God's Healing for Life's Losses

Please remember to bookmark and visit my new blog and website:
http://www.rpmministries.org/

I've posted twice as many free resources, scores of book reviews, daily blogs, and more--all because I know "You Want to Change Lives!"

So please drop by my fresh new site at: http://www.rpmministries.org/

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

I’m excited to announce the upcoming (April 2010) release by BMH Books of my fifth book: God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting.

I’ll be sharing more about the book in the coming days. Here’s the current wording for the back cover.

Find Hope When Your Hurting—Biblically and Relevantly

You’re tired of quick quips (“Just trust God”) and false hopes (“Time heals all wounds”). You’re ready for real and raw, honest and hopeful conversation about suffering, loss, and grief—from a Christian perspective. You’re longing for real answers, for real people, with real struggles. You’ve come to the right place. When life’s losses invade your world, learn how to face suffering face-to-face with God. Learn how to journey:

 From Denial to Candor: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
 From Anger to Complaint: A Lament for Your Loss
 From Bargaining to Crying Out to God: I Surrender All
 From Depression to Comfort: God Comes
 From Regrouping to Waiting: When God Says “Not Yet”
 From Deadening to Wailing: Pregnant with Hope
 From Despairing to Weaving: Spiritual Mathematics
 From Digging Cisterns to Worshipping: Finding God

How do you deal with suffering and despair; the times when life seems so overwhelming that you just want to give up? Bob Kellemen has the answers. If you’re looking for tired clichés (“Just put on a happy face”), impersonal academic discourse, and worldly wisdom, then this is not the book for you. But if you want a thoroughly biblical and intensely honest examination of suffering from someone who has walked the path from “hurt to hope in Christ,” then God’s Healing for Life’s Losses is just the book for you.
—Ian Jones, Ph.D., Chairman, Counseling Department, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

“God’s Healing for Life’s Losses takes on traditional thoughts about grief and loss and turns them upside down. Dr. Kellemen takes us down to take us up as he develops a biblical theology of suffering and hope. There is a refreshing honesty about the pain of loss and the permission to be real with God and others as we embrace the mourning process together. This book is biblical, personal and healing; I highly recommend it.”
—Garrett Higbee, Psy. D., President, Twelve Stones Ministries; Executive Director, Harvest Biblical Soul Care

Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, served for over a dozen years as Chairman of the Master of Arts in Christian Counseling and Discipleship Department at Capital Bible Seminary. In his three pastoral ministries, Bob has ministered to 100s of grieving parishioners. In his role as Founder and CEO of RPM Ministries (http://www.rpmminstries.org/) Bob is known for his Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed approach to equipping God’s people to use God’s Word in their personal ministry.

God's Healing for Life's Losses

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting
By Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC

Foreword by
Pastor Steve Viars, D.Min.

*Note: God's Healing for Life's Losses will be released by BMH Books in 2010. The following is Dr. Steve Viars' Foreword to the book.

Can anyone avoid suffering?

I have had the privilege of serving as a pastor of the same congregation for over twenty years. On the one hand God has graciously given numerous opportunities to share in the joys and blessings of my parishioners and friends. There have been many births, weddings, spiritual victories, and occasions for laughter and love. Countless days have been filled with far more sweetness than I would have ever imagined.

But the parallel truth is that I have seen first-hand how often men and women suffer. Job losses. Shocking diagnoses. Children gone astray. Abuse. And the caskets…oh too many caskets. I knew the Bible predicted this would occur, but it is different when it happens to members of your church family, your own family, your friends, and to you.

Of course, you know that as well. I have never met a person who has not suffered in some way. That explains why Jesus’ family is instructed to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Life this side of heaven is anything but trouble-free.

That is why I am so glad Dr. Bob Kellemen wrote God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. You cannot choose whether you will face suffering or not, but you can decide where you will turn for help. Here are three reasons why I heartily and joyfully encourage you to carefully read what Bob has written.

It courageously faces the hard questions. You are probably fed up with pat answers and pious platitudes. Plastic smiles do not work, not when you are suffering. Bob writes with the seasoned wisdom of a winsome counselor who has spent many hours compassionately listening to people whose hearts are breaking.

It skillfully takes you to God’s Word. Listening is wonderful and powerful, but it is seldom enough. Bob is a careful student of the Bible. He believes that the living God has direction and answers for every hurting person who will humbly come to Him (Matthew 11:29). I went to college and seminary with Bob—I know that he is a diligent and accomplished student and scholar. Yet this book does not read like a distant theological treatise. It is more like a wise conversation with a mature spiritual friend.

It passionately points you to the Savior. The Bible is less like an encyclopedia and more like a novel. Bob’s goal is not to give us a few verses that we simply memorize and recite when times get rough. He is inviting us to use suffering as an opportunity to grow more in love with the One who suffered supremely for us. That is why there is hope for life’s losses.

I look forward to the day this project goes from the manuscript I currently have in my hand to a book I can read and give to others. My church family needs it. My counselees need it. I need it. And, if you’re suffering a loss or helping someone who is grieving, then you need it.

