Finding Comfort
Notes
Transcript
Handout
To prepare you for this message, however, I first want to give you some “life truths.” (You may want to write some of these down).
1) Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.
1) Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.
2) Therapists tell us that the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what we start, so go ahead and finish that bag of M&M’s and that chocolate cake you have at home.
2) Therapists tell us that the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what we start, so go ahead and finish that bag of M&M’s and that chocolate cake you have at home.
3) Socrates said, “Go ahead and marry. If you get a good wife you will become happier. If you don’t’, you will become a philosopher.
3) Socrates said, “Go ahead and marry. If you get a good wife you will become happier. If you don’t’, you will become a philosopher.
4) Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with his experience.
4) Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with his experience.
5) A bargain is something you don’t need at a price you can’t resist.
5) A bargain is something you don’t need at a price you can’t resist.
6) If you faithfully work 8 hours a day, someone will make you a supervisor so you can work 12 hours a day.
6) If you faithfully work 8 hours a day, someone will make you a supervisor so you can work 12 hours a day.
7) Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
7) Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
8) Most parents spend the first 2 years of their child’s life teaching them to stand up and talk, and the next 16 years telling them to shut up and sit down.
8) Most parents spend the first 2 years of their child’s life teaching them to stand up and talk, and the next 16 years telling them to shut up and sit down.
9) Don’t try to give People advice about raising children before you have children. Later on, you will have 4 children and no theories about raising them.
9) Don’t try to give People advice about raising children before you have children. Later on, you will have 4 children and no theories about raising them.
10) Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your children.
10) Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your children.
11)The best time to give advice to your children is while they’re still young enough to believer that you know what you’re talking about.
11)The best time to give advice to your children is while they’re still young enough to believer that you know what you’re talking about.
12)Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
12)Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.
13) The best machine at the gym is the vending machine.
13) The best machine at the gym is the vending machine.
14) Life is not a bowl of cherries with whipped cream on top
14) Life is not a bowl of cherries with whipped cream on top
The fact of life is that life is tough. Everybody agree with that? It’s not easy. Life is tough. Life is hard. Life is difficult. Since Adam’s sin, the world was broken and everything in it is broken. Nothing works perfectly. Your body doesn’t work perfectly; the weather doesn’t work perfectly; the economy doesn’t work perfectly; no relationship works perfectly; your marriage doesn’t work perfectly.
And life is full of losses. We have sorrow and we have suffering. We have problems and pressures. We have defeats and disappointments. How do you rise above the inevitable losses in your life? Today we learn how as we begin with the second beatitude.
4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
I do not know what you are going through right now. I hope that you are going through a relatively easy time. But you may not be. Some of you came to the service today churning on the inside.
You may have conflicts going on… chaos in your life… a bad health report… just got laid off of work… Maybe you have had a fight with your family… boyfriend/girlfriend… husband / wife. Maybe the money you think you need isn’t there. Stress. Maybe you have had a loss in your life.
Something has caused you grief. Listen to me
Life is often filled with trials and tragedies.
Life is often filled with trials and tragedies.
Jesus said, John 16:33
33 … Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. …
We have all gone through times of tragedy and difficulties.
Job loss - (my dad when he was let go from RPH)
Loss of parents, spouse, child
Divorce -
All of these things can bring discouragement, deep sorrow and depression into our lives.
God doesn’t expect us to be happy all the time.
God doesn’t expect us to be happy all the time.
That’s a fact. He doesn’t expect you to be happy all of the time. There is a myth in Christianity, among Believers, that if you know Jesus, you should be smiling, always happy, always cheerful, skipping in the hills and picking flowers and talking about peace and love. NO Just because you are a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean that you become a Polyanna where the sun always comes up tomorrow and you are always happy. You won’t be, so don’t expect to be.
Solomon said,
1 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.
Solomon, and in other places in the Bible, says that sometimes weeping is appropriate. The fact is… the world is filled with sadness. All you have to check your phone every morning. You will see robberies, car jacking, murder, terror attacks etc. There is a lot of pain all over the world and sometimes the most appropriate thing we can do is to grieve.
