Speaker 1: Praise God.
Speaker 1: I do encourage you to take some notes.
Speaker 2: You retain things and learn things better when we are taking notes.
Speaker 2: So in your service guide, there is that opportunity.
Speaker 2: We are in our second lesson of written and read the revolutionary ideas of Jesus.
Speaker 2: He had revolutionary ideas.
Speaker 2: He changed the world through the ideas that he shared and his words led the way.
Speaker 2: In fact, we said last week, that words change worlds.
Speaker 2: And as Jesus is beginning his ministry, he, he gives what we know is the sermon on the Mount.
Speaker 2: It's recorded most thoroughly in Matthew, chapter five through chapter seven.
Speaker 2: And he begins to talk about, uh, the kingdom of God.
Speaker 2: He's preaching the kingdom of God.
Speaker 2: And he begins with these things called the beatitudes that we call them be attitudes, because the first word in each one of them is the word blessed.
Speaker 2: And it's the Greek, the Latin word beatus.
Speaker 2: And that means blessed.
Speaker 2: And so, and so we call them the beatitudes.
Speaker 2: Last week, we started in Matthew chapter five, verse number three, where he said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Speaker 2: And we learned that the first work of the Holy spirit is the work of conviction in your life.
Speaker 2: And in mind letting us know where we're wrong and how to get right.
Speaker 2: The second work of grace in our life is repentance where Jesus is giving us that opportunity to come back or turn back to him.
Speaker 2: And I know that in my life, it has been many times where I've had to repent of the direction I was going, the activity that I was involved in and turn to him and say, God, I'm sorry for this.
Speaker 2: And, and help me get a, get a realigned with your will and with your word and with your way.
Speaker 2: And so God in his grace gives us that opportunity to repent everywhere that God is in control is considered or called the kingdom of God.
Speaker 2: And so when we repent, his kingdom becomes real and our life as we submit our life to his control.
Speaker 2: And in fact, I repented life offers a blessing that is only accessible when God is in control.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to today.
Speaker 2: We are just stepping into the next verse of scripture.
Speaker 2: Here is Jesus begins to say in verse four, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't really that doesn't really fit blessed are those
Speaker 3: Who mourn because morning
Speaker 2: Is not typically positive.
Speaker 2: We don't mourn positive things.
Speaker 2: We don't say, you know, I'm in morning right now.
Speaker 2: Cause I got a three per, you know, a 300% raise at work yesterday.
Speaker 2: And so, um, that's just really a morning that situation, that's not how that works.
Speaker 2: We don't mourn when good things come into our world.
Speaker 2: We mourn because something has been there.
Speaker 2: And in fact, in the day that Jesus was teaching, they would have said, morning was a sign that God was not happy with you, that something had gone wrong, that, that you were being in effect punished by God.
Speaker 2: In fact, if you think about in the new Testament, the disciples are walking along with Jesus and they come along to this, to this blind man and they see the blind man.
Speaker 2: And we don't really know what's going to happen with this blind man just yet.
Speaker 2: But the disciples look at Jesus and say about the blind man, Hey, who sinned in his life to cause him to be blind?
Speaker 2: Was it his parents?
Speaker 2: Or was it himself that sinned?
Speaker 2: And so that's causing him to be blind because in their day they thought that if you did something bad, God would punish you.
Speaker 2: I know some people who still believe that today.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that we live in a time where God operates in grace in our lives.
Speaker 2: But Jesus is saying blessed are these who mourn blessed being supremely blessed.
Speaker 2: It means happy.
Speaker 2: It means fulfilled.
Speaker 2: It means fortunate.
Speaker 2: It means well off.
Speaker 2: So this is a very positive thing.
Speaker 2: Blessed are those who mourn or lament or
Speaker 4: Grieve.
Speaker 4: Those two
Speaker 2: Things don't seem to really connect, mourning and blessing, blessing and grieving.
Speaker 2: But he says, the reason why there's a blessing there is that they will be comforted.
Speaker 2: There will be something that comes into their life in that particular moment that will console them.
Speaker 2: That will help them.
Speaker 2: That will, that will put a salvage.
Speaker 2: If you will, over the hurt.
Speaker 2: That's in their life.
Speaker 2: Mourning and grief.
Speaker 2: And our world today are often used interchangeably where people will say, Oh, they are mourning or they are grieving.
Speaker 2: But the reality is there's a difference between the two.
Speaker 2: They are connected.
Speaker 2: Morning is an expression of grief.
Speaker 2: It's an expression of grief.
Speaker 2: Grief is felt on the inside while morning is what we express on the outside.
Speaker 2: Grief can be held.
Speaker 2: Secret morning is known by others.
Speaker 2: In fact, Dr.
Speaker 2: Allen Wolf said this grief is the internal meaning given to the experience of loss.
