- Grief, more times than not, that's how it starts. We think, just yesterday, just last night, just this morning, I talked to him. Things weren't like this. Man, the news can hit us in a way that leaves us shocked, surprised. I remember, it was April 19th and my mom called. Her and my dad were on the way to Duke which, for a procedure which doctors said was routine and outpatient. They weren't worried about it. Dad wasn't worried about it, but Mom had been worried about it. So she said, hey, do you want to drive up and meet us somewhere on
95 so that we can pray? And I was thinking, like, oh man, that's about two hours there, two hours back for about
five minutes of prayer. Why don't we FaceTime, Mom? We could talk. I call you, we could pray a couple times on the way. It'd be even better, right? So I called and we pray a couple times. They finally get to Duke and do all the check in stuff. A couple hours pass and I was expecting the call to say hey, Dad's out, just wanted you
to know everything's okay. And when Mom called, man,
she was just sobbing. I couldn't understand what she was saying. Dad had had a brain bleed. They had to do an emergency craniotomy to give his brain some space, but he was there at
Duke and nonresponsive. I just couldn't believe
just a little while ago, we'd talked, he was joking, I was praying with him. Like, seriously? Well, almost eight months later, to the day, Dad passed away, went on to be with the Lord. Mom had been his primary caregiver. They had moved from several
different facilities, ultimately to our house and along the way, I thought we had kinda started grieving. We'd been praying for a miracle, believing that God could do it, but with each passing holiday or event that Dad used to be a part of, realizing that he couldn't be a part of it and things didn't seem to be progressing in the way that they thought, we thought they would. I felt like we were grieving a little bit along the way even though
we weren't talking about it. But man, in the two months since his passing, it has been a tough season for our family. In fact, just this past week, my mom said, hey, I just want you to know I'm really struggling. When I close my eyes, all I can see is your dad from the last year. And all I want to see is
the 39 years before that. Just the week before he passed, they celebrated their
40th wedding anniversary and Mom was like, I want to remember all of the good years but all I see is the year where I was his caregiver. I don't want to lose those memories. You know, by definition, grief means deep distress, an unfortunate outcome, a cause for suffering. The words are true,
but it kinda feels like Webster maybe pulled a committee together and said, hey guys, we
need to try to describe this emotion in which none of us have ever actually felt, right? If I were to describe
grief, just in my own words, I think it's the most
avoided, undesirable, confusing, painful emotion that there is. It carries with it a heaviness that you just can't sit down. It's not as much a burden that you carry as is it
one that just sits on you. It's all-consuming. There's no escaping it. It impacts you mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. It can keep you awake when
you want to go to sleep. It can make you feel like going to sleep in times that you need to be awake. It can cloud your thinking, lead to poor decision-making and wildly impacts your moods. Lots of highs and lows. Grief is a global certainty. It crosses over language barriers, cultural differences,
socioeconomic backgrounds. It doesn't favor race or genders. While there are many people in this world who will never taste
the sweetness of success or really grab hold of peace or experience a season of happiness in their lives, every single one of us will experience grief at
some point in our lives. Jesus said it this way in John 16 there on your outline. Here on earth you will have
many trials and sorrows. Oh, and welcome to Seacoast, by the way. My name is Josh Walters. (congregation laughing) (laughing) Some of you all are thinking like, for real, Walters? I brought a friend today. (congregation laughing) (laughing) You're not like this. I know, there's nothing fun about grief, but man, just stick with me. So listen, by testimony, how many of you, here at Mount Pleasant, at one of the distant campuses, or online, how many of you would say that you have a testimony of having experienced
some trials and sorrows in your life? Every hand, man, we all have, to some degree. Well for the last few weeks,
we've been in a series called This is Us, where we've been looking
at some common themes from the popular television show. Grief is an unwanted emotion that seems to make an appearance in just about every episode. In some episodes, it's in the death of Jack and Rebecca's
baby, their third child when it was born. In others, it's in the
death of Jack's father, due to his struggle with alcohol or Randall's father, William, and his struggle with cancer, or ultimately Jack's death himself. In other episodes, it has to do with Kate and Toby's miscarriage
