Rick Warren - Biblical Advice for Loss, Grief and Overcoming Sadness

I hate to say this, but unfortunately, you're going to

need this message sometime in your life because you're going

to go through major losses in your life. Loss is unavoidable,

but grief is a choice. You have to choose to grieve,

and a lot of people choose not to.

They stuff it. They deny it. They try to go

through all of the losses of life without ever grieving.

That's a big mistake. There is no life without change.

There is no change without loss, and there is no

loss without pain, but grief is a choice. Let me

explain that again. All living things change. The only things

that don't change are things that aren't alive.

Does that make sense? Yeah.

So if you're alive, part of life is you're going

to go through changes in life. The things around you change,

the things inside you change. There is no change without

loss because in change, you lose some of the old

to grab on to some of the new. So there's loss.

You're losing things all the time in your life. And

there is no loss without pain because we don't like

to lose things. But grief is a choice. You have

to choose to let grief in. You have to allow it.

You have to allow yourself to feel it because grief

is the key to your spiritual growth.

We'll come back to that in just a minute. First,

let me just say this.

When I mentioned grief, most people think grief is something

that happens only at funerals, that it only happens with

the loss of loved ones. But really, You have thousands

of losses in your life. You can lose your health.

You can lose your job. You can lose a friend.

You can lose your finances. There are literally hundreds and

hundreds and even thousands of things that you have in

life that you lose. And so grief is not simply

for when somebody dies. That's one of the things it's for.

But there are many other things in life you ought

to grieve because they're losses in life. Now, because grief

is unpleasant, most people just try to avoid it.

They want to stuff it. They want to put it aside.

I'm not going to grieve. I'm just going to get

on with my life. I'm going to deny it.

And I want to say to you, that is the

cause of many of your problems.

Unresolved, unmourned grief.

And if I don't grieve, wherever I've had a loss

and I didn't grieve it, I'm going to get stuck

because you can't get through it. You can't get past

it unless you go through it. You get stuck if

you try to get past it without going through it.

So how do I get past it? How do I

move on in spite of the terrible losses in my life?

How do you move forward? As I said, a lot

of people are stuck because they don't know how to

do this. Well, if you want to get unstuck, you're

going to need to do four things.

I write these down. Number one, you want to move forward.

You want to get past the pain painful experiences you've

gone through. Number one, I need to list the losses

that I haven't grieved over. List the losses I've never grieved.

And you need to go back and really take a

little inventory of your life. And you need to look

at your life and reconsider, where have I had major

losses in my life? And maybe you went off to war.

Maybe you experienced rejection. Maybe you missed missed some loved

ones in your life or long-term illness or you lost

your home or you lost your job or whatever. What

are the things, the losses in your life that you said,

you know what, I just said I'm going to put

my head down and I'm not going to think about

it and I'm not going to grieve it.

I'm just going to move ahead. Well, that's where you

got stuck.

So you start by listing the losses that I've never grieved.

In other words, I can't get past it till I

acknowledge it. Now, let me ask you, and I'm going

to ask this of all of our campuses, and even

those of you online, you can do this too.

How many of you would like your future to be

blessed by God? Let me see your hands. Yeah, okay.

That's unanimous.

We all want God to bless our future. Jesus said

grief is the key to blessing. Notice this next verse.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are

those who what?

Mourn. For they shall be what? Comforted. Who gets comforted? They.

And who are the they? Those who have the courage

to mourn. What is he saying here? Cover-ups don't get comforted.

If I cover up the pain, if I ignore the pain,

I deny the pain, I pretend it does not exist,

I'm too afraid of my emotions, then I don't get comforted.

And if I don't get comforted, I don't get blessed.

Blessed are those who mourn. You want God's blessing? You

got to learn how to grieve clean, how to grieve good.

It's like if you have a wound.

If you had a wound, you got a bad wound

and it got dirty, you would not think of letting

a doctor simply put a Band-Aid on it without cleaning

out the wound. If you don't clean out the wound,

it's going to fester. Yet you tried to do that

with many things in your life where you thought, that

was painful. I just felt rejected. She just walked out

on me.

He just walked. I'm not going to think about it anymore.

What you did is you put a Band-Aid over a

wound that's just festering.

You didn't clean it out. You didn't have clean, good grief.

Now, why don't we do this? You say, I don't

know if I want to do that or not. I

don't know if I want to go back and think

about my losses and whether I grieved over them or not.

