SPEAKER_01: Alright, so something happened to me this last week, and I am embarrassed by it, but I'm gonna share it with you.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's actually, I blame this for it.
SPEAKER_01: Does anyone know what this is?
SPEAKER_01: Say, say, yeah, it's a fly swatter, and yes, that is duct tape on it because I am too cheap to buy a new fly swatter, and duct tape seems to solve a lot of problems around the house.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's pretty gross.
SPEAKER_01: It's old.
SPEAKER_01: It may have some fly guts on it.
SPEAKER_01: And uh I've made a sport out of swatting flies in our family.
SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty proud of it.
SPEAKER_01: I've I think I've gone pro at this point.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I want you to know something happened to me this week as a result of this fly swatter.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I injured my shoulder.
SPEAKER_01: I injured my shoulder this week swatting a fly in our kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: Robin came around the corner, she said, Scott, there's a fly in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: I said, say no more.
SPEAKER_01: I slid down that pole into the bat cave.
SPEAKER_01: I came out with this thing, and I was ready to go.
SPEAKER_01: And I chased that fly down, and I went, and I had him right where I wanted him, and as soon as I smacked that fly, I felt, oh no.
SPEAKER_01: What was that?
SPEAKER_01: I pick up the fly, I throw it at the throw it in the trash, I go to put the fly swatter back, and when I put the fly swatter back, I feel and hear a and you know what happened?
SPEAKER_01: I hurt my shoulder.
SPEAKER_01: Swatting a fly in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: And I realized something that day.
SPEAKER_01: I've changed.
SPEAKER_01: I am years old now, and I can no longer go full Rambo on a fly in my kitchen without there being consequences.
SPEAKER_01: I had to take two days off from touching any type of weight.
SPEAKER_01: I just ran and hoped it it felt better over time.
SPEAKER_01: You know why?
SPEAKER_01: Because I changed.
SPEAKER_01: I got older.
SPEAKER_01: And something happened to me as I aged.
SPEAKER_01: I lost the ability to swing this the way I once did.
SPEAKER_01: The intensity at which I swatted a fly must change.
SPEAKER_01: Because I changed.
SPEAKER_01: And I lost the ability to do it the way I once did it.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what I realized in that ridiculous fly swatting kitchen story.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone will experience a change at some point in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: But with every change comes loss.
SPEAKER_01: Anytime something changes in our lives, we lose something.
SPEAKER_01: It's a reality we we've all experienced.
SPEAKER_01: When things change, you lose something.
SPEAKER_01: You can change relationships and you lose things.
SPEAKER_01: You can change a job and you lose things.
SPEAKER_01: Now you may gain things as well, but there is an unavoidable reality to change in our lives, which is that we will lose something.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, all of us just experienced this, whether we realized it or not.
SPEAKER_01: Give it just a second.
SPEAKER_01: Wait.
SPEAKER_01: Did you feel it?
SPEAKER_01: We all just lost that time.
SPEAKER_01: That time changed, and we're not getting it back.
SPEAKER_01: See, when things change, you lose things.
SPEAKER_01: Change of job status, change of relationship, maybe a change of a housing situation, change of opportunities that you wanted that you didn't get.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you moved.
SPEAKER_01: There's change there.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's the loss of family members or friendships or people we love.
SPEAKER_01: When things change in our lives, we lose things.
SPEAKER_01: And that loss is realized on the other end of that change.
SPEAKER_01: And then what happens is we start to process these feelings or interact with these feelings as we realize that loss as a consequence of that change, and that's called grief.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it whoops us, and we got to figure out how to understand it.
SPEAKER_01: And we don't even realize what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, think about it.
SPEAKER_01: The job you had, that job's gone now.
SPEAKER_01: That's changed.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens?
SPEAKER_01: You feel that loss in a certain way.
SPEAKER_01: You no longer see those people, you no longer go to that place.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe you miss it, maybe you don't, but there's loss there.
SPEAKER_01: The relationship we had no longer exists, that friendship or that romantic relationship, that fractured family relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that marriage has ended.
SPEAKER_01: It's changed.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens?
SPEAKER_01: We feel that loss.
SPEAKER_01: The place we lived, we moved.