God never said nor does he expect you to suck it up buttercup… to grin and bear it and stuff your emotions down inside all the while trying to smile while you go through the storms of life. No, the Bible says… Jesus says God blesses those who mourn… God blesses you when you grieve.
Many people think that grief is only for funerals when you lose a loved one. But the fact is, there are a lot of losses in life.
You can lose your health…
You can lose your job…
You can lose your money…
You can lose your reputation…
You can lose your dream…
You can lose your strength…
And sometimes the most appropriate thing you can do is to face it and to grieve… not grin and bear it. We need to mourn our losses… mourn over our sins… mourn over the sufferings of the world… to grieve over friends who do not know Jesus.
There are a lot of things the Bible tells us to grieve over, and it tells us that God does not expect us to be happy all the time.
We also need to know that
Grieving well is essential to our health.
Grieving well is essential to our health.
It’s essential to our emotional health, our mental health and even to our physical health. In fact, if you never grieve about anything, it means one of two things.
You are out of touch with reality because there are a lot of things to be sad about in our world.
You are out of touch with your emotions and you are living in denial.
You don’t love anyone or anything. Because when you love, you see things that will make you grieve.
Grief is a tool that God uses to get us through the transitions of life.
There is not growth in your life without change. And there is not change without loss. Because you lose the old for the new. me - day-timer to Palm pilot to iPhone… There is no lose without pain. It would be like a woman giving birth without any pain… It doesn’t happen.
There are a couple of unhealthy reactions to losses of life.
Repression - we unconsciously try to block a painful thought out of our minds…
Suppression - we consciously try to block it out of our minds.
Both of these are different forms of denial.
God doesn’t want us to suppress our pain… He wants us to confess it to him and express it to out friends.
God doesn’t want us to suppress our pain… He wants us to confess it to him and express it to out friends.
Write thins down…
If we don’t let it out we will act it out.
If we don’t let it out we will act it out.
If you don’t let it out in healthy ways, it will come out in unhealthy ways… and that’s usually not pretty. Some of you were hurt in the past… maybe even as a child. Maybe your parents divorced. Maybe you were abused. Maybe you were hurt by something someone said about you. It hurt and it hurt very deeply. But as a child, you had no idea how to grieve in a healthy manner so you pushed that pain down. And you never got over that hurt.
You need to go back and grieve over it, because if you don’t grieve over it, you will become stuck at that stage.
Person who all they can talk about is something that happened 30 years ago… they are stuck.
Listen to me… real good.
When you don’t grieve, when you don’t go through the grief when pain happens in your life, and you don’t feel it, you push it down, you get stuck emotionally at that stage and you spend the rest of your life reacting to something that happened a long time ago and you’re taking it out on the people around you now. And that’s not fair to them. It’s not healthy to stuff it down. If you don’t talk it out, you take it out on your own body or the people around you. And if you don’t let it out in healthy ways, you will act in unhealthy ways. When you swallow negative emotions, your body will get sick. It’s not just what you eat that makes you sick. David’s Psalm after his sin with Bathsheba.
3 When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long.
Circle the word groaned. When you go through a loss in life… job, friend, a deal, a dream, something you hoped would happen, a marriage… you can either groan or you can grieve. Groaning is negative while grieving is positive. Grieving is calling out to God in your grief and in your pain.
2 But as I stood there in silence— not even speaking of good things— the turmoil within me grew worse.
If you don’t grieve the losses in your life, if you’re too busy and you just stuff it and don’t even think about it… to grin and bear it or suck it up butter cup. If you don’t grieve, then what happens is that, like David said, your distress will get worse.
So, what I am saying is this. The things that happen to you, around you, and the bad things that happen to you… they’re not your choice. But grief is a choice. And it’s a healthy choice. When you choose to let it out, you have to choose to allow yourself to feel the sad emotions. Not one wants to feel sad, but not everything that helps us feels good. Not everything that’s healthy feels good at first.