Speaker 2: It's that's those feelings and those emotions he said morning is when you take the grief you have on the inside and express it on the outside of yourself.
Speaker 2: Now, it may seem odd to you that we're talking about morning on Valentine.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: This is a day where we celebrate love and we celebrate loving relationships.
Speaker 2: And we're talking about mourning and grieving, but the truth is you do grieve things that you do not love.
Speaker 2: You do not mourn over things that you do not have love for.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's actually very appropriate that we are talking about this on Valentine's day.
Speaker 2: See, we hate grief.
Speaker 2: I grew up there.
Speaker 2: I've never met anybody who says, you know what?
Speaker 2: I just can't wait to experience grief in my life.
Speaker 2: This is, this is going to be wonderful.
Speaker 2: When that happens.
Speaker 2: None of us love grief because it hurts.
Speaker 2: Grieve hurts.
Speaker 2: And when you're grieving something, when you're grieving a loss, when you're, when you're grieving, it sometimes feels like something is being ripped out of your body.
Speaker 2: Like your guts are being ripped out of you, that you have that deep pit in your stomach.
Speaker 2: And it feels like you want to throw up, but sometimes you can't and, and or maybe you already have, and there's nothing left and it's, it's just, it's disconcerting and it's horrible.
Speaker 2: And it stresses every single part of your body in your life.
Speaker 2: And, and it pushes on you consistently.
Speaker 2: It's hurtful.
Speaker 2: And so we don't like grief and hurts that we have in life.
Speaker 2: They can either heal and we can become whole, or they can fester and be left.
Speaker 2: If they're left alone, they will begin to fester.
Speaker 2: And suddenly, suddenly they grow and I've known people and maybe you've known people and maybe you are a people who have throughout life.
Speaker 2: You, you experienced a hurt somewhere and you've never allowed that hurt to heal.
Speaker 2: That hurt has never healed in your life.
Speaker 2: And so, so you're now 20 years later, but you're still stuck back over here where the hurt happened in your world and, and healing has never actually happened in your, in your line.
Speaker 2: And that's our big idea today.
Speaker 2: A big idea is addressed.
Speaker 2: Heal, addressed, hurts, heal.
Speaker 2: He, the hurts from loss.
Speaker 2: They're real.
Speaker 2: They're not imagined the not fake.
Speaker 2: They're just not an emotional thing that you're going through.
Speaker 2: They're real.
Speaker 2: They are emotional and they affect every part of your life.
Speaker 2: And God designed us to heal from these hurts.
Speaker 2: The way we heal from the hurts is through the grieving process.
Speaker 2: If we try to stop the grieving process, that's where we get stuck.
Speaker 2: We try to say, we're not grieving and we're not going to mourn.
Speaker 2: We're not going to express it.
Speaker 2: Then we can get stuck in that moment.
Speaker 2: And we never move past that in life.
Speaker 2: I don't care how old we get, how successful we get.
Speaker 2: I don't care what else happens in our world.
Speaker 2: We can still be stuck in this moment of where that hurt happened and grief hit.
Speaker 2: And we did not deal with the grief
Speaker 5: And our three thoughts for us today.
Speaker 5: Thought number one is you will experience grief in life now, aren't you glad you came to church this morning for this uplifting message.
Speaker 5: You will experience grief in life.
Speaker 5: Now
Speaker 2: Sometimes when we talk about grief, it's in relationship to a death of someone that we love, but it goes much further than just simply death.
Speaker 2: We grieve for all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 2: We, we grieve because as a friendship that we had that was close and suddenly we're not close anymore.
Speaker 2: And we don't, maybe we didn't know exactly what happened or why we began to have a distance between us.
Speaker 2: But, but we start grieving a relationship that is
Speaker 5: No more.
Speaker 5: Maybe we, maybe we grieve the loss of a spouse.
Speaker 2: They left us, or, or they drove us out.
Speaker 2: And, and now we're grieving the loss of that relationship.
Speaker 2: There's a separation somewhere.
Speaker 2: I know people who have grieved the loss of business partners, things didn't work the way they thought they were going to, and suddenly the partnership dissolves.
Speaker 2: And now there's a grieving process that they're going through.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a loss of a job.
Speaker 2: You, you seem like things were going well on the job.
Speaker 2: And suddenly there was, there was cutbacks.
Speaker 2: And now you're looking for a position there, or maybe there's, there was something that happened on the job.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was your fault.
Speaker 2: Maybe it wasn't your fault, but something occurred.
Speaker 2: And now you don't have that position anymore.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's the death of a career.
Speaker 2: You, you were on a good trajectory.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden that career seems to be derailed or the loss of a marriage that doesn't isn't working any longer, but it doesn't have to be those things.
Speaker 2: It can be health, the health of a child.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You don't want to see your child go through the health problems that they're dealing with, but they're going through them.
