Change of Heart

"God blesses those people who grieve. They will find comfort!" (Matthew 5:4)

Speaker of the Day Craig Groeschel says the verse means God blesses people who feel truly, deeply sorry for their sinfulness and try to change their ways. God will forgive, bless and comfort them

The verse just says grieve, so we usually think of someone dying when we use that word in English. But Craig says that is not the context Jesus was using it in. He was talking about people feeling sorry for their sin

When we realise God is good and virtuous and is our Father and it saddens him when we sin and means we can't live with him in heaven, grief is the natural emotion. We grieve over the loss of heaven and our relationship with God. If we grieve, we will be comforted, because God will give that relationship and place in heaven back to us

But if we don't realise God is our Father and is good, we won't realise we lost his love and our place in heaven, so we won't see anything to grieve about. We will just sin and think well, whatever, that's life. Everyone else does it, so why shouldn't I? I'll take whatever I can get however I can get it and not care about virtues or sins

For that kind of behaviour, we will not be able to go to heaven after death. So we will get reborn as humans or animals, and have to suffer and die all over again and again, until we eventually realise who God is, and feel true sorrow and grief over our sinfulness, so repent and change our ways. Then as the verse says, God will bless us, comfort us, and let us go to heaven

I hope you all realise this today. Especially my love. She is not just a random occurence. She is a daughter of God, and he wants her to be good and marry me. We are all children of God. So let's be good kids and honour him by being virtuous like he wants

That means no more killing or war or bloodlust or violence or spitefulness or gossip or selfishness or wicked plots or not wishing people well or being unkind or being greedy or making excessive amounts of money just to spend on your own sinful wishes or overeating or not believing in God or lazing around or not bothering to try to be virtuous or ignoring holy wisdom or sleeping around out of wedlock

All of those things make God sad because they stop you from going to heaven to be with him, and your spirit is his much loved child. Realise this and feel grief and sorrow over everything you've done wrong. Then God will comfort and help you start changing your ways and being good and virtuous in every way each day

We will all try to be good and virtuous together as a family. As a community of believers whose sole goal in life is to please and serve our heavenly Father, the Lord of Heaven. We will each help and encourage each other each day to stop sinning and say sorry for each sin and be virtuous and do good and be a force for good in this world, making it a bit more like heaven each day

When you are good and do virtuous things, God will bless you with inner peace, and your life will slowly grow happier each day as your spirit enlightens, bit by bit. But when you are bad and do sinful things each day, your soul stays in darkness. You feel bitter, jealous, spiteful, angry, vengeful, stressed, competitive, worried, annoyed, hurt, insecure, sad, upset, anxious, everything negative. Those are the wounds sin inflicts on your soul. They cause you pain and suffering each day, and you will keep suffering from them in the afterlife, and in your next life when you get reborn

But if you change your ways and be virtuous from now on, God will gradually remove all those unhappy emotions from your soul, until eventually you are completely happy and enlightened. Then you will be ready to fully serve God with your life on Earth, and go to heaven to live with him in the afterlife

That is what today's verse means. "God blesses those people who feel truly sorry for their sins and wish to change their ways. They will find inner peace, comfort and joy as God gradually swaps out all their unhappy, painful emotions for happy ones!" (Matthew 5:4)

The ref 5:4 means this verse applies to all of us, as 5 is a group. This is what the 5 of us or all of us are meant 4. God wants all of us to change our sinful ways and be good from now on

These are the Days of Awe before Yom Kippur when everyone is trying to change their ways and make New Year Resolutions ready for Judgement Day. Then God will judge them as worthy to be written into the Book of Life, because they feel bad about their sins, and are doing their best each day to make amends and be virtuous. So let's let our resolution be to stay part of this group that tries each day to be virtuous and serve our heavenly Father. It is what all churches and religious groups do. So join one in your local area. Or simply be part of this new one right here