SPEAKER_01: We moved maybe out of state or moved across town.
SPEAKER_01: Things changed, and we felt that loss.
SPEAKER_01: We felt the loss of the space that we had created, the memories that we had made in that certain house, or the loss of friendships and connections with neighbors and people who were around us in that prior location.
SPEAKER_01: See, that's a change that happens and that's a loss we realize and we feel that.
SPEAKER_01: It goes so deep.
SPEAKER_01: The loved one that we lost, that friend, that family member, the mother, father, spouse, child.
SPEAKER_01: That change in our lives brings about a realization that we have lost something or someone.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's too deep to even express into words.
SPEAKER_01: And on the other side of that loss, we process this thing called grief.
SPEAKER_01: It's the feelings associated with the losses we realize from the changes we experience.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone deals with change, which means everyone's going to deal with loss.
SPEAKER_01: Thus, everyone is going to have an encounter with grief of some kind at some time in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And we struggle to navigate loss and grief.
SPEAKER_01: I believe oftentimes because we just don't understand what's going on.
SPEAKER_01: And so the goal of our conversation this week is to help us navigate loss and grief and learn how to grow through it.
SPEAKER_01: But I want you to take a breath just at the onset of our conversation here, because some of us have experienced this, and maybe it's going to give you just a little bit of relief or release, or maybe just a little bit of freedom here.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to encourage you with this.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever gone through loss or grief in your life and you handled it poorly, can I just encourage you with this?
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
SPEAKER_01: If you ever went through loss or grief and it whooped you, it got the better of you.
SPEAKER_01: I'll be the first to raise my hand and say, Yep, been in that boat.
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to, it's okay.
SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
SPEAKER_01: You're still here.
SPEAKER_01: And we want to learn how to grow through what we go through.
SPEAKER_01: Because everybody is going to experience loss and grief.
SPEAKER_01: Because everyone will experience change.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we forget the personal ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's fun and easy to focus on the miraculous ministry of Jesus, water to wine, feeding 5,000 people, and you know, healing the sick.
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_01: And it's signs that point us to who Jesus is as Lord and Savior and God's Son.
SPEAKER_01: But it's it's easy sometimes to miss the personal ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus understood loss and grief in the Gospel of John chapter 11.
SPEAKER_01: We read of Jesus attending what would be a makeshift, then soon-to-be canceled funeral of his friend Lazarus.
SPEAKER_01: And he shows up and the family and friends are there and they're mourning, they're grieving.
SPEAKER_01: A change has happened.
SPEAKER_01: Their brother, their friend, Lazarus has died, and the loss that they have realized is coming with these feelings, and they are starting to grieve.
SPEAKER_01: And even Jesus, as he shows up on the scene in John chapter 11, it says, it's the shortest verse recorded in Scripture that Jesus wept.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus understands.
SPEAKER_01: I think that is a profound piece of scripture that's easy to overlook.
SPEAKER_01: And it's something that we need to get a hold of if we want to learn how to navigate loss and grow through the grief we go through.
SPEAKER_01: We need to understand that God understands.
SPEAKER_01: How profound is it that God would gift humanity with a further expression of his ability to understand us through this story we read of his son Jesus who experienced loss and wept just as we would.
SPEAKER_01: What a beautiful picture of God's understanding because God wants us to know that he understands grief.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's because many of us don't understand grief.
SPEAKER_01: And so God wants us to come to him when we're grieving.
SPEAKER_01: But grief can be hard to understand.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot involved, and it can be confusing, and it can catch us by surprise sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: We think we're doing okay.
SPEAKER_01: And then what happens?
SPEAKER_01: Woof.
SPEAKER_01: It hits us.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of misconceptions about grief when things change in our lives and we realize those losses and we start to journey through what is often called the grief process in what has been coined stages of grief.
SPEAKER_01: Is anyone familiar with the stages of grief?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've experienced that.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've gone to a group share or a class or something.
SPEAKER_01: And what are those stages of grief, right?
SPEAKER_01: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you've heard of the five stages of grief.
SPEAKER_01: But what if you're like some of us who maybe journeyed through loss, dealt with grief, and kind of thought, well, that's, I mean, I don't know that I necessarily went through all of those like that.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that doesn't sound like the best way to describe the grief process that I went through.
