Finding God When We Can't Find Answers

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

Post 21: Finding God When We Can’t Find Answers

What about you? Yesterday we explored how we can journey with others helping them to move from depression, alienation, and separation to comfort through communion with Christ and connection with Christians. But what about your path from depression to comfort?

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 depression to comfort— experiencing the presence of God in the presence of suffering—a Presence that empowers me to survive scars and plants the seed of hope that I may yet thrive.

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

My Comfort/Communion Journey

1. When you are ready to give up, ready to give in, what empowers you to draw a line in the sane of retreat? How does communion with Christ help you to say, “Yes, I have a scar, but it is neither fatal nor final”?

2. Comfort originally meant co-fortitude. How does your connection with Christ fortify you? How does it en-courage you—pour courage into you?

3. Deep faith as opposed to naïve faith, walks in the dark. In your dark night of the soul, how can you invite in the One Who is the Light of the World?

4. Jacob (Genesis 32) teaches us that tenacious wrestling with God results in painful yet profitable comfort through communion. Wrestle with God. Tell Him everything.

5. In our suffering, God divulges more of Himself. When our heart is grieved, God is the strength of our heart (Psalm 73:21-28). What will it look like for you to acknowledge your grief and groan to God for His strength?

6. Faith perceives that God feels our pain, joins us in our pain, even shares our pain In all our distress, He is distressed (Isaiah 63:9). Sharing your sorrow with God makes your sorrow endurable. Write a Psalm of Shared Sorrow to God.

7. Select and apply some of these comfort trialogues to your own journey.

“The Bible teaches that ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick.’ It’s normal to hurt and to struggle when our internal pain seems incurable. How could you connect with Christ and the Body of Christ to find relief for your sadness over your scars?”
“Some wounds won’t be totally healed until heaven (Revelation 7). How can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to face life with this wound?”

“What is your suffering teaching you about God’s power made perfect in your weakness?”

“If you were to write a Psalm 42, (David moving from confusion to comfort) what would you write?”

“Christ often comforts us through other Christians. Who is coming alongside to help and comfort you? How could you connect with other Christians so they could help you to bear your burdens?”

And Now What?

We’ve journeyed together from denial to candor, from anger to complaint/lament, from bargaining/works to crying out to God, and from depression to comfort/communion.

In the world’s model of grieving, the next and final stage is “acceptance.” The Word’s way actually offers four more stages on our journey. They move far beyond acceptance.

Join us in the coming days as we explore: waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping. Join us as we find God even when we may not find answers.

God Comes

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

Post 17: God Comes

So far on our journey we have approached three road markers leading to three decision points.

*Confronting road marker one on our destination, we choose to move from denial to candor—honesty with our self about our grief.

*Facing road marker two on our destination, we choose to move from anger to complaint--honesty with God about our grief, pain, and confusion.

*Approaching road marker three on our destination, we choose to move from bargaining/works to cry—crying out to God in humble dependence.

Directional Choice Point Four: Depression or Comfort

In stage four, our journey leads us either to depression due to alienation and separation from God and others, or to finding comfort through communion with God and connection with God’s people.

To use a wrestling analogy (as a wrestling coach, I have to use at least one of these!):

*Through candor we choose to step on the mats with God.

*With complaint, the match begins.

*With cry, we cry “Uncle.” We say, “I’m pinned. I’m helpless. You win, God. Now I win, too.”

*Comfort, then, is the crippling touch of God that plants the seed for healing. In cry, we ask for God’s help. In comfort, we receive God’s help. In comfort, the God we cried out to, comes.

Depression/Alienation Described

In the typical fourth stage of grief, there’s a type of depression that we might best describe as hopelessness. The person accepts reality, but only from an earthly perspective. They can see no higher plan.

It reminds me of the chilling opening scene in the musical Les Mis. Hundreds of prisoners are chanting, “Look down, look down, don’t look them in the eyes.” They’re filled with shame.

Then one prisoner, Jean val Jean, attempts to break free from his emotional prison by singing that there are people who love him and are waiting for him when he’s released. The guards and even the other prisoners heap more shame upon him. One cries, “Sweet Jesus doesn’t care.” Others sing, “You’ll always be a slave, you’re standing in your grave.”

That’s hopelessness. That’s the fourth stage of grief without Christ. Or, as Paul says it in 1 Thessalonians, it is grieving without hope.

Now What?

Grief without hope—without Christ—is no place to stay. We need comfort. Tomorrow we’ll define and describe it, and in coming days we’ll explore how we find it in Christ and His people.

Miserable Counselors?

God's Healing for Life's Losses:

Post 2: Miserable Counselors?

For far too long some biblical counselors have highlighted confronting the sinning, but minimized comforting the suffering. But if we are to rightly call ourselves biblical counselors, then we must address what the Bible addresses. And suffering is everywhere in the Bible from Genesis 3 to Revelation 19.

Frank Lake explains the implications of the Bible’s emphasis on suffering and sin.

“The maladies of the human spirit in its deprivations and in its depravity are matters of common pastoral concern.”

True pastoral/biblical counseling not only studies depravity—the sins we have committed, it also must examine deprivation—the evils we have suffered.

When we talk about sin and not suffering, then we become like Job’s counselors, who Job labeled “miserable comforters.” They mistakenly called his suffering “sin” and cruelly claimed that he was suffering because of personal sin.

The World, More Compassionate Than the Church!?

Oddly, the world at times seems more compassionate than the church!

While we in the church have been like Job’s miserable counselors, the world has at least tried to address human suffering. Unfortunately, their approach is incomplete and inaccurate.

Students of human grief have developed various models that track typical grief responses. However, their models fail to assess whether these responses correspond to God’s process for hurting and hoping.

Without getting too technical, we must understand something about research in a fallen world. At best, it describes what typically does occurs. It cannot and should not, with assurance and authority, prescribe what should occur. Their attempts to understand the human nature are thwarted by the fallenness of our nature and of our world.

DABDA (The Acrostic of the World’s Five-Stages of Grieving)

The best known approach is that of Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. In her book On Death and Dying, she popularized a five-stage model of grieving based upon her research into how terminally ill persons respond to the news of their terminal illness. Her five stages, which have since been used to describe all grief responses, are:

Denial: This is the shock reaction. “It can’t be true.” “No, not me.” We refuse to believe what happened.

Anger: Resentment grows. “Why me?” “Why my child?” “This isn’t fair!” We direct blame toward God, others, and ourselves. We feel agitated, moody, on edge.

Bargaining: We try to make a deal, insisting that things be the way they used to be. “God, if you heal my little girl, I’ll never drink again.” “If I’m very good, then God might relent and be very good to me.” We call a temporary truce with God.

Depression: Now we say, “Yes, me.” The courage to admit our loss brings sadness (which can be healthy mourning and grieving) and hopelessness (which is unhealthy mourning and grieving).

Acceptance: Now we face our loss calmly. It’s a time of silent reflection and regrouping. “Life has to go on. How? What do I do now?” With one’s own impending death, it’s a time of quiet contemplation almost void of feelings. Sometimes it includes contentment, other times despair.

These various stages in the grief process claim to record what does typically occur. They do not attempt to assess if this is what is best to occur, or if it is God’s process for hurting and hoping.

Is it God’s process?

Return tomorrow to learn the rest of the story…