If we don’t mourn the losses of life, we get stuck in that stage of life.
If we don’t mourn the losses of life, we get stuck in that stage of life.
I don’t want you to get stuck in the stage of sorrow, and neither does the Lord. That’s one reason we will look at this beatitude today. We will learn to experience the blessedness of mourning and the blessedness that comes from mourning.
Jesus said,
33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
Today we want to address the question,
How does the Lord comfort us when we are dealing with sadness and sorrow?
How does the Lord comfort us when we are dealing with sadness and sorrow?
1. When we have a broken heart, the Lord draws us close to Himself.
1. When we have a broken heart, the Lord draws us close to Himself.
18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.
When you are grieving, it feels like the Lord is a million miles away. He’s not! When you are hurting, he will never be closer. What you feel and what is real are two different things. Not everything you feel is real and not everything that’s real do you feel. But the Bible says that God is close to the broken hearted. He is paying attention and he is right there with you.
5 Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”
Isn’t that good? It’s a wonderful think to know that the Lord will never leave us when we need him. That’s the difference Jesus make in our lives. Now if you don’t have Jesus in your life, then God isn’t close to you during those tragic times… you are on your own. But you don’t have to handle it by yourself and God never intended you to handle it on your own. All you have to to do is to call on him. Paul said this in 2 CO 6:10
10 Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.
2. When we have a broken heart, the Lord grieves with us.
2. When we have a broken heart, the Lord grieves with us.
The reason we have the capacity for long term grief is because we are made in the image of God.
We are all created in the image of God, and God is an emotional God so we were created with emotions. The Bible says that God grieves… he weeps. When he sees the lostness of humanity, he weeps. When God sees sin in our lives he weeps.
The Bible says that when we weep, god weeps with us. IOW, God is a suffering God and is a sympathetic God. He is not aloof and apathetic. He isn’t sitting up in heaven watching you and me struggle. He suffers with us.
3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
So when you come to Jesus, it’s not like Jesus goes … huh? When you are hurting, Jesus understands. He was raised by a single mom. He had brothers and sisters to take car of because of that. He had to work to provide… He was betrayed by friends. Jesus understands.
Write this down…
The Lord understands my grief.
The Lord understands my grief.
Let me give you an example… When his friend Lazarus died, the Bible says in John 11:33-36
33 When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. 34 “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Then Jesus wept. 36 The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!”
Circle the word Loved… I told that grief is actually an evidence of love. And the more you love the more you will grieve about things. If you are apathetic, you will be callous… with no love in your life… you don’t care what happens to someone else. It won’t bother you. You won’t grieve over a tragedy with your neighbor. If you don’t love them, you won’t care. The more you love the more you will understand grief.
We have a Savior who knows us, understands us, and sympathizes with us.
We have a Savior who knows us, understands us, and sympathizes with us.
When Jesus saw that Lazarus was dead, he cried. Let me say to anyone who sucks it up and you don’t cry. Guys typically are not good with grief. We do’t like to feel bad. Many of us were told growing up… big boys don’t cry. When you tell someone to stop their crying, you are telling them to to stuff their emotions and that’s not healthy.
Since Jesus cried, let me tell you. Sadness is not weakness. Jesus was the strongest man to ever live, and He cried. For a man to show emotion is not a sign of weakness; its a sign of strength. Weak men are afraid of their emotions. It freaks them out. When you are a strong man, you are ot afraid of emotions or of showing emotions. Jesus cried and he was the strongest man to ever live and if he cried, we can cry.
The Bible even says that Jesus came to bring us comfort. Isa 61:2-3
2 … He has sent me to comfort all who mourn, 3 To give to those who mourn in Zion Joy and gladness instead of grief, A song of praise instead of sorrow. They will be like trees That the Lord himself has planted. They will all do what is right, And God will be praised for what he has done.
So the first two ways God blesses those who mourn is he draws us to himself and says,
I am going to be with you. You are not going through this alone.
