Your Encouraging 5 Minute Podcast
A weekly dose of encouragement to start your week off right! Join your favorite WPER hosts every week for uplifting thoughts to keep your eyes focused on Christ and His promises.
Your Encouraging 5 Minute Podcast
Finding Jesus in the Pain of Grief
Grief hits every single one of us. The overwhelming weight of loss, shattered dreams, or life's disappointments. In this intimate five-minute conversation, we explore how hope often intersects with our deepest sorrows.
What makes our faith unique in times of grief is that Jesus doesn't stand at a distance watching us squirm and struggle.
Despite knowing He would soon perform a miracle, Jesus wept at the death of his friend, Lazarus. The shortest verse in scripture - "Jesus wept" reveals our Savior's heart – He steps directly into our pain, feeling every ache right alongside us. When grief whispers that joy will never return, Jesus counters with a promise: "You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy" (John 16:20).
If you're walking through sorrow today, remember grief doesn't play nicely. Some days will feel impossible, triggered by the most unexpected moments, and some days feel quite peaceful. But through it all, you will never walk alone! Jesus remains your comfort, your refuge, your living hope. He promises one day to wipe every tear from our eyes, but until then, He weeps alongside you.
Share this message with someone struggling with grief today, and remember that genuine hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.
Thank you so much for listening to your encouraging five-minute podcast. We're Eric and Heather and we hope that at the end of five minutes you're going to feel encouraged and, if you are, share this podcast with somebody. But if you want a little bit more encouragement, consider listening to WPER, virginia's home for encouragement. Now, if you live outside the Virginia listening area, you can listen on your smart speaker or you can download the WPER app.
Speaker 2:So let's jump right in. Talk about grief. It's going to touch every single one of us at some point, whether it's the loss of someone we love, a dream that's died, or even the slow, silent grief of life not turning out the way we had hoped.
Speaker 2:Grief's heavy, yeah it is, it changes us, and if that's where you are today, we just want to say this you are not alone. A few years ago I had a friend. Mark lost his mom unexpectedly and this came through a phone call and that completely changed and shattered his world and he told us later that grief felt like waves at the beach. Sometimes he could stand and get through it. Sometimes it knocked him flat get through it. Sometimes it knocked him flat on his back.
Speaker 1:That's a great description.
Speaker 2:He said what surprised him the most was how lonely grief felt. People meant well, but none of their words could really touch the ache inside. And maybe you felt that he said I just wanted someone to sit in the pain with me, not fix it, not explain it, just be there. And isn't that what our hearts long for Someone to just see us in our grief and stay with us when it gets really uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:You know, what comforts the most is that Jesus knew and knows how grief feels. There's a moment in the book of John where Jesus gets to the tomb of his friend Lazarus. When he walks up, jesus knows he's about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He knows the ending is victory. But yet when Jesus walks up on the scene he sees Lazarus's sisters, mary and Martha, who are crying.
Speaker 2:And what does Jesus do he cries, he cries. Think about that. That's the shortest verse in the Bible, by the way, but probably really one of the most powerful. Jesus wept. John 11, 35 is where you find that.
Speaker 1:Isn't that nice to know that we don't have a God that's standing way far away just watching us struggle. We have a Savior who steps right into our pain. He feels that pain with us.
Speaker 2:He weeps with us, and that means even in our darkest grief, we are never alone. Grief will tell us the story's over. The joy will never come again. Death is the final word.
Speaker 1:But that is exactly where Jesus speaks hope, because in John 16, 20, he says you will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy, not because we forget and not because the loss doesn't matter, but because he is a God of resurrection, because death is not the end of the story. Thank.
Speaker 2:God right For Mark. Yeah, the grief's still there, still misses his mom every single day. But he told us something I'll never forget. He said grief taught me that Jesus really is enough. That hope isn't just a word, it's a person. Hope has a name and his name is Jesus. Jesus is our hope.
Speaker 1:Jesus is the only one that holds us together when everything falls apart. Jesus is the one who promises that one day he will wipe every single tear from our eyes. Jesus promises that death, that sorrow, that pain, all of it is not going to exist. So if you are grieving today, don't rush it, don't feel like you got to get through it right, because people say, oh, are you still grieving? Yes, because grief isn't linear. It doesn't play fair. Some days you'll be fine and some days you'll look at a cup on the counter and just lose it. But throughout every single moment, jesus is with you.
Speaker 2:He is your comfort, jesus is your refuge, jesus is our hope and we hope above everything, that you know you are loved, you're seen. There is hope, not someday, but right now, right here, because Jesus is with you. Hope you've been encouraged today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. If you've been encouraged by this podcast in any way, share it with a friend who might also need this encouragement, whether your grief is a year old or a decade old. And if you've been encouraged, you can always get more encouragement by listening to WPER, Virginia's Home for Encouragement. If you live outside of Virginia, you can listen to WPER on your smart speaker or even through the WPER app. You