SPEAKER_01: And you know why?
SPEAKER_01: Because grief is not a one-size-fits-all formula.
SPEAKER_01: Grief comes in all shapes and sizes because losses come in all shapes and sizes.
SPEAKER_01: Losing an opportunity to play on a team that you tried out for is not the same thing as losing a job that you loved and things shifted in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And those are not the same thing as losing plans that you had made because you were excited to hang out with this person and they canceled on you and you're bummed about it, as is losing a loved one in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Losses come in all shapes and sizes, which means grief is going to look different for different people in different situations and in different seasons.
SPEAKER_01: And so we need to clear up some misconceptions about grief.
SPEAKER_01: Those five stages, there's nothing bad about them.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they're helpful for allowing us to understand maybe why we're feeling what we're feeling or that we're feeling these things.
SPEAKER_01: And it can help maybe ascribe a word or a way for us to even articulate that with people in our lives so they can help walk alongside us.
SPEAKER_01: But those five stages of grief were actually not designed to be the grief formula for every person.
SPEAKER_01: Those five stages of grief were actually coined in an observation from a psychiatrist.
SPEAKER_01: Her name was Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Kuvla Ross.
SPEAKER_01: She in the 1960s, in the late 60s, had done a study for her practice.
SPEAKER_01: And it was actually based on a very small sample size of only 200 people.
SPEAKER_01: So the five stages of grief that we understand that there are books on that we lead people through are actually the result of an observational study from a psychiatrist in the late 60s of a sample size of only 200 people, but they were 200 people who had been given terminal diagnoses, meaning they were diagnosed with some form of sickness, illness that was going to cause their death to be approaching quickly.
SPEAKER_01: And so what Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Kugler-Ross did is she sat down and she interviewed these 200 people.
SPEAKER_01: She observed them and she penned that all 200 people seemed to, on some level, in some way, process the news of their terminal diagnosis with these five stages.
SPEAKER_01: But not all losses experienced that.
SPEAKER_01: But what happens, right?
SPEAKER_01: The medical community, the psychological community, here's what happened.
SPEAKER_01: They got a hold of this uh published work from Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Ross, and they realized, okay, here's what we know.
SPEAKER_01: Grief is messy.
SPEAKER_01: There are feelings that will hit you out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_01: You don't see them coming and you don't know how to deal with them.
SPEAKER_01: It can feel chaotic at times.
SPEAKER_01: But because people are looking for solutions to their problems, the medical and psychological communities jumped on board and said, okay, look, then we want to help, we want to help people maybe kind of get a hold of what they're going on, you know, what's going on in their minds here.
SPEAKER_01: And okay, well, this is what Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Kubler-Ross says people walk through, at least in this sample size of people who have been diagnosed as terminally ill patients.
SPEAKER_01: Well, then let's just go ahead and say, hey, if you're going through grief, maybe you'll go through this on some level.
SPEAKER_01: And so they they did this as a way to help people be able to articulate what they're going through.
SPEAKER_01: Because maybe you've experienced this, you've had a pretty real loss, and the grief you're going through, some days you're just like, I don't even know how to say what I'm feeling.
SPEAKER_01: And so they provided these five stages of grief as kind of a backdrop of understanding.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what can happen sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: We'll go through loss, we'll experience grief, and it's different for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: And so some of these stages are pretty accurate for us.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we'll go through the denial stage, and yeah, I mean, we just kind of what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: We avoid, we avoid dealing with the reality, and so we we put it off.
SPEAKER_01: Or there's the anger stage, we've talked about this before, where that's real, and you're angry, you're angry at the situation.
SPEAKER_01: You may be even angry at God.
SPEAKER_01: You may be angry at another person, you may be angry at yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's there's a reality.
SPEAKER_01: You go through loss and you deal with anger.
SPEAKER_01: That's real.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's stages like bargaining, and you wonder, okay, well, I mean, yeah, I've kind of bargained sometimes, but there's a danger in thinking that in every loss you have to engage in a stage like this at a certain level to be okay.
SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes you'll start to force yourself to maybe feel some things that you aren't naturally moving in the direction of.
