2. How to Be Blessed Every Day - Grieving Your Losses

Grieving may not be something you consider a "best practice," yet Jesus promised comfort to those who mourn. In this talk, learn important steps to grieving your losses so you can move on and move forward. 

Grieving Your Losses is part two in the series based on the Beatitudes. Early in Jesus ministry, he sat down and gave 8 keys to blessing in the life of his followers. In this series we examine some of those attitudes that Jesus linked with specific blessings and how they are awarded. 

Transcript

Hey, I'm Josh Hallmark. I want to thank you for listening to one of the Oaks podcasts.

Remember this message from Isaiah chapter 61.

God takes the seeds of brokenness and turns them into Oaks of Righteousness, and that is you.
 ----
We're in a series called "How to be Blessed Every Day." Now let's look at the scripture together. This is from Matthew chapter five.

And it says
Jesus, seeing the multitudes went up on a mountain. And when he was seated, his disciples came to him He opened up his mouth and he taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We've been talking some about personal growth, and you guys want to grow or do you want to stay the same? You want to grow. This is what Jesus is doing in his body. We've looked at this verse from Ephesians, where it says that God is trying to bring the body of Christ to maturity, where we attain the fullness of Christ, where we become filled with who Jesus is. And this is connected to maturity. And so the Lord is trying to help us to become more mature, that's what he's up to. In the body of Christ at large all over the earth. If you're wondering what God is doing, in the body of Christ, he's trying to bring her to maturity, that's what he's up to.

So with that in mind, you know, we talked about how our church that's one of the core values of our church is personal growth. We all want to be growing more becoming more like God getting rid of the things that are keeping us from growing. And and so this this series is kind of along the same lines that I was We're looking at Jesus self help talk, if you will, this is the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus gives you eight ways to be blessed every day. And then he says, You guys remember some of the ones we just mentioned, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven last week. That's what we talked about.

We talked about those who are poor in spirit. In other words, those who have an awareness of their need for God, actually are equipped. They're given the kingdom of heaven, which means the kingdom and all the resources that come along with the kingdom. So we talked about that at length last week. You can listen to that online when it's up. It's not quite up yet, but this week, I'm going to talk about a subject that I don't know if I've ever actually done a sermon. I've given lots of sermons or messages or talks over the years, but I don't know that I've ever done a talk on this before. But uh, I started thinking about this topic. in a different way, a couple years ago, when Mr. Tad passed away, and Miss Donna and I were just talking about grieving well. And this got me thinking about this passage of Scripture in a way that I had not thought about it before. And so today I want to just talk to you about this a little bit. This part of morning. My topic today is mourning, tell your neighbor "boohoo."  We're going to talk about mourning for just a minute.

And Jesus says, Blessed are those that mourn. I've always thought of the first half of the Beatitudes: blessed are the poor or the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom. Okay, so if you're in this condition, you're blessed because and I think you can read it that way. Last week, we were talking about intentionally being poor in spirit being humble so that we can position ourselves to receive the kingdom I think that I think both are legitimate. When it comes to mourning. Naturally what you think is blessed are those that mourn because God is available to cover them. But then the rest of the Beatitudes they're not framed that way. They're afraid. Blessed are the peacemakers, like Oh, that is a quality that I want to have. I want to be a peacemaker. Because what's the promise for peacemakers they should be called sons of God or I want to be merciful Blessed are those who are show mercy for what because they will be shown mercy. Okay, so I started working this back up the line in terms of the the blessings that it's not just, you're blessed if you mourn because you are sad and God's available to cover but what if I told you that just like being a peacemaker well, or being merciful Well, what if I told you That you could mourn well.

And that if you know how to mourn well, then you can actually be blessed with a very specific blessing. And it's the blessing of comfort. So there we go. So let's talk about this for a minute. Okay. Now, let's talk about morning. When I looked at the word mourn, just in the Strong's, it's used to Strong's Concordance, it means to properly grieve over a death or a personal loss or hope or relationship that does something that's coming to closure. And, and So in short, if you're taking notes, you can write this down. When I mourn, my heart comes into contact with the reality of what was lost. And so this is morning, when I mourn. My heart comes into contact with the reality of what was lost or what I mourn. The heart understands the value of what was lost.

