Lesson Three

How Do We GetOn The Road To Healing?

The Process of Grief

INTRODUCTION:Theology of Suffering

Suffering teaches us that life is bad, even while God is good. Sin shows us that we are evil by nature, but that God is gracious.Suffering reveals the fallenness of our world.

Our brothers and sisters in Christ are around us to help us wrestle with the evils we have suffered, and help us face the sins we have committed. Suffering and sin are intimately intertwined. Do you, as a Christian going through a great trial, need a theology of suffering?

John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” Jesus guarantees we will suffer; it’s a normal, expected part of life. You will be hemmed in, harassed, distressed, oppressed, vexed, and afflicted, both internally and externally. Internally, you experience fear, anguish, and anxiety: externally, you experience persecution by enemies and such troubles as illness, poverty, and abandonment. © Donna Hart

Memorize: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

Our theology of suffering teaches us that we live in a fallen world and it falls on us.

The Bible repeatedly recites Jesus’ not-so-wanted guarantee of a life full of suffering:All suffering first passes through the hands of God (Job 1-2). Some suffering is because of our own sin (1 Corinthians 11:27-32). Some suffering is because of the sin of others against us (2 Timothy 3:12). In His affectionate sovereignty (Deuteronomy 8:1-10; John 9:1-3; Romans 8:28; 1 Peter 1:3-9), God redeems all suffering to glorify Himself, benefit others, and beautify us.

Suffering includes getting what you do not want (e.g., illness, rejection, layoff, downsizing, divorce, death, poverty, persecution, and oppression), wanting what you do not get (e.g., love, marriage, a raise, a promotion, a new home, children, church growth, students who learn), and getting what you want, but being dissatisfied in the getting.

LEVELS OF SUFFERINGThe Apostle Paul found that we always experience suffering as a trial of faith. He conceptualized two levels of faith trials.

Level One Suffering: What happens to us and around us; our circumstances. This is the external stuff of life to which we internally respond. We lose a job, or a child is ill, or we face criticism.

Level Two Suffering: What happens in us? How we face what we are facing. This includes the suffering of the mind that gives rise to fear and doubt as we reflect on our external suffering. It is what happens in us as we face our circumstances. We doubt, fear, and run away from God.

LEVEL ONE SUFFERINGSuffering is just as true a theological reality as sin. Our theology of suffering teaches us that we live in a fallen world and it falls on us. Fear of suffering is normal. Grief is necessary. These are authentic life responses.

Why is suffering dreadful? Suffering is death. All suffering is the dying, separating, and/or severing of relationships. Eternal death and separation from God is the paradigm of all our losses. All suffering is experienced as death. In suffering, God is not getting back at you; He is getting you back to Him. Suffering opens our hands to God.

Why does God allow us to endure the suffering that can be like wandering in the desert? According to Deuteronomy 8 and Matthew 4, it is to humble us, teaching us how desperately needy we are. Our greatest need is eternal life, and eternal life is experienced in intimacy with God (John 17:1-3).

Suffering, therefore, reveals God’s extraordinary love. Without suffering we forget God and our need for Him (Deuteronomy 8:6-12).

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God allows suffering to remind us that we need Him, and are not home

yet.

SUFFERING IS GRACE. God makes therapeutic use of our suffering. It was grace that barred Adam and Eve from the tree of life, lest they live forever, immortal, immoral beings, never having to face their need for God. Suffering is God’s putrid-tasting medicine of choice that results in our delicious healing. He graciously allows suffering to serve as a healing medicine for our ultimate sickness: the arrogant belief that we do not need God.

Read Hebrews 11:13-16. God refuses to allow us to become too comfy here on earth. Instead, He allows suffering to remind us that we need Him, and are not home yet.

LEVEL TWO SUFFERINGThe theological reality of suffering teaches that our world is fallen and it often falls on us. The experiential reality of suffering tutors us in the truth that our world is a mess and it messes with our minds. All suffering and mourning amount to a sense of death, divorce, aloneness, and forsakenness. The doubts we endure while in suffering lead to a potential hemorrhage in our relationship with God, others, and self, so we end up feeling forsaken, betrayed, and or ashamed.