SPEAKER_01: And here's what can happen with bargaining sometimes.
SPEAKER_01: You ready?
SPEAKER_01: It can accidentally cause us to see God as this cosmic vending machine or some type of arcade game.
SPEAKER_01: Well, God, I guess I didn't put in the right amount of tokens, and so you took this from me.
SPEAKER_01: And so we start to see God not as sovereign or as one who understands who, yes, does allow all things to happen, but we start to see God as this cosmic vending machine owner who says, Look, you didn't put in three tokens, you only put in two.
SPEAKER_01: And so you're not gonna get this thing you wanted.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm I'm gonna not give you what you want at all, and I'm gonna do this to you.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're not careful, we can start to miss the sovereignty, the grace, the goodness, and the love of God because we start to hold a grudge against him in this bargaining process.
SPEAKER_01: Well, God, I thought I did this the right way, and we play that what-if game.
SPEAKER_01: What if I would have done this, and maybe you would have done this, and we we miss kind of an opportunity to grow in our relationship with God because instead of going to him with our grief, we blame him for our situation.
SPEAKER_01: Depression can be real, but sometimes you'll experience losses, and again, because they come in all shapes and sizes, you might think, yeah, we we experienced a pretty good change in our life and we lost some stuff, but I didn't really, I mean, I got sad, I got, I got, you know, I got angry, but I didn't really get beaten down.
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't feel maybe stuck in there.
SPEAKER_01: So did I do grief wrong?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, am I okay?
SPEAKER_01: Do I need to go, do I need to go back and do it all over again?
SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, because I didn't really feel depressed as long as maybe I've heard others.
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is no, you don't need to go back and do it again, because again, grief is gonna look different for everyone.
SPEAKER_01: And they'll there will be similarities in the things that you go through, but how you recognize them, you're gonna get better at it.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're not careful, though, we'll end up thinking that we're not okay because we didn't check every box in the stages of grief formula that we've been given.
SPEAKER_01: Because we have to remember grief is messy, and while there are pretty common things everyone will experience on the other side of loss, and as we process grief, that process might look different for the person next to you than it does you.
SPEAKER_01: Because the losses come in all shapes and sizes, and grief looks different.
SPEAKER_01: You lose that job, it's different than losing that person that you loved.
SPEAKER_01: The loss of a relationship, you lost that friendship, it was fractured.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there was some forgiveness that you just couldn't arrive at, and you feel that loss.
SPEAKER_01: You lose that breakup.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe when you're younger and you're dating that person, and that person hung the moon, and you love that person, and you can't imagine your life with that person, you have no idea what it's gonna be like to get through the eighth grade without that person, and you lose that relationship and you feel that, but that's a little different than you're in your 30s and your marriage has ended.
SPEAKER_01: That's a different type of loss, that's a different type of grief.
SPEAKER_01: And you lose things in some of those changes and some of in some of those experiences that you didn't see coming.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you lose some self-confidence and you start asking the question, can anybody love me?
SPEAKER_01: Will I ever find the right person?
SPEAKER_01: Or someone hurts us, and we wonder, can we ever trust anyone again?
SPEAKER_01: See, losses come in all shapes and sizes because not every change is the same, which means the way we grieve things, the way we process the feelings on the other side of loss, is going to be different in different situations for different people because not all people process grief the same way.
SPEAKER_01: Not all situations carry the same weight or have the same grief dynamic.
SPEAKER_01: But if all change involves loss of some kind, and all loss comes with grief of some kind, we need to understand how to deal with it.
SPEAKER_01: And the most common question that gets asked is how can I get through my grief?
SPEAKER_01: We want to get to the other side of it.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to challenge with a different question, and maybe this will help you.
SPEAKER_01: Because some of us who have navigated grief and loss in our lives, it may be years, months, decades down the road, and there are moments that we feel it and we don't realize that we can feel it later on than we maybe thought, or or we're pushing for it, and we think that after a loss of some kind, that if we can process the grief enough to get to the end of it, we will get past it.
SPEAKER_01: But how many of us who have lost and have grieved maybe understand some.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you don't ever feel like you get past it.
SPEAKER_01: So instead of asking the question, How can I get through my grief?
SPEAKER_01: I want to encourage you to ask this question.
