Godly Sorrow

 A website I wrote for is folding and I don't want to lose some of the pieces I've written, so I am posting them here.  The following is one:

I went to the wrong entrance.

We had received a call about a little girl and had agreed to take our first placement.  I had thirty minutes to get to a place thirty minutes away and pick up this sweet, little girl.  I was nervous and excited at the same time.

In my nerves and excitement I went to the wrong entrance of this building.  This error caused me to be a couple minutes late.  I was eventually led into a room where the little girl was and where her mother was.  I was terrified.  I was in the room with the woman whose child I was taking.  I imagined the hatred she must have for me at that moment.

Shockingly, this potentially horrible and awkward situation allowed me to ask questions about bed time and routines instead of being a standoff.  I talked with this mother as tears streamed down her face.

Not many days later I received the case file on this child.  This mother had lost rights to multiple other children.  I was told by a social worker that when her most recent children were removed from her custody forever, she said, “I’ll just keep having kids until you let me keep one.”  My wife and I realized this little girl was very likely going to be our little girl forever.  We were sure this foster care placement would lead to adoption.  The mom had the deck stacked against her in the form of addiction and her track record wasn’t hopeful.

But something completely different happened.  The system broke her.  She broke down and gave up her ways of doing things.  She followed the prescriptions of the judge.  She jumped through every hoop.  She became a model for how foster care is supposed to work.  

Six months after our first foster care placement began the little girl was back with her mother.  Her mom is now a mentor for other parents whose kids have been placed into foster care.

Through immense sorrow she changed the trajectory of her life and of her daughter’s life.

Now another story.

A teen in the youth group had expressed her confusion about her sexuality and gender.  She was pretty sure what she was and it wasn’t a straight girl.  She had same sex attraction and felt as though she might want to express herself as a boy.  Everything in society told her that this was awesome.

One night she told me that as she read the Bible it seemed to her that she can’t have Jesus as Lord and keep acting on urges in a way the Bible clearly doesn’t endorse.  I applauded her for her honest reading of Scripture and said she was right.  I assured her she was exactly where Jesus liked her to be.  That Jesus loved when people were honest about their situation and honest about His Words.  Her dilemma was exactly as she described it.  I told her the parable of the hidden treasure and said, “The question is: Is Jesus worth it to you?”

She thought deeply about that question.  I hated to see her dour, but I was excited that she was inches away from salvation, in my view.

That night she posted about her dilemma on Facebook in a very honest, open and accurate way.  What ensued was tragic.

Post after post after post after post of professing Christians trying to ease her of the tension of her dilemma.  Post after post after post of those proposing an unbiblical third way around her fork in the road.

I cried that night.

“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation…” 2 Corinthians 7:10a

Therapeutic Christians, and there are hordes of them (us), avoid sorrow at all costs.  We just can’t stand feeling badly and we can’t stand others feeling badly.  Our radio stations must be “positive and uplifting”.  Our coffee cups and signs must bring a smile to our faces.  Our tolerance for sorrow is so low.

Are we denying people the gift of repentance by denying them the pain of sorrow? 

“Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it.  Though I did regret it…I see my letter hurt you, but only for a little while… yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance.  For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us.  Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.  See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.  At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.  So even though I wrote to you, it was not on account of the one who did the wrong or of the injured party, but rather that before God you could see for yourselves how devoted to us you are.  By all this we are encouraged.” 2 Corinthians 7:8-13a

The Apostle Paul did not set out to cause sorrow but he was delighted that sorrow had occurred.  He was delighted because of the fruit of repentance which brought the fruit of salvation which brought all these other delightful results.

Likewise, we don’t intend to cause sorrow, but we can rejoice when godly sorrow comes because godly sorrow is fruitful.  We must resist the urge to avoid sorrow for ourselves and others.

God must lead those He loves to repentance and He will do that by any means necessary.  Through sorrow God labors to turn us from destruction and toward life itself.  

But why sorrow?  

C.S. Lewis wrote this in The Problem of Pain: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”  Sorrow gets our attention. It screams, “This isn’t working!” and demands that we make a U-turn.

All sorrow serves the purpose of redeeming and sanctifying the elect.

Jesus promised that when He left, He would send the Holy Spirit.  One of the chief tasks of the Holy Spirit is to convict and one of the key tools of conviction is godly sorrow.  

“When He comes, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement…” John `6:8

When we don’t allow godly sorrow to work in the lives of others and ourselves, we run the risk of quenching the Holy Spirit is His work (1 Thessalonians 5:19).  Therapeutic Christians may believe their intent is good while actually running counter to the workings God has ordained.  We must ditch the idea that all sorrow is bad.  We must instead pray continually (1 Thessalonians 5:18) so we can make sure we work in step with the Spirit and not against Him.

Sorrow is uncomfortable.  Sorrow, in and of itself, is not good.  When Christ brings us into His Kingdom fully “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4). But until then we must trust that the Sovereign Lord is sovereign over all sorrow and is harnessing it to redeem and sanctify those He chose before the foundations of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight (Ephesians 1:4).

Not all sorrow is godly sorrow, but more sorrow is godly sorrow than Therapeutic Christians allow themselves to believe.  When godly sorrow enters your life or the lives of those around us, we must heed the words of the angels: Fear not.  Fear not, because God’s providential love often uses sorrow to lead those He died for to salvation in repentance.