Why don't we allow ourselves to grieve? One word, F-E-A-R.

You're a fraidy cat.

You're scared. You're fearful.

And what are the fears that you, supposedly a mature adult,

are still holding on to? Well, there's the fear of

if I really go back and think about the losses

in my life and I allow myself to grieve.

Over them, I might be overwhelmed with emotion. Yeah?

It's not going to kill you.

It's like a wave. It'll come and then it'll go.

So what? You're afraid of your own emotions? Really? Then

you're afraid of yourself. That's not very healthy.

Say, well, I'm afraid that if I really grieve about

that loss, I'll never recover. You will recover. You will recover.

Where you won't recover is if you keep it a secret.

You keep pushing it down. That's like shaking up the

Coke bottle. You keep pushing it down. You say, well,

I'm afraid that I'll lose my mind.

You won't lose your mind.

You might if you keep it a secret. You might

if you keep pushing it down. But if you let

it out, the boogeyman isn't that big anymore.

You bring him out into the light.

What you need to do if you're afraid to grieve

about a loss in your life, you need to claim

the 23rd Psalm, the most famous Psalm in the Bible.

Psalm 23, verse 4 says this. Even though I walk

Psalms 23:4

through the valley of the shadow of death, I will

fear no evil for you are with me. Now, that's

one of the most famous verses in the Bible. But

I want you to look at it like you've never

seen it before. Notice, let's take it.

Apart by words.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow,

circle the phrase walk through.

You're walking through it. You're not going to stay stuck there.

What I'm asking you to do is to consider the

things maybe you've never grieved. And you walk through them.

You're not going to stay there. You're not going to

stay stuck there the rest of your life. You're going

to walk through the valley. But you've never walked through it.

And so you're stuck on the other side. And that's

why you can't grow. That's why you can't get rid

of those habitual patterns in your life that are holding

you back. You walk through it. Then circle the word shadow.

Walk through the valley of the shadow of death. You know,

when you're kids, when you're a child, We all feared shadows,

particularly at nighttime.

Why?

Because shadows make things appear bigger than they really are.

But nobody ever died from a shadow. You're not going

to die in the valley of the shadow of death.

You're not dying. You're still alive.

It's not going to kill you. And on top of that,

I'm going to walk through it. It's a shadow and you, God,

are with me. So what am I afraid? You see,

not once in the Bible are we told weep not,

or are we told sorrow not, or are we told

cry not, or are we told to grieve not. But

we are told to fear not. In fact, 365 times

in the Bible we're told fear not.

Why?

That's one for every day of the year because grief

doesn't paralyze, fear does. What you are afraid of is

actually paralyzing you more than the grief itself. Your fear

of your own emotions is actually paralyzing you, not your grief.

Grief doesn't paralyze. Grief gets you through the valley of

the shadow to the other side. And then you can

get on with the rest of your life and you

will grow and you'll be more mature and you'll be

richer in spirit. It's the fear that holds you back.

So I need to list the losses that I've never grieved.

Then number two, if you're serious about getting unstuck, identify

the what I've really lost. I go back and I

look at and I say, what did I really lose

in that childhood? I go deeper, not just beyond the obvious.

In other words, what did I lose by having an

alcoholic dad? What did I lose by being laid off?

what did I really lose when my parents divorced what

did I really lose when my family moved so often

as a child did I lose stability did I lose

security did I lose identity Did I lose encouragement? Did

I lose my credibility when that happened? Did I lose trust?

You need to look past the obvious and say, when

that happened to me, that painful thing, or when that

loved one died, or when that person walked out of

my life, or when whatever happened, what did I really lose?

And that's what you need to grieve.

And as I said, I've got a list of questions

you can ask yourself Now, the third thing you do,

you make a list of the losses you've.

Never grieved and you say, what did I really lose there?

Third thing, you.

Have the courage to lament. I need to have the

courage to lament. Now, lament is not a word that

we use much today, but it's a Bible word. And

so I want to deal with it because it's a

kind of action that you must do in order to

be healthy emotionally and spiritually.

What is a lament?

Well, I gave you a definition there. Lament is a

passionate expression of grief to God. To lament means I

have a passionate expression of grief to God.

I cry out to God. I may shout to God.

I may weep. I may yell.