SPEAKER_01: How can I grow through my grief?
SPEAKER_01: How can I grow through?
SPEAKER_01: Because you may not ever feel like you fully got through grief because you might always feel that loss.
SPEAKER_01: That's the reality.
SPEAKER_01: You might not feel as heavy as you once did, but it is very possible you're going to feel certain losses for a very long time.
SPEAKER_01: And you may not ever, as we say, get over it.
SPEAKER_01: But you can grow through it.
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, if you work hard, you can train your heart to hope and grow through what you go through.
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to give you some practical things and some spiritual things.
SPEAKER_01: Things to help you get through the days and grow through the season.
SPEAKER_01: And I want to start with this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to put a photo up here for you, and I want to ask, does anybody know what this is?
SPEAKER_01: It's old school.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: All right.
SPEAKER_01: Did anybody ever do one of these?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: That's a seesaw.
SPEAKER_01: In case you don't know, it's a seesaw.
SPEAKER_01: So what happens?
SPEAKER_01: One person sits at one end, another at the other, and then you do what?
SPEAKER_01: You bounce back and forth.
SPEAKER_01: And it's fun, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is crazy because this is from the 1900s when we used to do weird stuff like go outside and play.
SPEAKER_01: And you'd hop on these seesaws and you'd be on the playground.
SPEAKER_01: And you know how this works, man.
SPEAKER_01: If somebody was bigger and they sat on it and the person was smaller and sat on it, did it go?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: What had to happen?
SPEAKER_01: The bigger person has to push off with their legs so they can experience this and they come back down, and then what happens?
SPEAKER_01: Gravity does what it does.
SPEAKER_01: Physics does what it does.
SPEAKER_01: The seesaw gets scienced, and the heavier person goes and you do one of those, don't you?
SPEAKER_01: You know why?
SPEAKER_01: There's a thing in the middle of a seesaw called a fulcrum.
SPEAKER_01: I want to do a science lesson.
SPEAKER_01: We'll put the next one up because this will help me illustrate.
SPEAKER_01: I've got some cartoon friends here, and they're going to help us learn some science about a seesaw.
SPEAKER_01: The seesaw is a classic example of what's called a lever.
SPEAKER_01: The great uh mathematician and scientist of ancient Greece, his name was Archimedes, was famously quoted as saying, give me a lever long enough and I can move the world.
SPEAKER_01: Because a lever uses what's called a fulcrum.
SPEAKER_01: That's that triangle in the middle that the seesaw balances on.
SPEAKER_01: And that fulcrum is actually what dictates the amount of weight that gets distributed on the seesaw.
SPEAKER_01: So as the load is heavier here than it is here, if the fulcrum is in the middle, the heavier load is going to dictate the balance of the scale.
SPEAKER_01: Are you tracking?
SPEAKER_01: So then how on earth would it be that our one friend seems to have hoisted up our two friends here?
SPEAKER_01: It's because, scientifically, here's what happens it's a unique uh bit of engineering.
SPEAKER_01: If you move the fulcrum toward the heavier load, it now becomes easier for the other side to hoist the load.
SPEAKER_01: And you can take that off.
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to look at my cartoon science drawing anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Why do I share that?
SPEAKER_01: Because years ago I read a book called The Happiness Advantage.
SPEAKER_01: It's by an author.
SPEAKER_01: His name is Sean Acor.
SPEAKER_01: And Sean Acor would go around and he was teaching, and in his book, he encouraged people as they dealt with the difficulties of life, that one of the most practical things you can do to get through the days and grow through the seasons is to move the fulcrum in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes you have a stationary plot in which this is where I process my emotions.
SPEAKER_01: And life is like this.
SPEAKER_01: And so if life gets heavy, I get hoisted.
SPEAKER_01: And if life gets light, I'm all good.
SPEAKER_01: And what Sean Acor said in his book, The Happiness Advantage, is that practically you need to learn how to move the fulcrum in your life and look for practical things that move the fulcrum that allow you to experience positivity to look forward to.
SPEAKER_01: It's a field that is called positive psychology, and I'll just give you the spoiler because I read the book.