Speaker 2: And so there's something within you that every once in a while, it just Wells up and there's just this feeling of, of hurt and of loss.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's maybe it's a health issue with a spouse something's happening and that can't be fixed.
Speaker 2: And there doesn't seem to be an answer.
Speaker 2: And so here you are, and you're trying to work through it and you're trying to make the best of it.
Speaker 2: And you're trying to be happy and, you know, see the, see the good, but there is a grieving that is going on.
Speaker 2: There was a hurt that's there because it's changing life.
Speaker 2: And maybe the things that you thought were going to become now won't become the way you thought they would and things have changed.
Speaker 2: And, and there's a grieving process that you're going through.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a situation
Speaker 5: In your own self
Speaker 2: We're going along.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden health begins to shift and change.
Speaker 2: And you can't just chalk it all up to getting older.
Speaker 2: Although that seems to be the answer to a whole lot of things, but, but it's not everything.
Speaker 2: And so, and so here you are, you're you there's an issue with your health or, or maybe it's even beyond that.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's an adoption that didn't go as planned
Speaker 5: Or, or it went as
Speaker 2: Planned, but now things aren't working out the way you dreamed that they would be whenever you entered into that situation, or maybe decisions that you made or
Speaker 5: Others made, you're
Speaker 2: Looking at that.
Speaker 2: And, and the plan isn't unfolding the way you thought that it would unfold.
Speaker 2: And there's a loss of a vision or a loss of a dream.
Speaker 2: And, and there's a grief that comes along with every single one of these things.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's a tragic event that happened in your life.
Speaker 2: And you're just going along one day and something tragic occurs with you around you, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2: And suddenly you find yourself at a crossroads where, where something that you could not control, something that you did not plan.
Speaker 2: It is what it is.
Speaker 2: And you cannot change it.
Speaker 2: And it has stolen something from you.
Speaker 2: It could be innocence where one moment you didn't know something like that could ever really happen.
Speaker 2: And now you do.
Speaker 2: And even that can be a grieving.
Speaker 2: I know young people who grieve growing up because suddenly they realize that, you know, they don't get to keep all of their paycheck.
Speaker 5: That's a hit.
Speaker 2: You tell them, well, you'll get it back in your tax return.
Speaker 2: And they don't, nah, that's, that's a lifetime away, but it goes farther than that.
Speaker 2: When you start realizing that visions and dreams you have for your life, they don't all just come.
Speaker 2: And in.
Speaker 2: Sometimes growing up creates this
Speaker 5: Area of grief.
Speaker 5: There are many people,
Speaker 2: Well grieving realities of 2020 loss of connections, loss of lives, loss of community, loss of jobs, loss of a sense of certainty.
Speaker 2: Everything can change.
Speaker 2: And some people see grief and the feelings of grief as weakness.
Speaker 2: Well, if I was just stronger than it, it wouldn't matter.
Speaker 2: Or if I could just control this, it'd be okay.
Speaker 2: Or maybe a lack of faith.
Speaker 2: There's some faith traditions that teach will, you know, if you just have enough faith and just believe enough, then, then that won't happen to you.
Speaker 2: And it will be okay, but here's the, here's the problem that it's not true.
Speaker 2: It's not true.
Speaker 2: God absolutely can heal anything and everything.
Speaker 2: He can raise Lazarus from the dead, but Lazarus is not walking on this earth today because he died again of something.
Speaker 2: And God, I have a scar from here to here on my belly right now, where, when I was a baby, I should have died.
Speaker 2: In fact, the doctor said I did die.
Speaker 2: Kicked my family out of the room.
Speaker 2: They did an emergency surgery.
Speaker 2: It didn't really work.
Speaker 2: The doctor thought I was gone.
Speaker 2: And suddenly I came back to life.
Speaker 2: The doctor himself saying, there's something unusual about this moment in this, in this kid's life.
Speaker 2: And when I look at my belly and when I see myself in the mirror and I see that, I remember I've got something going on in my life.
Speaker 2: I've got a job to do.
Speaker 2: God kept me here.
Speaker 2: For some reason, he kept me here from some reason, but there is coming a day when something is going to take me from this earth.
Speaker 2: I prayed for my grandmother.
Speaker 2: Oh, great woman of faith for many years, to be relieved of a type of arthritis that she had that left her bedridden a few years before her life.
Speaker 2: And I wish it were different.
Speaker 2: I wish it were different.
Speaker 2: And it causes a grief to rise up within us because we want it to be different.
Speaker 5: We want it to be different.
Speaker 2: Some people see it as a result of bad stewardship or poor choices, or even God's judgment.
Speaker 2: Well, your reasoning to go on through this, as soon as God's getting you well, if God is getting me, I got, there is no getting away from God's getting, He can get me wherever I am or wherever I go.
