I was always a church kid
and I don't think I ever questioned God I don't I think I
ever questioned why things happen the way they do
and I have a tremendous number of questions now.
I'm asking God things like
“Why didn't you just stop this from happening?"
He was reaching so many people
why would God take him at that time?
I would find myself really just literally crying out, screaming
“Why do you need her now?"
“Why now before he had a chance to see his baby?"
“Don't you think she needs to be here with her children?"
He was only 35; he was working through his PhD program
at the dissertation stage.
And I get in that vicious circle of why, why, why.
why and it just consumed me.
“What's God's message?" “What's He trying to tell me?"
“Why is this happening?"
It just didn't make any sense to me.
I think it's changed my relationship with God.
At a library like this one you can discover answers
to many questions, answers found in books written by the best
and brightest minds across the ages.
And if you have trouble locating the information you're
looking for a knowledgeable librarian can point you
to the right section or even specific volumes
to help narrow your search.
That's the role we'd like to take today as we talk
about important questions that are no doubt on your mind
after the death of your loved one.
When you're in the middle
of grief there's usually one specific question even the best
and brightest thinkers have a hard time answering.
And that question is, 'Why?"
Questions like, “Why did my 13 year old son die of cancer?"
“Why did my brother murder his wife?"
“Why did God let my wife suffer for so long?"
“Why did God allow the doctors to make such a careless mistake?"
“Why did my husband die at such a young age?"
To begin our exploration of the why question let's turn
to a story found in the greatest book ever written, the Bible.
It's the story of a man named Job, he suffered a great deal
and his response can serve as an example for relating to God
when we don't understand what He's doing.
[ Music]
The Bible tells us that Job was a very wealthy and righteous man
but in one day he was financially ruined,
most of his servants were killed and all
of his children died in a tragic accident.
Today we're going to look at Job's response to his suffering
and how God replied to his struggles and questions
to see what we can learn about dealing with our pain
and unanswered questions.
One of the first things that we learn from Job is
that it's okay for us to be honest with God and cry
out to Him in our pain.
Listen to some of the things Job said
in response to his loss.
“Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the
bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does
not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure."
He says, “What I feared has come upon me;
what I dreaded has happened to me."
Job said, “I have no peace, no quietness;
I have no rest, but only turmoil."
Job finds himself in so much agony
he wishes he had never been born.
Job's words are an example of what we call lament
and it's something that God actually invites all sufferers to do.
Michael: A lament is a difficult conversation,
that we have with God when we are sorrowful or when we are angry
or when we are confused.
A lament by its very nature is a cry,
it's a cry to someone who is there.
It is a cry if you will to God himself.
It's complaining
to God saying, “I'd rather have had it this way or that way
or I don't understand what you're doing."
Lament is both natural and it's also a recognition
in the human heart that there is someone there.
And I think Christians need number one to embrace the fact
that that's not only okay I think it's necessary
that we are lamenting the death of a loved one.
[ Music]
Phil: And that's very true the Bible describes God that way,
that He keeps our tears in a bottle it says and kind
of metaphorical language.
Everyone knows that at a library
like this one you're expected to keep your voice down so
if you want to have a conversation go outside,
there's certainly no yelling allowed inside.
Sometimes when we're grieving we act
like God has similar rules we think He doesn't want us
to say much and He certainly doesn't want us crying
out to him about the way we feel.
But as Job and other people in the Bible demonstrate
to lament is an expression of faith.
Dr. DeVries: Lamenting is in its own sense a way of saying, “I trust you God,
I know you're sovereign that's why I'm complaining to you."
You don't complain to a person at the store
who you think can't do anything about it; you say
“I want to talk to the manager."
But why is that? Because you're
convinced the manager can solve the problem.
Well, in a lament that's what we're saying
we want to talk to the manager.
The Psalms are a great example of that,
the Psalms are really worship songs and yet the Psalms are
so very honest about what it is to live in this world.
And to have questions where you're saying, “How long, oh Lord?
Why do the wicked triumph? Why do we suffer,
we are your people, I don't understand."
Sometimes we may be frustrated with God,
sometimes He seems distant but lament is based on the faith,
the belief that God is and His nature is
that He's a God who cares.
There was sort of this underlying implication
that if you really love God you're not going to cry,
you know you're going to just say, "The Bible, God wanted this
to happen and I'm going to muscle through it."
Lamenting and faith can go together.