One more thing. Bob and I grew up a few miles from one another in Gary, IN. I have known him since we were boys running around the neighborhood. I can say this without reservation—Bob is the real thing. He cares deeply about people who are suffering. That is one of his God-given passions. Let this book be a gift to you, from a dear and trusted friend.

Dr. Steve Viars,
Sr. Pastor, Faith Baptist Church, Lafayette, Indiana

Biblical Grief Seminar

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

A Half-Day or Full-Day Seminar on Grieving and Growing

Have you experienced a loss and do you long to find God’s hope in your grief?

Do you desire to minister God’s healing to your grieving friends?

Then discover God’s healing for life’s losses.

Dr. Bob Kellemen, in God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, equips you to apply eight scriptural stages in your response to life’s losses—helping you to find hope when you’re hurting. Bob will also empower you to minister healing hope to others so that they can face suffering face-to-face with God.

Presented by Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC

Bob is a nationally-known speaker, author, consultant, educator, pastor, and counselor. He’s the author of Beyond the Suffering, Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. He has equipped thousands of lay people, pastors, and counselors as Chairman of the Master of Arts in Christian Counseling and Discipleship Department (Capital Bible Seminary), as Director of the Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation Network, and as Founder/CEO of RPM Ministries.

Attend and You Will Learn How To:

*Apply to your life a four-stage biblical model of facing life’s losses with courageous honesty.

*Apply to your life a four-stage biblical model of finding healing hope by finding God.

*Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical stages of hurting and grieving: candor, complaint, cry, and comfort.

*Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical stages of hope and growth: waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping.

*Practice skillfully the biblical counseling and soul care arts of sustaining and healing.

*Build healing communities where Christians find courage and comfort in God and each other.

Christ-Centered, Comprehensive, Compassionate, Culturally-Informed Biblical Grief Counseling

*Experience personal healing and biblical hope.

*Encounter God in the midst of your suffering.

*Empathize with hurting people more compassionately.

*Encourage suffering people more competently.

*Empower your congregation to become a “hospital for the hurting.”

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses Seminar Schedule

Session One: Launching the Journey of Grief: Honesty with Yourself and with God—Candor and Complaint

Session Two: Inviting God to Join Your Journey: Finding God Even When You Can’t Find Answers—Cry and Comfort

Session Three: Deepening Your Journey During the Dark Night of the Soul: On the Road to Hope—Waiting and Wailing

Session Four: Traveling with God on the Journey of Faith: Joining the Larger Story—Weaving and Worshipping

Endorsed by Pastor Steve Viars

Here are three reasons why I heartily and joyfully encourage you to learn from God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. It courageously faces the hard questions. You are probably fed up with pat answers and pious platitudes. Plastic smiles do not work, not when you are suffering. Bob writes with the seasoned wisdom of a winsome counselor who has spent many hours compassionately listening to people whose hearts are breaking. It skillfully takes you to God’s Word. Listening is wonderful but it is seldom enough. Bob is a careful student of the Bible. He believes that the living God has direction and answers for every hurting person who will humbly come to Him (Matthew 11:29). I went to college and seminary with Bob—I know that he is a diligent and accomplished student and scholar. Yet this book does not read like a distant theological treatise. It is more like a wise conversation with a spiritual friend. It passionately points you to the Savior. The Bible is less like an encyclopedia and more like a novel. Bob’s goal is not to give us a few verses that we simply memorize and recite when times get rough. He is inviting us to use suffering as an opportunity to grow more in love with the One who suffered supremely for us. That is why there is hope for life’s losses.

To Host or Attend a Seminar, Contact:

RPM Ministries, PO Box 270, Crown Point, IN 46308, 219-662-8138
http://www.rpmministries.org/, rpm.ministries@gmail.com

Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Christ-Centered, Comprehensive, Compassionate,
and Culturally-informed Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation

Creative Suffering or Destructive Suffering?

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

Post 42: Conclusion—

Creative Suffering or Destructive Suffering?

It’s clear that there is a typical way to respond to suffering. That typical way does not typically factor God into the equation.

It’s equally and biblically clear that there’s a better way, God’s way to respond to suffering. We can face suffering face-to-face with God and we can empower our spiritual friends, parishioners, and counselees to do so if we will follow a biblical theology of suffering—a sufferology.

This biblical sufferology uses sustaining trialogues to help our spiritual friends to move from candor, to complaint, to cry, to comfort.

It uses healing trialogues to encourage our spiritual friends to move from waiting to wailing, to weaving, to worshipping.

Biblical sufferology helps us to find God in the midst of our suffering, to glorify God by how we respond to suffering, and to become more like Christ as we face our suffering.

Select Bibliography of Biblical Sufferology

Adams, Jay E. A Theology of Christian Counseling: More Than Redemption. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979.

Aden, L. “Comfort/Sustaining.” Pages 193-195 in The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Edited by R. J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.