Speaker 2: So I might,
Speaker 5: Well just get me, Lord.
Speaker 2: Here's the reality.
Speaker 2: It's a natural part of
Speaker 5: Life.
Speaker 5: Abraham, the father of the faithful
Speaker 2: Grieved, Sarah, his wife, Jacob grieved, Joseph, his son, David grieved, Samuel's death, Peter grieved.
Speaker 2: The words of Jesus.
Speaker 2: Jesus said, do you love me?
Speaker 2: And Peter is like, yep.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 2: And Jesus said, Peter, do you really love me?
Speaker 2: And Peter is like, you know that I do.
Speaker 2: And Jesus like, Peter, do you really love me?
Speaker 2: And Peter is like, yes.
Speaker 2: And he is grieving him.
Speaker 2: Why would he even be having to ask me this?
Speaker 2: What is going on this?
Speaker 2: I just, I feel like I'm all twisted in knots because Jesus keeps asking me this question.
Speaker 2: Do you love me?
Speaker 2: Paul grieved over the demon possessed girl.
Speaker 2: And his grief caused him to, to deliver her from that demon.
Speaker 2: He cast the demon out of her body and she was able to go back to a normal life.
Speaker 2: It was grief though, that caused him to move in that direction.
Speaker 2: Even Jesus grieved.
Speaker 2: The scripture tells us that Jesus grieved over Jerusalem and Jesus wept.
Speaker 2: We know that even the Holy spirit can apparently grieve as well because Ephesians chapter 30 chapter four, verse 30 rather says, and do not grieve the Holy spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the death of redemption.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't be telling us, don't do this thing.
Speaker 2: If doing this thing was impossible said, don't grieve the Holy spirit.
Speaker 2: So these great men and women of faith, I know great men and women that have preached faith and lived faith and, and been faithful all of their lives.
Speaker 2: But eventually something takes them from this earth.
Speaker 2: And none of them avoided grief.
Speaker 2: None of them avoided pain.
Speaker 2: None of them avoided problems in their life.
Speaker 2: None of them avoided all disease, all sickness, all of anything bad.
Speaker 2: He, all of them dealt with something.
Speaker 2: And even if God himself can grieve, then we will not avoid grief.
Speaker 5: If in our life we won't avoid it.
Speaker 2: But here's my encouragement to you.
Speaker 2: Don't let a season of life define your whole life.
Speaker 2: Don't let a season or an issue.
Speaker 2: Define everything about you.
Speaker 2: You cannot avoid loss in this world, but if you're not careful, it can overwhelm you.
Speaker 2: And it's one of the reasons I believe that many people latch on to belief systems that are not exactly biblical because it allows them to avoid dealing with the grief of
Speaker 5: Thought.
Speaker 5: Number two, you will express grief
Speaker 2: When grief is in your life, ultimately you will express it.
Speaker 2: Now, historically, there were all kinds of organized ways and acceptable ways to express grief from your life.
Speaker 2: Some of them they were done at home.
Speaker 2: They were done in the public square.
Speaker 2: They would do things like tear their clothes and put ashes on their head and sing loud and sad songs and weep and cry.
Speaker 2: In fact, you find it all through the old Testament.
Speaker 2: You find it in the new Testament too.
Speaker 2: And if you are a wealthy family, you might prove your grief by hiring professional mourners, people who professionally grieved.
Speaker 2: Now I know some people today that could do a really good job in that particular department.
Speaker 2: They wail like no one else.
Speaker 2: They, they are good.
Speaker 2: I had one person suggest to me in the first service that all Michigan fans could qualify.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I do not believe that.
Speaker 2: I do not believe that at all.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that I don't believe it at all.
Speaker 2: That is a false doctrine.
Speaker 2: That's being propagated and we're casting it out.
Speaker 2: I've just mentioned in it.
Speaker 2: So you can be careful about it.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 2: So these were organized expressions of grief that would go from seven days to 70 days today,
Speaker 5: Likely to hide our grief.
Speaker 5: We go to the funeral of someone we love in the morning, and then we go back to work in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: We go to our father's grave and then we go back to work the next day.
Speaker 2: Just give me something to do.
Speaker 2: Let me get my mind off it.
Speaker 2: As, as if not thinking about it causes the problem to go away.
Speaker 2: If, if I just, if I'm just distracted by it, then I won't have to deal with the stuff that I'm feeling within me.
Speaker 2: I want to grieve, but I don't want to mourn pride says, Hey, you got this.
Speaker 2: Nobody even has to know that you're dealing with it.
Speaker 2: And shame says, nobody cares about it.
Speaker 2: Anyway,
Speaker 5: Pride, I've got this shame.
Speaker 5: Nobody
Speaker 2: Cares about it.
