Embracing Your Darkness In The Light

Embracing Your Darkness In the Light

Matthew 5:4

“What we know, You have taught us.

Where we’ve come, You have brought us.

What we are, You have made us.

Where we’re going, you will take in us.

What we will be, You have promised us.”

I want to break from our series through the gospel of John - and talk with you about something that God has powerfully laid in my spirit this morning. My title is “Embracing Your Darkness In the Light.”

I would like us to use our passage as the starting point this morning - so please open your Bibles with me, if you will, to the book of Matthew - and the fifth chapter.

Chapters five, six and seven form the body of a single sermon - known by believers as ‘The Sermon on the Mount.” I have no intention of trying to tackle the entire text - but would direct us simply to one of the verses in the beginning.

So turn with me, in your Bibles, if you will, to the gospel of Matthew, the fifth chapter and the 4rth verse.

Matthew 5:4 - Read - Pray

“Blessed are those who morn . . .” We are not sure what to do with people who morn - feel very inadequate trying to comfort them - not sure that what we have is sufficient for their need. Why? Because we live in a world that would rather deny their sorrows than deal with them, would rather hide their sorrows than embrace them, would rather ignore their sorrows than find victory in them.

And so we live in a make up world of pretend. We come to church and everybody is meant to be all right - every thing is meant to be ok - but you know what - they truth is that is not.

I love the way Martin Luther translates this verse - “Blessed are the sorrow bearers . . .”

“The word for mourn here penthein, is one of the strongest words used for mourning in the Greek language… It describes a sorrow which pierces the heart; it is no gentle, sentimental, twilight sadness…it is a sorrow which is poignant, piercing and intense.”2 Martin Lloyd Jones writes: “… Blessed are those who mourn! …The one thing the world tries to shun is mourning; its whole organization is based on the supposition that mourning is something to avoid. The philosophy of the world is, forget your troubles, turn your back upon them, do everything you can not to face them…”

Instead of running away from our troubles and our sorrow, Jesus invites us to face them, embrace them even take ownership of them … and if Luther’s translation is to be accepted…to be identified and formed by our sorrows…as sorrow-bearers…in a real sense sorrow is part of what it means to be human…

Americans, who represent 5 percent of the world’s population, consume 50% of its manufactured drugs. - self medicate because we want to avoid pain

Evangelicals love a testimony of how screwed up I USED to be. They aren’t interested in how screwed up I am NOW.

Those who engage life from reality not denial. You cannot mourn over what you are in denial of.

But we will pay $400 to go hear a “Bible teacher” tell us how we are only a few verses, prayers and cds away from being a lot better.

Could be that sorrow is not our enemy but our friend? And that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said,…Blessed are they who mourn…for they will find comfort…

None of us have escape childhood without some very deep and dark wounds.

There is a wounded child in each one of us

There is the voice of a critical parent we cannot get away from.

Ask: - What are my blind spots - and what keeps attracting that same stuff continually into my life.

I am as needy as anybody else. I think I do my best work from out of my dark side, not my light side, fund light out of my failures not my successes, see truth in my weakness, not my strengths.’

It is when I embrace my dark side that I do my best work.

Start by becoming comfortable in my own skin.

Recognize my dark side

Leverage your pain, your weakness.

The way we deal with our own woundedness determines how we deal with the wounds of others.

Embrace you difficulties in the light

Embrace your weaknesses in His strength

Embrace you failures in His Victory

Embrace Christ in your circumstances and your circumstances in Christ

Embrace forgiveness in Christ and Christ in your forgiveness

Embrace your wholeness in the truth and the truth in your wholeness

Matthew 7:28 “Wen Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching.”