The Hammers And The Hopers - Defiant Hope

This morning we're going to talk about grief.

And I don't know what you think of when you hear that, but let me just say this.

Grief does not always wear black.

Grief comes in many different forms.

I have a very dear friend who has had 30 years in his profession, has advanced steadily in that profession.

Very high up, very good at what he does.

And because of one employee who lied about him, Because they didn't like the way they were treated.

He literally one Friday afternoon was called in to his superior's office.

And was done with a 30-year career.

It hit like a lightning bolt without warning.

I talked to him quite a while on the phone that night and his wife.

And I said, you're grieving, aren't you?

He said, yeah, that's it.

He said, I'm grieving.

Nobody died.

But he had lost something of great value, a life anchor to him, and obviously heavily identified with what he did and what he did well and what he tried to do for the glory of God.

Over in a moment.

Boom!

The hammer hits.

And he has some choices to make.

Life's painful losses are the hammers that hit us hard.

Whether they build us or tear us down is decided by the choices we make.

In fact When you get a major life hit, you're either going to come out with a harder heart or a softer heart.

Which is it gonna be?

You choose.

You're either going to come out closer to God or farther from God than you were before the hammer hit.

You're either going to be more about yourself or more about other people than you were before the hammer hit.

You're gonna become more open as a person and transparent, or you're gonna close up?

You cannot stay the same.

And when we lose a life anchor, we face one of what I call one of life's greatest hope killers.

Which is grief.

And that grief, that can be because of what you've lost when the doctor gives you that report.

What you're losing or have lost maritally, or in your son or your daughter, financially, materially, as we saw with the recent hurricanes. occupationally like my friend it may be that you are grieving and you don't even know it because you are grieving Quietly, and you've never really dealt with it, perhaps, does something that happened to you long time ago.

The lost innocence of your childhood Things that happened a long time ago.

You were abused.

You were betrayed.

You were abandoned You were torn down.

And you've never really dealt with it, perhaps.

And so that continues to define how you live and how you feel about a lot of things.

That's all grief.

Of course, on May sixteenth, twenty sixteen I got hit with a sledgehammer.

Some of you never had the privilege of meeting Karen.

Um we brought some that that her smile would radiate a room.

Her laugh would register on seismographs.

This was um these are look at all those names.

Mom, Ama, Nolly Not that this is based on the Navajo word, because we can't say the Navajo word because Navajos you have to go to say Navajo words and and my our mouths don't do that.

So uh Anna taught us that it's Nolly something for grandma and grandpa.

So we just became Nolly Ma and Nolly Pa.

Um and uh there's a lot of pictures as I go through our pictures, there's a lot of cuddling pictures I've noticed.

There's lots of hugging and kissing stuff.

I don't know Uh Brad always used to walk away and always used to embarrass him.

But uh there we are on a beach with the team and Karen known to uh so many native people as Mama Hutch and Our Sioux brothers and brothers gave her a name, Wambly Ina, Mother Eagle, and Her homegoing left a huge void in uh hundreds of native lives.

Let me just tell you this.

This meant a lot to me just to give you a, this will this will tell you a little bit about her.

First of all, she was a crazy lady And uh I I would like to amend a 50 song.

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a crazy lady your wife.

Karen was totally unpredictable.

Uh Lisa had just been born.

I'm traveling on a trip, a ministry trip.

She doesn't want me to forget. what's going on at home.

I open up my luggage and here's a pamper in the middle of my suitcase with peanut butter in the middle of the pamper.

This is this is uh one of a thousand stories I could tell you about the crazy lady that I married The dreaded moments, fear, a good definition of fear in our family could be defined in these words Oh no, mom has the mic.

That was always a frightening experience when mom had the mic.

And as many people in this room would testify, so many people have memories of how she made them feel, special and loved.

I got hundreds of things that told me that in the mail after her home going, more than I ever even realized.

She would stay up all night to fight for a life and to fight for a heart And she together, God honored us the privilege of beginning three different ministries together.

She's the wisest person I in my life.

I miss that wisdom tremendously, but I realize how much of it I still have with me.

This one comment, one of our important parts of our vision right now is the building of a native discipleship center on the land that many of you will see when you go with us today.

And uh I I really b we really believe that could be a game changer for Native America, a generation changer, to be an epicenter of preparing native young men and women like these to become change agents on their reservations all over this country.

We ask God for that miracle.

We were in a prayer circle on that on the land where it may be last year, and one of the ladies here turned to Rachel and she said, Can you picture that being here?

And Rachel, I don't know if you remember this, but it touched me very deeply.

And she responded to our friend here.

She said, yeah, she said Kind of like Mama Hutch's place, because it will be safe here And people felt safe with her.

So the loss has been massive.

And I've never spoken on grief as a message like this in my life.

Now I am.

Whatever form grief may come or is in your life, past, present, or future.

I want to spend a few minutes about the We can't talk about hope this weekend without this addressing the greatest hope robber of all.