Speaker 2: The issue is this grief be expressed either intentionally or unintentionally.
Speaker 2: It's going to be, you know, how I feel about my grandfather, Paul, um, we're from Baton Rouge and we're LSU tiger fans and pup all was my best friend growing up.
Speaker 2: And until I met my wife and then I tell stories about pop all the time.
Speaker 2: And, and, and I just, the impact that he made on my life is inexpressible.
Speaker 2: But the day came Easter Sunday, April the fifth, 2015, I received the phone call that said, Paul's dead.
Speaker 2: He he's died today, died this morning.
Speaker 2: And I, and I took that phone call and it was a heavy one to receive.
Speaker 2: I was grateful that I've been able to go back and forth and be with him over this last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: And while he was still lucid.
Speaker 2: And before he went into a coma and, and I was thankful for those moments, but it was a hard thing to leave my office at the church there at grace Tomball in Texas, and, and walk out to the, to the sanctuary and then get up there and preach a sermon that morning.
Speaker 2: It was, it was a hard thing to do, but we did it and God blessed it.
Speaker 2: And then later that week, we had his funeral at a back in Baton Rouge in his home church.
Speaker 2: And it was a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: And I, I had, he had asked me actually, he asked me when I was 12 years old, the first time he asked me to eulogize him at his funeral.
Speaker 2: Can I just encourage you?
Speaker 2: Don't ask your 12 year old grand, anything to eulogize you.
Speaker 2: Number one, they're going to go find out what eulogies are and really be sad.
Speaker 2: So I got up and I utilized him and I kept it together.
Speaker 2: Yes, I cried.
Speaker 2: But, but, but I was able to do what I needed to do and months days passed and then months passed and I thought, okay, I'm doing really good.
Speaker 2: Every everything's fine.
Speaker 2: And, and yes, I would have moments where I'd break down and you know, me by now that I don't withhold emotion necessarily that I feel.
Speaker 2: And so I was doing my best to work through this, but the day came, in fact it was September the fifth.
Speaker 2: It was a Saturday, September the fifth of 2015, exactly five months later that I was sitting at Rudy's barbecue with a bunch of men from the church, having a men's breakfast, we were eating some incredible breakfast burritos.
Speaker 2: And I just want to say, we need to bring them to Northwest Ohio, but I'm sitting there eating this, this food, and we've talked about life.
Speaker 2: And we talked about spirituality and we started wrapping things up.
Speaker 2: And, and we started talking about football because that was the first day of the opening day for, for college football.
Speaker 2: And that day, uh, LSU tigers were scheduled to play McNeese state, and it was going to be an easy win.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew it, the LSU could send out the third string and still beat McNeese state.
Speaker 2: We're going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Ultimately that game got canceled for various reasons, but, but we, we were talking about it and we were talking about it.
Speaker 2: I can't talk about football without talking about Popol.
Speaker 2: And so we're talking about it.
Speaker 2: And suddenly I start feeling really weird.
Speaker 2: I start feeling kind of, kind of like my head starts getting started, getting fuzzy.
Speaker 2: And I, and I started trying to, it was harder and harder to keep my thoughts focused.
Speaker 2: And suddenly I just started feeling a little nauseous and I started getting hot and cold and hot and cold.
Speaker 2: Like I had a fever, but I didn't feel like anything was really wrong with me.
Speaker 2: I just, something weird was going on.
Speaker 2: So finally, after this occurred for several minutes, I got up and I said, gentlemen, I need to go, God bless you.
Speaker 2: And I went and got in my truck and I, I call my dad.
Speaker 2: I said, Hey dad, I'm not feeling right.
Speaker 2: Something is wrong with me.
Speaker 2: And I just want you to pray for me.
Speaker 2: And then talk to me while I'm on my way to the house.
Speaker 2: I don't want to call Christy cause I want to freak her out.
Speaker 2: He said, okay.
Speaker 2: And so he did, he prayed for me.
Speaker 2: And then I started driving and I drove really slow, uh, drove quite a ways to where our house was.
Speaker 2: And, and I pulled into the driveway.
Speaker 2: I got out of the truck.
Speaker 2: I walked to the front door.
Speaker 2: I just walked into the house and sat down at the dining room table.
Speaker 2: And there I sat feeling hot and cold and feeling I was sweating by that point.
Speaker 2: And my head is all freaked out.
Speaker 2: It's kinda like if you have ever accidentally taken too many decongestants, I have stress accidentally have ever taken too many decongestants.
Speaker 2: See, the only reason I know this is that's, that's what it kind of felt like my head was in two places at once and it was kind of in a fishbowl.
Speaker 2: And so I'm sitting there and Christie comes in, she says, how's it men's breakfast.
Speaker 2: It was fine.
Speaker 2: We had a good time, but I feel really odd.
Speaker 2: Something's off with me.