How do we know that, well of course the Psalms
but we also see Christ, we see our Savior lamenting,
He is lamenting in Gethsemane when He is going
through more pain and suffering
than any person has ever experienced and then
in that greatest lament of all time, the greatest lament
of all time is “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?"
See we can say that.
A lament is a sign of faith and not a sign of weakness.
In a very simple way lament is hanging on,
I may not like it, I may not understand it but you are a God
who is worth hanging on to and of course the other side
of it is we realize God's been hanging on to us all along.
So through this process of grief I did learn
that I could go to God with things that I was not proud of,
things I would have thought, “Oh my gosh, I can never say
that to God." With my anger, my disappointment, my confusion
and realized that it was okay I could go
to God with these things.
So lament isn't anything I think that you need
to teach someone, I think what you need to convince people
of is that they are free to lament, the first lesson
that you learn as an infant is
if I cry long enough somebody will show up
and I think that's a lesson that serves us well
for the rest of our lives.
And so I had a lot of just crying
and just saying, 'Why, you know why this way Lord, why now?"
And then the Holy Spirit would come and comfort me
and would calm my spirit
and it just...l may not have gotten the answer to the why
but it was okay, it was a peace that came over me.
If I cry long enough God's going to show up.
God knows the deep hurts of living life in this broken world
and He wants us to cry out to Him.
But sometimes our assumptions
about how God works intensify our suffering.
Take Job for instance, he lived in a culture
where people believe that if you did the right thing God would
bless you and if you did wrong
God would curse you with suffering.
And since the Bible says that Job was blameless
and upright it's easy to see why Job was so confused
by his suffering perhaps you've been confused by this too.
Vaneetha: If you live right God's going to do well by you
and when Paul died that sort of shattered because I felt
like I was following God, I was teaching Bible study,
Like how could this happen.
And some of us who have again a walk of faith kind of expect
and assume not ever spoken that because we've paid tithe
or been faithful or because we go to church each weekend
or because we're kind to our neighbor
that God kind of owes us.
My sister, she lived like that perfect Christian life,
you know she had done everything that we were asked to do
so I kind of didn't understand then,
she did everything she was supposed
to do why did she have to go?
I realized that I had a very kind of business relationship
with God, I thought okay the rules are in the Bible,
I'm following the rules, you're supposed to do what I want.
We don't say that out loud but you know
that somehow we then are in a good standing with God
and that He's going to shower us with those blessings.
The Lord had blessed in many, many ways and at that point
in my life I had more of this attitude or thinking
that God was blessing us because of what we were doing
and what we weren't doing and then when he was taken suddenly
like that I was like you know what have we done wrong
or what did we not do right.
Believing that your plans are the same
as God's is another wrong assumption
that can intensify your suffering.
I had polio when I was a child, so I was handicapped,
grew up in hospitals and dealt
with this disability my whole life so I really thought
when I became a Christian at 16 that that was it,
that I had my suffering and then life was going to be easy.
And so when our son died I thought somebody has told me something
wrong I should be done, it's somebody else's turn to suffer.
I was raised in a obstensively Christian home,
my father read scripture to us every day, he was a leader
in the churches we were involved in.
What got exposed three or four years before he died is
that my dad had lived a horrendous double life.
Because of what my dad had done he was basically on the street
so we invited him to live with us.
Now in my way of thinking I thought God would use this
to lead him to repentance, restore our whole family
and this would be the end of this story.
When my father got sick I truly believed
that through prayer God would heal him.
And he had Parkinson's disease so he had
that stiff shaky body,
was walking up the steps one Sunday morning, fell back,
fell back on his head, a huge wall clock came off and hit him
in the forehead. He had very serious brain injuries
and slipped in a couple days into a coma
and in eight days he was dead.
I felt like God had betrayed me.
And it seemed impossible
that God would let this story end this way.
That we would be left with the horror of what this man had done
and there would be no closure.
We would never hear, “I'm sorry, please forgive me."
but we would live in the midst of all that was left.
I can remember when my dad died being at the hospital
and five floors on the elevator by myself screaming at God.
When I got to the bottom I was shocked at what had come
out of me, I was mad that I was raised in this family
where my dad was a fake.
I was mad about the surface Christianity and I was mad
for what all our family was going through.
I was questioning the wisdom of God.
When you basically say, “God I know this is what you're up to
and this is going to happen because I have faith in you."