And the more heavily invested you are in what you have lost, Whether it's a job or family or whatever it is, the deeper the hurt is, though greater the grief is Uh just I'm a words guy, and so you might be interested to know that the word grief actually goes back to the 15th century.

It was an old French word, grief.

I don't know what the word was exactly, but it meant burden.

Burden.

And I really understand that because grief is this heaviness that you carry in your heart.

It doesn't always It's not there, you're not crying all the time, but it is a burden, it is heavy.

And I described it one day.

I was looking for words, and I said to Doug, you know, this is like There is this major uh uh uh key score playing in my life and and my-and and the loud score of my life is one of joy. and excitement and passion and and and that that's the that's the score uh uh against which I or uh a back uh the backdrop of my life But it's like there is this minor key tune that is always playing.

It's not usually dominant, but it's always playing.

And every once in a while the volume gets turned up on that.

And that's when the sadness and the heaviness comes back.

There are two mistakes you can make with grief.

One is to deny it, and the other is to be defined by it.

If you don't handle your loss rightly It will define you for the rest of your life.

You won't even know it is, because it'll surface in so many ways.

And when the hammer hits, look at your notes.

Our natural responses will only, our natural responses will make the darkness darker.

But it's true, the hammer of loss and grief can build you if you make the choices.

Of defiant hope.

Romans chapter 5.

Let's see God's word on this.

We glory.

Paul has these wild sentences about The worst stuff that ever happens to you.

We glory in our sufferings.

I really, Paul, that will take a little explaining.

I hadn't thought about that being my reaction.

We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces.

Okay, here we go.

We're building The hammer is going to build something.

It's going to build perseverance, somebody who is able to handle anything and see anything through because of what suffering teaches them.

Perseverance will build character.

This becomes somebody that anybody can look to and trust.

And character will result in hope.

And so somehow the end result of being hit with one of life's hammers can be hope And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

So We know that the right choices can end with character, perseverance, and hope.

And when we have lost something or someone that's important to us, here's what you've got to know.

You are extremely vulnerable.

You are extremely vulnerable, and guess who knows that?

When did Satan, the temptation of Jesus is a blueprint for us to understand the mechanics of how Satan tries to bring us down And one of the things we find out is Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days.

He hasn't eaten, and that's when Satan hits.

He waits till our Savior's weakest moment to hit him.

He waits for yours.

And I'll tell you when one of these losses hits, and one of somebody we had a lot of conversations last night.

A lot of people are processing this last night.

Uh and uh and someone said to me, just it it's sudden that you don't have time to prepare.

And like, my friend, he didn't there was no preparation about his job.

There's no preparation for the report the doctor gives you Sometimes the finances, one one shift economically, and suddenly you're where you how did we how did I end up here?

Oh, one heartbeat. 1 Peter 5. 8 is the warning, of course, of God's word.

Be alert and of sober mind Because your enemy, the devil, prowls around.

He is stalking you.

He is stalking you at your moment of loss.

He's stalking you like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

They tell me that in Africa, the gazelle herds are seldom attacked by a lion as long as they're in the herd.

The way that a lion has a gazelle burger for lunch is that he runs the gazelle, tries to get one of them off on its own alone.

And at that point they're totally vulnerable.

And he's got his gazelle burger.

Satan tries to exploit and you know here's the crazy part.

You are so weak and you are so reeling from what hit that it's hard for you to get your Bible open, it's hard for you to pray And at the moment you most need to be alert and sober-minded, you feel the least like doing it.

It's a choice.

It's not a feeling.

Because you won't feel like it.

There's where hope is a choice.

So, because I'll tell you, man, when one of these things hits You have got fear?

You have got emotions that are just, yeah, a lot of you've experienced this.

That's like there's fear and then there's anxiety, but then there's anger.

But then there's like, I want to withdraw, I don't want to be around anybody, and there's panic.

What's what am I I don't know uh and you make you you tend to make bad decisions, uh you get you get uh a little mean a little harsh, it just it all this jumble of emotions.

I brought my journal with me.

This is one of the most important things I did.

God clearly led me to do this.

I found this on Karen's shelf.

It's a a journal she had not used.

And so I decided that if it was going to hurt this bad, I needed to make a record of this journey.

And I wrote, only days after I lost her.

Well, I didn't lose her, I know where she is, but you know what I mean.

I wrote in bold right here those words right there at the top.

I will not waste this grief.

I will not waste this grief.

I was one of the most important choices I could have made.

God, if it's going to hurt like this Doug Harnet, I'm gonna I wanna be.

I wanna come out of this somehow more useful to you Hammered into greater usefulness for you than I've ever been before.

Um Karen had an uh heirloom antique diamond and um that I don't I think she must have inherited it or I I think and didn't buy it.

Um, by the way, if you I I I wish you could have been if you I wish you could all have a lesson at how to do pawn chops from Karen.

She was The pawn shop owner after she left would go, what have I done?

But uh she was really amazing.

Uh but she had this Erlum antique diamond She took it into a local jeweler, and you know they have the little magic eye, you know, where they look at the thing and tell you what you can't see.