Eyrich, Howard and William Hines. Curing the Heart: A Model for Biblical Counseling. Ross-shire UK: Christian Focus, 2002.

Graham, L. K. “Healing.” Pages 497-501 in The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Edited by R. J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.

Kellemen, Robert. Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Third revised edition. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. “Spiritual Care in Historical Perspective: Martin Luther as a Case Study in Christian Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Kent State University, 1997.

Kellemen, Robert. Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Revised third edition. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Soul Care Givers and Spiritual Directors. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2009.

Kellemen, Robert. What to Do After the Hug. Crown Point, IN: RPM Books, 2009.

Keller, Timothy. “Puritan Resources for Pastoral Counseling.” Journal of Pastoral Practice 9, no. 3 (1988): 11-44.

Lake, Frank. Clinical Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962.

Powlison, David. Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003.

Powlison, David. Speaking the Truth in Love: Counsel in Community. Winston-Salem, NC: Punch Bookstore, 2005.

Tripp, Paul David. Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002.

Waite, Terry. Taken on Trust. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1993.

Wangerin, Walter. Mourning Into Dancing. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.

Mourning Into Dancing

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

Post 39: Mourning Into Dancing

Problems can either shove us far from God or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him. So in suffering leading to worship, we ask a core soul care question, “How are these problems influencing your relationship to God?”

Worship and the Hymn

As the hymn writer poetically states it:

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: the best thy heavenly Friend,
Thro’ thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Worship and the Word

Many passages support the concept of worship in the midst of suffering and worship as the end result of suffering. This has been the experience of saints throughout Biblical history.

Asaph, reflecting on his suffering, concludes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you (Psalm 73:25).

David concurs, as his suffering creates a God-thirst. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).

Peter, in the New Testament, explains the purpose of problems, teaching that they come so that our faith in God may be refined, then concludes with these words about suffering’s significance:

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filed with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8).

Peter’s message reminds us of Paul as he looks back upon a lifetime of suffering and says:

“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:8, 10).

Mourning into Dancing

In suffering, God is not getting back at you, He is getting you back to Him.

Throughout Mourning Into Dancing, Walter Wangerin explains that suffering and death are meant to teach us our need again.

“The actual experience of dying persuades the little god that he is finite after all” (Wangerin, Mourning Into Dancing, p. 76).

Suffering opens our hands to God. It was Augustine who declared, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there is nowhere for Him to put it.”

God makes therapeutic use of our suffering. Suffering, as Martin Luther taught, creates in the child of God a delicious despair. Suffering is God’s putrid tasting medicine of choice resulting in delicious healing. Healing medicine for our ultimate sickness—the arrogance that we do not need God. The arrogance that anything but God could ever satisfy our soul.

Suffering’s ultimate goal is worship. Suffering’s ultimate goal is knowing and worshipping God as our Spring of Living Water—our only satisfaction and our greatest joy.

Guiding Others to the Spring of Living Water

Easy words to type…harder words to live. Journey with us again in our next post as we ponder how to guide others toward God the Spring of Living Water even when life is like a parched and barren wilderness.

Problems Are Opportunities

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

Post 38: Problem Are Opportunities

“Worship;” it’s such a common word. But what is worship really. Specifically, in the midst of grief, what does worship look like?

Subtle Contrasts

Let’s start with some subtle contrasts.

In cry, you cry out for God’s help; in worship, you cry out for God.

In comfort, you receive God’s strength; in worship, you experience God.

In wailing, you long for heaven because you’re tired of earth; in worship, you long for God because you miss Him.

In weaving, you glimpse God’s perspective; in worship, you glimpse the face of God.

Worship While Grieving

So what is worship in the context of suffering?

Worship is wanting God more than wanting relief.

Worship is finding God even if we don’t find answers.

Worship is walking with God in the dark and having Him as the light of our soul.

Terri’s Story: "Not Everything's Perfect!"

A while back I received an email from Terri (see previous posts in this series). She began with words I’m sure she typed with a smile.

“Guess what? Not everything’s perfect at our new church.”

I smiled knowingly as I read her first line.

She continued, “But God is. God is perfectly beautiful. Perfectly holy. Perfectly in control. Perfectly good.” Terri is glimpsing the face of God. She’s worshipping.

Every problem is an opportunity to know God better and our primary battle is to know God well. Thus in suffering leading to worship, we ask a core soul care question, “How are these problems influencing your relationship to God?”

Problems can either shove us far from Him or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him.

Worship and the Word

Join the journey again tomorrow as we explore worship from God’s Word.

Surviving Scars

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

Post 18: Surviving Scars

For those without Christ, the grief process moves from denial, to anger, to bargaining/works, to depression. For those with Christ, for those who grieve with hope, we journey from candor, to complaint/lament, to crying out to God, to comfort.

What Then Is Comfort?

What then is comfort? Before I offer a definition, I’ll offer some history. Historically, sustaining has attempted to draw a line in the sand of retreat. Horrible things happen to us. We’re charging headlong away from the life that we once dreamed of. We’re ready to give up and give in.