SPEAKER_01: We have the resources available to us, but in his practical book that did reach people with really truths of God's word, he said, in order to move the fulcrum, you got to do some things that don't sound very sensational, but they are very helpful and practical.
SPEAKER_01: Things like this schedule time with a friend during the week to go have coffee or lunch or take a walk with them.
SPEAKER_01: It's very simple.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what it does?
SPEAKER_01: It gives you something.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the key it gives you something to look forward to.
SPEAKER_01: When change happens and we experience loss and we process grief, it's easy to get stuck in the muddiness of our grief.
SPEAKER_01: And we start to lose sight of things that we can enjoy and look forward to.
SPEAKER_01: It's very practical.
SPEAKER_01: He says things, I mean, down to simply, oh, that movie came out on Disney Plus.
SPEAKER_01: I've been wanting to watch it, so this Thursday night, I'm going to put it on my calendar that I'm going to sit down, I'm going to cook my favorite food, and I'm going to sit there and watch that movie.
SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't sound like something to do to process grief, does it?
SPEAKER_01: But do you know what it's doing?
SPEAKER_01: It's moving the fulcrum in a direction for you to look ahead to positive things.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go to church this week because I know there's going to be people there that are going to bless me.
SPEAKER_01: That that smiling face of that person I see at church is going to help me move the fulcrum of my life.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to look forward to that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to start that book I've been wanting to start.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go on that coffee date.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do that workout.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go to the gym.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to attend that sporting event.
SPEAKER_01: These don't sound very spiritual, but they are hyper-practical ways.
SPEAKER_01: You know what they're doing?
SPEAKER_01: They're leveraging the way you approach your emotions in the season.
SPEAKER_01: Because the heavier the grief, the higher you get hoisted.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in order for you to kind of get through the days, as it were, find things to look forward to.
SPEAKER_01: You got to move that fulcrum in the direction.
SPEAKER_01: Do things that allow you to look ahead to positive things in your life.
SPEAKER_01: Spiritually, what can we do?
SPEAKER_01: There are cases in Scripture that encourage us to get real with God, to lament.
SPEAKER_01: Lament is a way of offering honest prayers.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever seen the movie Forest Gump, Lieutenant Dan made his peace with God because he sat there on that boat and had some honest prayers.
SPEAKER_01: It was ugly, but he did it.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we're afraid to get real with God because we don't want him to see what we're thinking, even though he already knows what we're thinking.
SPEAKER_01: I tell people this all the time.
SPEAKER_01: They say, Pastor Scott, what's the best prayer?
SPEAKER_01: I tell them, an honest one.
SPEAKER_01: It is an honest prayer.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Psalm 39 tells us that he knows every word and he knows every thought.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the big point there.
SPEAKER_01: He listens.
SPEAKER_01: He gets it.
SPEAKER_01: God understands your grief.
SPEAKER_01: And he even invites us to come to him.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' words, in the Gospel of Matthew, he says, Look, if you are heavy burdened, come to me.
SPEAKER_01: Come to me, I get it, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_01: I have a verse I want you to write down and hold on to, and I'll put it on the screen.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Psalm chapter 34.
SPEAKER_01: And it says this in Psalm 34.
SPEAKER_01: You can read along with me.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord is what?
SPEAKER_01: Near to thee.
SPEAKER_01: What's that word?
SPEAKER_01: Brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_01: Saves the crushed in spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That word brokenhearted is actually two Hebrew words.
SPEAKER_01: And what they mean are the shattered pieces of the innermost parts of you.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you feel like a mess.
SPEAKER_01: And the word of God tells us that God is near to the brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_01: How do we grow through the grief we go through?
SPEAKER_01: Get honest with God, lament, have honest prayers, then express it physically.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you're just going to have to cry it out.
SPEAKER_01: And those crying fits will catch you by surprise.
SPEAKER_01: They will come out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_01: That song comes on and it hits you.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: That smell.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody orders that item at a restaurant, that holiday movie comes out.
SPEAKER_01: That billboard you see, that TV show came on.
SPEAKER_01: A Tuesday.
SPEAKER_01: Grief can come out of nowhere and hit you.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you just need to feel it and let it out.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture's full of people who lamented and let that out physically.