Speaker 2: She said, what's wrong?
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know.
Speaker 2: And I was telling her, explaining to her how I felt.
Speaker 2: And I said, I don't know what's wrong, but I got up and said, I'm going to go lay down on the couch and just kind of relax for a while.
Speaker 2: And so I got up and when I did, I almost passed out.
Speaker 2: I've passed out a few times, but never in a moment like that or for apparently no reason.
Speaker 2: And so, and so I kind of stumbled my way to the couch and I laid down.
Speaker 2: And when I laid down the weirdest thing of all happened, and that was all of a sudden, I felt like I was standing right over here, looking at myself, laying on the couch.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, I felt like I was floating above myself, looking down at me
Speaker 6: On laying on the couch.
Speaker 2: I knew that I was not looking at myself from this side.
Speaker 2: And I knew that I was not looking at myself from floating above myself because myself was laying upon the couch.
Speaker 2: And I knew that, and I was telling Christie something,
Speaker 6: It was really, really wrong with me.
Speaker 6: You need to call the ambulance.
Speaker 2: And she said, after thinking a minute now understand Christie is the person who tells me to go to the doctor more often than anybody.
Speaker 2: And we'll take you to the hospital in a second, if something's really wrong.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 2: And so this is, this is not something that she didn't do with a lot of thought.
Speaker 2: And she said, I don't think you need to go to the hospital.
Speaker 2: I think you're having a panic attack.
Speaker 2: I said, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at myself from over there while I'm laying on the couch and I'm looking at it at the same time.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at myself from up there as I'm laying on the couch and the whole time.
Speaker 2: And I'm on the couch.
Speaker 2: And I can't even talk to you regularly because something is really wrong with me.
Speaker 2: There's not a panic attack.
Speaker 2: There's something really wrong.
Speaker 5: And if
Speaker 2: You asked me about panic, when people said to me before this occurred, Hey, I'm having a panic attack.
Speaker 2: The, what I used to think is you need just need to get yourself together.
Speaker 2: You need to buck up and pull yourself together and get you, get your head on straight.
Speaker 2: But what I realized after she started talking to me about things that she had experienced, the things that she knew and things that she understand and read, I realized that she was probably right.
Speaker 2: I was having a panic attack.
Speaker 2: And then what I realized is if you're having a panic attack, you can't pull yourself together.
Speaker 2: I don't care if you recognize that you're laying on the couch, you're still looking at yourself from over here, from up there and, and stuff's happening.
Speaker 2: You can't control it.
Speaker 2: And so I realized that she was probably right in, and then I thought, what in the world do I have
Speaker 5: The panic about, I have
Speaker 2: My own house.
Speaker 2: I drove my own truck here, which probably not a good idea in hindsight.
Speaker 2: And, and everything's good.
Speaker 2: We have a good family.
Speaker 2: We have a good relationship we have.
Speaker 2: And then I remembered that at Rudy's.
Speaker 2: I had thought LSU is playing football today.
Speaker 2: And this is the first game they've ever played.
Speaker 2: That I will not be able to pick up the telephone and talk to Paul about that game.
Speaker 2: Cause he's gone.
Speaker 2: And then I started to say that to somebody.
Speaker 2: I started to say that to the group.
Speaker 2: And, but, but I thought everybody's tired of hearing me talk about Popol anyway,
Speaker 5: And then I'm probably gonna cry if I talk about it.
Speaker 5: So I don't want to do that.
Speaker 5: So I didn't express anything about it.
Speaker 5: The truth was it didn't matter.
Speaker 5: What I wanted to do.
Speaker 5: I was expressing
Speaker 2: My internal grief
Speaker 5: Externally.
Speaker 2: I wasn't doing it with any intentionality.
Speaker 2: It was just happening to me and I could not control what was going on intentionally or unintentionally.
Speaker 2: We express grief and grief can make us do crazy things.
Speaker 2: People who are grieving, we'll blow up a marriage.
Speaker 2: People who are grieving will spend money, recklessly.
Speaker 2: People who are grieving will live.
Speaker 2: Promiscuously.
Speaker 2: Some people become very angry and they start pushing people away from them.
Speaker 2: And they they're they're mad inside.
Speaker 2: So they just shut everybody out and they become irritable than become removed.
Speaker 2: And, and sometimes it gets worse than that.
Speaker 2: In that they start self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and they could just stay drunk or if they can stay high enough and they start breaking the good things that are happening in their lives.
Speaker 2: These are good guys.
Speaker 2: He's a good girls.
Speaker 2: He's a good people.
Speaker 2: But there are people who are hurting on the inside, who have, who are not allowing the natural grief process to take place.
Speaker 2: And so the hurt is festering.
Speaker 2: And suddenly you have people who have been hurting for 20 years and, and, and the pain has never truly gone.