SPIRITUAL DEPRESSIONSpiritual abandonment is when I see God as my enemy (Job 3:1-26; 6:4, 10: 1-3). Martin Luther called this aspect of level two suffering ‘spiritual depression’, which occurs when reason is unaided by faith, and reflects on and, interprets the suffering. It includes the terrified conscience that perceives that God is against us, and the sense of ultimate terror that God may have forsaken us. The presence of suffering can result in the absence of faith. Satan incites this terror when he whispers, “Life is bad. God controls life. God must be bad. How can you trust His heart? He has left you all alone. Again!”

Spiritual depression and spiritual separation anxiety are the results of our internal interpretations of external events. They are Satan’s spiritual terrors, restlessness, despair, pangs, panic, desolation, and desperation that tempt to doubt God. The absence of faith in God in the presence of external suffering leads to a terrified conscience which perceives God as angry and evil instead of loving and good. And that response, in and of itself, causes us to suffer.

CONDEMNATION AND REJECTIONJeremiah felt and expressed condemnation and rejection. Read Lamentations 5:20. His language is even stronger in 20:7. Psalm 88 is the psalm of the dark night of the soul. It ends with, “You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.” As if excruciating spiritual abandonment is not enough, this example of level two suffering continues with social betrayal.

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SOCIAL BETRAYALJoseph faced social betrayal everywhere. He was betrayed by his brothers, slave traders, Potiphar’s wife, Potiphar, and the baker (Genesis). King David also knew betrayal. He speaks for all of us when he describes the wracking torment of broken trust. Read Psalm 55:12-14.

SELF-CONTEMPTTo spiritual abandonment and social betrayal we also add self-contempt. We surmise that if God and others reject us, we must be unworthy of friendship, or that something must be wrong with us. Job could relate to this thinking - he loathed his very life, (Job 10:1). He lost all hope for himself and his future.

Read Job 17:11.He felt torn down, stripped of honor, and uprooted from hope (Job 19:9-10). What are we to do when assaulted outside and in? What should we do next when we’re overwhelmed by circumstances and feeling condemned by God, our friends, and our own souls?

We don’t move toward healing simply by quoting, “God works all things together for good to those who love him.” (Romans 8:28) Before we can truly sense the depths of God’s goodness, we have to admit the lowest pits of life’s badness.

Joseph models this by acknowledging evil as well as good. “You intendedto harm me, but God intended it for good,” Genesis 50:20. Grief through groaning begins with sustaining in suffering, which says, “It’s normal to hurt and necessary to grieve. Later, grief through groaning moves to healing in suffering, when we conclude, “It’s possible to hope in the midst of grief.” Hurt than hope.

Jane Bissler (Counseling for Loss and Life Change) uses the acronym TEARto define the grieving process.T: To accept the reality of loss.E: Experience the pain of loss.A: Adjust to the new environment without the lost object.R: Reinvest in the new reality

Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying popularized a five-stage model of grieving based upon her research into how terminally ill persons respond to the news of their terminal illness.

Denial: This is the shock reaction of refusing to believe what happened.Anger: Resentment grows with why questions. A person blames God, others, and themselves. They feel agitated, moody, or on edge.Bargaining: They try to make a deal, insisting that things be the way theyused to be. Depression: When the person starts to have the courage to admit the loss then sadness sets in moving toward healthy mourning. It can move

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It is normal to hurt and necessary to grieve

In facing the pain you admit what is happening and feel

what is going on inside

Acceptance: The person starts to face their loss calmly; it is a time of quiet reflection and a moving onward.These various stages of grief do record what does typically occur. Do they attempt to assess whether it is best to occur or if it is God’s process for hurting and hoping?

FACE ITWhen suffering first hits, we often respond with shock and denial, and struggle to believe what’s happening around us (as Kubler-Ross identified.)

Hitting things head on and facing them is an excellent response to denial. It involves courageously telling yourself the truth about life, in which you come face-to-face with the reality of external and internal suffering.In facing the pain you admit what is happening and feel what is going on inside.

