A Christian approach to Grief: Finding Hope when your heart is breaking.

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Introduction: When Loss Leaves You Without Words.

Grief is something that a human being can experience and it is one of the most disorienting experiences. One day life is going on in a predictable pattern and something occurs a death, a loss, a sudden end, and then the ground goes out under your feet. Everything seem changed at the moment. And knowing that it is going to be okay does not change the feeling.

When we grieve, we ask God many questions. Where is God in this? Why did he allow it? Is it permissible to be this angry, shattered, lost? Does faith imply that I am expected to be holding on to it better than I am?

This article is not going to propel you into a healing process or bow a basket of feel-good Bible verses on your head. It will be straight forward by walking through what the bible actually states on grief, what a Christian approach to loss actually looks like and how faith can be a true source of comfort and strength even during the darkest times of life.

You are allowed to grieve. And you need not lament solitary.

 

Bible Says About Grief and Loss.

Should a Christian Grieve?

It is one of the most essential things that must be determined at the very beginning: grief is not the evidence of bad faith. The Bible abounds with individuals that mourned with the heart, with sincerity and without shame. David wept. Jeremiah cursed with such a lot of force that a whole book of the Bible carries the name. Job sat in ashes. Hannah lamented in the presence of God to the extent that a priest thought that she was a drunken woman.

And then there is Jesus. Even when Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus out of the dead, he cried at the tomb. It is also one of the briefest verses in the whole Bible, and it has a weighty load on it. The Son of God was at a grave side and wept. He did not pass the grief to reach the miracle. He went all the way into the agony of the moment. He felt it.

This implies that when you mourn, it does not mean that you are a failure as a Christian. You are being human. God created us as loving people and sorrow is only what love should appear like when it loses something. It is not not letting yourself feel it shows a lack of faith. It is sincerity, and God cannot be shy of sincerity.

 

Christian Grieving: Hopeful Sorrow.

What Christian Grief Has in Common with the Grief of the World?

Paul tells something extraordinary in his first letter to the Thessalonians. He instructs believers not to mourn as those who do not have hope do. That is a meticulous and significant phrase. He does not say do not grieve. He says do not weep like hopeless men. The difference exists and is actual.

Christian grief is such grief that has hope in it. As Christians, we believe; that everything happens for a reason. There is hope that what is dead will come back to life. The dead man who raised Jesus is the same God who is still working.

The grief does not fade away because of that hope. It fails to make the loss less significant. That it is not the last word of grief. On the other side of it there is something, and the God who will walk with you through it is one who has already overcome the worst loss can possibly inflict.

That difference, despair with hope as opposed to despair without it, is what lends its especial touch to Christian grief. It may be uncivilized and actual and full of tears, and still it may be a part of a system of trust and expectation.

Where Is God When You Are Grieving? Questions Christians Ask: Honest.

The Question of Why God Allows Grief and Suffering?

This is the question that lies in the middle of nearly all grief experiences. And in case God is good, and in case God is mighty, how come that he allowed this to occur? Why did he not step in? And where did he go when it all went wrong?

The Bible does not provide a neat solution to this. What it does provide is good company. People in the Psalms are pleading with God by posing these very questions. Why have you forgotten me? How long, Lord? Why do you hide your face? These are not the prayers of unbelievers. They are the prayers of individuals who believe in God to the extent that they can argue with him on what they are going through.

What the Scripture always reveals is that God never leaves people alone in their misery. He is not standing by and watching. Isaiah refers to him as a God that is close to the brokenhearted, one that picks up those too weak to make it on their own. Romans 8 is a shocking assertion that neither death nor life nor anything in the entire creation can separate us and the love of God.

It may not seem to you that presence just now. The grief tends to deaden everything, including spiritual. But not to feel is not not to feel God. He even when he does not talk is there in grief. and numerous individuals who have passed through a yearning death tell us that in the most distressing times of their lives, looking back, they have perceived signs of his closeness when they had no thought of it then.

 

The Christian Journey Through Loss and Stages of Grief.

Is Grief a Patterned Process among Christians?

Psychology tells us that there different stages of grief. The majority of individuals experience various moods in an unforeseeable sequence. One week you may feel good and the next time you are in a state of utter ruin because of a smell, or a song or a boring Tuesday afternoon.

As a Christian, we have the grace of each step. Anger in grief is not a sin. Frantic or bewildered shouts to God are not lack of faith. The very bargaining which occasionally occurs, the begging with God, is comprehended by a God who knows the heart of man and treats it with compassion rather than with sternness.

The Christian faith does not provide a bypass to the complexes involved in the process of grief, but a companion in the process. The Holy Spirit, which is defined by Jesus as the Comforter, is specially available in the periods of suffering. You need not make peace, or feign to be ahead of where you are. God finds you at whatever point you are in the process and he is patient enough to remain with you.

How to Seek Comforter in God in The Grieving.

Practical How Christians Can Be Close to God in Grieving.

