Living Passionately for God

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 31: Living Passionately for God

What about you? We’ve explored how we can journey with others helping them to long deeply for heaven while living passionately on earth. But what about you?

Whether you are reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions. I’ve designed them to help you to move from deadening to groaning—staying alive to life even when it crushes you to death.

Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Wailing to God Journey

1. When are you most tempted to deaden the pain of life? How do you defeat this temptation so you’re able to groan to God?

2. Groaning exposes us for the needy people we are. How hard is it for you to admit your neediness—to yourself, to others, to God?

3. God made you a longing, thirsting, hungering, desiring being. What are you longing, thirsting, hungering for and desiring?

4. How do you stay alive to life when it crushes you to death?

5. Reread and meditate upon Philippians 1:23-25. What would it look like in your grieving to apply this passage to your life? “I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of your for your progress and joy in the faith.”

6. Wailing says, “I wanna’ go home. This world is so messed up. I ache for Paradise. However, I’m pulling weeds till the day I die!” Write your personal “wailing psalm.”

7. Satan wants life to kill your dreams. What dreams do you want God to resurrect?

8. God calls us to keep longing for Paradise while still pulling weeds even while we live East of Eden. What weeds is God calling you to pull?

9. “If you were to write a thirst Psalm like Psalm 42, how would you word it?”

10. “In Romans 8:17-18, Paul did some spiritual mathematics and reasoned that his current sufferings were not worth comparing to his future glory. As you calculate your earthly suffering and your eternal glory, what conclusions do you make?”

11. “Satan wants to use your suffering to suck the life out of you. How can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to find new life, new zeal for God? How can you not only survive, but thrive?”

Weaving

Surely we can’t stay forever in the wailing stage. How do we uncover God’s perspective on life? How do we gain the spiritual eyes, the faith eyes to see life with 20/20 spiritual vision again?

We need spiritual laser surgery. It is in the grieving stage of weaving that the Divine Soul Physicians operates on the eyes of our hearts. We visit His office tomorrow to have those cataracts removed . . .