Can you tell? Can you just say this with me, I'm sorry. This is how I do say it was important. So it mattered. You can say they were important. They mattered.

That's what mourning is when we grieve, when we mourn when we grieve the loss of something. It's us saying they mattered. It mattered. It's not just that just carry on but it mattered. It had value. And mourning actually does that and we want to associate mourning with people right.

If there's a death in our family, or in our friend group, somebody passes away. We want to say through grieving through, you know, by the way morning, if you will, there's, you know, there's the social fabric of morning which is different societies do morning in different ways, but we're actually just saying it mattered, they mattered.

And so I might just say that some people do morning better than others. And I think maybe this is something that Jesus is getting out.

So we mourn people. We mourn relationships. I'll tell you something.

People and this is sad. People got hurt with me in ministry, that I could not be what they wanted me to be for them. So they decided to end the relationship. One person told me I had reached out to him a few different times. And they told me that they were angry with me and they were communicating that anger through the silent treatment did not notice that they weren't but you're they're mad about is that I had not been reaching out to them. So I was reached out to the top They ignore me. And they told me that they were mad because I wasn't reaching out to him.

I guess what I'm saying is, there's nothing else I can do for that.

It was somebody that I'd been meeting with for a while. I started having babies have four of them on if I had for them by the end of that, but I at least had three of them. And I'm I can't meet every week anymore. And this got their feelings hurt. Long story short, they have kids now they probably feel a lot differently than they did

when they were single college student.

But I was sad that that relationship ended, there was nothing I could do

to repair that.

It was kind of resting that they had a critical piece of it, you know, relationship takes two individuals, right? Um, but that's sad. And it's okay to say that relationship. I really like this guy.

Very bright.

Very bright, very gifted.

That's sad. It's okay. Like, you can mourn the loss of something doesn't get it back. But you know what happens in the midst of mourning, something that was lost? Well, Jesus is there. He's in the middle of that. He says he expressly says, hey, I've got something for you in this. In this loss. I have comfort

for you.

That's pretty good. I'll

say I'm blessed. I'm blessed. When I'm more it's good to even say instead of me just saying, Man, that guy's so immature, whatever that is good for me to not do that and be done about it. But instead think, man, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that that happened. Um, I grieve the loss of that relationship. And maybe it'll come back around. You know, I've prayed that it would but in the midst of that, We can do that. Another thing that that we have to be able to grieve in is sometimes we have dreams and they just don't work out. They just get crushed and broken up, right? Things just do not work out the way we thought they would.

I think this happened to Peter. You know, he he had, um,

actually all the disciples.

I'm just gonna start right there because I'm about to go away, big rabbit trail. I'll just say this, this disciples went through moments where they were very disillusion. And the way I'll just tell you, I'll tell you one thing, okay? Jesus starts preaching this cryptic message and he says, unless you drink my foot, eat my flesh and drink my blood. You have no part with me and this grossest people out there or why would he ask us to do this? This is sick. And it says many, many people walked away. Jesus was actually revealing something in the hearts of the people. But his disciples were troubled, they have given up everything to follow this guy. And that's how they were like this look that I'm doing. And, and Jesus looks at them, and he says, will you leave also?

And

they had a good answer by the way, their answer was, Lord.

Where will we go?

You're the one that has the words to eternal life.