or in the pain and regret of Kevin's divorce or in the death of Annie's pet lizard. (congregation laughing) Death, you all laugh, that's serious for an eight year old, you know what I'm saying? I think part of the
reason the show resonates so powerfully is because of how gracefully it tells the story of grief. For some reason, we can sense
our story in their story and because of that, it brings
about a lot of emotions. This past Monday morning, I Googled This is Us grief video. I wanted to find what
were some of the clips from the show that would
resonate with the message and that led me to searching
This is Us grief Kevin, This is Us grief Randall, and after about three hours, I had seen every
character's greatest moments of pain before lunch, right? I had cried every tear I had in my body. I was starting to feel
dehydrated, you know? (congregation laughing) I realized that I hated this message, I hated this series and I wanted to punch
somebody in the face. (congregation laughing) You know, all before lunch is just where I was at. When was the last time
you experienced grief? You know, we're quick to
associate that emotion with the loss of a loved one, which is true. It definitely is, but by definition, deep distress, an unfortunate outcome,
a cause for suffering, that could be brought about by a lot of different circumstances. Maybe for some of you,
it's professionally. All of your life, you've
dreamed of being an athlete, a pilot, a soldier, a fill in the blank, whatever that was for you. And just before grabbing
hold of the dream, you learned something. For some reason, it wasn't
gonna be possible for you. That was Pastor Michael's story here at the Mount Pleasant campus. All of his life, he had
wanted to be a pilot. He had prepared for it, and just as he was entering flight school, he had a physical and learned that he had a medical condition that was gonna keep that
from being a reality for him that he was unaware of. Now for any of you at this
campus that know and love Pastor Michael, man, praise God, that he didn't become a pilot, right, that God had other plans for him. But whatever the case,
when we don't get to attain or grab hold of a dream
we've always wanted, it can cause us to enter
into a season of grief. Maybe for some of you,
you've always dreamed of starting a family and you find the right guy,
which took a lot more time than you were expecting, right? They're hard to come by, just kidding. And you approach this thing God's way. You pray about it. You go to start a family only to realize that
there's something going on inside of you that you weren't aware of and that you weren't going
to be able to have kids on your own. Or maybe it's even a good thing, right, you raise your kids up to
ultimately send them out of the house and now your last kid is going off and moving out, and as excited as you are about it, you're starting to have
some thoughts and feelings of what this empty nest
season is gonna look like. It means the kids are gone,
and while you're excited, there's some grief that comes with that as to what it now looks like
for you as a mom or a dad. Things are gonna be different. What's interesting about grief
is how it presents itself. It's not difficult to identify emotions like anger or sadness. In fact, all you have to do is stand out in the parking lot here at
the Mount Pleasant campus and peer in the window of cars passing by, you know, to pick up on some anger as people are trying to
get out of the parking lot. But anger and sadness are
just two of many emotions that someone is going through grief has and what they would describe
as an emotional rollercoaster. Man, that's been my life
for the last two months. Not to mention how I feel
about my dad's passing. Man, he was our boys' hero. We have four boys and man,
he was an incredible Pepaw. He would drive into town to go on their school field trips with them. He would drive up for rec
games, sporting events. He would surprise them, pick them up for school,
take them out for ice cream. He loved to snuggle and
spoil them to no end. He would do the same with our girls. Him and my mom would drive
up and pick up the girls along with the couple of their friends and they'd drive up to
Charlotte, go to Carowinds for the weekend. My dad spoiled Katie. We would go to see them and
every time without fail, we would go to leave and
he would give her a hug and grab her hand to say something sweet and there would be a transfer
of cash that happened, a tightly folded wad of twenties. (congregation laughing) It used to be my money, right? (congregation laughing) At some point, there was a transition and he started giving it to her. Thankfully she was a good
sharer and she'd get in the car and I'd say, so what'd he give you? I saw that. (laughs) (congregation laughing) Or Dad would call me and say, him and Katie talked
four or five times a week and so he would call her and she would be looking
at furniture online or in some furniture store and Dad would eventually call me to say, hey listen, I've been thinking about as much as Mom and I are
coming up the road there, I need something comfortable to sit on. Will you go to this place
