressing it or trying to replace it with other
emotions (i.e. frustration, anxiety, sorrow). Anger caused by sin is actually a healthy
emotion to experience because God hates sin and He too is angered by sin. The
distortion and sin for me is that I stay stuck in anger because I suppress it. Anger is
part of the grieving process which is resulted by sin. What does this process look
like? Im not a scholar on this matter but what I am beginning to see, thanks to the
Holy Spirit, is this:
1. A sin is committed
2. Period of shock: Did I/they really just do that? Why? How?
3. Anger: That is wrong, and messed up!
[Sam gets stuck]
4. Grief/sorrow: realizing/remembering sins nature and origination
6 Romans 8:26-30
7 John 11:32-35
8 John 11:4
9 John 11:25-26
10 Philippians 1:6
11 Matthew 21:12-13

5. Confrontation: lovingly applying the gospel to the sinner and their sin
6. Restoration: living in light of the gospel because of the gospel
Again, Im no scholar on this and I know I have a long way to go regarding this. If I
take this list and then compare it to Gods example given in Genesis, this is what I
come up with:
1. Sin is committed: Genesis 6:5
2. God is not surprised because He is sovereign so He does not experience a
period of shock
3. Anger: Genesis 6:3 Use of the word contend denotes a feeling of strong
displeasure
4. Grief/Sorrow: Genesis 6:6 God mourns over the sinful state of His creation
5. Confrontation: Genesis 6:11-22 God confronts the sin with the flood, offers
salvation to the sinner via the ark
6. Restoration: Genesis 8:20-9:17 God restores His creation
Take this now one step further to Jesus ministry, this is what it looks like:
1. Sin is committed
2. Jesus, being God is not surprised because He is sovereign so He does not
experience a period of shock
3. Anger: Mark 3:5, Matthew 21:12-13
4. Grief/Sorrow: Mark 3:5, Luke 19:41-44
5. Confrontation: Jesus death on the cross is the ultimate confrontation with sin
and sinner. He suffered the penalty for the sin, and provides salvation for the
sinner.
6. Restoration: John 6:35-40, Romans 5:1-11 Through Jesus, sinners are
restored to God and His kingdom.
For myself it has been a huge encouragement and hope knowing that anger is not
the end of the line. My prayer now is that God will effect transformation within my
heart to where I will cooperate with the Holy Spirit to move past anger and into
mourning over sin. The mourning that has been revealed to me is not a mourning
that selfishly seeks pity because either I have wronged another or another has
wronged me. Compassionate mourning is the proper mourning for the sin of others,
while repentant mourning is proper for my own sin. Compassion can only be born of
love, just as repentance is only possible because of love, and love only comes from
God, so this is a heart-transformation that only God can effect. 12
My conviction thus far is this:

I get angry and frustrated

Do I stop to prayerfully mourn over my sins?
Do I stop to prayerfully mourn over the sins of others?

12 1 John 4:19

Do I confront those sins with the cross and the gospel?

Is that confrontation out of love?
Do I then hope fully and completely in Gods sovereignty and power in His
work of redemption, reconciliation, and restoration in Jesus?

*When first reading this, it may seem as though I have never ever felt mournful over
sin, or towards death. I have. I remember those times well. This is an
acknowledgment of what I want to return to: a heart of flesh. 13

13 Ezekiel 11:19-20