And if there's a parenthesis, there's not the presence but it's there in the spirit. I just made that up. But in if there's parenthesis, Jesus, you may be crazy with what you're saying. I do not get what this means. Eat my flesh drink my blood. sounds really weird. But I know that you have the words eternal life. In other words, I don't understand you, but I trust you. That was a moment. But they had to come to terms. I don't know if there was some more that went on, but they had to come to terms with things not being like they thought they were gonna be. They were like, everything was great. We have this big following. People are following us. We're multiplying bread, Nelson, people are leaving, people are going away because they're mad at what Jesus is say. And it's just like this was not in our plans. And there are times where we have a personal agenda, or personal hope, or personal dream, and it gets dashed upon the rocks of misunderstanding or we don't know what happened. And in that moment, this is the side note. The Lord wants us to continue to follow even though we don't understand, but what I'm talking about today is mourning the fact that some things don't always work out the way we saw. By the way, after all that happened, then Jesus did explain himself. He said the words that I'm speaking are spiritual. In other words, this is a metaphor, this As a spiritual thing, I'm not literally saying to do that,

right. I'm not telling

you to take a bite of me and you know, we connect that to

you know to Communion now, so Jesus was talking about something besides what he was just saying in that moment, but they didn't understand first I trusted first and they understood second. Anyway, morning says here, I'm gonna give you a few things, okay, four or five things. One, he says, I didn't mean to advance. Finish that thought personal hopes, okay. I'm gonna give you five things that morning means okay. So if we learn to mourn, well, we'll learn to be comforted. Right. That's the promise in mourning. First of all morning says, My heart understands the value of what was lost. So we kind of get that. Number two

is that mourning means

I feel

mourning is not something that you really just do with your head. It's actually something that you do with your heart is a deeper level. When I say your heart, I'm not really talking about this organ that's right here I'm talking about your innermost being a thing that is the center of you. You might say you believe in something with your head, but how you react when something's present shows what you really believe in your heart.

Okay?

You're struggling.

So mourning means I feel Did you guys know this and I'm speaking to Americans. Americans love to use the left side of their brain. I love to think about everything that's empirical, but I want you to know you also have feelings. There's another side that you morning feels you feel and it's important for you to be able to feel

I think a lot of the church you know,

some of the churches very like very

I'm

systematic programmatic in the way they think about things, how things should be done. And there's merit to that. But there's also merit to the idea that relationship is a feeling type word. And our relationship with God has this element to it. But when we mourn, we're getting in touch with something that's a feeling. And you guys might remember. And john Lim 55, who knew this is the shortest verse in the Bible?

knew that from Sunday school.

JOHN 1135 does Jesus wept Does anybody know why Jesus wept

it's all been lost the iron bowl. Nope.

Anybody know why Jesus wept?

Who cuz Lazarus died.

has to do with someone passing away. Wow, that could be connected to mourning you think this is interesting? I want you guys to read this

with me or listen to it rather if I can find it.

This is john chapter 11

we get to hear this

does anybody know the rest of the story? Were like Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. Just pretend that you don't know that for just a minute.

And it says is

so you got Jesus. You got Mary, Martha, you got Lazarus. And then you got the other other characters that are women. That's kind of who's on stage right now. Okay, um, Jesus comes four days late. Lazarus has already stinky. Um, Jesus has in mind he had already told His disciples Lazarus is asleep, which means he was dead. But Jesus already had mind what he was going to do. Seems like this was a premeditated miracle. Right? That's what the church should be doing instead of premeditated crime, right? We should be doing premeditated miracles. So Jesus, he, he's there. But then he gets around these people that are sad. I'm telling you guys, Jesus. I think that he was not. He was. He was not just man on a mission, but he was a bleeding heart as well. He failed. He felt the people that he was around. He was a son of God, but he was also the Son of Man. And, and it says is that Mary reached the place where Jesus was she failed a sweet lord. If you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died and when Jesus saw Her weeping. And then he saw the Jews who had come along with her. They were also weeping. It says he was deeply moved in spirit.

Can you say this that he felt

he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled?

other translations said he was angered.

You think that there's ever anger associated with grief? Heck, yeah. It says he was troubled. And he was angered. And he's like, Where have they laid him? And they're like, come see, Lord. He's over here. And then it says, it's like Jesus knew that he was planning to raise these people from the dead, but he was feeling on such a level, the anguish if you only need to understand something, when you experience loss, this is a side note but it's very important for you to know, when something happens to you, like you lose a personal hope. Or you lose a relationship or you lose a person. Jesus is moved by your loss. Often you think Jesus is moved by somebody else's loss. But I want you to understand that the injustice that's happened to you in your life, Jesus is actually moved by. And when you say it's angered, I was like, man, why was he angry? And maybe it was at the injustice that Lazarus died, maybe when Lazarus time to go and he was mad that happened. I'm not sure.