Speaker 2: It's never been dealt with because they've never gone through the process of grief.
Speaker 2: So the question today is will you express grief intentionally in a healthy way or unintentionally express grief and become destructive to you and to those that are around you.
Speaker 2: But when I, when I ask people those questions, when they're, when they're in those conditions, I say, Hey, why are you shutting down?
Speaker 2: Why are you closing your family out?
Speaker 2: Why are you shutting your friends out of your life?
Speaker 2: And what they say is I don't want to put this kind of weight on them,
Speaker 5: But that's an illogical thing to say,
Speaker 2: Because you're putting the weight on them.
Speaker 2: They are losing you.
Speaker 2: They are losing the relationship with somebody that they love, who they care about, and your grief is becoming their grief.
Speaker 5: So you got to deal with it.
Speaker 2: The weight is there, but you got to deal with it.
Speaker 2: It may take praying it out.
Speaker 2: It might take talking it out.
Speaker 2: It might mean crying it out.
Speaker 2: It might be screaming it out.
Speaker 2: It might be exercising it out.
Speaker 2: It might be walking it out, but whatever you do, you got to let that grief process work in your life.
Speaker 2: And you have to mourn.
Speaker 2: You have to mourn take what's inside of you and express it outside of you.
Speaker 2: And here's what happens when you mourn intentionally, it brings us the thought, number three, you will be.
Speaker 5: That's what Jesus said when you're more and you will be comforted.
Speaker 2: So you can't address what you wanna admit is happening.
Speaker 2: You can't heal from a hurt that you say doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: You have a gaping wound in your side and you're going that that's nothing pay no attention to my guts.
Speaker 2: Hanging out.
Speaker 5: Some of you are doing that emotionally,
Speaker 2: You know, attention to what's going on in me.
Speaker 2: And then no one can extend comfort.
Speaker 2: If you want to admit that there's an issue in your world, that you are grieving, no one can help you.
Speaker 2: But when internal grief is expressed, externally comfort can be extended.
Speaker 2: Suddenly others, words of comfort and encouragement can be, can be meaningful to you when they know that grief is present in your life, you say, well, what are words going to do?
Speaker 2: Words cannot change the reality of the, but words can begin to place a South upon the wound that is there.
Speaker 2: And as you express, and as they express, suddenly healing can begin to take place.
Speaker 2: And the wound is not left to fester by itself, but, but as good as friends can be, and family can be, there's only one who can take a heart and turn it into becoming whole.
Speaker 2: And that is God himself.
Speaker 2: God offers comfort that the world cannot offer both the old Testament and the new Testament testify of God taking morning and turning it into a time of celebration.
Speaker 2: David wrote it this way.
Speaker 2: Psalm chapter 30.
Speaker 2: He said, you have turned for me.
Speaker 2: My mourning into dancing.
Speaker 2: You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.
Speaker 2: Praise.
Speaker 2: The Lord, Jeremiah.
Speaker 2: Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet.
Speaker 2: He's not typically the happy guy.
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 2: But he says in Jeremiah 31, I will turn their morning to joy.
Speaker 2: Will comfort them and make them rejoice rather than sorrow.
Speaker 2: Jesus himself said, he's talking about his own death.
Speaker 2: He says, they're going to put me to death.
Speaker 2: And then he says, most assuredly.
Speaker 2: I say to you, now that word, those two words, most assuredly in the Greek, as Jesus is saying, he, this is, this is, Hey, I'm telling you something.
Speaker 2: This is very emphatic.
Speaker 2: He said, listen up most assuredly.
Speaker 2: That's what he's saying here in, in the original language I say to you that you will weep you.
Speaker 2: Believers will weep and lament, but the world, when they put me on the cross that the Jewish leaders, the Roman soldiers, everybody that thinks I'm a troublemaker, they are going to rejoice.
Speaker 2: It's going to be awesome.
Speaker 2: Even as you are weeping, you're going to weep.
Speaker 2: They're going to rejoice.
Speaker 2: And then he says, but you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy.
Speaker 2: How was that?
Speaker 2: Because he was going to be put to death and he was going to be placed in a tomb.
Speaker 2: But in three days he was going to get up from that tomb, praise God.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden the believers were going to rejoice and the chief priests and the leaders of the day.
Speaker 2: We're not going to know what in the world to do with a guy that could not kill.
Speaker 2: It was awesome that Jesus got up from the grave.
Speaker 5: But then he left again,
Speaker 2: Like I can't invite Jesus to come talk to us today.
Speaker 2: Jesus, would you come preach to five lakes, church, a whole different subject, but he is right now.
Speaker 2: And it's not because I'm Jesus,
Speaker 5: But this is what he said.
Speaker 5: He
Speaker 2: Said something very specific when explaining what would occur when he left John 14, 16, he said, I will pray the father.