Read Psalm 42:3-5David actively faces his external suffering. He describes his losses of fellowship, leadership, and worship. He is honest about his internal suffering. He labels his soul as downcast and disturbed within him.

What does the apostle Paul teach us in 1 Thess. 4:13? He chooses the Greek word lupesthe, meaning to feel sorrow, distress, and grief, and to experience pain, heaviness, and inner affliction. Paul teaching that grief is the grace of recovery because mourning slows us down to face life. No grieving, no healing; know grieving and know healing.

The only person who can truly dare to grieve and bear grief is the person with a hope that things will eventually be better. If we trust God’s good heart, do we trust Him no matter what? Can we face and embrace the mysteries of life?

COMPLAINT In a complaint we are honest with God about the pain and confusion we experience in life. They are faith-based acts in which we trust God enough to bring everything about us to Him. In complaint, we hide nothing from God because we trust His good heart and because we know He knows our hearts.

Do you believe that it’s okay to complain to God? Are there more Psalms of Complaint and Lament than Psalms of Praise and Thanksgiving?

Read Psalm 62:8A biblical complaint expresses frankness about the reality of life that seems incongruent with the character of God. Complaining to God is an act of truth-telling faith, not unfaith. It is a radical trust in God’s reliability in the midst of real life. It is not grumbling about God or who He is, but about the circumstances of life.

Read Job 3:23-26 Does Job forcefully and even violently express his complaint? In Job 42:7-8, God honors Job’s complaint saying that Job spoke right of life and right of God. God prizes complaint and rejects all deceiving denial and simplistic closure, preferring candid complexity. To deny or diminish suffering is to arrogantly refuse to be humbled; to reject dependence upon God. God wants us to remember our suffering, our need for Him in the midst of our suffering, and to rehearse our suffering before Him.

Discussion Questions

1. Spiritual depression is the absence of faith during the presenceof suffering. How have you experienced this in your life?

2. Read Lamentations 3:1-20 and probe what it is like to feel abandoned by God. How does Jeremiah’s experience compare with yours?

3. According to Job 17:11 and Proverbs 13:12, how do dashed dreams impact us? How have they impacted you?

4. Amidst your separation/divorce, how have you struggled tobelieve God loves you?

5. What things have made you most angry in the breakdown ofyour marriage?

6. In what ways have you found it difficult to worship God? In what ways have you seen God committed to doing good in your life?

7. What do you think God is seeking to accomplish in your life?

Homework:

1. Reflect on the certainty of what is ahead:a. Read Romans 8:38-39, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18,

Philippians 1:20-21, Philippians 1:23.b. From what you observe in these verses, what assurance

does God give His children?c. Think about the key promises God gives you in these

verses. Choose to focus on these truths meditating on themthis week.

2. Reflect on important truths about the care of your loving God:a. Read John 10:27-29, Romans 5:1-2, Romans 8:11,

Hebrews 7:25.b. Highlight the words and concepts that show God’s great

love and care for you today and in the transition ahead.3. Reflect on the help that God has promised to give you during

times of difficulty:a. Read I Corinthians 10:13, Hebrews 4:15-16, Hebrews

13:5b-6.4. The place of sorrow and grief:

a. Read Isaiah 53:3-4, John 11:32-36, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4b. Summarize what the verses in this section teach about

sorrow and grief for disciples of Jesus Christ. Remember: sorrow and grief are not sin. When life is torn apart, tears and sorrow are appropriate.

God wants us to remember our suffering, our need for

Him in the midst of our suffering, and to rehearse our suffering before Him

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Call outPRAYER Lord most days the pain is almost more than I can bear. You said that You sent Your Holy Spirit to comfort us. You said others would comfort us. Please give me assurance of that comfort. Thank you that You know the road ahead of me and ordain every step I take. Help me to trust You in these uncertain times and to walk in the confidence of Your love for me. Lord guide me to focus on You, instead of my own hurt. Lord my joy is in You. Thank you for dying for every hurt I will ever need to endure. I rejoice in You today. In Jesus name Amen