And then when it doesn't happen and your dream gets shattered,
not only does your dream get shattered
but your faith gets challenged
and your faith gets challenged unnecessarily
because you had a false expectation.
That thinking will make my experience of grief harder
because now I can't understand how this God has promised good
things would bring this bad thing into my life
and so my experience of grief is shaped
by the thinking that I bring to it.
So we've seen that it's okay to honestly cry out to God
about how we're feeling.
And we've also discovered
that sometimes our wrong assumptions
about God can intensify our pain.
But even though you understand those things you
probably still have a lot of why questions surrounding the death
of your loved one, so how did God respond
toJjob's why questions?
H. Norman: Job asked the question why 16 times,
did he ever get an answer? No, he didn't get an answer.
And then what happens is eventually
God does show up at the end of the book,
I think God shows up in response to Job's lament
And it's interesting how people look
at Job's life and they say he lost all these things
but he got them all back.
You know his cattle and his sheep
and his donkeys are restored and he has more children
but the point of the book of Job isn't
that he gets his stuff back, the point of the book
of Job is he gets God back.
Before the tragedy Job thought God operated a certain
way but the loss of his wealth and family caused him
to rethink his core beliefs about who God is
and how He operates, in a sense Job lost the God he thought he
knew but that gave him the opportunity
to know God as He truly is.
God reminded Job that He is not bound
by anyone's misconceptions of who He is
or how He should operate and when God revealed Himself
to Job, Job realized his suffering provided him the
opportunity to know God like never before.
In Job 42, 3 and 5 Job says, “Surely I spoke
of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know
My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you."
Job realized that he didn't have the right to demand answers from God.
What's more when we continue reading
in Job 42 we see that his humility before God leads him
to be sorry for his behavior and willing
to change the way he thought about God.
It's important to understand that he wasn't sorry
for being honest with God, God invites us to do that,
he was repenting for his narrow view of God
and for holding God accountable to human standards.
Job learned that God doesn't follow our rules
and he saw God as He truly is.
The story of Job is he had a new relationship with God
because in the latter part of Job it says, “Before I had heard
of you with my ears, but now I've seen you with my eyes."
Michael: Job has this intimacy with God
that he could have never imagined
and the point is he wrestled, he laments he hangs on to God
and he has this experience of God
that he would have never had otherwise if he hadn't hung on.
Some of you may be thinking getting a deeper relationship
with God is nice but I still want answers.
If that's how you feel you have to remember that one
of the key lessons of the book of Job is
that God doesn't owe us an explanation
for why He allows suffering and remember even
if you did get an answer from God you might not be able
to understand it because His wisdom reaches far beyond ours.
Dr. Loritts: One of the things we learn by reading the book of Job
that we ought to grab a hold of is that nobody tells God what
to do, when to do it and why He should do it.
You know the book of Job is just such a fascinating study
and job was a Godly man but he wasn't a perfect man and one
of the lessons from the book is that God lovingly
and graciously, but definitely puts Job in his place.
Now not the same way that God speaks to Job's
so called counselors who clearly displeased Him
and were judged severely in this book but God does say to Job
in a rather pointed fashion, “Were you there
when the earth was made? Were you there
when I fashioned various aspects of my creation?"
And He helped His servant realize well there is a God
and I'm not him.
It doesn't mean that God didn't have compassion on Job
because He did and He demonstrated
that in the way He came toward him where Job kind
of couldn't move and He revealed Himself to him
but He said you know, “I have to be who I am and if you want
to know me you're going to realize
that who I am is not something you're going
to fully understand."
So that really helped me to go forward.
Now He doesn't forbid us asking Him why
but God is not going to be held hostage to our reasoning,
He owes us no explanation.
Deuteronomy 29:29 tells me that just some things are secret
to the Lord and if He was to go as far
as to tell me why Michael died I don't think I have the brain
capacity to figure it out anyway.
Think about it if God responded positively
to every question or answered every question
that we ask it would be an erosion of His authority.
We serve Him, it's not that He serves us.
Working through the why questions that took the longest
for me because of her being so young, she was top in her class,
she had so much going for her, she had her whole life ahead
of her and the why questions you know, “Why her? Why now?"
I had to learn how to let go and trust God especially
when I don't know why.
I just came to the realization
that we don't always know why but that He's in control
and that He knows best.
Male Narrator: Although God won't respond
to all your questions He is still your best source
for help and guidance.
