How to Handle Your Emotions (Counseling Through the Bible Series) (35 page)

“Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you”

(1 P
ETER
5:7
NKJV
).

People are drawn to Jesus because He cares. And because He cares for everyone, you too can turn to Him.

“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of
grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need”

(H
EBREWS
4:15-16).

Who has not questioned the reason for pain and suffering in the world? Certainly some people have become hardened by their losses, while others have become softened. God used their grief to cultivate in them tender, understanding hearts.

Only days before His own death, Jesus traveled to the grave of Lazarus to comfort Lazarus’s two sisters in their loss. Jesus was not only deeply moved in His Spirit, but He was also weeping with Mary and Martha. It may seem paradoxical that Jesus—the Son of God, the One who turned water into wine, the One who multiplied the loaves and the fishes, the One who raised Lazarus from the dead—could not avoid grief in His own life. But the prophet Isaiah foretold that Christ, the coming Messiah, would be a man who would understand grief well for, indeed, He was

“a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”

(I
SAIAH
53:3
NKJV
).

—
Grief
is the painful
emotion
of sorrow caused by the loss or impending loss of anyone or anything that has deep meaning to you.

“Be merciful to me, O L
ORD
, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief”

(P
SALM
31:9).

—
Grief
begins in your heart as a natural response to a significant, unwanted loss.

—
Grief
is a God-given emotion that increases with knowledge about the sorrows of life. The wiser you are about the grief that people experience, the more you yourself will grieve.
¹

“With much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief”

(E
CCLESIASTES
1:18).

—In the New Testament, the Greek word
lupe
means “pain of body or mind.”
²
When Jesus told His disciples that He would soon be betrayed and killed, they were filled with grief.

“The disciples were filled with grief”

(M
ATTHEW
17:23).

—
Mourning
is the process of working through the pain of sorrow that follows a significant loss.

“Joy is gone from our hearts; our dancing has turned to mourning”

(L
AMENTATIONS
5:15).

—
Mourning
(also called grieving) is a normal, healthy process that lasts for a period of time. God uses mourning in order to produce ultimate healing from deep distress and sorrow.

“You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy”

(P
SALM
30:11).

—
Mourning
evokes compassion and expressions of comfort from others. When Lazarus died, Jesus and many others came to comfort Mary and Martha.

“Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother”

(J
OHN
11:19).

—
Mourning,
in the Old Testament, can be the Hebrew word
abal,
which means “to mourn or lament.”
³
Jacob’s favorite son was Joseph. When Joseph’s brothers told their father, Jacob, that his favored son had been killed by a ferocious animal, Jacob went into deep mourning for days…and ultimately, for years.

“Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days”

(G
ENESIS
37:34).

While we are grieving, a prevalent problem may be that we don’t want to talk about our grief or let others see our sadness. Not wanting to appear weak, we mask our emotions.

Yet if we delay sharing our sorrow, our healing will also be delayed. If we are going to be “authentically human,” we need to be able to share the truth about the heaviness in our hearts. If we develop chronic grief, we can become emotionally stuck, and we need to be set free. Jesus’ words about truth are freeing—even when applied to grieving.

“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”

(J
OHN
8:32).

—
Chronic grief
is unresolved, emotional sorrow experienced over a long period of time as the result of not accepting a significant loss or not experiencing closure of that loss.
⁴

“The troubles of my heart have multiplied; free me from my anguish”

(P
SALM
25:17).

—
Chronic grief
(or incomplete grief) can also be unresolved, deep sorrow experienced over a long period of time and characterized by
misconceptions
that result in a failure to move through the grief process.

Misconception:
“My grief will never end.”

Correction:
You will mourn for a season; and then your grief will end.

“[There is] a time to mourn and a time to dance”

(E
CCLESIASTES
3:4).

Misconception:
“If I cry, I’m not strong.”

Correction:
Jesus was strong, yet He wept after Lazarus died.

“Jesus wept”

(J
OHN
11:35).

King David was strong, yet he and his men wept after Saul and Jonathan died.

“They mourned and wept and fasted till evening for Saul and his son Jonathan”

(2 S
AMUEL
1:12).

Misconception:
“If I feel deep sorrow, I must not be trusting God.”

Correction:
Jesus, the Messiah, never failed to trust God, the Father, yet He was called “a man of sorrows.”

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering”

(I
SAIAH
53:3).

Have you seen someone smiling, yet within the smile you recognized sadness? Have you heard someone laughing, though you knew that heart was not healed? This is a picture of repressed grief.

“Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief”

(P
ROVERBS
14:13).

—
Repressed grief
occurs when a person has reason to grieve and needs to grieve, but does not grieve.
⁵
The person with repressed grief exhibits negative lifestyle patterns but does not know why. (Examples may include distancing from others, playing the clown, using mood-altering substances such as alcohol or drugs, engaging in mood-altering behaviors such as gambling or compulsive spending.)
Only by facing the truth of our painful losses in life and going through genuine grief will we have emotional healing.
In the Bible, the psalmist prayed this prayer:

“Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me”

(P
SALM
43:3).

—
Repressed grief
can be overcome and grieving can begin when a person takes the Timeline Test.
⁶

The Timeline Test

1.
Draw
a long line representing your life (see sample time line on page 205).

2.
Divide
the timeline into three sections—childhood, youth, and adulthood.

3.
Denote
the major changes in your life, using short phrases…

4.
Determine
whether there are any sad experiences or significant losses and hurts over which you have never grieved or have never finished grieving, such as…

5.
Discover
the source of your masked pain through earnest prayer.

Prayer for Discovery

Father,

As Your child, I come to You for help.
Calm my heart. Enable me
to see what I need to see.
Make me aware of my need
for healing and show me Your truth.

Bring to my mind any buried pain.
Surface any hidden hurt and
the exact circumstances that caused it.
I ask You to help my wounded heart to heal.
I know You have the power
to make me whole.
I am willing to face
whatever You want me to face
so that I can be set free.

In Your holy name I pray. Amen.

6.
Define
the painful events over which you need to grieve by using specific statements.