SPEAKER_01: David, Moses, Elijah, Job, Hannah, Mary, the list can go on and on and on.
SPEAKER_01: You want to grow through the grief you go through spiritually?
SPEAKER_01: Get real with God.
SPEAKER_01: Get honest with God.
SPEAKER_01: Lament.
SPEAKER_01: Have honest prayers.
SPEAKER_01: Be comfortable letting it out.
SPEAKER_01: Do not be afraid to let it out.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us are like, no, I can't let anybody see me cry.
SPEAKER_01: I can't let anybody see me hurt.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if your courage to be confident into feeling what you're actually feeling would be the thing that the person next to you needs to see because they're struggling with the same fear of letting it out too.
SPEAKER_01: And they just need, they just need permission through your courage to let it out.
SPEAKER_01: And then you grow together.
SPEAKER_01: Which leads me to a big one, and it's this find your people.
SPEAKER_01: In Scripture, people who grew through the grief they went through found people.
SPEAKER_01: They found support, and you're going to need support.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to hear this because it is very, very important.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to grow through the grief you go through, you are going to need to find people in your life who love God and love you and want to help you grow.
SPEAKER_01: And it might take you outside of your comfort zone to find those people and to be vulnerable enough to share with those people to let them in and let them help you.
SPEAKER_01: But you will not grow through the grief you go through unless you find people to help you get through the days and grow through the season because struggles grow in isolation, but people grow in community.
SPEAKER_01: I was 15 years old, and my best friend was killed in front of me.
SPEAKER_01: I told you I'm getting real with you.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't do this, so bear with me.
SPEAKER_01: I watched my best friend die on July 3rd, 1999.
SPEAKER_01: And as they packed me into the ambulance and took me to the hospital, I sat there in that room.
SPEAKER_01: And I watched as his parents came in and they told him.
SPEAKER_01: I dealt with football coaches and friends and family members sitting there.
SPEAKER_01: Are you okay?
SPEAKER_01: I got x-rays, I got stitched up, I got all the things.
SPEAKER_01: I woke up the next day sore and clueless.
SPEAKER_01: I was a 15-year-old young man.
SPEAKER_01: I had no idea how to deal with anything.
SPEAKER_01: And then what happened?
SPEAKER_01: It compounded.
SPEAKER_01: Things that meant the world to me at the time, I lost them.
SPEAKER_01: That girlfriend, that relationship, she was gone because I didn't know how to process my grief, and she didn't either.
SPEAKER_01: We were teenagers.
SPEAKER_01: And so that was lost.
SPEAKER_01: Those football scholarships that were being offered to me to go play on national television.
SPEAKER_01: When you mess yourself up in a car accident like that, your body says, No more.
SPEAKER_01: And those were gone.
SPEAKER_01: Those physical capabilities that I had gone.
SPEAKER_01: The feeling of being carefree as a kid was gone.
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't realize it.
SPEAKER_01: And so I told God to leave me alone.
SPEAKER_01: And I spent several years of my life avoiding him, if possible.
SPEAKER_01: And one day, when I was at the bottom of it, I got a phone call from a friend.
SPEAKER_01: He actually now serves as one of our advisory board members.
SPEAKER_01: We have known each other a very long time.
SPEAKER_01: He called and he said, Hey man, the worship team that I serve on is doing a trip to North Carolina.
SPEAKER_01: We were in Virginia at the time.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Um, why don't you just come tag along?
SPEAKER_01: I said, okay.
SPEAKER_01: So I got in a van, I was sick, didn't want to go, and I went that weekend.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what I did?
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't pick up a guitar and play, I didn't help.
SPEAKER_01: I moved some chairs around, I carried in some equipment, and I was just with friends.
SPEAKER_01: We got back from that trip, they called me the next weekend.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we're all going to see this movie.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you come with us?
SPEAKER_01: I didn't want to see that movie.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but just come with us.
SPEAKER_01: So I went and saw that movie.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it.
SPEAKER_01: But they were helping me grow through the grief I was going through.
SPEAKER_01: I had no idea.
SPEAKER_01: That discipleship now youth event weekend that I showed up to and moved chairs to, and I think I ran PowerPoint slides, which was probably a disaster.
SPEAKER_01: It changed my life.