and buy that couch for Katie? Just put it on my card. I'm like, what? I want stuff too, you know. (laughs) (congregation laughing) Buying everything for Katie. Used to be my deal, you know? But he was a giver, a lover. Man, it's been hard for us to get used to living in a world without him. It's been equally difficult for us to have grace for one another. Every night, going to bed, our boys want to hear Pepaw's stories. It's like, man, I've
long run out of stories to tell about Dad. Now I just kinda make up
things that sound like they might be true about him, you know. (congregation laughing) Katie and I are tired. It's like we're short with each other. Find ourselves arguing and frustrated and questioning like,
what is wrong with us? And we have to keep reminding ourselves that man, we're in a season of grief. Something that was very
much a part of our lives and still is, but isn't in the same way. And we're in a season of grief. We have to have grace for one another. Well, for the last 50 years, counselors and psychologists
have been studying people's response to grief as a result of a book written in 1969 by a woman named Elizabeth Kubler Ross. And when she wrote a book that identified five different stages or categories of grief there at the top of your outline I want to take just a
minute and talk through. First of which is upon
receiving hard news, experiencing a loss of some kind, we can enter into a season
of shock or disbelief, much like we saw of Randall in the video. You know, just the night before, Dad was playing the piano and singing. He was fine. There's no way his
organs are shutting down. I don't believe it. Or maybe you get a hard
diagnosis and you think, like, man, I've eaten healthy, I get good sleep, I drink enough water, I've worked out my whole life. There's no way I have cancer. Or we'd gone on date nights, we go to marriage
conferences, we pray together. There's no way my spouse
would do that to me. A season of disbelief and shock. Ultimately, as reality starts
to set in and you realize, man, this is my life. This is my reality now, it can give way to anger. You're mad, I've seen this
happen in other people's lives but I never imagined
it would happen to me. And because you're mad,
man, you take it out on the people that are closest to you, that are walking through
the story with you. That anger can give way to bargaining, as you ask a series of if-only questions or statements. You think, well if only
we would have gotten a second opinion, or if you only I would
have listened to her more. If only I would have loved him better. If only we would have eaten healthier or exercised, than maybe things
would have been different. And that can bring on incredible guilt because you take on responsibility you were never meant to carry, thinking that in some way, had you lived differently,
acted differently, been different, you could
have changed the outcome, but you couldn't. Because of that, man, it can bring about incredible depression, a sadness, a sorrow that you just can't climb out of, feeling responsible for the
situation that you're in. But ultimately by the grace of God, it would give a way to a
season of acceptance and hope, where you embrace the mortality and inevitable future of yourself or a loved one and that it brings about more stable emotions in your life. Those stages don't necessarily happen in that order and the intensity changes for whatever the loss or grief might be. But if you think about the
last time you experienced grief in your life in light of those stages, is there one or two of
them that you tended to hang out on? Any places in particular where you found yourself getting stuck or maybe you just avoided entirely? It can be hard for any one of us walking through those stages, but can you imagine
what it would feel like for a family, for all of those stages to be processed together
going on under one roof? Well today, I'd like for us to look at a passage that in many ways resembles my home for the last few months. The Apostle Paul is writing
a letter to the church in Thessalonica and the people there have experienced some loss of loved ones. They're going through some grief and the Bible doesn't tell us exactly what was happening relationally, but because they're people,
we know that there were some who were sad and depressed, there were others who were shocked. While some might have been
experiencing acceptance, there were others who
were very sad and angry and man, when they came
together, it just wasn't pretty. So Paul writes them a letter
to kind of serve as a guide in their grief, to say,
hey, when you're hurting, here's some steps that you can take that lead to life. It's found in 1 Thessalonians
there on your outline. It says this. So what can we learn from this passage? If you find yourself in a season of grief, which Jesus promises that we will all have at some point, what are some thoughts that lead to life? The first of which is
there on your outline. I should grieve. I should grieve. Now on principle, I don't think any of us disagree with this, but my
question for you would be, do you actually do it? Do you actually do it? You know, if you receive news that a loved one has