Sustaining steps in to say, “Yes, you do have a wound. You will have the scar. But it is neither fatal nor final. Don’t quit. You can make it. You can survive.”

Co-Fortitude

It’s within this context of surviving scars that I’m using the word “comfort.” Originally, comfort meant co-fortitude—being fortified by the strength of another. Being en-couraged—having courage poured into you from an outside source. That outside source, for Christians, is Christ and the Body of Christ. In this life, your scar may not go away, but neither will His. He understands. He cares. He’s there.

Now we can define comfort. Comfort/communion experiences 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. At the end of sustaining, I’m not necessarily thriving. More likely, I’m limping, but at least I’m no longer retreating.

My Comfort Journey

For me, comfort reflected itself in my decision not to give up on God and not to give up on ministry. Here I was in seminary, preparing for ministry, and secretly doubting God—doubting His goodness, His trustworthiness, His ability, or at least His desire, to protect me and care for me. As comfort came, I came face-to-face with God. We had some wild talks. We had some fierce wrestling matches.

God won. I surrendered. Still confused about the details of life, but committed to the Author of Life. More than that, surrendered to Him and dependent upon Him. My attitude was like Peter’s when Jesus asked His disciples, “Will you, too, leave me?” Remember Peter’s reply? “To whom else could we go? You alone have the Words of life.”

I was surviving again, surviving though scarred. I was not and never again would be that same naïve young Christian who assumed that if I prayed and worked hard enough, God would grant me my every expectation. My faith was not a naïve faith, but it was a deeper faith—a faith that could walk in the dark.

Is Comfort Biblical?

Did my experience of comfort reflect a biblical process? Join the journey again tomorrow to discover the answer—God’s answer.

Crying Out to God

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

Post 13: Crying Out to God

Stage one of the grieving process moves from denial to candor, stage two from angry to complaint, and stage three from bargaining and works to crying out to God for help.

Bargaining/Works Described

When I label the typical third stage of grief that I put works with bargaining. Kubler-Ross recognized this reality in her research. The dying people that she worked with bargained with God believing that they would be rewarded for their good behavior and granted special favors.

This is exactly what Job’s miserable counselors counseled Job to do—behave, be good, do right and God will treat you right. Bargaining knows nothing of grace. It is all works, all self-effort, all self-sufficiency. That’s why as biblical counselors we want to move people from works to cry.

Cry Defined

What do I mean by “cry” What is it? Cry is a faith-based plea for mobilization in which I humbly ask God for help based upon my admission that I can’t survive without Him. Cry is reaching up with open palms and pleading eyes in the midst of darkness and doubt.

Throughout my 22nd year of life, I cried out to God for help. “God, I’m confused. I’m scared. Everything I trusted in is gone. I used to think that if I only prayed hard enough and worked long enough, that eventually everything I longed for would come true in this life. But now I know that’s a lie. So what is true? What have You really promised? What can I count on? I can’t count on myself. Father, I want to count on You. Don’t let me down. Rescue me. Help me. Save me.”

Is Cry Biblically Supported?

Did God hear my cries? Were my cries biblical? Can we find biblical support for cry as a scriptural stage of grief?

Check back in tomorrow to see.

Your Dark Night of the Soul

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

Post 12: Your Dark Night of the Soul

What about you? Yesterday we explored how we can journey with others helping them to move from anger to complaint/lament. But what about your path from anger that pushes away to complaint that draws close?

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 anger to complaint—vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

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

My Complaint/Lament Journey

1. Biblical complaint/lament trusts God’s good heart enough to bring everything about us to Him. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being anger that pushes God away because I doubt His good heart, and 10 being complaint/lament that invites God in because I trust His good heart?

2. Here are a few complaint trialogues. Pick one or two to explore personally.

a. “What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling anger or
disappointment toward God?”

b. “What verses could you ponder to discover how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?”

c. “What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint toward God? How could you relate this to your response to God?”

d. “If you were to write a Psalm 13 or a Psalm 88 to God how would it sound? What would you write?”

e. "Suppose Satan sent someone to you to say, ‘Curse God and die.’ How would you respond?”

3. In past or current suffering, how did you begin to move from destructive anger to biblical complaint/lament?

4. Psalm 62:8 indicates that when we trust God we openly pour out our whole heart to Him, believing He is our refuge. Pour out your heart to God—everything and anything—in prayer, or in a journal, or in your own lament Psalm.

5. Write a Psalm 88—a Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul—and rehearse before God all the badness of life as you are seeing and experiencing it.

6. Thinking of the examples of Job, of the Psalmists, of Jeremiah, of Paul in 2 Corinthian 1 and 4), and of Jesus (in the Garden), do you believe God invites our complaint and lament? A simple “yes” or “no” will say a lot . . .

7. To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled
(Deuteronomy 8:1-10). Remember your suffering and rehearse it God for the express purpose of admitting that God is indispensable.

