To Those Hurting This Christmas

I know some of you are praying you’ll make it through Christmas — just make it through — not anticipating anything good will come from gathering with extended family and friends. It has become a cliche — right next to the article on what second-graders are excited about for Christmas is the article on the rise in depression during this last month of the year.

You know the sadness is real. While you change the diaper of a teenager, or administer complicated medications, or prevent your non-verbal ten-year-old from hurting himself again, or explain yet again the complicated life of your five-year-old without a diagnosis for her disability, your nieces and nephews and young friends are playing and running and eating, happily talking about the toys they want or travel they’re excited about or things they are doing in school. They easily do things your child will never do, no matter how many therapies or medications or prayers are offered.

Or maybe the disability in your family member means you can’t gather with other loved ones, and the heartache is almost more than you can stand.

Jesus knows.


For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

More than that, he endured and is victorious!


Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1–2)

And there are some of you who can’t see it. There is still hope!

From Pastor John’s book, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy,


It is utterly crucial that in our darkness we affirm the wise, strong hand of God to hold us, even when we have no strength to hold him. This is the way Paul thought of his own strivings. He said, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12). The key thing to see in this verse is that all Paul’s efforts to grasp the fullness of joy in Christ are secured by Christ’s grasp of him. Never forget that your security rests on Christ’s faithfulness first.

Our faith rises and falls. It has degrees. But our security does not rise and fall. It has no degrees. We must persevere in faith. That’s true. But there are times when our faith is the size of a mustard seed and barely visible. In fact, the darkest experience for the child of God is when his faith sinks out of his own sight. Not out of God’s sight, but his. Yes, it is possible to be so overwhelmed with darkness that you do not know if you are a Christian — and yet still be one. (216, italics added)

Jesus understands. Jesus is victorious. Jesus is the answer. May you find him, and in finding him, find hope and peace in these hard days.


And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

Good Grief: 5 Ways Your Mourning Can Glorify God

From Clint Archer:


If When you need to comfort a Christian friend in the loss of a loved one, you need to be prepared with a spiritual first-aid kit of verses to help the healing to begin.

This list is by no means exhaustive; if you have any other balms to add to the cache, please feel free to do so in the comment section.

These are the five points I have found useful to cover with someone who wants to honor God in their grief.


1. Resist the temptation to be angry at God.

It is natural for mourners to experience a sense of indignation, even rage, at the loss of a loved one. This, I believe, is our soul’s normal response to the Curse. We recognize deep within us that death is unnatural, and everything in us cries out for justice and for death to just stop its devastation. The problem is that most people are theologically ill-prepared for the onslaught of these emotions.

Their anger can at that time be misdirected. People whoa re smarting from the pangs of the fresh wounds of loss, may be tempted to mistakenly direct their indignation at God. They will often say, something like, “I’m so angry at God right now I can’t even pray.”

I say “tempted” because anger at God is always a sin.

James 1:20 "The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

God never sins, and He never does anything unjust. Anger is a right response to an assault on God’s glory (as when Jesus cleansed the Temple). But to be angry at God is to aim your guns at a friend instead of the enemy. In a time of emotional trauma, believers sometimes need to be reminded to resist the temptation to think wrongly about their loving Savior.

2. Rest in God’s sovereignty.

When death comes in an especially unexpected way, for example in a sudden accident, or in cases where a young child is suddenly taken, there is always a sense that this was not meant to be. We are left reeling at the ambush of fate. This sensation of being caught off guard can sometimes lead us to feel as if God was also surprised. Since He didn’t provide us with warning or prep time, as when we are diagnosed with a terminal illness and supplied with a prognosis of time, we may feel as if the loss was incidental.

But the Bible assures us that God is absolutely sovereign over life and death. He is never caught off guard, He is never surprised at events; no, God ordains everything to the minutest detail. This is truth that brings peace and rest to a heart that is staggering under the dizzying sucker-punch of sudden loss.

Matthew 10:29-31 “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

This is a precious and profound reality that needs to be impressed on the grieving heart.

3. Realize that it’s good to grieve.

In this day of Prozac and over-the-counter anti-depressant oblivion being proffered by an over-eager medical community, we need to be reminded that the pain felt in mourning is normal. Grief is not a condition that needs to be treated. Grief is not a disease that needs to be cured. Grief is the treatment, grief is the cure!

God equipped us with the emotion of sadness in the same way that He gave us physical pain. He wants us to feel when things are wrong so that we can do something about it. When you feel a sting in your skin you look and see a kamikaze bee injecting poison into you. You don’t take a pain killer to forget about the bee. You address the sting.

When His friend Lazarus died, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He was known as a “Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Jesus did not avoid sadness, because it’s not wrong to grieve.