passed away on a Monday, wherever you are, you know, at the office or work, you would head home, emotional, you would call family. If they lived out of town, you would at some point get online and maybe purchase airline tickets or start packing up bags so that you could drive. You meet up with family
wherever this loved one lived and you cry together, you
share a few meals together. You begin preparing for a visitation and a memorial service. Maybe you stay a couple days afterwards because you've gotta do
a little bit of planning regarding their possessions, an estate or clean some things out. Whatever you might do. You fly home on a Sunday and somehow by Monday, you're supposed to step back into life as normal. Show back up at work when
really, the grieving process is just beginning and life is gonna look anything but normal. So the question for us then is what does it look like for me to grieve? If I'm supposed to
grieve, whether it's by, in losing a loved one or in realizing of dreams that aren't
going to be fulfilled, what does it look like for me to grieve? Well biblically, there's
a number of examples there on your outline
we're gonna read through. And as we read through
them, I'd encourage you to just listen for any
common words or themes that you can underline
that we'll talk about once we get through them. The first of which is
in Genesis chapter 50 when Jacob died. It says, and the Egyptians
wept for him 70 days. When they came to the
threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation, and he made a mourning
for his father seven days. When Aaron died in Numbers 20, it says, and when all the congregation saw that Aaron had perished, all the house of Israel
wept for Aaron 30 days. When Moses died in Deuteronomy 34, it says, Moses was 120
years old when he died. His eye was undimmed
and his vigor unabated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab for 30 days. Then the days of weeping and
mourning for Moses were ended. In 1 Samuel 1, when
Saul and Jonathan died, it says, then David
took hold of his clothes and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. They mourned and wept
and fasted until evening for Saul and Jonathan and his son and for the Lord and the house of Israel, because they had fallen by the sword. It's like, man I looked hard anywhere in this message
to find some humor, right, and this passage was one of them. It's like in each of
these, if you know anything about David and Saul's story, David was anointed to be king. Saul was a wicked king, but David had worked hard to honor him. It's like, in each of these passages, you see 30 days, 70 days, seven days. Well, when King Saul died, David said, you know what, I
know it's important to mourn, so between lunch and dinner, you guys rip your clothes and be sad. Then we're gonna party. (laughs) (congregation laughing) For the next four hours,
we're gonna mourn. So what kind of themes did you see? What common language stood out to you as we read those passages? For me, there's four different things that come to mind that I think can serve as a helpful
guide for you in grief. If you've got a pen, I'd encourage you to write these down. They're not on your outline sheet. The first of which is
that in seasons of grief, we have to be attentive to time. Attentive to time. In each of those passages, they allotted a certain
period, a window of time for their grief. And for any one of you, grief is directly
proportional to relationships. So the grieving widow is gonna grieve much
more intensely and longer than her best friend, right? Her friend is gonna hurt
because a sister is hurting. The widow is gonna hurt 'cause her soul has been ripped in half. Whatever the case, we
see in these passages, a people, a community who
allotted a certain window of time for their pain and grieving. For Katie and I, every time we butt heads or gets frustrated with each other, it takes some time for us to remember, oh yeah, we're in a season of grief. So when you experience a
loss or pain of some kind, it's important that
you're attentive to time, that you give yourself the grace needed, 'cause your body's gonna
respond in some ways that you don't get to control, with fatigue and emotions, highs and lows. You have to be attentive to time, remembering that you're
in a season of grief. Second, we have to present mentally. Present mentally, not
just attentive to time but making a decision
to give ourselves over to this season of grief. Oftentimes when you receive hard news of a diagnosis or a loved one that's lost, it wasn't a
decision that you made. You're thrown into this season of grieving where you feel powerless. You don't have any control while being present mentally
gives you some control, and says you know what,
I'm gonna give myself into this season. I'm gonna allow myself
to feel and do the things that I need to to ultimately bring me
to a place of healing. So we have to be attentive
to time, present mentally. Then we have to be available emotionally. For some of you ladies,
this is a lot easier for you than it is for the guys. For us to be available emotionally, man, we can feel like
we need to be strong. We need to be strong for our families, we need to be strong for our kids. I'm supposed to be strong
