How to deal with grief and loss
The key here is that you have to realize that your identity cannot be in anyone but Jesus Christ. You are a new creation in Him, and your identity must be in Him if you are going to get through the loss of a loved one. If Christ is in you things have changed concerning death, Romans 8:10, “And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” You must recognize that your life is now hid in Christ, and He is in your heart. Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Notice what Paul says, “I” that is the old I, the old man, “am crucified with Christ”
If you are saved today, you are not the old man any longer. Your identity is then in Him. I realize that we have a strong identification with our loved ones, but they are not who we are. Our relationship with them did not define us completely. I love my wife, I cannot imagine what life would be without her, I don’t ever want to find out, but if that was to happen, I would have to remember that her death did not end my life, because my life was not in her, it is in Jesus Christ. Your life is not found in anyone on this earth, but rather it is found in Jesus Christ as well.
Secondly, There is a time to stop mourning. It says in verse 3 of our text that Abraham stood up from before his dead. He didn’t stay there the rest of his life. You must realize that you still have a life to live, and God still has a purpose for you. Several years ago when I was on a trip to England I was putting out literature door to door and ran across a lady that was sitting on her front porch in her pajamas crying. As I asked her what she was troubled about she told me that she was sad because her father had died. This was a lady who was in her fifties. I asked if I could come back later and visit with her, she agreed so I took a missionary with me and later went back to her house. When we got there she was inside and invited us in. Her house was a shrine to her late father. She began to tell us how she had taken care of him since she was just a teenager. And how she had done everything for him. I asked when he passed, and she said about four years ago. She was completely engulfed in grief and had never stopped mourning because she had no identity of her own.
Because she had no identity of her own she had no purpose to live. Her only purpose in life had been to take care of him. She didn’t know what to do now. Ro 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” You may have lost your purpose, but God has one for you. You are called according to His purpose. Turning from your own confusion to His purpose for your life is vital to standing up from your dead and moving on with the life that you have been given.
To end mourning your dead must be buried out of your sight. Some time ago I counseled with a man who was overcome with grief at the death of his wife. She had passed away almost six months prior and he was getting worse each day. As we sat down to talk he began to tell me how much he missed her and how he just didn’t know if he could go on without her. He pulled out of his pocket a phone and said this is her phone, I have kept it active so that I could call her voice mail and listen to her voice and he called it a dozen times a day. His mind was telling him that she was still there, but he knew that she wasn’t. the confusion was destroying him.