So he looked at this and he said, you know, there's a crack right in the center of it And Karen told, well, that was odd that there would be a crack in the middle of the diamond.

And she asked him about that, and he said, well, he said, here's what happens sometimes.

When the diamond is growing underground, It will, you know, in developing out of that hole, if there's an underground disturbance of some kind, or maybe an earthquake, the diamond will crack.

But some di- now some diamonds, that's it.

It's done when they crack.

But some of them will continue to develop even though they're fractured at the center.

He said, that's what happened with diamond.

I said, that could be people, can't it?

That you're fractured.

But you're still growing.

I got a piece of me broken inside that'll probably stay broken the rest of my life.

But I I'd like to be a diamond that's fractured but growing.

And continue to grow around that hole.

So we're going to take a look at six choices that can bring hope out of loss.

And help you not waste this because, and this is not in your notes, but you should write it down.

And veterans, you've heard me say this many times.

You can finish this for me.

If you're gonna get the pain, get the point.

Get the point If you haven't got that written down, Summer, write that down.

If you're going to get the pain, which you don't have a choice about, get the point.

God never allows pain in your life that doesn't have a point.

So get the point.

So you ready?

Let's let's roar down this road and quickly look at these hope.

Hope growing steps that come out of the biggest hurts of your life.

Number one, grieve your grief It may sound strange.

Grieve your grief.

Listen to the words of our master in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Let it happen Cry.

Go to God.

Let it out.

If it's anger, if it's pain, if it's confusion.

Whatever it is, blessed are those who mourn, for they're the ones.

In allowing themselves to mourn, they will be comforted.

Grief is I used the beach ball a different way last night, but let me just say it was so warm yesterday.

I was thinking of the beach, but I w i if you push the beach ball down, you can only keep it down for so long and it's gonna bounce up.

Grief is just like that And many people, because it hurts so bad, run from their grief and don't really grieve their grief.

Some of us still have stuff we have not really faced into.

Maybe you were burned by the church Maybe you've been burned by Christians.

That's grief.

There's so many kinds of wounds.

And we listed in the first part of this many of the things that wound us.

And when we stuff our grief, it morphs.

This is in your notes.

When we stuff our grief, it morphs into deeper darkness.

And believe me, grief not fully grieved. will breed monsters, starts to grow monsters inside of you.

I think I have I think I marked something in here that Hit me early on.

Hope you don't mind if I I don't really read from this usually to anybody, but um I must get away by myself.

I said, I am at the same time energized by people, but I must get away by myself to try to feel my feelings.

Hear God's voice and get Jesus' perspective on this land without a map.

I just had to stop the world and grieve my grief It doesn't mean it went away then.

But by facing into it, I think it has not defined me.

Brad cited for you The horrific brokenness of Native American people.

All of us know people who've been sexually abused, or maybe be the are the person.

All of us know people who have a drinking problem or drug problem or a violent family or depression or maybe committed suicide But I don't think you live in a place where that's just about everybody you know.

If you grew up on a reservation, that's your normal It's just about everybody you know.

I get asked, Ron, why?

Why the the the incredible amount of addiction And anger and hurt and depression and suicide.

Three of the young men and women you say standing up here?

Were this close to killing themselves at one point in their life?

They almost weren't here.

But for Jesus.

What is it?

Why A native brother wrote a book that I think put his finger on it.

He was an alcoholic, a recovering alcoholic.

His alcoholism was decades in the past And Art Holmes wrote a book called The Grieving Indian, First Nations Gentleman from Canada.

And his thesis of that book, heavily backed up with documentation. was that Native people are doing serial grieving, but they will not grieve.

They really will not get it out They push it in and as a result it grows into pain relief.

I've got to figure out a way to deal with this pain.

It grows into anger, which grows into violence, where there are bad decisions made.

The addictions are to are to try to not feel so bad.

The depression is from the serial grieving.

And when that mountain of grief, another death, another tragedy, and when that gets so big, you end your life.

That's the power of ungrieved grief.

That's why, well, let's go to um Billy Shakespeare.

You know Billy?

We were very close.

And he said this in Macbeth.

Give sorrow words.

That's three powerful words right there Give sorrow words.

The grief that does not speak knits up the overwrought and bids it break.

Boy, is that insightful.

That's exactly right.

It knits up the overwrought heart.

He didn't say it spawns terrible stuff, but it does.

Um I decided early on That I would need to be honest about my hurt If some of you got our blogs and have read my blogs, first one I wrote after Karen 's homegoing was My Shattered Heart.

My certain hope.

I wrote a number after that.

I wrote one called That Dreaded Anniversary, which was one year after, May 16th this year.

I've written several like that.

And I realized that if I was not honest about my hurt, who would believe me when I talked about my hope?

A lot of times we just say the Christian talking points.

Right?

We're okay.

We're always okay.

Because we're Christians.

I was not okay.

Did you know the stars are out right now?

Let's go outside and look at them.

