Matt Crouch

And you know, that's, that's kind of the w- that's kind of the way I was.

You know, it was like I really believe that I would've gone to heaven if I would've died, [coughs] but I don't think I would've taken anybody with me.

Matter of fact, the way I behaved, I might have possibly kept a few people out.

[laughs] Because the bad thing is, is when we, when we claim to be something but have no fruit of that- Mm ...

it actually turns people off rather than helping them want what we have.

And several times in those few verses, He corrected them and reproved them for their unbelief.

I just think that we need to realize tonight that God is not pleased with all of our unbelief.

You know, in the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke each use the word believe either nine or ten times.

So we have trials and tribulations, we have sorrow and we have suffering, we have problems and pressures, we have, as I said, defeats and disappointments.

Now, how do you rise above the inevitable losses in your life? How do you rise above them? Well, today we come to the second Beatitude.

It's Matthew 5:4, and Jesus says this: "God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Now, in the eight ways to be blessed by God, the second way, this seems so ludicrous when you think about it, so un-normal, so irrational, when he says, "The way to be blessed is to mourn." What in the world does he mean by that? In other words, the way to be happy is to be sad? That, that just seems like a great reversal.

What does he mean by this? God blesses those who mourn.

Well, that's what we're gonna look at this weekend, on how to handle the losses of life, and how God blesses a broken heart.

There, there are things.

You've had a, a loss in your life, or you've had a death in your life, or if you had something that has caused you to have grief.

Now, this last year, as you know, I, I've gone through a, a, a year-long journey with grief since Matthew died, and I've learned a lot.

Ah, okay.

Matt Crouch and a few others, yeah.

So I was thinking about this experience I'm about to be having and about the significance of Christians coming here at this time.

And I wanted to read, just to frame the conversation, by first reading the end of the book of Zechariah.

But I, I talk about how when God called me into ministry, and how we got from there to here.

And yesterday I was at TBN, and Matt Crouch read the book before he interviewed me, and he said, "You know what I love about this book?" He said, "About this much of it is your, your testimony from your abuse." And he said, "Most people say, 'I went through all this, I received Jesus, and now everything's wonderful.'" Mm-hmm.

He said, "But you got this much of the book that tells the true story of what you had to go through to get through- Yeah.

Right ... and to get real soul healing." Yeah.