I’m going to feel it with you. The pain you feel in that separation, God feels it with you. In that loneliness, God feels it with you. The pain of that rejection, god feels it with you. The pain of that disgrace or embarrassment, God feels it with you.
3. When we have a broken heart the Lord gives us a church family for support.
3. When we have a broken heart the Lord gives us a church family for support.
God never intended for us to deal with our troubles alone. There is an old statement.
When you share your joy it’s doubled, and when you share your sorrow, it’s halved.
When you share your joy it’s doubled, and when you share your sorrow, it’s halved.
When you try to carry it all by yourself, you are carrying a load that God never intended you to carry. When something horrible happens, you go, I’m not telling anyone… I’ll keep it to myself. When you do that you have just broken one of the principles of God’s word. God says we were are meant to grieve in community. Healing comes in groups. healing comes in the church. We’re better together. You were never meant to carry it on your own. The Lord intends for each of us to be involved in a church family that will support us and help us in times of grief and sadness.
5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.
Paul is saying that we all belong to each other. We are brothers and sisters in god’s family. We’re part of the Body of Christ.
10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other.
Then he says to love with genuine love… NIV says to be devoted to each other. How can we be devoted?
15 Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep.
We can sympathize with each other. When someone has a victory, we are not jealous, we celebrate. When someone has something bad happen, we hurt with them.
The church is to be our spiritual family and primary source of emotional support.
The church is to be our spiritual family and primary source of emotional support.
11 So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.
Let me give you a couple of suggestions because right now you’re in one of two positions.
You are going through pain yourself and need the comfort.
You are not going through pain and need to comfort others.
You either need comfort or you need to be a comforter for someone. You either need help or you need to help. If you are not in major pain right now, you need to be thinking, How can I follow what Jesus is telling me to do and comfort the people in pain around me?
First you have to be aware. And if you care, you will be aware.
2nd - You have to reach out to others with love and care. Don’t reach out with a judgemental or critical spirit, or even an I am stronger that you attitude. Reach out with love and care.
3rd. Never minimize another person’s pain. Get rid of the phrase “at least…” from your vocabulary when talking to someone in pain. It doesn’t help and it’s minimizing their pain by you trying to point out something good.
Parents. Stop trying to teach your kids to stop it. Don’t cry now… we try to fix it when someone is in pain. Don’t be in a hurry to fix it. God will fix it in due time. What you need to do is to be there and care.
Never minimize.
4th - Allow people to grieve what they are going through. Never rush people. Pain and grief take time and is messy. No one knows how long grief takes for a particular person or situation. It takes time.
5th - Continue to be there for those who are hurting. Don’t discourage them from reaching out several weeks after the person experienced a tragedy. Keep reaching out… keep caring.
To be comforters of others we must? 1) Become aware of when people are hurting, 2) Reach out to them with love and care, 3) Refuse to minimize others pain, 4) Allow people the time to grieve what they’re going through, and 5) Continue being there for those who are hurting
4. When we have a broken heart the Lord will use the grief to help us to grow.
4. When we have a broken heart the Lord will use the grief to help us to grow.
God uses grief or pain to help us to grow. He does it in three ways.
1. God uses pain to get our attention.
1. God uses pain to get our attention.
God whispers in our pleasure and shouts in our pain. CS Lewis
Pain is God’s loudspeaker. We rarely change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat.
2. God brings good things out of bad things.
2. God brings good things out of bad things.
3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
Trouble and pain gives us the opportunity to grow in our character. You can’t control the pain you go through but you can decide whether it’s going to make you better or bitter. Whether it is going to be a stepping stone or a stumbling block. God brings good out of bad.
28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
3. The Lord uses struggles and sorrow to prepare us for eternity.
3. The Lord uses struggles and sorrow to prepare us for eternity.
17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.
You are not taking your car… your house… your job… or anything but your character to heaven with you. You are taking you. So God is more interested in your character development than in your career or your comfort. Why? Because you will spend forever in heaven with him. This life is preparation for eternal life. These troubles are getting us ready for an eternal glory.