I've got some thoughts about it. But

But Jesus saw these people and he was moved so deeply he was troubled and spear that says, and his expression was to cry. He wept. So, so when it comes to mourning, don't just say it but feel it. And so, so we feel and then the next one morning means I actually I come A place where I express

my grief.

Look, if you don't if your grief grief, if your grief, if your grief does not have a voice, you're going to implode.

Or you're going to shut down.

Here's a couple

verses, you know, going back to that grief, that that Greek word rather, one of the things that is the Greek word sad about it, that it literally this word mourning literally refers to manifested grief. It's not just I'm feeling it, but I'm manifesting. I'm giving an expression to it. There's a couple verse there's actually a book in the Bible called to cry. limitations. A lament I'm sorry, I'm saddened. You know, Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. He was known as the weeping prophet is me too. I think this, Jeremiah.

He said some tough things.

You know some preachers you must see that

taught real tough real me. This is my thought if you go talk like that, you need to be like Jeremiah who was known as the weeping Prophet, because he felt what he was saying very deep, but he was in touch with the pain of what he was expressing. Anyway, Jeremiah said and limitations to 19 rise during the night and cry out, pour your hearts out like water, in the presence of the Lord. Have you guys ever emptied your soul out to the Lord like that before? I'm gonna throw out an idea. If you're gonna agree Well, why don't you just do that sometime? Why don't you have your own Fashion Rob Henderson snotty cry. Robbie model that whale force brother. Mm hmm. Give a voice Rob does it just when he thinks about kittens and puppies but. But you have things that you get touched with that you realize something happened that wasn't right. It was wrong in your life. I was thinking about this during worship today. I meant to be really clinical with this talk today and just talk about morning Gree. I started thinking during worship.

For some reason.

I was thinking about me when I was a kid. And without really getting into my story, my parents got divorced last two, and my mom got remarried on round four.

And

my stepbrother

stepbrothers did not Like my,

my mom, and they were older than me, they were like in their 20s when I was like four or five in anyway. But that period when I was two to about four, I've just realized over time that I think I was that was a real unstable time for me. Because I was shuffling about I think I live in my dad with a little while and then my mom and then I get thrown in this whole new world with my new step people and I'm like, my step brothers got me drunk when I was like five years old. I think just because I thought it was funny. And

this morning, I was thinking about that.

I was thinking,

that sad, and that the Lord actually thought it was

sad.

And that felt different.

When I realized that God cared about a sliver of my life was a very unstable time. You guys know that. You know? But young ages when you're really, really being formed in terms your identity, what you think, and stuff like that, and um

I was just thinking about it

the idea of being maybe in sad too.

I mean, I could like, talk about

my stepbrothers, get me drunk. I could be telling a story about that and laugh at it. And, I mean, y'all don't look at me so pious, I'm saying I could do that. You know, that's kind of funny. But then I thought about a different way that it was actually really sad. That they probably didn't like me. They probably didn't like my mom. That was probably a passive way. I don't know. I really don't know. But it started sad that that happened. And I started thinking about other things about me. This is just sitting here earlier about me losing my chastity at a very young age. And thinking about how the Lord is like sad that happen. That was not his plan. And it's okay for me to look at that and be sad to Does that make sense? And me to say, you know what, for me, like, I keep my make good to have a good Rob cry over that. And to really pour out my soul to the Lord for what was not there in what got taken. Because it shouldn't have been it was an injustice. And here's the thing. When I can do that, all of a sudden, I feel validated because I realized that that little boy is worth something. Do you guys understand what I'm saying? Here's the deal. Jesus looked at the injustice that they were seeing. And he he wept over the thing that he was just about to fix in them. But he is touched by the feelings of our infirmity. And so For us to give them an expression, to the grief that we feel over our life. Here's another verse. This was good. This isn't handing over to Hannah. She was grieving over the fact that she couldn't have children. She could not have a baby. And she went to the throne of God, she went the temple of God. And she started pouring her soul out before the Lord expressing her sorrow for what she did not have that felt like an injustice to her. Eli was the priest. He comes to this is what the Bible says, is that Hannah was she was crying so good. I'm saying I think Hannah was emotionally healthy. I know a lot. She was crying so good. You ever get to the point where your words where you don't make noise anymore. She gotten past the point of Then she had going on, you know, on. And then she got to a place where she was just like mouthing words, but nothing was coming out.