and set a good example for the other people around me, and so being strong looks like not being emotional, not crying, not doing so many of the things that our bodies need to do to help us experience
some healing in life. You have to be available emotionally. Just say, you know what,
in this window of time, I'm making a decision to give myself over fully to grief, to allow my body to feel the things that it needs to. Lastly, we have to be engaged spiritually. What we saw with King David and
Saul and Jonathan's passing, is that in that window of time where they mourned and grieved, they fasted as well. The purpose of fasting is the breaking down of our flesh for the building up of our spirit. God, what do You have for me in this? Turning to God, seeking Him and in any moment or
season of grief and pain in your life, the Bible
tells us that God draws close to the brokenhearted. He saves those who are crushed in spirit. If there's ever a time where you can be certain
that you're in a thin place, that God is close to you, it's in your greatest moments of pain that it's important that
we're engaged spiritually. Okay God, what do You have for me here? When I think about the last
couple of months in our home, I attribute my grief
to the kindness of God. We have a very full life. Man, we'll work a full
day here at the church and then go home to a full night. With six kids, there is
always a project, a play date, a sporting event, and we enjoy staying busy. Well, Dad passed away on December 22nd and our offices are closed
the week between Christmas and New Years because we have
85 Christmas services, right? (congregation laughing) So we were closed that week. The first week of January,
we had Snowmaggedon, right, where kids were out of school. It was like, even Starbucks was closed. So nothing good was
happening in Mount Pleasant. And so that whole week kinda
forced us to stay home. Couldn't really get out and
drive anywhere, do anything, so we stayed in pajamas and watched movies and talked and had down time. Well then the next week, Katie and I had a 15th anniversary trip. Our anniversary was actually
the day before Dad passed, and so we had canceled that trip sensing it was close, put
it back on the calendar and had some extended time away. And as I looked back on it now, I had three weeks of time just carved out that I wouldn't
have experienced otherwise. I think my life would have looked like stepping back in to the
busyness and the usual pace and not really processing or grieving the way that I needed to. But God was, man, just so kind in giving me the time with Katie, with our kids, and with
friends that I needed. It's important that I grieve. When you experience a loss of some kind, a relational loss, a dream, that we set aside time for
God to do the work in us that He desires to do. Secondly there on your outline, I should grieve in community. In community. Again in principle, I think we do this, but I would say that we're really good at the initial response, right? When you hear about a friend of yours who's lost a loved one
or is experiencing grief of some kind, we're quick to
shoot them a text message, an email, a phone call, stop by their house, send them flowers, take them a meal. Something to say, I'm praying for you and I'm with you. The challenge is that
grief is never a moment. It's never a meal. It's always a season and at some point, it becomes the hurting
person's responsibility to reach out to others
to say, I need help. When as a community, we have to remember that the call for us is
to grieve in community, to walk with brothers and
sisters in their pain. In This is Us, Jack and Rebecca, when they were pregnant with triplets, they lost the third baby upon delivery. They ended up adopting an abandoned child that was there at the hospital and when they get home with three babies, Rebecca has this point
where she's just overwhelmed with the weightiness of
life and so she bails. She doesn't tell Jack where she's going or if she'll even be back. And when she does show
back up to the house, this is what happened. (mellow music) (baby crying) - You know, I didn't know where you were the last four hours. - I know, I'm sorry. - I thought you ran off to
Mexico and abandoned the kids. - I would never run off to Mexico and abandon the kids without you. - Promise? - I promise. I can't stop thinking about
the one we lost, Jack. I can't. I know, I know we have these new babies and I should be happy, but I just can't stop thinking about him. - Me too. - Yeah? - Yeah. It's all I think about. You know, I feel, I feel guilty when I think about him and then, you know, I feel guilty when I
stop thinking about him. - Me too. I thought it was just me (scoffs). - No, it's me too. (mellow music) - I love you. - I love you too. - You see the relief in her face when she realized she wasn't the only one feeling that kind of guilt and grief? She said I thought it was just me. Can you imagine what their life would look like had they
not had that moment together where they realized that
they were both feeling the same pain? It's like at some point,
their guilt or grief would have turned into anger or sadness. They would have done
their best to manage it, maybe through alcohol or medication. Whatever the case, it
would have brought about conflict in their home and they would have taken
it out on one another, when really, all they
needed was each other. A willingness to grieve in community and talk with each other
about how they were feeling. Jesus knew that we were
gonna need each other in our grief, and because of that, when He was on the cross, looking out over people, He saw two folks, both
of which who loved Him, that were gonna need
each other after He left. And in John 19 there on your outline, this is what it says. When Jesus saw His mother there and the disciple whom He
loved standing nearby, He said to her, "Woman, here is your son" and to the disciple,
"Here is your mother." From that time on, the disciple took her into his home. What Jesus was saying
was, hey, in your grief, in your pain, I need you
to draw closer together than you've ever been. I need you to love one
another like family. So the question for us then is what does that look like? A good example is in Job chapter 2. After hearing that his wife and family had been lost, that Job was hurting, his friends go to see him. And there on your outline, it says, when they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him. They began to weep aloud
and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. They sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him,
because they knew how great his suffering was. Now just as a side note in grief, if you have a friend that's hurting, tearing your clothes and showing up dirty, I'm not letting you in
my house naked and dirty. (congregation laughing) Unless you have a lasagna,
you know. (laughs) Then maybe, all right. You could read that passage and think, well, his friends didn't
know what to say or do, but I think they knew
exactly what to say and do. When someone is in that kind of grief, you're not gonna be able to offer words that lead to life, but, man, there is a ministry to presence. A burden shared is a burden lightened, and just sitting there with him silent, communicated without communicating that I'm here for you, that I love you and that you're not alone. Romans 12:15 says it this way. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Man, there's a number of reasons why we don't do this in a prolonged manner. First of which is just because when we let everything
out, it's not pretty. That's why they call
it an ugly cry, right? It's like, it doesn't
matter how good you look, how pretty you are, when you're willing to let
it go, it ain't pretty. And so you think, well,
I'm just gonna keep that at the house. I'm still not all put back together. I'm gonna take another day off work. I don't want anybody to see me like that. Our temptation is to isolate and withdraw when the reality is
that we need each other. My seven year old, Asher, man, he's got all the words, right. He's a storyteller. And the truth is always
somewhere in the middle of whatever the story is. Lately, he's been telling us that his friends weren't playing with him. He hasn't wanted to go to school. He's always loved school,
loved his friends, been like the class clown but lately that just hasn't been the case, and so this past Monday,
on the playground, Asher had isolated himself from the class, and a couple of his
friends run over to him and they said, Asher, why
aren't you playing with us? And Asher's response is,
don't you know what happened in my life? And all this time, like, I haven't known what the
truth was with Asher, but the truth is he's
hurting inside, right? And he doesn't know how
to process his emotions. If there's ever been a
place where he felt at home, man, it's the playground. He's never met a stranger. He knows how to be silly and have fun, but he finds himself in a place where he's had fun in the past unable to have fun now, because of the feelings of sadness. And so, he's isolated. Man, whether you are seven or 57, the temptation in the midst of pain is gonna be to remove
yourself from people, but the truth is, we need
one another in our grief. So it's important that
I grieve in community. Lastly there on your outline. I should grieve in community with hope. With hope, what does that look like? 2 Corinthians 1:3-11
there on your outline. It says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. This is the money verse. Who comforts us in all of our troubles. He's not the dad that says,
hey come on, Bud, get up. Your knees aren't even bleeding. It was just a fall, you're okay, you're not hurt. You know, that's what I do. That's not Him. Father of compassion, God of all comfort. He deploys them in our times of need. Comforts us in all of our troubles. Why, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the
comfort we ourselves have received from God. What that means for each of us
today is if you find yourself in a season of grief or pain or loss, why is it
important that I grieve? Because when Father God
draws close to comfort me, there's gonna come a point later in life where He uses the same
comfort I received from God, not to comfort somebody