Deuteronomy 29:29 a verse that tells us God keeps some things
to Himself, reminds us that God
will give you the information that you need.
Dr. Emlet: The secret things belong to the LORD our God,
but the things revealed belong to us
and to our children forever,
that we may follow all the words of this law.
In other words
God doesn't give all the whys and wherefores,
the inner workings of His secret will and counsel
but what He does reveal, He reveals enough
that we know how to live accordingly
but I don't have a specific answer
as to why this particular form of suffering
at this particular time in my life.
And if I camp out there in a sense insisting that I've got
to figure this out, that can erode my faith rather
than build my faith.
What I would hate to see a person do is become so hung
up on the question they have that is not answered in the word
of God that they discard all of the scripture as if to say
because the Bible doesn't answer the particular question I have
it's of no value to me as I grieve.
I can either put my focus on the answers God has already given me
that I can trust and rejoice in or I can put my focus
on the one question that's not answered in the scripture
and therefore ignore all the value He's given me in the word.
Even though God doesn't reveal to us all of the answers
to our questions He does reveal himself to us through His word
and as we get to know Him better
through studying the Bible it quiets our questions,
just like God's revelation of Himself
in the storm quieted Job's questions.
And if were honest we'd have to admit that even
if God spelled out for us exactly why He allowed our loved
one to die it probably wouldn't be a good enough answer for us.
Hollis: You know we didn't get a result of why Michael died
until we got the autopsy report which was 8 weeks later
and during that 8 weeks the question
of why, it was just growing and growing and growing but even
after getting the autopsy report and telling me what happened
and why and everything
that didn't answer my question of why.
If God had explained to Job
why he had to lose his children,
why he had to be sick,
why he had to lose everything he owned,
if God had sat down and explained all the reasons
to him, Job would still have had to have faced empty chairs
at the breakfast table the next morning.
So it doesn't change anything.
And so I don't think God would ever say just
because you understand the big picture it's not supposed
to hurt any more.
There is still a real loss in grief.
One of the things our former Pastor said
at the funeral he said, “If we knew why Melissa died,
if we knew the why answer it wouldn't change anything,
she'd still be gone."
I just chose to live by faith that as long as God knows
then I'm going to be fine.
[ Music]
Now earlier in this session we explained
that God didn't give Job specific answers
to his why questions instead God revealed Himself to Job in a way
that quieted Job's questions and brought him to a place
of acceptance and trust.
And we can have the same experience.
So let's take a moment to look at a few of the characteristics
of God that can strengthen us as we recover
from the deaths of our loved ones.
The first is God's sovereignty.
God is sovereign that means that there is a plan and purpose
for everything in my life, there is no luck,
there is no chance, there is no fate.
A long time ago I was in a restaurant and I saw a placemat
and on this placemat there was a story of a weaver
and I memorized it. It goes like this.
My life is like a weaving between my Lord
and me. I do not choose the colors He weaveth steadily,
oft times He weaveth sorrow
and I in foolish pride forget He sees the upper
and I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent and the shuttle cease
to fly will God unfurl that canvas
and explain the reason why the dark threads were as needful
in the Weaver's skillful hands as the threads of gold
and silver in the pattern He has planned, there's a pattern.
The Bible teaches us to trust God in the midst of our lives,
He's given us enough knowledge of Himself so that we can say
with job, “Though he slay me yet will I trust in him."
He is utterly trustworthy and with that we can be satisfied.
Sometimes people bristle at the idea that God is in control
of everything, they can't stomach the thought
that God allowed their child to die or wife to be murdered,
if He is really in control why
didn't he stop those things from happening.
And we can understand why you might have similar questions,
however by rejecting the sovereignty of God we give
up more than we realize.
You know during a time of grief we all have
to decide what we're going to trust in and if we choose
that God is not sovereign then where does that leave us?
If God were not all powerful then there would be no guarantee
that justice would ultimately prevail, there'd be no guarantee
that evil would ever be ultimately punished
or vanquished.
There's no reason to expect
that death would ever go away.
And so if a person denies the sovereignty
of God what you're saying is that evil might yet win.
Well, we could trust in circumstances or we could trust
in our own ability to make things better
but that's a pretty weak philosophy when you take it
out to the future because if I'm dependent
on my own sufficiency that's hopeless in the days ahead.