8. Find a trusted, safe friend and take the “baby steps” of sharing with him or her some of your complaint.

What Next? What Now?

So what’s next? You’ve been candid with yourself. You’ve complained/lamented to God. Now what?

For the world the third “stage” is bargaining: basically attempting to manipulate God into being good to us by doing good works.

What Christian “stage” contrasts with that?

That’s our topic for tomorrow.

With Christ in the School of Suffering

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

Post 11: With Christ in the School of Suffering

Biblical complaint counters unbiblical anger. Unproductive and unrighteous anger pushes us away from God, others, and personal healing. Productive and righteous complaint/lament draws us toward God, others, and personal healing.

It is reminiscent of what Philip Yancey says, “We can either be disappointed with God or without God.” I would say it like this. “We can either complain with and to God or we can complain without and about God.”

So how do we help others to move from anger to complaint? As we said with candor, there are many effective ways to move with others along the healing path. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.

Sample Candor Trialogues

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward biblical complaint.

“You’ve shared a lot. There’s obviously so much going on inside. Rightly so. Yet, so far we’ve not talked much about where Christ fits into your picture.”

“What are you doing with Christ in your suffering?”

“Have you been able to share your heart with God? If so, what have you said?”

“What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling anger or disappointment toward God?”

“What verses might we ponder to illustrate how God’s people have talked to God when they experienced loss?”

“What does Psalm 88 suggest about expressing your anger, disappointment, or complaint toward God? How could you relate this to your response to God?”

“If you were to write a Psalm 13 or a Psalm 88 to God (Psalms of lament and complaint), how would it sound? What would you write?”

“How would you compare your response to your suffering to Job’s? Jeremiah’s? Jacob’s? David’s? Paul’s? Jesus in the Garden?”

“Job and Jeremiah got pretty raw and real with God. Let’s look at some examples . . .”

“We’ve talked about Job’s story. Suppose Satan sent someone to you to say, ‘Curse God and die.’ How would you respond?”

And For Ourselves

Tomorrow we turn our focus to personal complaint. How can we move along the path from anger to complaint? See ya’ then.

God Prizes Complaint!

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

Post 10: God Prizes Complaint!

Can complaint be biblically supported? Does God really prize complaint?

Complaining About Biblical Complaint

Some think not. They ask, “Didn’t God judge the Israelites for complaining?”

There are different words and a different context between the sinful complaint of the Israelites in Numbers and the godly complaint/lament of the Psalmists and others. Plus, biblical complaint complains to God about the fallen world. Ungodly complaint complains about God and accuses Him of lacking goodness, holiness, and wisdom.

Biblical Complaint Samplers

Consider Psalm 62:8. “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

The biblical genre of complaint expresses frankness about the reality of life that seems incongruent with the character of God. Complaint is an act of truth-telling faith, not unfaith. Complaint is a rehearsal of the bad allowed by the Good.

Complaint lives in the real world honestly, refusing to ignore what is occurring. It is radical trust in God’s reliability in the midst of real life.

In Job 3, and much of Job for that matter, Job forcefully and even violently expresses his complaint. “What’s the point of life when it doesn’t make sense, when God blocks all roads to meaning? For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me” (Job 3:23-25).

In Job 42:7-8, God honors Job’s complaint saying that Job spoke right of life and right of God. God prizes complaint and rejects all deceiving denial and simplistic closure, preferring candid complexity.

In Jeremiah 20:7, Jeremiah complains that God appears, by reason alone, to be an unprincipled, abusive Bully. “O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.”

Jeremiah felt and expressed condemnation and rejection in Lamentations 5:20. “Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?” God responds positively to Jeremiah’s rehearsal of life’s incongruity.

Heman, considered one of the wisest believers ever (1 Kings 4:31; 1 Chronicles 2:6), pens the Psalm of the dark night of the soul (Psalm 88) in which his concluding line sums his spiritual struggle. “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend” (Psalm 88:18).

Rehearsing Our Suffering Before Our Suffering Savior

To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled. It is to reject dependence upon God. We are chastised in Deuteronomy 8:1-10 for forgetting our past suffering. God wants us to remember our suffering, our need for Him in our suffering, and rehearse our suffering before Him.

What’s Next?

Given that inspired Scripture documents godly complaint/lament, how do we help others to lament? How do we address our complaints to God in a godly way? Stay with us for the next two days to discover how.

Can We Really Complain to God?

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

Post 9: Can We Really Complain to God?

Our healing journey has walked us down the path from denial to candor: honesty with ourselves. In a Christian approach to grieving, we can’t stop there. We must learn how to traverse the trail of complaint—honesty with God.

From Destructive Anger to Constructive Complaint

Anger is the typical “second stage” in the world’s grieving journey. Satan is the master masquerader (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). His counterfeit for biblical complaint is unhealthy, destructive anger.