SPEAKER_01: It would eventually introduce me to some friendships that would be long-lasting and help me grow through what I went through and realize that I wasn't alone, and there were people who loved me and wanted to love me through that process, but I had isolated myself because I didn't think anybody could understand.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know, you've not been through that.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't need to know what it was like to have gone through that.
SPEAKER_01: They just wanted to love and help me.
SPEAKER_01: You want to grow through the grief you go through?
SPEAKER_01: Find people to help you get through the days and grow through the seasons.
SPEAKER_01: Because you're gonna have to work on worshiping God in that season.
SPEAKER_01: And it's you're not gonna want to.
SPEAKER_01: You are not gonna want to declare the goodness of God when the grief of life is whooping you.
SPEAKER_01: You're just not gonna, so it's gonna take work.
SPEAKER_01: And you hear that phrase time heals all wounds.
SPEAKER_01: It does not.
SPEAKER_01: But it does give you the opportunity to grow through what you go through if you're willing to work on it.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to recite scripture.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to sing those songs that you don't feel like singing, but you're gonna have to declare those.
SPEAKER_01: That's why you have in several pieces of God's word and places the Lord gives and the Lord takes.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I will tell you this firsthand as I shared very briefly a little part of my story.
SPEAKER_01: I will tell you this as a guy who told God to leave him alone and took years to find his way back.
SPEAKER_01: There have been seasons, days, moments of life where I had to stand in the struggle and say, the Lord gives, the Lord takes, blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want to, and you're not gonna want to.
SPEAKER_01: There will be those moments, just like I shared with you, where you may even feel like you lost everything.
SPEAKER_01: But I want you to hear this.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't lose God.
SPEAKER_01: He is still there.
SPEAKER_01: And you may be mad at him, and you may not understand what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: You might even be confused.
SPEAKER_01: But the Lord is near to the brokenhearted.
SPEAKER_01: God sees you and he cares for you.
SPEAKER_01: Even when you don't understand what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: So one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna hurt your shoulder trying to swing this out of fly in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: Because things have changed.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna realize loss, and you're gonna experience the feelings that come on the other side of that loss called grief.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that grief is gonna swim in the shallow end of the pool and it's gonna be easier to get through.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes that grief is gonna toss you into the deep end that is so deep you don't even feel like you can see the bottom.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be different at different seasons of life, but God will be the same through it.
SPEAKER_01: Our grief wants to tell us that God changes when our circumstances change.
SPEAKER_01: He does not.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have to get real with him.
SPEAKER_01: Let it out.
SPEAKER_01: Find your people and work on worshiping God when it is hard.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed be the name of the Lord in all seasons.
SPEAKER_01: Do things to help you get through the days.
SPEAKER_01: Move that fulcrum and do things to help you grow through the season.
SPEAKER_01: Lament, let it out.
SPEAKER_01: Find your people, get support, and work on worship.
SPEAKER_01: And then you'll learn what it means to grow through what you go through.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: And you can linger in the lobby and maybe even now start finding your people.
SPEAKER_01: Scan a QR code, do something to let us know if we can pray for you.
SPEAKER_01: And as the heaviness of the message I know can rest on us, I would encourage you to rest in this.
SPEAKER_01: The God who sent his son to make a way for you loves you and is just waiting on you to come to him with your grief and your loss.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a room full of people here and a room full of people in the next service who are all journeying through life together.
SPEAKER_01: And you do not have to do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: God, thank you again for another day.
SPEAKER_01: God, I pray that your word helps us.
SPEAKER_01: God, even as we engage in kind of a heavy message, I pray that it would help.
SPEAKER_01: That's ultimately what we're asking.
SPEAKER_01: God, that you would be honored and that it would help us grow in our faith, grow through the seasons we go through.
SPEAKER_01: It's in your name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church.
SPEAKER_00: We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you.
SPEAKER_00: If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online, there's a link right here that you can follow and it'll take you to that payment portal.
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you donate helps not only go towards reaching people in the greater San Diego area, but also all around the world for our ministry party.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to get further connected, whether in person or online, you can email this email right here, and either myself or some one of our team members will be there to answer it and help you get connected in any way that you need.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next week.