To numb the pain only prolongs the recover period. I tell people I counsel in these dark times to cry their hearts out if that’s what they feel. Sometimes you just need a box of tissues, a tub of ice cream, a dark room, and some Enya in the background, so you can have a really good cry. The catharsis is a gift from God. And most people would testify that the more the allow themselves to weep, the less frequent, and less intense the breakdowns become, until eventually they are only very occasional.

4. Rejoice in the hope of reuniting.

This is a joy that can only be appreciated by Christians who have lost loved ones who are in Christ. One of the sweet joys of Heaven is not only seeing our Savior face to face, but also being reunited with our brothers and sisters in Christ who have crossed Jordan ahead of us.

1 Thess 4:13-14 "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”

We see King David comforted by this truth when his infant son died. He confidently asserted that “He cannot come back to me but I shall go to him” (2 Samuel 12:20-23).

This is the silver lining we must draw our friends’ attention toward as they are overshadowed by the storm clouds of loss.

5. Reach out to others.

Though it seems callous to tell a mourner to think of others rather than themselves, it is a unique opportunity for the hurting to be healed by ministering to others who are hurting too.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too."

There is a sense in which the only people who can comfort those who have lost a child, or parent, or best friend, are those who have walked the same stark path through the arid valley of death. Everyone else offers platitude that sound trite in the ear of the grieving one. But comfort that stems from genuine empathy is an elixir of healing in what otherwise is a very lonely time.

One thing I’m sure all believers agree on is: without Christ in our lives, death would be impossible to face. I love the Apostle Paul’s triumphant reminder:


When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

Our Sufficient Savior

“Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, became like us to be a total Savior, sufficient for the whole range of our need. How hollow, then, ring the world’s complaints against our God. People are saying all the time today, lamenting in this world of woe, ‘Where is God? Why doesn’t he do something?’ Meanwhile, he has done everything, indeed, more than ever we could ask or imagine. God has entered into our world. He has walked through the dust of this earth. He who is life has wept before the grave, and he who is the Bread of Life has felt the aching of hunger in his belly.


Is there anything more lovely in all of Scripture than the scenes of Jesus supping with the weak and the weary, the sinners and the publicans? He has taken the thorns that afflict this sin-scarred world and woven them into a crown to be pressed upon his head. And he has stretched open his arms in love, that the hands that wove creation might be nailed to a wooden cross. Then he rose from the dead, conquering all that would conquer us, setting us free to live in peace and joy before the face of God.”


— Richard D. Phillips (Hebrews: Reformed Expository Commentary, pg. 82)

Christ + Anything = Insult!

From John Piper:

The plight of us finite, sinful human beings is seen not merely in the fact that we have so many unanswered questions, but also in the fact that we often don't even know the right question to ask. The Bible is a Book full of right answers — but only to the right questions. I want to think together this morning about a question of Christian experience which, I think, is often asked in an unanswerable form, but for which there is a correct, and answerable form.

But for the right question Paul offers an answer in his letter to the Ephesians. The question runs something like this — see if it sounds familiar — "I'm a Christian, I'm saved, Christ is in my heart, the Holy Spirit has been given to me, I'm going to Heaven, but something is wrong: I don't have the joy in the Lord some others seem to have, my heart doesn't seem to be full of praise like it should, I don't honor God with my actions as consistently as I ought to. What do I lack, what more do I need to get?"

I think this is a fairly common question of Christian experience. But if we go to the Scriptures or to God with this question, I don't think we will get an answer, because the question is wrong.

Christ is the image of the invisible God, through whom, and for whom, all things were created (Colossians 1:15ff), who took on human form, who humbled himself freely for our sake even to the death of the cross, who has been raised by God to sit at His right hand in Heaven, who is sovereign over every ruler and authority and power and dominion in the universe, who will come again as victorious King to complete his work of redemption and receive his people to himself. If we have this Christ there is no more to get besides.

Picture yourself asking this question to the Lord face-to-face: "Jesus, I know I've got you, but surely there's got to be more! I mean, no offenses, Lord . . . but . . ."

No offense!! There is no greater offense! What could Jesus answer if you tell him face to face he's not enough?

The question is all wrong. The one who has Christ, the Lord, does not ask, "What more can I add to Him?" He asks instead, "How can I enjoy, appreciate, and act according to what I already have in Him?" For this kind of question the apostle Paul offers an answer, because it is the very thing he wrestled with in the care of his young churches.

Quote of the Day

"And let us not take it into our heads either to seek out God anywhere else than in his Sacred Word, or to think anything about him that is not prompted by his Word, or to speak anything that is not taken from that Word."

- John Calvin, Institutes, Book 1