Grieving the Lord's Heart

 When we see someone we really care about who is suffering, it grieves our hearts. Their suffering hurts us. The same is true when someone we love passes away, and we miss them, even if they went to heaven. We are grieved in our hearts because we can't be with them for a while. We feel grief because we are made in God's image. God grieves over what people do and what happens to us, as humans. We need to realize this and see how much we mean to God.

The Israelites rejected God and went after false gods in the land of Canaan. It was terrible how they treated God, so He had to punish them severely. (Judges 10:16) Then, the Israelites put away their foreign gods and served the Lord once again. When God saw that, He was grieved by the misery they were in because of His punishment.  This grief led God to deliver them from their oppressors again. That is how much He loves us. He cares, and He doesn't want us to suffer.

I don't know what is going on in your life right now. If you have forgotten about God and walked away from Him, He may be bringing difficulties into your life to try to get you to turn back to Him. The trials are not coming because He doesn't love you. They come to turn you to Him. When He punishes you, it grieves the heart of God. If you will turn to Him sincerely, He will lift the punishment, and get you back on course. 

There is another aspect to grieving God's heart, too. The Bible tells us in Ephesians 4:30 that we must not grieve the Holy Spirit. We grieve the Spirit when He tells us not to do something, and we go ahead and do it anyway. That hurts His heart. He realizes that we are not listening to Him as we should and things will not go well for us. This lessens His influence in our life until we confess our sin and get back to a right relationship with the Lord. Let's decide we are going to bring joy to God's heart and not grief by being faithful to Him out of love.

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Tomorrow, I intend to read Judges 11-13.