But it's a passionate expression of grief to God. And

a lament is an act of worship. It is an

act of worship that can actually include arguing with God

and complaining to God. You say, wait a minute, complaining

to God can be an act of worship?

Absolutely.

You complain to God, that's an act of worship. You

complain about God, that's an act of rebellion. We usually

do the second. We complain about God, that's a sin.

But God says, you can complain to me all you

want and God can handle it. We're gonna look at

this in detail next week when I talk about struggle

and how do you argue with God and how do

you complain to God and it become an act of worship.

But I'll let you in on a little tip, a

little advanced notice. God can handle it. God can handle

your rage. He can handle your resentment. He can handle

your regrets. He can handle your complaining. He can handle

your accusations. It's like a parent with a little child

Grabbing at your knees, having a temper tantrum. You can

handle a temper tantrum of somebody less mature.

Than you are.

God can handle your pain.

You can tell him anything you want. Why?

Because he already knows it. He just wants you to

get it off your chest. He wants you to admit it.

You know what I love about the Bible? What I

love about this book so much is it doesn't whitewash

any negative emotion.

It's all there. It's just all there.

And if a guy says, God, I think you're being

unfair right now. You just cheated me. You broke your promise. God,

you just, you need to fix that, God. And God

just puts it right there in his book. God doesn't,

God isn't afraid of negative emotions.

We are, but God isn't.

And I love it because Life is not all sunshine

and rosies and rainbows and my little pony and unicorns

and picking flowers and talking about peace and love.

A lot of life is tough. Everybody agree with that?

Life can be rough.

And just like the Bible says, there's times to weep

and there's times to rejoice and there's times to party

and there's time to cry.

This is part of life.

And God says to be fully alive and to be

fully human is to accept it all. If you only

accept the parties of life and not the grief, you

live half a life. You are emotionally stunted because you're

living only the good parts. And there's no depth, there's

no color to your life. The depth and the color

comes in the grief, in the tough times, in the

valleys of the shadows. Now, the Bible is full of laments.

In fact, there's an entire book in the Bible. It's

called Lamentations. That's what that book is. If you've ever

read the book of Lamentations, it's an entire book of

Jeremiah complaining that God got it all wrong.

And it's in the Bible. And God just says, well,

have your say, Jeremiah. Go ahead, just spout off.

Tell me what he was grieving was the destruction of

the temple in Jerusalem. And in the book of Psalms,

most people think the book of Psalms is about thanksgiving

and praise. There are 150 Psalms in the Bible, in

the book of Psalms.

65 of them are Psalms of lament.

And if you go read them, it can be pretty

shocking that there's that much negative stuff in the Psalms.

And God says, David and a whole bunch of guys

just really say, God.

This is bad. I don't like this. And God says,

that's an act of worship too.

That's as much an act of it as thank you, God,

praise you, God, is right now, God, I don't like you.

Because you're talking to God about God.

And it's all, if you ever want to read the

pinnacle of the dark lamentations is Psalm 88 by a

guy named Heman. And the final thing is he says,

darkness is my only friend. That guy's pretty upset.

Okay, darkness is my only friend. He's handling that.

Now, you know, this Bible right here, I call this

my depression Bible. I've had it since I was a teenager.

When I was a teenager, I bought this Bible. It's

a living Bible paraphrase. And in 1981, I went through

a year, a really bad year. And it was very depressing,

very discouraging year. I was under a cloud of depression

the whole year. I didn't leave for a year. And

it was just filled with all kinds of fears and

anxieties and depression. And my goal wasn't, oh, God, build

a great church. My goal was, God, can you get

me through this week? Can you get me through today?

And I took this Bible, and I opened up the middle,

which is Psalms, and I read through the book of Psalms,

and I underlined every verse, highlighted every verse that either A,

I identified with in my pain, or B, was an

encouraging word of promise that would encourage me.

And I underlined it all. And I still got it.

And now if I start to get discouraged, I go

get my depression Bible and I open it up and

I just start reading all, just the underlying parts and

I get encouraged again. You see, every emotion known to

human man is in the book of Psalms. It's all

expressed there. So here's your assignment, your homework. Start reading

through the book of Psalms. Get a modern paraphrase, you know,

living Bible, the message paraphrase or new living. There's lots

of good ones And start reading through the book of

Psalms and underline every verse you identify with and every

verse that encourages you. And then you'll have it in

your time. And you'll have it to share with others

when others are in their discouraging parts. So have the

courage to lament. Now, there's one other thing you need

to do. You need to ask Jesus to heal your

broken heart. I ask Jesus to heal me. my broken heart,

because he's understanding. He made me. The Bible says he's

close to the brokenhearted. Psalm 103, 13, and 14 says this.

