"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

I want to remind you that this Sunday is the last day to submit nominations for church council, personnel and legal committee. We are needing to fill 3 positions on our church council, one position on our legal committee and 2 positions on our personnel committee. Nominations can be submitted using the nomination form located at the Welcome Center or online at [email protected]. Thank you for your faithfulness to the needs of our church.

This Sunday, we will continue our series in the Beatitudes. The beatitude we will be looking at this week is, "Blessed at those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." To mourn your sins is a natural outflow of being poor in spirit. This second beatitude should naturally follow the first. But that doesn't always happen. Because of all the paths to joy, this one has to be the strangest. True blessing, Jesus says, begins with deep sadness. Joy comes through mourning. Freedom through surrender and liberty through confession. Blessed are those who know they are in trouble and have enough sense to admit it. Just like with the first beatitude, until we come to realize our need for Jesus, we will never truly experience happiness and joy. As long as we treat Jesus as one of many options, he is no option. And as long as you can take him or leave him, you might as well leave him, because he won't be taken half-heartedly.

But when you mourn, when you begin to show sorrow for your sins, when you admit that you have no other option but to cast all your cares on Jesus, that's when Jesus opens up his arms and says, "Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30 The Message)

Join us Sunday and experience Jesus!

Pastor Doug