See if you can find the uh big dipper.

You say, well, we can't see the stars.

There's no stars out.

Yeah, the stars are out.

The stars don't go.

Where do they turn them off at night?

No, the stars are out.

But we can't see the light of the stars except against the dark backdrop.

It's gotta be dark.

And it's okay to admit how dark it feels if you can shine the light of Christ out of that darkness.

But you've got to be honest about the hurt.

I see this happen on reservations night after night.

Why are these young men and women breaking through where missionaries have not been able to for 400 years?

Part of it is because they will be transparent about their hurt, but then they're transparent about their hope.

And it's just overwhelmingly glorifying to Christ in the long run.

So if you don't deny your grief, you won't be defined by your grief.

There you go.

And your first stop to go with letting it all out is the one who knows more about pain and more about grief. than anyone who ever walked this earth.

Isaiah 53.

Remember who you are pouring it out to.

You go to him and you tell him how you feel, he's not going to go, really?

Oh no.

He said , I've been waiting for you.

He will not, he's a gentleman, he will not come in and begin to work on that until you open it up to him He was despised.

He was rejected.

He was a man of suffering.

He is familiar with pain on a level none of us have ever known.

Like one from whom people look, rejection, despised, suffering, pain.

We held him in low esteem.

Go to the next verse.

Surely he took up our pain.

Go to him with it.

He bore our suffering.

Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquity.

Look at these verbs.

The punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds.

We are healed.

Remember this.

All human suffering must be viewed from Calvary You stand at the cross and look at human suffering from there.

That's the only place.

Does that give you all the answers?

No.

But it is the only place to begin to find hope and to find answers.

Hebrews chapter 4, oh I love this.

We do not have a high priest who was unable to empathize with our weaknesses.

Often when you have a loss, people will come to you and say, I know how you feel.

And what are you saying inside?

Right.

Thank you.

No, you don't.

They mean well.

I've done it.

I've d I know I've done it for people.

It's it's not they don't know how you feel.

But you will he Jesus says, I know how you feel, and boy does he know how you feel.

We do not have a high priest who's unable to empathize with our weaknesses.

We have one who's been tempted or tested, it also means, in every way, just as we are, but he handled it without sin.

And then go over to Psalm 56.

Oh, this is beautiful.

This is so tender.

List my tears on your skull.

Are they not in your record?

Actually, many other translations say this. that he stores up your tears in a bottle, I will find myself You all know about this if you've lost somebody.

I'm just suddenly I'm crying.

I'm like, what just happened?

We have a word for it in our family.

We call it a mom bush.

We got ambushed.

But something about mom.

We 're just, that's all we have to say to one another.

I got mom bush today.

And the triggers are endless.

But he stores up your tears.

This is how intimately concerned he is for you when you have gone through a loss.

Psalm 147, verse 3 He heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds.

Will you go to him and tell it all?

Just do a heart dump.

But then you need to reach out and talk and s give sorrow words Then um before I show you this next the second second uh way to hope in the middle of loss I have to tell you why I'm making this point.

It was December, excuse me, it was May 16th, 2017.

If you've lost someone you love, you know what the anniversary is.

You know there's the first Christmas.

There's the first Thanksgiving.

I have two pictures. that I carry sometimes of two Thanksgivings.

We get everybody together around our table at our house and Karen was the queen of Thanksgiving and the queen of Christmas and One of the pictures is 2015. 2016 there's one less person in the picture.

Those are hard times.

And all of us were wondering how we were gonna be on the day that she went to heaven.

And Don Larimer, my dear friend, about six o'clock that morning my phone beeped a text.

And speaking words from God Himself to me, he wrote this to me, praying that his joy would overwhelm you.

It's kind of a strange first thought on that morning.

His joy, knowing your bride. his bride into eternity has been and is at this very moment worshiping in his throne room and looking into the face of Jesus.

Ron, we love you and pray you celebrate more than you mourn.

This day.

Number two, celebrate more than mourn Don, thank you for not saying celebrate instead of mourn.

That wouldn't have been real.

No way.

You know we You ever notice when we lose somebody how we tend to fixate on the last days of their life, the last moments?

There's a whole life there for heaven's sake.

Why do we concentrate on uh you know a fraction of 1% of their life instead of their whole life?

But I had to make a decision that day, and I have to tell you that coming at six in the morning, that allowed me to make a choice of how I was going to handle that day And I had to ask the question, which side of eternity do I want to dwell on today?

The side I'm on or the side she's on.

I made the choice to dwell on the side of eternity that Karen is on.

Did I mourn?

Yes.

Did I celebrate?

More.

Revelation 22, verse 4.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Jordan graduated on May 15th.

That's the last place Karen and I were together.

As I left for a trip to drive through the night, a ministry trip with some friends, and my friend Gary is here and was on that trip with me.

I said, I love you, honey, and she said, I love you too.

And then she had tears in her eyes, which we've said a lot of goodbyes over the years.

She said, I'm really gonna miss you.

