They make him mourn
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"To all who mourn in Israel, He will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair. For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for His own glory." Isaiah 61:3
The child of God will be more or less a spiritual mourner on account of the evil that dwells in him. The more that he knows of his heart—the longer he walks in the divine life—and the more that sin is opened up to him as seen in the light of God's countenance—the more will he be a spiritual mourner.
Sometimes he will mourn over the evils of his heart—that his lusts and corruptions are so strong—and he so weak against them. Sometimes over the temptations that Satan has laid for his feet, in which he has been entangled, and by which he has been cast down. Sometimes over the absence of God, and that he finds so little access to His blessed Majesty.
Sometimes he will mourn as feeling how little grace he has. Sometimes he will mourn over his backslidings—how he has been entangled in, and given way to his lusts—how he has been overcome by his temper—how he has murmured and fretted against God's dealings with him, so as at times to have been almost ready to break forth into cursing, or do something desperate.
As these and a thousand other evils are felt in a man's heart, they make him mourn, and as the text speaks, have ashes for his covering. He mourns also over his lack of fruitfulness—and that he cannot be, do, or say what he would.
He has strong desires to adorn the doctrine of God in all things—to have spirituality of mind and a tender conscience—and to lead a life of faith, prayer, and watchfulness. But he is obliged to confess with the apostle—"For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil that I would not, that I do."
For his mind is often, very often, doing the exact contrary. All these things, combined with Satan's powerful temptations—and his many misgivings on account of the hidings of God's face from him on account of his sins—with his thorough inability to cast off the burdens that press him down—sink him very low.
In addition to all this, he may have also to experience persecution for the truth's sake from those, perhaps, near and dear to him. So that it is not one, but many sorrows, that he has to wade through, so as at times to make him, in his feelings, of all men most miserable!
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