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Have you experienced a devastating loss?  Does the pain just sneak up and throat punch you when you least expect it?  Is the emptiness overwhelming at times and you feel you will never be useful again to God’s Kingdom let alone anyone else?  In Pastor Rick Warren’s daily devotion, he gave 6 ways God helps you through devastating loss.

6 Ways God Helps You Through Devastating Loss

Several of my friends have lost precious loved ones.

They are dear to me and it hurts to see them in so much pain.  They are doing their best to heal and make it through each day. Even though I pray for them, I still long to help them through the grief.  However, only God and time can heal them in His timing.

After the initial trauma had past, they had the difficulty of learning to walk through life and breathe again without breaking down in tears.  Putting one foot in front of the other and learning a new normal took all the strength they could muster each day.

Even when life distracts them for a moment, the pain is always just below the surface.  It doesn’t take much for the pain to come back and take their breath away.  Even something as simple as cleaning out a drawer and coming upon a note or a memory popping up on Facebook will sucker punch them in the gut when they least expect it.  The wound instantly reopens and the pain reappears.

It is hard to know the right words to help those who hurt so desperately.

Whether you experience the overwhelming loss of a husband or a child, or the loss a beloved pet or even a much loved job, the grief is real.  Pain is real and every one of us will experience it before we leave this world.  Praise God, I have not experienced the loss my friends walked through but recently, I grieved the loss of something painful and am in a season of healing.

I subscribe to Pastor Rick Warren’s daily devotional.  It helps me to focus my thoughts on God and get in the Word even on days when I may only have a few minutes for quiet time.  Rick Warren is the senior pastor at Saddleback Church in California and author of “The Purpose Driven Life”.

If you haven’t read his book, you should!  You can find it HERE.  It is an easy read and will help you grow spiritually and find the purpose God has for you in this life.

After I started this post, as God usually works, the daily devotion from Rick Warren was about grief.  So, I’ll spare you the reinvention of the wheel and share it with you.  I did write a post about dealing with pain called, “When Will It Stop Hurting“.  You can read it HERE.  However, Pastor Warren is much more qualified to discuss grief than I could ever be.  This is an excerpt from his devotion.

Six Ways God Helps You Grieve 

1. God draws you close to himself.

Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and he saves those whose spirits have been crushed” (NCV). When you grieve, you may feel like God is a million miles away. But what you feel and what’s real are not always the same thing. God isn’t a million miles away. In fact, he’s never been any closer.

2. God grieves with you.

The Bible tells us that Jesus was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief”(Isaiah 53:3 NLT). When you come to Jesus with your grief, he knows what you’re talking about, and he understands your pain. God is a sympathetic. He’s not aloof. He’s not apathetic. He’s not standing on the sidelines. He grieves with you.

3. God gives you a church family for support.

We’re meant to grieve in community. Healing comes in groups. Healing comes in the church. Healing comes in community. We’re better together!

“In Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others . . . Be devoted to each other like a loving family . . . Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:5, 10, 15 NIV/GW/NIV).

4. God uses grief to help you grow.

God uses grief and even pain to help you become more like Christ, and he does it in three ways:

God uses pain to get your attention (Proverbs 20:30), he brings good out of bad (Romans 8:28), and he prepares you for eternity (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

5. God gives you the hope of heaven.

There are many people who grieve without hope. Your life on this earth is short, but if you believe in Jesus Christ and trust him for your salvation, then you have the hope of spending eternity in heaven with God, and that hope will sustain you through your time of loss. The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 4:13, “We don’t want you to be ignorant about those who have died. We don’t want you to grieve like other people who have no hope” (GW).

6. God uses your pain to help others.

This is called redemptive pain; it is the highest and best use of the pain you go through. God does not want you to waste a hurt. “[God] comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us” (2 Corinthians 1:4 NLT).

Have you experienced devastating loss?

I hope these 6 ways God helps you through devastating loss helped.

Let God help you as you walk through grief.

Don’t close yourself off from the world.  Find a church community; seek encouragement and comfort from Christian friends. Pastor Warren says, “grief is God’s tool to help us transition through seasons of life and you’ve got to let yourself mourn losses so that you can move on with your life and receive God’s blessing”.

You are not alone friend. Reach out and find help in dealing with the pain of grief.  It isn’t healthy to hold it all inside and try to walk through grief by yourself.

Here is a group a friend of mine, who lost her husband, told me about.  They can assist you in finding help close to you.

https://www.griefshare.org/

If you want to subscribe to Pastor Warren’s daily devotional, you can subscribe HERE. You can go HERE to read the whole post on “6 Ways God Helps You Grieve”.

You are not alone.

I am praying for you.

Love,

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