And I said, oh it it won't be long.

I was wrong about that.

But I know that the next day I uh that next weekend and we live streamed her service.

I said there were two graduations within 24 hours.

John graduated from high school on May 15th, and his grandmother graduated to heaven on May 16th.

When Jordan's class graduated, they threw their caps in the air.

When Karen graduated, she threw a dozen medicine bottles in the air.

No more prescriptions, baby.

Lot less trips to Walgreens.

He will wipe every I was talking to a nurse that was taking care of uh uh this thing I had in my arm to help fight the infection in my shoulder.

And oh go back to that, go back for that for a minute.

And I said, I want to tell you something.

You know you're gonna be out of work soon She said, really?

I said, yeah, and I read her this verse.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.

I said, we're gonna be out of work, all you guys in the medical profession.

Isn't that wonderful?

The old order of things has passed away I remember the number of times that Karen and I would be in church or in a meeting like this and we would sing one of those songs about worthy is the lamb that was slain.

And I began to picture.

I mean we were we'd get emotional then.

What is it like to sing worthy as the Lamb to the Lamb?

Right there with him.

And to think that she has walked with Jesus and she's met the people who are the legacy of our family who planted seeds of faith. generations ago and and she's walked with the giants of the faith and the giants of our past.

There is so much to celebrate Like I said, hope doesn't erase grief, but it envelops it.

It envelops it.

So your grief is surrounded by hope.

It's still there.

But is enveloped by the hope of Christ.

So shall I dwell on my pain?

Or shall I celebrate his loving purpose?

Because he always has a loving purpose.

That's why I said I will not waste this grief.

Psalm 57, verses 1 and 2.

Have mercy on me, O my God.

Have mercy on me, for in you I take refuge.

I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.

I cry out to God most high, to God who vindicates me.

That is the cry. of the human heart.

Write this down.

I wish this was original with me.

I heard it from an African-American pastor in the Billy Graham School of Evangelism where I was teaching.

When you cannot trace God's hand, trust his heart When you cannot trace God's hand.

God, what are you doing here?

But I know your heart.

I don't get what you're doing.

Once again, if you view it through Calvary, if you view it through the cross, You'll remember his heart.

There's three words in a well-traveled passage of Scripture that as I stand at Karen's grave, have taken a new significance to me.

You know the passage, and the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with the shout, with the voice of Archangel, with the trumpet of God and The dead in Christ will rise first, and then we who are alive and remain, we've been caught up together with them in the air, together with them to meet the Lord in the air. and three words that leaped off the page that had never real I was all concentrated on the Lord himself for the sin, which is the centerpiece of it, but those three words together with them You know what we call the cemetery?

We call it the rapture launch pad.

I'll say, guys, I'm going to the rapture launch pad today.

Together with them to meet the Lord.

Celebrate more than more.

Thirdly, unpack your regrets.

Unpack your regrets.

When Rachel does some of our gospel wrap-ups on the reservation, she walks around the whole evening with this backpack on.

It looks like she's kind of bending backwards like this.

Because it's full of rocks.

And everybody's kind of wondering why she keeps walking around with this heavy backpack when she does her when she does her wrap-up She talks about the backpack of rocks.

She's talking about sin that we all carry and and that you can drop your backpack of rocks at the cross of Christ.

And it's really powerful.

And she's another wonderful, powerful communicator of the good news of Jesus to her people.

But you know what?

We all have a backpack, and you know this that when you lose somebody, part of the sting of grief Is the things I should have done differently.

Right?

I wish I hadn't.

I wish I had.

Inevitably there are regrets.

I've had to deal with those.

I have stood at the Rampshire launch Rapture Launchpad.

And thought about, you know, I always said to Karen Honey, I I love to put a smile on your face.

But I didn't always We had a great love affair.

But I I let her down sometimes in a number of ways.

And those regrets just compound the grief.

And then I had to realize that when Jesus said it is finished.

It included all the things I should have done and shouldn't have done.

Acts 3. 19 very simply tells us.

Repent, get it over with, get it right with God, and I've done that.

Get it done.

And then I like this next part.

And then the times of refreshing.

Once you got rid of it, you left your backpack at the cross, the times of refreshing can come from the Lord.

So you know what you gotta do?

You gotta forgive what he's forgiven.

And leave your backpack at the cross.

Where you can, if there are things you can make right with other people.

Go do that and learn from those regrets so you don't have to re -mourn those same regrets another time What did you learn from it?

Well, now let's make it right in other relationships so you're not again mourning that another day.

I wrote in here I don't need to look it up because I know what I said.

I said, Lord, help me be the man that Karen always challenged me to be.

And that feels good to know that I'm making choices to be the man that she always challenged and encouraged me to be in Christ.

Let's go to number four.

Let others grieve in their own way.

Let me read you just a the I pretty much can sum this up by reading what I what I wrote in my uh in my journal here, um I am learning that a mass of loss is a time when we must give each person grace and space to grieve in their own way.

We know we grieve differently.