Some of y'all have made that loop before

where you're mouthing words but nothing's coming out. Eli walks up the priests, and he thinks he's drunk. And so he reprimands or he's a woman. Have you come into the temple of God drunk? And this is what she says, Oh, no, sir. I haven't been drinking wine or anything stronger. But I'm very discouraged. And I was pouring my heart out to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman. I've been praying here, out of my great anguish, and grief. She was expressing herself. By the way, the Lord heard that prayer.

You know what she got out of it.

Mr. Oh million in a very bad buy there. Do you know what she got out of it?

Once you get

his name Samuel and your stay over here, she got

Samuel out of the deal.

God saw

her anguish that she had expressed to him I don't know I would say there is something to being able to give a voice to your grief look, you don't have to give a voice your grief all over Facebook, okay? But you can do it in the tip of God pouring out your heart the Lord and somebody happens to see just tell me not drunk. You're just pouring your heart out to the Lord. Okay? Now all this stuff that I'm talking about, I mean just mentioned this. When it comes to looking at your past. This is just my general idea about dealing you guys we really do need to deal with the issues in our life. Okay. Your past is definitely affecting you. And you need to go back there and grieve the loss of that two to four year old that miss some things find Jesus in it, he will come for you, he'll actually come to you in that place and comfort you. But this is more of a, you know, when you're driving, where should you be looking? ahead, right? And that's the same way that we're to leave. We're looking into Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. But there's times where we do need to look in the rearview mirror, right. Right.

And so,

that's what inner healing is like dealing with your pain or grieving losses, especially if they're older wounds. You do want to look in the mirror because it's, but the idea is not to go live there. It's to look ahead, but you do need to look back and that's what we're doing today. And I would invite you to do that. It's not a lifestyle. Some people like form their identity out of their issues. You don't want that you don't wanna go back there do. You don't want that to go with you always you want to move on, but it is worth it to look in the rearview mirror.

So that's what I'm talking About.

Now, let's say you get to a place where you're like Hannah, where you are able to actually give a voice to how you feel. Even if it's anger and you're expressing it the Lord, I think that the psalmist where some of the most emotionally healthy people in all the Bible, because they would say, Where are you God? Right? You've abandoned us. That sounds like a negative confession, doesn't it? But they were being honest. They were being emotionally honest about where they were. Now if you read most of the time, they'll end that song saying, but I know you're good. But you're the king of Israel, but you're they'll come back around the truth. But so any Do you want to do that you want to come back to the things that you know are true, but it's okay to communicate to the Lord, how you feel. Because when you express your grief, you position yourself for comfort, just like I said last week, when you embrace What was that thing called being poor in spirit, when you embrace that you position yourself to be resourced, by Heaven. Or in this case when you mourn, well, you actually position yourself to be comforted. That's good news, isn't it? So, Matthew Five, four, says, Blessed are those who mourn.

for they shall be comforted. So maybe

it's okay to get in touch with your pain

brothers and sisters.

Because Jesus expressly says, You know what, I'm gonna come to that spot. In fact, when you really start getting sad over something that you lost, that's given value, by the way, it's saying it mattered, but going to invite Jesus into that moment, because he'll come and he know what he brings with him.

comfort and joy, right? Just like the Christmas Oh.

Watch this.

I'm gonna read this first. And then we'll take point number five.