If I trust in random circumstances
that too is hopeless but if I really believe
that God is sovereign, He's in control even
when He allows something that I don't like then as I think
about the days ahead I can trust in His control for the future.
I can trust in His plan for the future so the doctrine
of the sovereignty of God is challenging
but ultimately it is a source of great hope.
God's the one that's in control,
He has the plan, He knows the best plan
and I'm not in control.
Knowing that God is in control is a huge comfort to me;
I don't have to work things out.
[ Music]
So this Pastor looks at us and says you have no right
to be angry with God, can you believe that? My father died
when I was 15, my wife suffered with cancer for 6 years
and 2 years ago my grandson died. And I shouldn't be angry!
I didn't realize that your father died when you were 15
and I'm sorry about that
and that young Pastor he didn't recognize your pain
but he did have a point.
After the tragic death of a loved one some people
like Marlin get angry at God and question His goodness,
however even in the midst of grief you should never forget
that God has made the ultimate sacrifice
to demonstrate His love and kindness.
When my brother was killed in the plane wreck my dad
and mom obviously grieved but one of the things
that dad was incredibly helped by in the middle of his grief,
dad and mother both, dad's mentor wrote dad a letter
and he said, “You can always trust the man who died for you."
The cross is God's ultimate demonstration of love,
He sent His son to die the death that I should have died.
I never doubt God's love because I know that Christ died for me.
[ Music]
Dr. Crabb: If God did that, gave His son for me then I cannot believe
that there ever is a failure in His love
in whatever happens in my life.
The gospel is proof of God's goodness.
This God who was certainly not obligated and had no need
to save sinners like me, gave His only son
with whom He had a fellowship for all eternity past,
He gave His son to die in my place and suffer in order
that blessing and life may come to me.
God had, in that sense, no personal gain,
He gave that we might experience eternal life and that is,
that is the comfort of all comforts.
God's nature is that He is good
and my pain is blurring my perception of my reality.
Interpret everything that happens in light of the cross.
[ Music]
God is intimately acquainted with grief
because He sacrificed His own son to allow us
to have a relationship with Him.
This means that He understands what we're going
through so He is a safe person to draw close to.
The God that I understand is also a God
that understands agony, understands suffering
and God is here hurting with me
but God is here walking with me.
I have been a Christian since I was in second grade
so I knew what God had done
but when I lost my sister the empathy that I knew God felt
for me just took on a whole new level, that when I was in pain
that He got it because He had been there,
not because He was God and He gets everything,
but because He too had experienced it
and if I felt this way about my sister how much more did He feel
that way about His son who He voluntarily sacrificed.
I began to realize I could draw closer to Him
because He shares in our suffering.
And so that helps me because so often
like we've said people just don't always get it even your closest
friends don't understand but the Psalm says we have one
who has understanding without limit.
So that just is a comfort to me first
of all just a place I can go
where sometimes I don't even understand how I feel
and I'll say, “Lord I don't even know what's going on."
And He understands.
Then there's that one verse that's one of the shortest verses
in the Bible that has become one of the most powerful
verses for me in dealing with grief in John Chapter 11,
two words, “Jesus wept."
That word in the original language isn't just
that He had a little tear that came down His face, He's weeping
now here's whats mysterious about that, why is He crying?
When He knows, He already said to His disciples earlier
in the chapter that Lazarus is going to rise again,
why is the one who is the resurrection and the life crying
and weeping when He is going to raise Lazarus from the dead,
but He still has the emotions of grief.
Now we theologically will take that and say
because He sees the impact of sin and what sin does
and He's encountering the power of death,
I get that but He wept, He wept.
I'm glad I've got a Savior who cries for me.
Even though He knows there's going
to be resurrection He weeps, He weeps.
[ Music]
Dave: We just enjoyed life so much and it was kind
of the dream family we had four kids, they were all doing great,
our two older daughters had graduated from college,
and actually a week before we were at my daughter's college
where she was graduating from Cedarville University.
I just looked down the row and I just felt so blessed,
I felt so proud, everything just seemed so perfect.
Dave: She just was in awe of this family that God had given us.
And then suddenly I just started feeling
like a panic feeling.
And she even said, “Please Lord don't let anything happen."
Don't let anything happen to any of my children.
And it was just five days later that Melissa was killed.
Female Narrator: Dave and Sue's daughter, Melissa died in a car accident
when she was 17 years old. Recovery was a slow process
for her parents but their belief that God is
in control helped them deal with the shock of Melissa's death.