Studies have shown that people in Nazi concentration camps in WW2, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, … all of these concentration camps where so many people died… but some survived. How? Those who survived found meaning and purpose in their pain. Those who saw no meaning or purpose… gave up.
You can handle a lot of pain if you know there is a good purpose in it. Labor before giving birth… But when you don’t see any purpose in the pain, it’s easy to give up. When the pain just keeps going, we have to see God’s purpose.
So when you are going through a difficult time, ask, What is God doing?
Is he trying to get my attention?
Is he trying to bring good out of bad?
Is he preparing my character for heaven? Is he giving me an opportunity to grow more like Jesus? Things that are seen don’t last forever but things that are not seen are eternal.
5. When we have a broken heart the Lord igves us the hope of heaven.
5. When we have a broken heart the Lord igves us the hope of heaven.
We always need to understand that this life is not all there is.
The amount of time you’re going to spend on this earth is really quite short. You are only going to be here … maybe 90 to 100 years. That’s nothing. It’s nothing compared to millions of years in heaven. Heaven is the most beautiful pl;ace that the mind of God can conceive and the most wonderful place that the hand of God can create.
We have the hope of heaven, but without that, we would be in a mess because there is so much evil and trouble in this life.
Look at what Paul said, in 1 Thess 4:13
13 And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.
Circle the people who have no hope. There are two kinds of grief. You can grieve with hope or you can grieve without hope. Listen, you want the first one. As a pastor I have done a lot of funerals. 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. I’ve seen the terror on their face and the despair on their face. Listen to me carefully.
The test of our faith and character is not how we handle the parties or promotions of life, but how we handle the pain of life.
The test of our faith and character is not how we handle the parties or promotions of life, but how we handle the pain of life.
The test of life is how you handle the failures… the deaths of life. The Bible says that we have hope. So we grieve but we grieve with hope.
When a Christian dies, why do we grieve? The Christian is going to heaven. They are going where they were made for. They are going to where they will spend eternity. They are going where you will go if you know the Lord. So we grieve because we miss them, not for them.
We can handle the pain of life when we know there is a Heaven that awaits us.
We can handle the pain of life when we know there is a Heaven that awaits us.
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”
6. When we have a broken heart the Lord uses our pain to help others.
6. When we have a broken heart the Lord uses our pain to help others.
There’s a purpose in your pain. Listen, God does not want you to waste a hurt. God doesn’t waste a hurt, but we often do because we’re not willing to use it help other people. God uses our pain to help others.
4 He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
Let me ask you,
Who can better help the mother of a special needs child than another mother of a special needs child?
Who can better help someone who’s lost a son or daughter in a war than someone who has lost a son or daughter in a war?
Who can better help somebody who lost a limb than somebody who has lost a limb?
Who can better help somebody who has gone through the pain of an addiction or a marriage failure or a molestation of any of the other evils in the world than somebody who went through that?
Listen,
Our greatest ministry will come out of our deepest hurts.
Our greatest ministry will come out of our deepest hurts.
Because we can relate. We can say, Been there done that. 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… Our greatest ministry will come out of your deepest hurt.
People of the world are more impressed with how we handle our adversity than they are with how we handle our prosperity.
People of the world are more impressed with how we handle our adversity than they are with how we handle our prosperity.
We think it’s our success that gives us credibility to be a witness. But God says, No, it’s our suffering that gives us credibility. It’s not our success that earns respect, but it’s our faithfulness in tough times that does.
Let me say this agin. We live in a broken world so every day nothing works perfectly. That means that
Every day we should be seeking comfort or sharing comfort.
Every day we should be seeking comfort or sharing comfort.
And maybe God wants to do both at the same time. It’s called being a wounded healer. If you wait until you’re completely healed to help other people … you will wait a long time. Because you will never be completely healed of everything in this life until you get to heaven. If you will start helping others, even while you are being helped, you will find healing more completely and quicker.
4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
I am glad that we serve a God who is near to the broken hearted.
Altar time -
God is close to you… reaching out to help you through everything you are going through.