He substitutes cursing for complaint. Such as when Job’s wife counsels Job to curse God and die—give up on God, on yourself, and on life. Cursing God demeans Him, seeing Him as a lightweight, as a dark desert and a land of great darkness (Jeremiah 2). Cursing separates. Complaint connects. Complaint draws us toward God; hatred and anger push us away from God.

Defining Biblical Complaint

What is complaint? In candor we’re honest with ourselves; in complaint we’re honest to God. Complaint is vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

We needlessly react against the word “complaint.” “Christians can’t complain!” we insist. Yet numerically, there are more Psalms of complaint and lament than Psalms of praise and thanksgiving.

Complaints are faith-based acts of persistent trust. They are one of the many moods of faith. Psalm 91’s exuberant trust is one faith mood while Psalm 88’s dark despair is another faith mood. A mood of faith is simply trusting God enough to bring everything about us to Him. In complaint we hide nothing from God because we trust His good heart and because we know He knows our hearts.

My Personal Lament

In the weeks and months after my 22nd birthday, I engaged in passionate complaint. What made my struggle even more difficult was my lack of assurance that my father was a believer. I had witnessed to him, prayed for him, and he even began attending church with me. Yet even on his deathbed, he made no verbal commitment of faith in Christ.

So I shared with God. I complained to God. I told God, “What’s the use? Why did I pray, witness, and share? Why should I ever pray again? Why should I ever try again, trust again?” I shared my confusion and my doubt with God. “Why does everyone else’s parent accept Christ in a glorious deathbed conversion?”

Were my expressions of complaint biblical? Can complaint be biblically supported? We’ll address that vital question tomorrow. . .

Your Grief Journey

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

Post 8: Your Grief Journey

What about you? Yesterday we explored how we can journey with others through their grief. But what about your grief journey?

Perhaps you’re going through a very fresh season of suffering. Or, perhaps things are sailing along smoothly right now. Whether reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing your current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions.

I’ve designed them to help you to move from denial to candor—brutal, frank honesty with yourself about your losses and crosses. Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Candor Journey

1. True faith faces all of life. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being total denial and 10 being facing all of life?

2. In past or current suffering, how did you begin to move from denial to candor?

3. How could your lively relationship with God become the anvil He uses to batter your suffering into meaningful shape?

4. As you reflect on something you are grieving over, list the external losses.

a. What is missing?

b. What has been robbed from your life?

c. What are you grieving over the most?

d. What feelings do you associate with these losses?

5. As you reflect on your grief experience, list the internal crosses—the trials of your faith. Be brutally honest.

a. How has your suffering impacted your relationship with and your attitude toward God?

b. What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling and expressing anger and/or disappointment with God?

6. Read Psalm 13 and/or Psalm 88. Write your own candid lament psalms expressing your feelings to God.

7. Read Matthew 27:45-46 and Luke 22:39-45. How can Jesus’ candor with Himself, His disciples, and with God influence you?

8. Read 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 and 2 Corinthians 4:7-12. Pen your own candid story of your suffering and grieving.

9. Find a trusted, safe friend and take the “baby steps” of sharing with him or her some of your candor.

What Next? What Now?

I know. For some it’s like, “This can’t end here, right?”

Good question. Fair question.

No. Biblical grieving does not end with candor. It begins with candor.

Where it heads next is our topic for tomorrow.

No Grieving; No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

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

Post 6: No Grieving; No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

So… does God really allow and even invite His children to be brutally honest about life? Can we support candor biblically?

A Man After God’s Own Heart

David practices candor in Psalm 42:3-5. “My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?”

Notice how David is honest about his external suffering—he describes his losses—the loss of fellowship, leadership, and worship. He also is candid about his internal suffering—he depicts his crosses—accurately labeling his soul as downcast and disturbed within him.

If we had time, we could examine how biblical character after Biblical character practiced candor—Job, Jeremiah, Solomon, Asaph, Heman (Psalm 88), Jesus, Paul, and so many more.

No Grieving; No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

The Apostle Paul does not tell us not to grieve; he tells us not to grieve without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He chooses a Greek word meaning to feel sorrow, distress, and grief, and to experience pain, heaviness, and inner affliction.

Paul is teaching that grief is the grace of recovery because mourning slows us down to face life. No grieving; no healing. Know grieving; know healing.

The only person who can truly dare to grieve, bear to grieve, is the person with a future hope that things will eventually be better. When we trust God’s good heart, then we trust Him no matter what. We need not pretend. We can face and embrace the mysteries of life.

Step on the Mats

Candor or denial. The choice is a turning point. It is a line drawn in the sand of life, a hurdle to confront. Faith crosses the line. Trust leaps the hurdle. We face reality and embrace truth, sad as it is. If facing suffering is wrestling face-to-face with God, then candor is our decision to step on the mat.

So Give Me Some Examples!

Just what do I mean by candor? What are some personal examples? Join us against tomorrow for real life, raw examples of biblical candor.

Courageous Truth Telling

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

Post 5: Courageous Truth Telling

So, the world’s way is denial. How do we move with God from denying the reality of our loss to brutal honesty—to candor?