Dave: God is in control even
in the worst situations that happen to us.
On June 6th it was no surprise to God
that Melissa's life was taken.
He didn't go, “Oops, I misplaced Melissa,"
To me without God's sovereignty in this situation
or any other we're left with chaos and randomness,
there is no purpose for life.
Female Narrator: Dave and his wife see how God is using Melissa's story
for good and while that comforts them they're also aware
that Melissa didn't have to die in order
for good things to happen.
Sue: Our daughter Julie moved to an area to teach
at a Christian school two months after Melissa died, Julie shared
with her students about Melissa dying and about her life
and one little girl raised her hand and said I want
to trust Jesus just like Melissa did because I want to go
to heaven like she did.
We were so thrilled to know that someone had accepted Jesus
but I also felt like why did my daughter have to die
so that someone else would accept Jesus, I thought there's
so many other ways that she could accept Jesus.
Melissa could have lived to a ripe old age,
she could have glorified God through her life
with having children and many, many things that she could have done
and she would have done I think but I'm not God.
I'm not omniscient, I'm not all knowing He is.
[Music]
Female Narrator: Although Dave and Sue believe God is
in control they've struggled to trust a God
who allowed their daughter to die.
Trust is probably the hardest thing that I have trouble with.
How do you trust Him and not feel
like God's going to take another child
and now we've got grandchildren in the picture,
is something going to happen to somebody?
[Music]
Dave: Trusting God is more real now than before,
before it was more an automatic thing we're believers,
we put our faith in Christ
and sure we trust God that's what we do as Christians.
Now it's more of an active thing so we're not waiting
for the other shoe to drop or anything like that or waiting
for something tragic to happen, we feel our job now is
to do the next step in the whole process and that is cling
to God, trust Him, understand that He is sovereign
and in control. And our lives are just going to have to be lived
that way with the tragedy in our background but confidence
that God knows what He is doing.
Female Narrator: When Dave and Sue are tempted to rage against God
for ruining their lives they remind themselves that God's
plans do not center around them.
And if we push God away we're saying you know what all this stuff
you did for all these thousands of years doesn't work anymore
because you messed up my plan, that makes it me centric,
I'm the center of the universe then and it's not true and her death
and her salvation, and her going to glory are part of the plan.
Dave: You know one could look at God's sovereignty
and say you're pretty cold and indifferent about your daughter,
“It's okay God," it's not okay.
Let me tell you it's not okay, I hurt every day
for Melissa being gone but I can't bring her back,
I'm never going to see her again, that hurts,
I'm never going to throw a softball with her again
or hug her or hear her come home and say it's all good
which is one of her favorite sayings.
So it hurts like everything to have her gone.
But then on the other side I have to, I have to think
through the theology of it, He knew what He was doing
and we still love Him and if we can have that be the message
and God be glorified through this tragedy then as much
as it hurts we're going to be good with it.
[ Music]
Hopefully today your ability to trust God in the midst
of difficulty has grown even though
you don't have all of the answers.
Be sure to look at your workbook this week to learn more
about the answers God has for you during this time of grief,
you'll find the daily From Mourning to Joy exercises
to be helpful, encouraging and informative.
In this week's From Mourning
to Joy exercises you'll learn more about Vaneetha
and how she dealt with the why questions
after her infant son's death.
At the next GriefShare session we' ll discuss some
of the factors that make it difficult to heal from grief.
It's easy to look at all the what if scenarios.
We moved to Blacksburg a year
and a half before Austin was killed,
what if we hadn't you know
she never would have been at Virginia Tech.
I think if I'd have talked to the doctors more,
if I'd of had him go to more tests, if I'd have said this,
if I had said that. Then maybe
things would have turned out differently.
We're sure you still have questions
about what God is doing and why you're hurting so much,
please don't misinterpret what we've said during today's
session as a polite way of telling you
to stop asking so many questions.
If you have questions we encourage you to continue
to pour them out to God in prayer and listen for Him
to speak to you through His word. Also share them
with other GriefShare participants
and maybe even the Pastor of the church hosting your group.
We're so thankful that you joined us
for this important GriefShare session,
In the coming week please review the notes you took while
watching the video and complete the daily exercises found
in your workbook, they'll help you reflect and focus
on what we presented today.
There is much more helpful information ahead
on your journey through the GriefShare program.
Be sure to join us for the next session, we'll see you then.