Praise be the God and Father, Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion. Can you say that when we say father of compassion, this is how he feels about your life, the father of compassion, and the what? I've got it underlined, the God of all comfort. Who does what? He can't force us in all our troubles. Let's get preaching right there. I'm just reading the Bible, but it's good. Guess what happens when we receive God's comfort? First of all, we received God's comfort. The unknown remains to be comforted.

I'll tell you in a couple minutes, let me share point number five first.

When you receive comfort,

it means that you all of a sudden have the capacity. Like if you will learn to grieve and you will learn to receive God's comfort. It will Automatically increase your ability to be empathetic towards other people. If you harden yourself about your own losses, you automatically be hardened with how you treat

other people.

My favorite band is called waterdeep. I had a song called completely known,

written before some of you guys were born.

But there's a line and it says Julie's tendency is to freeze whenever she's confronted. She's born so many losses that our senses have been blunted. She learned about death and dying when she was only eight years old, and every ever since everyone she meets seems a little cold. And when we don't have a proper voice given to the things that we lost, then we get hard Remember a guy

that used to

that we used to travel with was involved in ministry. I love this man very much. He's a man. Now he was a man and I just think of him as a student, but um, we talked about some of this kind of stuff. And he's just like, I don't feel I don't feel anything. And the longer I got no scalp, very loyal, very faithful. Great, great guy. He's like, I've got one of my passwords named after him.

I love this guy.

But he's like, I don't I just don't feel anything. And one thing I realized is that when this guy was a kid, I don't think he was loud feeling it kids do this so well. This morning and grief thing. Sometimes maybe when maybe when you're little you didn't think was okay to cry or to express grief. And now you don't feel you're just letting the gown Tom out he's I just don't feel

everything is right here on this side of the brain

is yes or no is ones and zeros

but there's no feeling in it and I would say that's not God's will not know some of us are wired a little bit differently that's not what I'm talking about. We want to we want to be like kids right kids do this so well my little girl,

Annie Hawkins I got her permission to

to share this with her. Y'all y'all know y'all most of you guys have hailed a kid that's crying or a kid that's crying comes and shows you their booboo and it's so sad and you just scoop them up and you love on them and what do they receive? They receive comfort. That's it. It's so easy to see this with kids. I do so well at it. We have a new world. And as always probably gonna be a veterinarian. She loves all Animals, any animal ever, and she's always taking strays and stuff like that. But anyway, we got it. And we got actually five, six dogs, five ducks. And they were all Peking ducks with this one was a Mallard. He was different. So he's a little Roundup. And so she just got him started loving on him. Of course he bonded with her, you know, he fall around, he loved her. And so let me just say this, after, you know, any Hawkins really connects with us the we had an accident in our house. He was in the house a lot. I mean, he was special. The others are staying out in their box. She named him claiming and she's also very good at names. She's always naming you know, she's always the like, She's a nice person. But clemmy

he had an unfortunate accident. It's almost

say and He may and I saw it as it happened and I know pretty much it was over. She wants me to check him out, see

if he's okay.

He's not okay. And so she was heartbroken and she's really good at expressing that, you know, she really cried about it and we actually put Blimey in a plastic box and I dug a hole and you know, we buried him he said in the back of my chair for a couple days because we didn't have an opportunity to do that you know yet and so we had our what are our What do you call it your watch? What do you call that wake? Oh, we had our wake in the back of my truck there for a couple days. Anyway, we lowered claiming into the, into the ground. I played some like some like acapella. I think it was acapella, like, gospel song, you know, like imagine Amazing Grace or something wasn't that though something like Want the garden alone or something like that? She said a couple words, I was the preacher, you know, I was efficient. And so