Spiritual practices that used to come naturally when in the midst of grief might seem impossible when in the midst of grief. It is empty reading the Bible. It is like talking to a wall when praying. Worship feels forced. This is most widespread, and there is nothing to be ashamed of.

On of the sincerest things you can do during this season is to take your grief straight to God through prayer. Not refined praying, not theological praying, plain and simple words. Tell him you are struggling. Tell him you are angry. Inform him that you know not. This type of prayer is modeled excellently in the Psalms and they allow you to be thoroughly yourself with God instead of having to control your emotions to his advantage.

One of the most soothing things a bereaved individual can do is also read the Psalms in a slow manner. Not as a study exercise, but as a company text.

Do not separate yourself spiritually. Although going to church may seem difficult at this point, though you may sit in the back and walk out early, it still matters to be in the body of Christ. According to Paul the church is a fellowship that weeps with the weepers. You did not create grief to bear alone, and the family around you in faith is a portion of how God will comfort you in this season.

What the Bible says of Heaven and Eternal Hope in the Grief.

Does the Hope of Heaven Benefit Grief?

The heavenly promise is not a cliche to the Christians who have lost a loved one who shared their faith. It is a true theological anchor.

Paul explains the hope of resurrection as the fundamental of faith. Unless Christ is raised, he says plainly, then we have nothing to believe in. But Christ is risen and that rising is the assurance of ours. That lost person, by knowing Christ, is not merely lost. They are in the presence of the Lord, and are in a condition of existence which is more beautiful and complete than this life ever presented.

This never makes the soreness of their absence pass. You still miss them. You even pick up the phone to call them. You also go to tell them something and experience the empty place that they occupy. Grief of separation is not forgotten in heaven. But it does reframe it. It transforms the goodbye to a temporary goodbye.

Keeping on to that hope with both hands even when it seems fragile is one of the most distinctly Christian things that a grieving person can do.

How To Help a Grieving Christian: What the Bible Says about Comforters.

What Christians Should Say to the Grieving Person?

Assuming that you are reading this not because you are struggling but because someone you love is mourning, this section is addressed to you. Reaching too quick to words is one of the most erroneous things that well-meaning Christians make. We have the desire to heal the hurt, to provide a theological clarification, to encourage the individual that God is in charge or that their person is in a higher place.

The typical model of how not to do this in the Bible is Job and his friends. The first day they arrived they remained silent with him seven days. It was the most useful thing that they did. Things began to go wrong only once they began to talk. The presence of a person is sometimes the greatest gift you can give a bereaved person. Sitting with them. Not trying to fix anything. Not explaining anything. Just being there.

Romans 12 tells us to weep with weepers. Not to turn at once to the silver lining. Not to remind them that everything is working together because they have not been given time to experience the loss. Just weep with them. Match their sorrow. Make them understand they are not the only ones in it.

In practice, it can be in the form of appearing with food, assisting logistics, sending a message weeks after the funeral when everyone has already passed, all these things are incredibly important. After the service, grief does not stop. The loneliest season often after is when the world

around the mourning individual has come to the usual yet they are sitting in the ruins. Be the one who continues appearing.

Finding Help As a Christian when Grief becomes too heavy.

Should Christians Seek Grief Counselling?

Christians tend to have an unhelpful notion that it is an indicator of a lack of faith to turn to professional assistance when grieving. That that in case you prayed more, believed God more, read your Bible more, you would be all right. This is not biblical, and it can even do real damage.

God has numerous ways of healing wounded individuals. He studies Scripture and praying and community. He also uses intelligent counsellors, therapists, physicians and grief support groups. It is prudent according to proverbs to have many counsellors. Grief by itself does not make one weak in faith by seeking professional help. It is wisdom.

When you are feeling emotionally weak, it is better to get the support by talking to a trusted person. It can be anyone you trust. This is not something that you should bear by yourself and seeking assistance is one of the boldest actions of a bereaved individual.

Concluding thoughts: The End of the Story is Not Grief.

Christian faith does not guarantee one that life is free of pain. Jesus himself informed his disciples that they would have trouble in this world. He never made an apology or qualification to that. He said it plainly. Grief is a component of loving in a broken world and pain is a component of life in that broken world.

But he did not stop there. I have conquered the world said he, be heartened. And that is the other half of the sentence, and the half which makes everything different. The speaker is not just an outsider who can sympathize with what is happening. He is a man who had descended into the deepest pit and emerged. He has experienced grief at first hand. And he overcame it.

Your grief is real. Your loss is real. The suffering that you are bearing is not to be hurried over or underestimated. But it is not the final word. God is close to the brokenhearted, collecting all the tears, who is making all things new. You may lament, and hope as well. You may be torn to pieces and still embraced. Even when you are in the midst of the worst season of your life, you can still be in the arms of God who has never looked away at any time.

Grief changes over time But God does not. The weight shifts. The light returns, slowly. And one day you will retrospect, and in all the hard and hollow times you will see the silent witnesses of a God, who was there.

 

 

 

                                                                                                          Written by Heritier Cyuzuzo

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