Speaker 2: And he shall give you another comforter.
Speaker 2: Another comforter that he may abide with you forever.
Speaker 2: So when he's telling us is that the Holy spirit embodies the comfort of God.
Speaker 2: And when the Holy spirit comes upon our life, as we are saved that he fills our life.
Speaker 2: The comforter fills our life with comfort.
Speaker 2: There, there is a comfort that comes from him.
Speaker 2: And so when we're in this grieving process, we can't get away from the grief.
Speaker 2: We can't get away from the hurts.
Speaker 2: But he says, when you allow the comforter to work in your life, then the hurt that you have, no matter what it is, no matter how it came, no matter how unexpected it was, no matter how deeply it cut.
Speaker 2: When the hurt comes in your life.
Speaker 2: When the comforter is with you, then you will not live the rest of your life grieving, but you will find joy as well.
Speaker 2: Praise God.
Speaker 2: How does joy come first Thessalonians.
Speaker 2: But we do not want you to miss B misinformed brothers about those who are asleep or those who have that.
Speaker 2: You may not grieve.
Speaker 2: Oh, you will grieve.
Speaker 2: But you may not grieve as others who have no hope.
Speaker 2: We grieve as believers.
Speaker 2: But we grieve as those who have hope.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: Because the comforter has come.
Speaker 2: The Holy spirit that empowers you.
Speaker 2: That empowers me.
Speaker 2: He has come.
Speaker 2: And he has not only come, but he has dwelled within you.
Speaker 2: He and dwells the believer.
Speaker 2: Now some of you need to intentionally mourn some stuff in your life.
Speaker 2: You need, you need to stop acting like it didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: Like you're so you're, you're tough enough to handle it all.
Speaker 2: You're tough, but you're not tough enough.
Speaker 2: You need to mourn some stuff.
Speaker 2: Maybe you've experienced some losses in 2020, I'm encouraging you today to express it.
Speaker 2: Even if you express it in a private place, I'm not saying you have to stand in the four-year and whale, but find a private place and Cole out, cry out, express what you're feeling inside.
Speaker 2: Outside.
Speaker 2: Find someone, a trusted friend, a trusted family member, find someone to express it with.
Speaker 2: But as you grieve, do not grieve as one who has no hope grieve, losing one relationship, knowing that the Holy spirit will bring the right relationship into your life.
Speaker 2: Grieve the loss of that job, knowing that the provider has already made a plan for you to provide for you and for your grieve, losing that opportunity, knowing that another door is going to open for you in your life.
Speaker 2: Grieve that health issue, knowing that he is the great physician and he will either heal you, or he will give you the strength to walk through it and testify of his goodness within it.
Speaker 2: Or he will take you home to glory, which has a much better place than this is grieve.
Speaker 2: That dream that died or that vision, knowing that the Holy spirit will bring new revelation and new understanding into your world.
Speaker 2: Grieve that adoption that fell through or didn't work out the way that you hope that it would knowing that God loves that baby more than you do.
Speaker 2: And he still has a plan for that child.
Speaker 2: And he still has a plan for your life to grieve that death, knowing that in Christ, you are already seated in heavenly places.
Speaker 2: The one that that left you here, they're already worshiping Christ in glory.
Speaker 2: And if, if I understand it correctly, I believe that if you're in Christ, you're already worshiping with them.
Speaker 2: They're to ask you to bow your heads.
Speaker 2: If you would, right now, praise team, come on out here, father in the name of Jesus, you have called us.
Speaker 2: You have created us.
Speaker 2: And now you are comforting us that we have the hurts that we feel and our lives.
Speaker 2: It's so easy for us to, to allow them to fester and to try to close ourselves off from the comfort and from the help that you provide as our father, our King, our savior, Lord, our comforter and our strength.
Speaker 2: I'm asking you today to give us the, give us the humility, to open ourselves up to you and to others.
Speaker 2: And to give us the courage, to accept the comfort that you pour into our lives, Lord, you know, what's going on in us, you know, what's happening.
Speaker 2: And so today, Holy spirit, we choose to trust you.
Speaker 2: We trust you with our hearts, knowing that you're the one that brings wholeness.
Speaker 2: You're good to us far better than we deserve your grace.
Speaker 2: Just to us with a grace that we cannot do not deserve.
Speaker 2: And we cannot earn.
Speaker 2: And Lord, we just ask your blessing upon your people.
Speaker 2: Well, today we may grieve, but we grieve as those who have hope and we operate in wholeness.
Speaker 2: As you bring healing into our lives, we give you thanks and praise for that in the awesome name of Jesus.
Speaker 2: And if that is your prayer today, which you just say, amen, amen.
Speaker 2: Let's stand on our feet.
Speaker 2: As we close this service in worship.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jay.