When is the Last Time You Grieved About Hell?
I don’t really like to think about hell, but I was forced to think about it this last week, whether I wanted to or not. In one of my college classes, we had to read the literary works of Dante’s “The Inferno”. If you are not familiar with this reading, Dante basically writes a very long poetic verse of what it was like to go through the different levels of hell and he describes the punishment that each different kind of sinner was tormented with.
It was an extremely difficult reading assignment for me, not to mention the writing assignment where we had to create our own “Hell” and describe what punishment we would give for the top 9 sins that would be in hell for all eternity. I grieved over this assignment. I even cried as I sat in my college advisor’s office telling her about it. Hell isn’t just an assignment to write about; Hell is a real place.
As much as I grieved this week for lost souls who will be tormented, how much more does our Heavenly Father grieve?
He does grieve when people turn from Him and choose their own path to walk down. He grieves because He knows that the road that some of us choose are roads that lead to destruction. They will lead us straight to a point of no return, to a place called Hell.
The Message of Christ is very simple; turn from your wicked ways and trust Him, or else, die in your sins and face an eternity without Him.
“And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46)
Here, Matthew is talking about how God will separate the sheep from the goats or in other words, He will cast His judgement on which people are bad and which are good; who will live with Him in heaven and who will live for all eternity in Hell.
Maybe, we don’t talk about Hell enough. I know most people don’t want to hear about it, but they need to know about it and even more so, we need to be grieved about it.
When is the last time you grieved about Hell?
PRAYER: Dear Lord, help us to remember that Hell is a real place and it is not Your Will for us to go there. Keep us on the right path and help us not to become complacent but instead help us to become like Your sheep that will become burdened for the lost ones in our flock. AMEN.
BLESSINGS. Laurie
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What a powerful message, Laurie. You are right; we do need to talk more about hell as a real place, and grieve over the lost souls.
Grief for those going the wrong way is love. I’m not concerned enough because I don’t love enough. I needed to hear this.
I am probably one of the few people that never saw the movie Titanic because I was struck by the thought that Hollywood was depicting a real disaster where people died and some of those people weren’t prepared to meet their Maker. I don’t want to sound self righteous but there is nothing romantic about people dying when they aren’t prepared to meet their Maker. Sorry this probably off topic but you are right we need to think more about those who don’t know the way. Not as condemnation but because we love them.
I agree Ann. I’ve actually never seen the movie either but you are right there is nothing lovely about people dying in their sin.