I said a couple things. And that gave her a hug. We said a prayer,

she received comfort through that process. I would say that's actually not a bad thing. You know, something else died recently. We're not having a funeral. Um, but for claiming he mattered, right? And so we want to express that but there is an exchange of the expression of grief, even through the symbol of the funeral, and then the reception of comfort. Some of you guys have had some losses, and they're not coming back, they're dead, barium and have a funeral for it. And then receive comfort from the Lord. You guys tracking with me? Because guess what happens when we do that? This is the same verse Praise be the godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ. compassion, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles and watch this. And so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort that we ourselves have received. If you want to be able to be effective at touching other people, then you have to let the Lord touch you. You have to be able to mourn your losses and go there and grieve it and cry it out and let it be so that you actually have something that is of substance to give away because you will not get what you do not have. But if you will receive the fact that your life and your loss actually mattered to the Lord. Look, it's a it's a lie from hell for you to think that everybody else is important except you. I'm telling you that as a tactic of the enemy. If you will accept the fact that your life and your loss mattered. You will receive the comfort that then you're able to give away and that's exactly What we're commanded to do, the Bible says, to rejoice with those who rejoice. That's a whole nother sermon about being able to enjoy.

But mourn with those who mourn. You can't

more those who more like Jesus did, unless you have the capacity to receive that comfort yourself. So when I mourn my heart understands the value of what was lost. When I'm comforted, I understand that I'm gonna be okay and this is your definition for comfort. Let's talk about that. And then I'm landing the plane, okay. Comfort means I lost it. It's gone.

But

I am going to be okay. Despite the loss. The know some of you guys, maybe you've lost a major opportunity, and you feel like your opportunity is gone. I can't tell you guys how many 2122 year olds that I've talked to in my life, that thought that they had missed the boat at that young of age and will tell you something if you're 70 you have not missed the boat. Because opportunities come back up. Don't they miss ginger? opportunities come back up. You have to grieve the loss of that. But listen to know this. I'm gonna be okay. So Tell your neighbor say I am going to be okay. All right, so I'm gonna leave you guys with a story.

Never done. Um

So as this is a story that I read as a Bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends. So the service was to be at a popper Cemetery in the background. entry is I was not familiar with the back was this is an Ireland by the way. As I was not familiar with the backwoods I got lost and being a typical man. I did not stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere inside. There were only the diggers and the crew left and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and I apologize to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and I looked down in the vault was already in place. I didn't know what else to do. So I started to play

bagpipes.

The workers put down their lunches

and began to gather around. I played my heart and soul for this man had no family or friends. I played like never before for this homeless man. And as I played Amazing Grace, the workers begin to weep they wept. I went, we all went together. When I finished, I packed up my bagpipes and started for the car. Though my head was hung low, my heart was full. And as I opened the car door, I heard one of the workers say to the other ones, I've never seen nothing like that before. And I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years now.

You guys can stand.

Can we close our eyes Just a moment, put our hands over our heart.

I'm just gonna, I'm gonna lead you guys into a prayer. This is a little deeper than what we can go into. To right now, but I'm gonna lead you guys into a prayer. And I'm gonna encourage you guys to have some time. Just wherever you do your thinking, wherever you do your pray, get your coffee, get a journal. Take a walk, and express your deepest grief to the Lord and let him comfort you, knowing that other people's comfort is it makes you effective as a person. And let me just tell you something, I feel it. When I talk to people who are real people, I can feel the difference in people who are able to give a voice to their pain, there's more present. It's like they're more tangible. We want to be like that. We want to be real. We want to be authentic, and this is part of that path. Okay,

so let's pray.

Lord Jesus,

I confess that my life moments,

the worst ones

where I lost things

or gave away things.

They mattered.

The people that I've lost

they matter helped me to understand the importance of grieving my losses, and teach me how to give voice to that pain

and teach me

how to receive comfort in that place. Will you start this work in me? That's really all I'm asking you guys to do is to give God permission to start that work in you. You're on the path to becoming authentic people. Let God start That work and you just say that when we say, Lord, You have my permission

to get working on that.

I give you permission to

influence my heart and this area. And you guys know how Rob talked in the very beginning, about how he made a decision. I'm gonna go to church. I want you to make a decision. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get good at this. This is a life skill. Guys, Jesus gave us this so that we can be blessed every day.

Amen. Well,

may the Lord bless you guys today and keep you and make his face shine on you and turn to you. Be gracious to you, and give us peace and may you

learn how to mourn

well

For more information about the visit the OIC dot o RG thanks for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai