Transcription
Jesus says this. God blesses those who mourn. Now, I want God to bless your life. I want God to bless your life in spite of all the bad things that have happened and in spite of all the bad things that are going to happen.
And in order for God to bless your life, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." And how does God comfort us? Six ways, write these down.
Number one, the first way God blesses a broken heart is God draws us close to himself. He draws us in close to himself. Look at these verses. Psalm 34 verse 18. "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. And he saves those whose spirits have been crushed." When you are grieving, you often feel like God's a million miles away, but he's not a million miles away. He's never been any closer. What you feel and what's real are not the same thing. Not everything you feel is real and not everything that's real do you feel. The Bible says, "God is close to the brokenhearted." He's paying attention. He's not aloof, he's not distant. Hebrews 13:5, "I will never leave you." Circle that, never. That means even in your worst pain. It means even in your most embarrassing disgrace. It means even in your most massive failure. Even in the thing you're most ashamed of in your life. "I will never leave you and I will never abandon you." 2 Corinthians 6:10 says this. "Our hearts ache, but at the same time we have the joy of the Lord." What does that mean? That's the difference Jesus makes. If you don't have Jesus in your life, then God isn't close to you at that moment and you're you're on your own. You don't have any other resources. You're there to handle the pain by yourself. God never intended for you to handle the pain by yourself.
First, the Bible says God draws us close to himself, and then here's the second thing, write this down. God grieves with us. The Bible tells us that God weeps when he sees inhumanity on earth, he weeps. When God sees us in it, he weeps. When God sees wars destroying people, when God sees this planet being destroyed, God weeps. God grieves. And we're made in God's image, and the Bible says God weeps with us. In other words, he's God is a suffering God, and God is a sympathetic God. He's not aloof, he's not apathetic, he's standing not standing on the sidelines, he suffers with us. Look at this verse up here on the screen. Isaiah 53:3 says this. "Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief." He knew suffering first hand. So, when you come to Jesus, it's not like Jesus goes, "I have no idea what you're talking about." When your heart is breaking and you're in pain, it's not like Jesus going, "I don't understand it. I don't get that. Just buck up and put on a happy face." No, Jesus was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief, and he is feeling it with you.
And there's a third thing that God does in blessing our broken hearts, and that is this, God gives us a church family for support. God never meant for you to go through life on your own. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, "Comfort each other and give each other strength." If you're not in major pain right now, you need to be thinking, "How can I follow what Jesus tells me to do and comfort the people in pain around me?" Well, first you got to be aware. And if you care, you'll be aware. There are people in pain sitting on your row, and you don't even know what their pain is. If you care, you'll be aware. Let me give you two suggestions for comforting people when they go through any kind of loss, financial loss, physical loss, health loss, loss of a loved one, anything. Let me just give you two. Write these down.
Number one, never minimize another's pain. The pain of others. Never minimize others' pain. Kay was talking the other day, we were in London, and she was speaking, and she said, "One of the words you can delete from your vocabulary when you're talking to somebody in pain is the word at least." And she told me about a lady, a mother, who had lost a child through drowning. And a neighbor came over and in a meaningful attempt to comfort said, "Well, at least you're young enough to have another child." Are you kidding me? I'm sure what that mama said, "I'm not wanting another child. I want my child back. I want my child back. Don't tell me, 'Well, at least you've got three other kids.' Are you kidding me? 'Well, at least you've got your'" Eliminate the phrase at least from your vocabulary when talking to somebody in pain. It doesn't help. It's not You're trying to minimize the pain by pointing out something good. Just never minimize the pain of others. And And I would say again, parents, stop trying to teach your kids to stuff it. Don't cry now. You know, the typical reaction when somebody's in pain, we try to fix it immediately. Don't be in a hurry to fix anything. You don't need to fix it. God will fix it. In due time. What you need to do is just be there and be aware and care.
So, never minimize. The other thing is, never rush people. Never rush people. Pain and grief takes time. And nobody can figure out how long the grief's going to take for any particular thing in your life but you. I can't tell you what's the appropriate time to grieve for anything in your life. You're just going to have to figure that one out yourself and it's different for everybody else. You know, in marriages, the death of a child is often the predictor of a divorce. In fact, marriages that have the death of a child don't have a pretty good rate of staying together. Kay and I knew that statistic. And when Matthew died, we determined that we were going to let this draw us closer to each other rather than divide us. And it was all because of one thing, showing grace to each other and realizing whatever you're feeling right now is okay. And I don't try to talk Kay out of her feelings and she doesn't try to talk me out of mine and we just enter into each other's pain. A feeling is neither right or wrong, it's just a feeling. Let me say that one again. A feeling is never right or wrong, it's just a feeling. So, husbands, quit trying to talk your wife out of feelings. And wives, quit trying to talk your husbands out of feelings. Feeling is neither right nor wrong, it's just a feeling. And and so, you show grace to each other and you you never rush people. Kay wrote a column or a little post in Facebook a couple weeks ago about how she was starting to feel people kind of rushing her and said, "You know, when you going to go back to teaching?" And you know, "When you going to be back on the stage?" And and you know, and and and kind of like, "Aren't you over it yet?" And and and she stopped trying to push people get over it. She wrote this little post. Did it hit a nerve? Over 3 million people reposted it. Why? Because that's the way anybody who deep pain feels. They understand. Don't tell me to get over it. You don't get over it, you get through it. You get through it.
So, God gives us a family and we're not to minimize and we're not to rush the people in our lives. There's a fourth way that God blesses broken hearts. All right? He He gives us a church family. He gives us his own presence. He grieves with us.
Number four, God uses grief to help us grow. God uses grief. God uses pain even to help us grow. And he does it in three ways. Here are three verses that illustrate three different ways. First, God uses pain to get our attention. C.S. Lewis wrote, "God whispers to us in our pleasure, but he shouts to us in our pain." Pain is God's megaphone. Pain is saying, "Hello!" We rarely change when we see the light. We change when we feel the heat. Here's what the Bible says. Proverbs 20:30. "Sometimes, it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways." That's in the Today's English Version. Anybody agree with that verse? Yeah. Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways. So, God uses grief to help us grow by getting our attention.
Second way, he brings good out of bad. One of the most famous verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28. "We know We know, not guess, not hope, we know that in all things, not some, not just the good, in all things God works. In all things, God works for the good of those who love him." It's an opportunity to grow in character. Every time you go through pain, you don't You can't control the pain you go through. You may have chronic pain. And that pain may be with you for years and years and years. You can't always control that. But you can decide whether it's going to make you bitter or better. Whether it's going to be a stepping stone or it's going to be a stumbling block. Look at this next verse. Second Corinthians 4:17 and 18. "These troubles are getting us ready for an eternal glory that will make all our troubles seem like like nothing. Like nothing. Things that are seen don't last forever. But things that are not seen are eternal. And that's why we keep focused on the things that can't be seen." God's more interested in your character development than in your comfort. Why? Cuz comfort's going to be on for trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of year and have it. This is the get ready stage. This is the learning stage. This is the warm-up act. This is the school. It's a preschool. And God says, "These troubles are getting us ready for an eternal glory." That's a comfort. You see, studies have shown that the people who were in the concentration camps in World War II, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, all these country, that many died, but some survived. And those that survived found meaning and purpose in their pain. That those who saw no meaning or purpose gave up. You see, you can handle an enormous amount of pain when you can realize there's a good purpose in it, like labor and having a baby. But when you don't see any purpose in the pain, then it easy to give up. When the pain is unceasing, when the pain never stops, when the pain keeps going, you need to see God's purpose. And what is God doing? First, is he trying to get my attention? Second, is he trying to bring good out of bad? Third, is he preparing my character for heaven? Is he giving me an opportunity to grow in Christ's likeness? Things that are seen don't last forever, but things that are not seen are eternal. When the pain is unceasing, when the pain never stops, when the pain keeps going, you need to see God's purpose. And what is God doing? First, is he trying to get my attention? Second, is he trying to bring good out of bad? Third, is he preparing my character for heaven? Is he giving me an opportunity to grow in Christ's likeness? Things that are seen don't last forever, but things that are not seen are eternal.
Number five. The fifth way that God comforts us when we mourn is that God gives us the hope of heaven. And this one has been particularly beautiful and meaningful to me this last year. That this life is not all there is. That this is just the warm-up act. And that we're living for so much more. The amount of time you're going to spend on Earth is really quite small. You're only going to get 80, 90 at the most, maybe 100 years. That's nothing. Nothing. It's going to be over before you realize it. It's nothing compared to millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of years in heaven. The Bible says we have the hope of heaven. If there were no hope of heaven, I would be in despair. Cuz there's just too much bad in the world. There's too many rapes. Too many people getting molested. Too many children being abused. Too many wars, too many people having being tortured. Too many people being burned up by by chemicals and all kinds of things. But the fact is the Bible says 1 Thessalonians 4:13 talking about believers who die. Paul says, "We don't want you to be ignorant about believers who've died. We don't want you to grieve like the people who have no hope." Circle the people who have no hope. There's two kinds of grief. You can grieve with hope or you can grieve without hope. Let me tell you, you want the first one. As a pastor, I have done, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, I don't know, maybe thousands. I don't know how many funerals that I've I've done. I don't know how many times I've stood at the bedside of somebody taking their last breath. I have been at the funerals and looked in the faces of people who had no hope when a loved one died. And I've seen the terror on their face and the despair on their face. You see, the test of your faith, the test of your belief system, the test of your worldview is not how you handle the parties of life. The test of your worldview is how you handle the failures and how you handle the funerals and how you handle the deaths of life. That's the acid test. The Bible says we have a hope. And so, we grieve, but we grieve with hope. When a Christian dies, why do we grieve? I mean, they're the that Christian is going to heaven. They're going where they're made for. They're going where they're going to spend eternity and they're going where you're going to go too if you know the Lord. So, why do we grieve? We're not grieving them in a funeral. We're grieving us. We miss them. We're not grieving them. My son Matthew for 27 years was tortured by mental illness. And it was agony. And honestly, when he died, I grieved his extremely painful life more than I grieved his extremely painful death. Because I know today he has no fear. He has no pain. He has no depression. He has He is Every one of his questions has been answered. He has joy. He has the understanding Everything he's always want Why was I made like this? Why didn't Why didn't I get well? All those questions were answered. I'm not grieving the fact that he's in heaven. I grieve the fact that I miss him. I want my son back. I miss him now. And so, when a Christian grieves, we grieve in a very, very different way than the rest of the world. We grieve with hope. Non-believers grieve without any hope. That's disastrous. It's devastating. It's debilitating. It's despairing. What is our hope? Revelation 21:4 says this. "God will wipe every tear from their eyes. And there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things will have passed away." I am looking forward to that day so much. It's one of the things that allows me to go to places like Africa and see people starving from poverty and allows me to go in the inner city and see people being beat up and abused and misused and allows me to see all the pain in the world which could be debilitating in its depressing nature. If I didn't know that one day God is going to settle the score, he's going to even the odds, he's going to balance the accounts, and one day in heaven, God's going to wipe away every tear, and there will be no more death, and there will be no more mourning, and there will be no more suffering, and no more crying, and no more pain, for the old order will have passed away. That is one of the six hopes that blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Finally, there's one more thing, and this is a big one. God uses our pain to help others. There's a purpose in your pain. This is called redemptive pain. This is the highest and best use of the pain you go through. God does not want you to waste the hurt. God never wastes a hurt, but we often do because we're not willing to use it to help other people. God uses our pain to help others. This is the highest and best use. Who can better help the mother of a special needs child than another mother of a special needs child? Who can better help somebody who's lost a son or daughter in a war than somebody who lost a son or daughter in a war? Who can better help somebody who lost a limb than somebody who's lost a limb? Who could better help somebody who has gone through the pain of an addiction, or marriage failure, or molestation, or any of the other evils in the world than somebody who went through that. God does not want you to waste your hurt. This is redemptive hurt. He wants you to redirect your focus. Second Corinthians 1:4, "God comforts us in all our troubles. So that we can comfort others with the same comfort we received from God." Now listen very closely. Your greatest ministry will come out of your deepest hurt. Your My You might write this down. My greatest ministry will come out of my deepest hurt. Because you can relate. You can say, "Been there, done that, went through I had a mother who was abusive. I had a dad who was distant and left the family. I had a failure in this area or that area." Your greatest ministry will come out of your deepest hurt. You see, we think the world is impressed by how we handle prosperity. But the world is actually impressed by how we handle adversity. We think that it is our success that gives us credibility to be a witness. But God says, "No, it is our suffering that gives us credibility." You would not believe the open doors that have happened in my life since Matthew died. And when I began to journal about it on social media, people began to come out of the woodwork. And some people you wouldn't believe. And said, "I've never told this to anybody else." We think that fame earns respect, but actually it's faithfulness in tough times. And here's the bottom line. I'll say it again. We're in a broken world, and so every day nothing works perfectly. And that means every day you need to be either you either need comfort or you need to comfort others. Right now you're in one of two categories. Put yourself on it. Right now you either need help cuz you're in really bad pain or you need to help others. And maybe just maybe God wants to do both at the same time. That's called being a wounded healer. If you wait until you're completely healed to help other people, guess what? You're going to wait a long time cuz you're not going to be fully healed of everything in your life until you get to heaven. You know, no matter how bad things seem you can always trust that God is active in your life working things out for the good. While you are waiting, God is working. God always has your best interest at heart. He's a good God.
Today I want to give you an example from a note that I got from a young man named Tyler who has seen how God is always there even when circumstances seem to be their worst. Tyler wrote me said, "You know, Rick, I haven't had a close relationship with Christ. But then several events occurred in my life all at once. First, my girlfriend broke up with me and that was the biggest heartache that I could imagine for both of us. Then my friends uh left for college the same week. And third, my dad left for California to start a new job leaving me in Ohio. All of this hit me at once and I was a complete mess. But with guidance from others and realizing this was a scheduled appointment from God himself I found Christ through your daily hope podcast. And through prayer and in going to church I finally found the joy in my life again. And I'm a changed person. Every day now I listen to you, Rick, and I read my daily devotional, and I look at life with a whole new perspective. You know, before I was living for me. I wasn't living for God. But this journey has been so amazing. God is so good. And the best part is that I can wake up every day knowing that he loves me and will listen to me and that Jesus Christ will take my worries from me. I'm so thankful, Rick, that God woke me up and changed me into a better and healthier person that I am today. And I'm thankful for my savior, Jesus Christ. So, God bless you."
Well, thanks, Tyler. Thanks for writing that encouraging letter. You have experienced firsthand how much God cares for you, even in the smallest details of your life. And through this, what was a very difficult season, he led you to Jesus, the greatest gift you could ever receive. So, did you know that the Bible says in Luke 15 right now all of heaven is rejoicing because you're a part of God's family. The Bible says they have a party in heaven every time one person steps across the line. And what that means that you and I are now brothers. Do you know about that? We're brothers in Christ. And your church family are your brothers and sisters here to walk alongside you. So, Tyler, welcome to the family of God. And as you grow in your faith, staying connected with a strong church community is so, so important. I want you to surround yourself with people who will encourage you in the Lord, who will pray for you, who will help you stay strong in your journey with Jesus. And just watch and see how God moves in your life as you faithfully follow him into your future. By the way, you also mentioned that you listen to the Daily Hope podcast. For anybody who hasn't checked that out yet, it is completely free. It's completely available on all major platforms. It's on Apple podcast. It's on Spotify. It's on wherever you get your podcast. You can also listen anytime by just going to a pastorrick.com on the internet.
Now, friends, we're able to share Daily Hope with people around the world because of your generosity, listeners just like you. So, let me just say here, thanks. Thanks a lot. Thanks for being a part of this community. Thanks for your contributions to care for other people so that they could get the word of God and build the hope that they need and they can keep seeking God and he will guide them. God bless you.