09/05/2026
Meditation: “He who has never come to be poor in spirit and known what it is to really mourn for sin, though he belong to a church or be an office-bearer in it, has neither seen nor entered the Kingdom of God…Mourning is ever a characteristic of the normal Christian state. There is much that the believer mourns over. The plague of his own heart makes him cry, ‘O wretched man that I am’ (Rom. 7:24). The unbelief that ‘doth so easily beset us’ (Heb. 12:1) and sins that we commit…are a continual grief to us. The barrenness and unprofitableness of our lives make us sigh and cry. Our propensity to wander from Christ, our lack of communion with Him, and the shallowness of our love for Him cause us to hang our harps upon the willows. But there are many other causes for mourning that assail Christian hearts: on every hand hypocritical religion that has a form of godliness but denies the power thereof (2 Tim. 3:5); the awful dishonor done to the truth of God by the false doctrines taught in countless pulpits; the divisions among the Lord’s people and strife between brethren; the awful wickedness in the world, despising of Christ, and untold human sufferings make us groan and provides occasion for continual sorrow of heart. The closer the Christian lives to God, the more he will mourn over all that dishonors Him. This is the common experience of God’s true people” (Arthur W. Pink).