The Lord is like a father. The Lord is like

a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those

who honor him, for he understands how.

Weak we are. When we come to God and we say, God,

I'm hurting. And God, I'm scared. And God, I'm grieving.

And God, I just got fired. And I haven't the

slightest thing. I don't know what to do.

That's a huge loss. Or I just lost it all

in the stock market. Or that big deal I was

working on, it just fell apart. Or that divorce, it's final.

Or that engagement, it got broken off. Dear God, all

the things I've wanted, they haven't happened. I wanted to

get married.

It hadn't happened. I wanted to have a baby and

a family. It hadn't happened.

Tell that to God. You know what God's going to say?

He's not going to say, now stop your crying. That's

what adults, humans do. He's going to say he's tender.

He's compassionate. He understands how weak we are. In fact,

Jesus said this in his first public sermon in his

hometown of Nazareth, Luke 4, 18. Jesus said, God has

sent me. God has sent me to heal. the brokenhearted

that's what jesus came to do he came to heal

the brokenhearted so in your pain the last thing you

do is you look toward god while you're walking through

the valley of the shadow you look to jesus you

know what i've discovered about shadows wherever there's a shadow

there's a light.

There's a light.

And when I'm walking through the valley of the shadow

and I see that shadow over there and it's scaring me,

what do I do to get through the valley of

the shadow? I turn my back on the shadow and

look directly into the light.

And I'm not afraid anymore. Because I'm not looking at

the shadow. I'm looking... the light.

Have you looked to the light? Jesus said, I am

the light of the world. You need to give your

life to Christ. If you haven't done that, you need

to do it no matter what campus or online, wherever

you are, you need to give your life to Christ

because you don't have the resources to make it through

all the losses that are going to come in your life.

If you don't have the power of God in your life,

Jesus Christ who came and died for you to love you.

You know, The best way to prepare for the loss

of a loved one, the best way to prepare for

a loved one's death, and you're going to have loved

ones who die.

Just like I did.

The best way to prepare for a loved one's death

is to make sure you're prepared for your death. If

you were to die tonight, do you know you'd go

right to heaven? Have you settled that issue? If you haven't,

let's do so right now. Let's bow our heads. Would

you pray this prayer in your heart? Dear God, you

know all the things that scare me. Sometimes I'm even

afraid of my own emotions. Sometimes I'm afraid to show them.

And I admit I have often equated sadness with weakness,

not strength. I realized that I needed to learn some

stuff today about grief.

That is a choice. It doesn't happen unless I let

it happen in my life. And God, many times I've

pushed it down.

I've suppressed and repressed and I've denied and I've gone

ahead thinking that I could go past it without going

through it. Lord, help me to realize that grief is healthy.

It's the only healthy response to loss. Thank you that

you grieve with me. Thank you that you're close to

the broken hearted. Thank you for putting me at Saddleback

Church where I can be in a healing community where

we can carry each other's burdens and we can share

each other's sorrows. I want to be in a small

group to build that kind of connection, that safety net

when I'm in pain and when I can help others

in their pain. Lord, many times I've rushed it, always

trying to find an answer, a quick fix, an instant solution,

instead of realizing that grief takes time.

And that there's a season for everything in life. Forgive

me for that.

Help me to make a list of the things I've

lost in life that maybe I just was too busy

or too afraid to grieve. I don't want to be

stuck anymore. I want to identify what I've really lost.

I want to have the courage to lament.

Not just an intellectual exercise, but to feel the grief

and express it. Thank you, God, that you can handle

all my questions and all my fears and anger and everything.

You love it all and can handle it. Jesus, I

ask you to heal my broken heart. And I do

that by first of all asking you to come into

my heart and.

Change me.

Fill my life with love where there's emptiness. Thank you

that you're a father that's tender and compassionate. You understand

the weaknesses in my life. Thank you, Jesus, that you

came to heal the brokenhearted. Start that today in my life.

As much as I know how, I say yes to you.

I want to go your way, not mine. And I

want to learn to love you and trust you.

In Jesus' name, amen.