Because no one can expect of another to be on the same timetable expressing it the same way.

But we also owe it to one another to gently and lovingly help make sure each of us gets our grieving and reckoning done I watched my own family.

And each one grieved differently, you know, and not necessarily in our case, but you know, it's like, well, why aren't you crying?

Well, why don't you stop crying?

Deal with it.

Get past it.

Turn the page.

Wait, don't you care?

Why are you running around doing stuff instead of being sad?

There's all kinds of ways and timetables people are on.

It's a matter of love and respect that let each one You see what happens is that we love each other, but we hurt each other at our very already wounded time by expecting them to grieve just like we grieve.

By the way, if this isn't for you right now, every one of us in this room is meant to be a comforter to other people.

There's so much here you need to know to help other people.

Grace and respect.

Philippians 4 verse 5.

You give grace to people, you give respect, let your gentleness, this is great, when somebody has gone through a loss, whatever loss it is, let your gentleness be evident to all.

And then I saved the most important one for last.

Nope, next to last.

Cry out to Jesus.

Oh, what?

But wait, there's more.

Cry out to Jesus.

Some people get closer to Jesus when there's a loss, a hurt, a hit.

But not everybody.

Some never really recover.

They end up with a harder heart to God Again, it's the choice.

John six, verse sixty-eight, when It really got tough to follow Christ.

I don't know if we have that one.

Do we have that one on the, because that was a last-minute edition of mine, but Jesus said Will you also go away?

Because everybody had left and the only of the twelve, five thousand people who ate his bread, and then uh and then man they they left when he started talking about a cross and and Peter says, Well who are we gonna go to?

If I leave you, no one else has anything eternal but you.

That's a good question.

So you're gonna turn from God right now.

Who are you going to then?

Your only hope of hope, your only hope of making any sense of this, your only hope of the fractured diamond growing instead of stopping growing for the rest of your life is to run to Jesus, not run from him.

So cry out, and I'm not I didn't just say, Dear Lord, thank you for this day.

No, this is oh God.

This is crying out to Jesus.

And here is the anchor promise for your broken times.

When you're going through a broken time Psalm 34, 18, I am so glad this one's in the Bible.

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

He's always there.

I am with you always.

But I am close, he says, to the brokenhearted.

I save those.

What is what a description of what it feels like.

Crushed in my spirit.

My friend who lost his 30-year career, his spirit was crushed.

His heart was broken.

My friends who have recently gotten terrible news from the doctor.

Your spirit is you feel like your spirit has just been mashed The Lord is close to the broken heart.

Write this down.

Jesus is always just my testimony, is closest when our hurt is the deepest.

Jesus is closest.

Somehow he moves in intimately in a way that is reserved for you broken times when our hurt is the deepest.

This was written?

It's the first entry in the book, isn't it?

No.

Yeah, it is.

I can testify.

This is May 22nd.

I can testify that Jesus is very big in this empty house today.

As I do my first day since the funeral parade ended.

He is very big.

He is very close.

And he is very real.

I've given this promise to so many people.

Giving it is one thing, living it is another.

Sometimes I cry out to Jesus, dear Jesus, help me.

It's all I got.

And he always does, it says.

The peace is strong, your peace is stronger than even the depths of grief.

And I think this summarized it pretty well for how the Lord's kept his promise.

Jesus, it hit me this morning what I've lived of you these three weeks.

It is you literally taking my hand as I would, a lost little boy.

And leading me moment by moment through my day.

This is unmapped territory.

I've never been here before.

And in your moments of suddenly entering into unmapped territory, even if you're moving out of a complacent Christianity into a risk-taking Christianity, I will tell you at those moments, Jesus takes your hand and I'm like, I don't know what to do next.

I don't know what to read.

I don't know where to go.

I don't know what song to listen to.

I don't know what to and It's been , I just never have had this happen before like this.

When you get desperate with him, you get desperate with Jesus.

It's just amazing.

Charles Spurgeon said, it is a most blessed thing to have no props, no buttresses.

But simply to stand upright with the rock of ages, upheld by the Lord alone.

God, you're all I got.

Those are holy moments.

John Piper wrote this on the eve of his prostate surgery.

Don't waste your cancer.

Does that sound familiar?

Don't waste your cancer.

That's an interesting sentence, isn't it?

Don't waste your cancer.

You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.

A whiff of fatality is a great gift because it gets us thinking about death while we still have the opportunity in this life to do more than mourn our sins and wasted time The aim of God in your cancer, among a thousand other good things, is to knock the props out from under our hearts.

Now you can substitute cancer with a lot of other things. so that we rely utterly on him.

You will waste your cancer if you think that treating cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.

You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.

You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as you did before.

Pride, greed, lust. hatred, impatience, laziness, procrastination, all these are far worse enemies than cancer.

Don't waste the power of cancer to crush these foes.

Let the presence of eternity make the Here's eternity eyes.

You ready?

The view with eternity eyes, LASIK, spiritual LASIK Let the presence of eternity make the sins of time look as futile as they really are.