Candor Defined

What exactly is biblical candor? Candor is:

Courageous truth telling about life to myself in which I come face-to-face with the reality of external and internal suffering.

The World Is Fallen and It Often Falls On Us

Let’s explore the last part of this definition first. Martin Luther divided suffering into two levels. He said that level one suffering is what happens to us and around us—external suffering—life’s losses.

Level one suffering is what we are facing. It’s the external stuff of life to which we respond internally. I lose my job, my child is ill, I face criticism, experience abuse, and the like. I like to say it like this: the world is fallen and it often falls on us.

The World Is a Mess and It Often Messes with Our Minds

This is bad, even traumatic, but level two suffering is worse. Level two suffering is what happens in us—internal suffering—life’s crosses. Level two suffering is how we face what we are facing.

This level of suffering is the suffering of the mind that gives rise to fear and doubt as we reflect on our external suffering. It is the crisis of faith. Do we doubt, fear, and run away from God? Or, do we trust, cling, and face our suffering face-to-face with God? I like to say it like this: The world is a mess and it often messes with our mind. In candor, I admit what is happening to me and I feel what is going on inside me.

My Personal Story

I had to move from denial to candor after the death of my father on my 21st birthday. In fact, it was not until my 22nd birthday that the process truly began. I had been handling my loss like a good Bible college graduate and seminary student—I was pretending!

On my 22nd birthday I went for a long walk around the outskirts of the Grace Seminary campus. I started facing my loss. My loss of my Dad. The reality that I would never know him in an adult-to-adult relationship. The fact that my future children would never know their grandfather. As I faced some of these external loses, the tears came. Then I began to face some of the internal crosses. What was happening in me. I felt like a loner. Fatherless. Orphaned. Unprotected. On my own. The tears flowed. The process of candor began. The floodgate of emotions erupted. I was being honest with myself.

Was It Biblical?

But was it biblical?

Drop back by tomorrow as we explore just how amazingly biblical candor is and how vital it is to emotionally and spiritually healthy responding to life’s losses.

True Faith Faces All of Life

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

Post 4: True Faith Faces All of Life

The world has it’s way of grieving. But, when our fallen world falls on us, when suffering crushes us, we need much more than research. We need revelation—we need God’s inspired truth about how to grieve as those who have hope.

Research informs us that people’s typical response to loss is denial. God’s Word offers us profound practical wisdom for moving from denial to candor: honesty with ourselves.

Denial Described

Candor contrasts with the typical first stage of human grieving—denial. When suffering first hits; when we first hear the news of the unexpected death of a loved one; when we’re told that we’ve been fired; we respond with shock. We can’t believe it. Life seems unreal.

I experienced this when I was ten years old. It was December and I was coming home from Riddle’s Pond where we were playing hockey. Billy Trapp and I were in a fight. My Mom pulls up, rolls down the window, and says:

“Get in the car. Grandpa died.”

My response?

“You’re kidding.”

Like my Mom would kid about something like that.

True Faith Faces All of Life

Denial is a common initial grief response. I believe that this initial response can be a grace of God allowing our bodies and physical brains to catch up, to adjust. However, after the necessary period of time, long-term denial is counter-productive. More than that, it is counter to faith, because true faith faces all of life.

I worked with a Pastor who struggled to move past denial. His wife died while giving birth to their only child. He denied the reality for months. He went on preaching, continued ministering. He never grieved, never wept. He put on a happy face. Behind the scenes, he was a mess. He imagined that he saw and heard his deceased wife. He was near the point of a total emotional and spiritual collapse, largely because he could not move out of the stage of denial and into the stage of candor.

So what is “candor”?

Visit again tomorrow and we’ll not only define it; we’ll illustrate it in real life. See you then…

Facing Suffering Face-to-Face with God

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

Post 3: Facing Suffering Face-to-Face with God

My study of biblical suffering suggests an eight-stage process for moving hurting people to hope in Christ. God’s purpose in suffering is not simply to remove us from our suffering, but to help us to face suffering face-to-face with God.

Today, I’ll outline the stages and tomorrow we’ll start exploring each one day-by-day. Just remember this: “stages” or “phases” can be misleading. Moving through grieving to growth is not an easy step-by-step process. It is a mess, murky, mucky, real-and-raw journey of twists and turns, ups and downs.

Sustaining in Suffering: “It’s Normal to Hurt and Necessary to Grieve”

The first four phases in biblical grieving compare and contrast with the first four stages in the typical human response to suffering.

1. Stage One: Candor

We move from denial and isolation to candor: honesty with self.

2. Stage Two: Complaint

We move from anger and resentment to complaint: honesty with God.

3. Stage Three: Cry

We move from bargaining and works to cry: asking God for help.

4. Stage Four: Comfort

We move from depression and alienation to comfort: receiving God’s help.

Healing in Suffering: “It’s Supernatural to Hope in the Midst of Grief”

The next four phases in the biblical healing process contrast and compare with the world’s response of acceptance.