else in my own strength, in my own knowledge, in my own ability, but to comfort them with the very comfort I received from God. That means there's purpose to your pain, whatever it may be that
you're walking through today, if you'll be present mentally, engaged emotionally, if
you'll give yourself over to this season of grief,
God will use it later to bring about good in
someone else's life. For just as we share abundantly
in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort
abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is
for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted,
it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm. Why is it important that
we grieve in community? 'Cause in our pain, it can be
so easy for us to lose hope. We need people around us that won't let us get stuck in
any of the seasons of grief. Won't let us hang too long
in the seasons of anger. You're gonna feel the same pain tomorrow that you did today if all
you do is focus on yesterday. We walk through our grief with people so that they can help us move along, 'cause their hope can be firm for us when ours is not. Our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as
you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. And for anyone who's
experienced grief or loss in their life, man, that sentence best captures it. It felt like I had received
a sentence of death. A sorrow had come over
me that I couldn't shake. But this happened, he says, that we might not rely
on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. If you ask yourself, why am I still here? Why did this happen to me? Why do I feel like I've
come to the end of myself? It's so that you would rely on God. So that you would lean into Him, the God who raises the dead. He has delivered us, He has delivered us in the past. He will deliver us in the future. On Him, we have set our
hope that He will continue to deliver us, as you
help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many. I should grieve in community, with hope. Man, we live in a world today where we are surrounded by sorrows, bombarded with tragedy. You barely have time to grieve after hearing about one
school shooting or bombing or personal tragedy
before you're bombarded with news of another. Man, apart from the hope of Jesus, our world is a mess. How do we find hope? For many of you today,
as we begin to respond, here at Mount Pleasant,
across all of our campuses, we're gonna sing a song and the opening lines of that song say are you hurting and broken within, overwhelmed by the weight of your sin? Jesus is calling. And church, today, it's
important for you to know that if you're hurting
and broken for any reason, the loss of a loved one, a dream or vision for your life that you've been preparing for that you've realized isn't gonna be yours to
attain or experience. Man, we worship a God who
draws close to us in our pain. If we'll allow ourselves
to grieve in community, we can find hope in Jesus. And for many of you today, I'm praying and believing you're gonna find that hope, maybe for the first time. Maybe it'll look like you becoming part of the family of God, praying a prayer of faith, saying God, I don't have
that hope in my life. I want to receive the
free gift of love from You that You would send Your
Son to die on the cross for my sin, that by making a
profession of faith in Him, I might have eternal life, acknowledging that Paul said to be absent with the body is
to be present with the Lord. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you shall be with Me in paradise. By making a profession of faith in Jesus, we don't have to live as a people who have no hope. That's the point Paul was making here. Don't grieve as people who have no hope. Man, as believers, don't
allow this season of sadness to overshadow the promise of eternity. There's so much about our
lives that are uncertain, but where we spend our eternal home is one that we can lock down today. And I'm praying for many of you that'll be the prayer you pray. For others, maybe in your grief, it's time to take a
step towards community, and today we've tried to do that as easy as we can. All you have to do is text the word GRIEF to 320320. We believe God presses in in our pain and we want to be a church
that presses in in your pain, whatever that might look like. There's many different small
group and resources available. But all you have to do is text GRIEF to 320320 and your campus pastor will follow up with you
on what that looks like. It's important that I grieve in community, with hope. Let's pray. God, I thank You so much that You are the Father of compassion, the God of all comfort who draws close to comfort
us in all of our troubles. And I pray for everyone under
the sound of my voice today, whether it's a pain and a grief that is raw and fresh that we're very much in the thick of today or maybe one that happened years ago that we suppressed or stuffed down and have never really leaned into You on. God, I pray that our hearts
would be opened before You, that we would encounter You as the God who loves us and is crazy about us. God, would You lead us
down a path of life? Would You usher in healing in our lives today? We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