You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth. and the glory of Christ, here is a golden opportunity to show that he is worth more than life Marinate your heart in praises to Jesus.

Um I'm glad I'm out in the country.

We've got some goats and a couple horses and I'm glad we don't have cows.

They'd probably give buttermilk or something because man do I blast the praise I crank it up to just about as low as that volume will go.

Here's why.

Psalm 8. 2 tells us this.

Through the praise of children and infants, and by the way, this child, you have established a stronghold against your enemies to silence the foe and the avenger.

What silences the foe and the avenger?

Praises to Jesus.

I had um a doctor friend, his daughter watched her husband die slowly of cancer.

It was about a three-year vigil, it was horrible And um and she was in her twenties, they were newly married, they had very little marriage time, and he was dying.

And And my friend told me that she said, Dad, the only way I can get through, I've gotten through these endless three years. has been as I'm driving to the hospital is to crank up praise music because I realize the only place the devil will never be is in praises to Jesus So if this is when you're really vulnerable in your vulnerable times, whether you feel like it or not, you better crank up the praise even if it scares the goats.

Whatever that's about.

Marinate your heart in praises to Jesus.

To what Satan wants to do.

And you know what I've realized?

A broken heart is an open heart.

When God allows your heart to be broken, you realize that your heart is open now, and you know what happens?

He is able to deposit things into deep corners of your heart that may have been inaccessible before.

A broken heart is a heart.

Now, the devil knows that as well.

But when your heart is broken, it means it's wide open.

Your defenses are down.

And it is a wonderful time where Jesus can go deeper in your heart and soul than he's ever gone before.

Choose that.

Choose that.

Don't waste this.

I can tell you this, the people who know Jesus best are the ones who've been through the deepest valleys with him.

They've walked through the valley of the shadow with him.

And they're the ones who know him best.

Listen to Job's testimony after he lost everything.

Now, you know the Lord spoke very highly of Job.

He said, but he said, you know, Lord, my ears had heard of you.

But now I've seen you.

I had a left-brain relationship with you.

He says I've I've experienced you I had all this knowledge, but I've seen you up close now.

Something happened to all of that loss It's your greatest opportunity to know your Jesus like you've never known him before.

Choose it.

That's defiant hope Just to introduce this last point, we'll finish up with it This little girl uh was late coming home from school and and her dad was not happy about that.

He's a little worried about her and when she came in the door he was kind of ready to jump on her and she said and and he said where have you been?

And she said, Daddy Uh Annie broke her dolly and and I I I stayed with her a little while.

And her dad said, oh, oh, you you mean you you you stayed with her to help her fix it, huh?

And his little girl said, no, Daddy.

I stayed with her to help her cry.

The last road to hope in the midst of a great loss is to turn your hurt into hope for others because you are surrounded by people who need someone to help them cry.

You know, the mayor of San Juan who 's become a kind of a controversial figure in all this Puerto Rico stuff.

But I still remember the first time she appeared uh I I saw on TV and and right after the hurricane and all she'd been out in a boat literally going out and going to doors. uh trying to save people and and she said I'll n she said I can't get it out of my mind.

She said if people can get to uh any kind of communication, the thing I hear over and over again that haunts me at night are these words.

If anybody can hear me Help.

You are surrounded in the midst of your hurt.

You are surrounded by people are going, can somebody hear my hurt?

Will somebody help me cry?

You have walked this trail.

You have what I call crud anchels.

That stuff that happened to you has could enchiled you to be uniquely helpful to other hurting people My friend John, who lost his wife to cancer, Karen and I went up to Des Moines to her funeral five years ago.

John, was that for me?

John walked the trail for me with me.

He knew how I was feeling.

He knew what to ask.

He knew what not to say.

Three months later, my friend, my very dear friend in Chicago, he was waiting for his wife to come upstairs to go to bed.

And she literally had dropped dead at the bottom of the stairs before she ever came.

And when John was for me, I was able to be for him. 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 3 and 4.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the Father.

All the compassion on earth comes out of his heart And the God of all comfort, all the comfort in the world comes out of the heart of God, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can feel better No.

So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

I can give something to people now I never had to give before The hammer of loss will either harden your heart or it will soften your heart. and you choose and you make the conscious choice to become more useful to your master and more useful to other hurting hearts And what it does, it does you a great favor.

Get your eyes off yourself.

Which is what pain always does, is it drives us inward.

I remember it was two years ago, maybe at this retreat, that a dear lady who had come with her husband to this retreat a couple of times.

And he was a great businessman, a great servant of the Lord, died of brain cancer.

And she wasn't able to come for a while because the last time she'd been here was with him.

Finally, she was able to come.

And on Sunday morning, when we had a little time for sharing, she stood up, and some of you were here for that, and she said, I um she said, I I don't do this, I don't talk in front of people But I have to say something.

Actually, we were just about to close it and I said, I think there might be one more person here who's supposed to say something.

And finally, that last, like the last call, she's uh she said, okay And she said, I've realized that my grief has given me something to help other people with.

And so she said, I am going to go home.

And begin a ministry to my tribe, a tribe she never wanted to be in.

A tribe of people who have lost someone close.

Well, I wondered what would happen.

She indeed has done that.

Has the 501 started a ministry of her own to other hurting people?

So, um, you find hope by being hope For other people.

You find hope by being hope for other people.

And you know what makes our hope different from every other source of hope on earth?

Here's the good part.

I'm fired up about this.

You ready? 2 Peter 1. 3 1 Peter 1. 3.

Look at this Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his great mercy.

Now I want you to read the rest of this out loud.

And I want and don't give me this little knot.

This is not wimpy.

This has got hair on it.

You ready?

Let's go with this.

He start with he has given.

Ready?

He has given us new birth into a living.

Do that with me.

Let's do that again.

He has given us new birth into a living hope living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Hope has a name.

His name is Jesus.

And we have an unseen, but we have a certain reality because Jesus has conquered the biggest monster on this planet.

He has conquered death.

He has crushed death.

He has walked out of his grave.

Every hope we have, whatever we lose, is anchored to a living savior.

It is a living hope.

He's a man.

He's alive.

He's a conqueror.

It's a living hope.

Oh my goodness, and all resides in King Jesus.

So I could say As my wife's casket is lowered into the ground with full assurance, See you soon, baby.

Because I have a living hope.

And a resurrected Savior stood by that graveside with me.

Hebrews 6. 19, which is one of my great anchor verses, says, we have this hope speaking of Jesus Memorize this verse, folks.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul.

Firm and secure.

Close with this.

As I told you, Sarah, my precious daughter-in-law was Raised in Liberia, her parents were Bible translators in Liberia for many years in the Kisi language, a dialect of the Liberian people.

And her dad told me a fascinating story.

As he was translating the scriptures, he hit a wall.

Is this often happens?

Because there is a concept. . that they do not have in that language, in this case it was hope. .

He couldn't find a word for hope Now there was a man who worked with him there, a Liberian man, a Kisi man, and he kept saying, how about this word?

And the man said, no, no, that is not hope.

So he was stuck.

I mean hope's in the Bible a lot.

One day, Sarah's dead Larry. brought some paint home.

He was going to do some painting on their little house and and he brought some paint home and this guy lit up and he said, he asked him, he said, could I have the cans?

He had something he wanted to do with these paint cans.

He didn't want the paint, but he wanted the paint cans.

And Larry said, well when I'm when I'm done painting, of course, you can have the cans.

Next morning, 5 a. m. there's a knock at the door.

Wakes Larry up.

He said, Can I have the cans?

Larry said, Well, no, no, no, I I haven't I haven't um painted yet, no.

The next three or four mornings, he's there again, knocking at the door.

Who needs an alarm clock?

We got the guy who wants the paint cans.

And he just keeps coming back.

And so Larry said, let me explain this to you one more time.

And he said, see, I have to use what's in the cans.

And he said, but then, he said, down the road I'll be able to give these to you.

And suddenly the man said, that's it, and he gave him a word.

That did describe hope in their language.

It simply was eyes down the road He said, oh, you mean I need to have my eyes down the road?

In other words, I can't have it right now But I can look down the road and see those paint cans.

He said, that's the word.

So in the Kisi language, hope.

His eyes down the road.

When a great loss hits, you have the hope of becoming stronger, more caring.

More in love with Jesus.

So I'll tell you this.

Sometimes my heart is heavy.

But my eyes are down the road Let's pray together.

Maybe you uh want to start the process of activating some of this with Jesus in your heart right now.

At least commit to him that you and he are going to be talking.

And I'll pray.

Lord You know us because you were one of us.

So much of this goes down to the deepest corners of our soul.

Whatever hurt we grieve.

Recent From childhood, whatever it is.

We've all got missing pieces.

We've all lost something. or someone.

We call you our personal savior.

But this is really personal, personal savior.

The deepest core of feelings we can't even have words for.

Even a words guy like me, there are feelings that just don't have words.

But we don't need them, because you know.

And Lord, crazy as it sounds, we thank you for brokenness.

Because when we're broken, we're open.

And you can go to those deepest corners where maybe you've never been allowed to go before.

Because we're just desperate.

So heal us, Lord , from the losses of the past and prepare us for the losses of the future.

We thank you that your grace is indeed sufficient and there will never be a hurt so great.

That your grace is not greater.

We thank you that we have a living hope.

And I stand now before the one who said, I was dead, but I am alive.

And I hold the keys of death in Hades.

I am alive forevermore.

There is the certain reality, unseen, but certain reality upon which our buoyant confidence is anchored.

We praise you for an empty tomb.

That we shall one day stand before the Lamb singing worthy. is the Lamb and will be with the Lamb.

I pray, Lord, for those who still mourn a loss here today.

I pray, Lord, that you would bring the comfort that you promised and give them grace to choose the road to healing and hope.

Instead of that tempting road to more hurt.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.