5. Stage Five: Waiting

We move from regrouping to waiting: trusting with faith.

6. Stage Six: Wailing

We move from deadening to wailing: groaning with hope.

Stage Seven: Weaving

We move from despairing and doubting to weaving: perceiving with grace.

Stage Eight: Worshipping

We move from digging cisterns to worshipping: engaging with love.

The Healing Path

Return to the healing path tomorrow as we begin to explore together the first of these eight biblical stages of grieving and growing.

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…

God's Healing for Life's Losses

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

Post 1: Creative Suffering

Frank Lake powerfully depicts God’s purposes in suffering.

“There is no human experience which cannot be put on the anvil of a lively relationship with God, and battered into a meaningful shape.”

Notice what the anvil is—a lively relationship with God. Notice the process—battering. Notice the result—meaning, purpose.

Another individual, this one intimately acquainted with grief, also pictures creative suffering. You may recall Terry Waite. The British hostage released in 1991 after nearly five years of solitary confinement in Lebanon was chained to the wall of his room for almost twenty-four hours a day. Reflecting on his circumstances, he noted:

"I have been determined in captivity, and still am determined, to convert this experience into something that will be useful and good for other people. I think that's the way to approach suffering. It seems to me that Christianity doesn’t in any way lessen suffering. What it does is enable you to take it, to face it, to work through it and eventually convert it."

Creative suffering doesn’t simply accept suffering, through the Cross it converts it.

The World’s Way and the Word’s Way

How do we move from suffering to creative suffering? How do we help others to suffer face-to-face with God rather than turning their backs on God during suffering?

We have two basic options.

1. We can turn to the world’s way.

Students of human grief have developed various models that track typical grief responses, such as the typical five stages of death and dying. However, these models fail to assess whether the responses correspond to God’s process for hurting (grieving) and hoping (growing). We will address and assess the typical five stages, however, we want to move beyond them.

2. We can turn to the Word's way.

The biblical approach to grieving and growing identifies eight scriptural stages in our responses to life’s losses. God’s way equips us to competently, compassionately, and comprehensively sustain and heal sufferers so that they can face suffering face-to-face with God.

Join us again tomorrow as we introduce God’s healing process.

God's Healing for Life's Losses

RPM Ministries is excited to announce their newest one-day conference:

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:

How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Experience engaging PowerPoint presentations, relevant biblical teaching,
personal healing, and equipping to minister to your hurting friends.

Presented by Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC

Bob is the Author of five books, including God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting (BMH Books, 2009); Chairman, Master of Arts in Christian Counseling and Discipleship Department, Capital Bible Seminary; and Director of the Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation Network for the American Association of Christian Counselors.

Attend and You Will Learn How To:

*Apply to your life a four-stage biblical model of facing life’s losses with courageous honesty.
*Apply to your life a four-stage biblical model of finding healing hope by finding God.
*Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical stages of hurting and grieving: candor, complaint, cry, and comfort.
*Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical stages of hope and growth: waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping.
*Practice skillfully the biblical counseling and soul care arts of sustaining and healing.
*Build healing communities where Christians find courage and comfort in God and each other.

Comprehensive, Compassionate, Culturally-Informed
Biblical Grief Counseling

Students of human grief have developed various models of typical grief responses. However, these models fail to assess whether the responses correspond to God’s process for hurting (grieving) and hoping (growing). Dr. Bob Kellemen, in God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, equips you to apply eight scriptural stages in your response to life’s losses—helping you to find hope when you’re hurting. Bob will also empower you to minister healing hope to others so that they can face suffering face-to-face with God.

Attend the God’s Healing for Life’s Losses Seminar To:

*Experience personal healing and biblical hope.
*Encounter God in the midst of your suffering.
*Empathize with hurting people more compassionately.
*Encourage suffering people more competently.
*Empower your congregation to become a “hospital for the hurting.”

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses Seminar Schedule

8:00-8:45--Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:45-8:55--Praise and Worship
8:55-9:00--Greeting and Prayer
9:00-10:30--Session One: Launching the Journey of Grief: Honesty with Yourself and with God—Candor and Complaint
10:30-10:45--Break
10:45-12:00--Session Two: Inviting God to Join Your Journey: Finding God Even When You Can’t Find Answers—Cry and Comfort
12:00-1:00--Lunch Provided
1:00-1:15--Praise and Worship
1:15-2:30--Session Three: Deepening Your Journey During the Dark Night of the Soul: On the Road to Hope—Waiting and Wailing
2:30-2:45--Break
2:45-4:00--Session Four: Traveling with God on the Journey of Faith: Joining the Larger Story—Weaving and Worshipping
4:00--Closing Benediction
4:00-4:30--Optional Book Signing

RPM Ministries, www.rpmministries.org, rpm.ministries@gmail.com
PO Box 270, Crown Point, IN 46308, 219-662-8138
Changing Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth
Comprehensive, Compassionate, Culturally-informed
Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation