Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: God loves you.

Guest (Male): Hello friends. Welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelly. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelly.

Tim Kelley: Loss makes you realize how precious every moment is. Next thing I wanted to just glean from this first point of 19. You do you you actually see moments. I find myself now just in a regular life stage running around. My wife is there and we're doing and I and I remind myself this is a moment I don't want to forget and I find myself being busy like everybody, but I keep reminding myself I would do anything to have some moments back in my life. 5 minutes with my daughter, I would sell everything and live in a box.

5 more minutes. I didn't know my mom growing. I knew my mom. She was a great mom. I just didn't know I was a selfish 19 20 year old kid who thought my mom was there to serve me and do everything for me and I lost her when I was 20. So I never got a chance to know her. She's in heaven now. I'm going to get a chance to know her, but I never got the chance to know her. I would do anything for a few more moments and find out who is my mom really cuz I knew she cooked and cleaned and treated me nice, spoiled me, went behind my father's back and did things for me, favored me over my brother and my sister.

They're watching. Moments. Last thing my friends on this point, give yourself some grace. Don't think you should be on to be on a point that you can't get. Give yourself some grace. If you're grieving for a spouse that you've lost at the 30 or 40 or 50 years of marriage and you're wondering when's this going to end, just give yourself some grace. If you're grieving your child, give yourself a grace. There is no timetable. There is no stopwatch. There is nobody waiting for you to get through this. Just give yourself some grace. And if people don't want to give you grace, to heck with them.

Yeah, that was nice. That was a very sanitized. That was very sanitized. That was that was um religious almost, you know. Yeah. Just give yourself some grace cuz you need it. This is what he means my grace is sufficient for you. When I can't do anything, when I'm paralyzed, it doesn't change one bit how God looks at me. He is not tapping his finger, wagging his finger. When are you going to get over this? Come on. No. He walks with us. He walks with us through this grief. Second thing, I have to keep moving here.

You really sense that this is not your home. Something I know in my life. I won't spend much time on this. I just realized for me to live this crisis isn't my home. I and I I but I look forward to a home to come. My attachment to this world becomes bare thin. Things don't mean anything. Ambitions disappear. Let me read you some verses here and I'll just move on to the next point. These sort of tell the story. Hebrews chapter 11. All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised that but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it.

They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads on earth. Obviously, people who say such things are looking forward to the country they call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he's prepared a city for them. Jay, I'm going to skip the third point altogether and just go into the fourth point. So we we realize that this is no longer as specially as we keep losing people.

I shared I think earlier here. I don't remember now 29 memorial services in 4 years. A lot of folks have said goodbye. This is actually the fourth point. I'm skipping the third. You find that the purest type of faith and the most difficult type of faith that I know I've had to confront. Lasagna's confronting it. My wife is confronting it. Anyone who's lost a child or lost somebody they weren't supposed to lose. The most difficult type of faith is trusting God without answers, without feelings and without direction while being full of unspeakable pain and confusion.

When you say God, why? And there's no answer when it doesn't make sense and there's no answer, you beg God and there's no answer. You knock, you seek, you walk, you ask. There's no answer. You have this unspeakable, undefinable pain that is so profound that you can't even breathe sometimes. And you have suffered through a loss of losses. The first thing that's going to be attacked is the goodness of God. Just like in in Genesis chapter 1 the the devil went to Eve and said look at look at God's keeping the best from you Eve.

He attacked the goodness of God to Eve. God is mean. God did not come through. He doesn't care about you. Now you you think that that's we know that 's not true, but you I'm telling you what you feel. That's your reality. That you serve them and then he takes the greatest things in your life away. You like Grace 401? It's a hard course. I like 101, 201, 301. Those are good courses. This 401 Grace is Yeah. It's a hard course. This is a battle for God's character and nature. Deep grief unchecked will redefine God.

Say it again. Deep grief unchecked will redefine God. If I don't take this pain, this grief, this heartache, and I'm not careful, it'll create a whole new God that won't be loving, that won't be kind, that won't be for me. It'll be against me. So this is the struggle and great loss is keeping God's motives, his nature intact for what they really are, not how our pain makes us think. My friends, you may have to rehearse this. I have. Like a Job, though you slay me, I will yet trust you. God, I know you're good even though I don't understand goodness here.

I know you're for me even I don't understand why you're for me here. I know that you call me you call me by name. I feel like you've abandoned me, but I'm going to trust what I know through the scriptures. I'm going to trust even though I have no subjective feeling or anything I can hang my hat on to confirm it. You want to talk about great faith? It doesn't get somebody out of a wheelchair. It's not washing a cancerous tumor disappear. It's believing that God is good when you have no evidence that he is.

But the scriptures that's great faith. It's trusting in the character of God, trusting in the nature of God. Doesn't mean the pain goes away. It doesn't mean you accept what's happened to you. It doesn't mean any of those things. You just say no God, I know you're good. I know you're for me. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I 'll never accept it, but I stand here knowing who you are. That is great faith. That doesn't come overnight. When I first lost Hannah, I battled with God. I battled. I battled. I'd be alone.

I'd yell at them. Never heard much back. And I and then I would repent. Say God, I'm sorry. I accept this for your will for my life. Then that would last an hour. Then I'd go back and and and then I'd plead my case again and I repent for another hour. And then he comes back and and this was just cuz the emotions were so profoundly painful. They just kept waving overwhelming me. But now I can say God is good. I don't like what happened to me. I don't think that's good. I don't know why he did it.

He hasn't explained that to me. I don't think he will. I wish he never did it. There's no good that came from it that I'd ever ever ever exchange. But God is good. It's a journey, lasagna. Takes longer than a year. Takes longer than 4. And like I said, it's a journey. Last point. I'm going to quote a dear friend of mine. Dorance. Dorance, where are you Dorance? I I won't I won't embarrass you. He loves to sing. He says everyone loves a happy ending. So I thought I'd just end the message on that cuz people will try their best to find something good about your loss.

They they love a happy ending. They don't want your loss to seem so final. They don't want you to be in pain much longer. So they they try to somehow take your loss and do a spin on it. It's like a again it's a Christian spin zone. Yeah, like a Christian Bill O'Reilly spin zone there. They use words like at least or yeah, like at least. That's a good lead and at least. At least you had all those years with your spouse. At least look all the good that's come out of your loss. At least you know they're not alone no longer in pain.

How about this one? At least you have other children. At least what they're really saying is I want you to feel better so I can feel better. At least everyone loves a happy ending. Our pain makes people uncomfortable. It doesn't fit well with their theology sometimes. Here's the problem. There is no happy ending here. There is no happy ending yet. Just like the people in 1 Corinthians first Hebrews chapter 11, their life was not happy. Talk to the 7,100 Christians that were martyred for their faith around the world this past year. These 7,100 Christians that watched their kids killed and their parents killed, ripped from their homeland, ripped from their homes, everything they've worked for a loss all because of um Muslim extremism.

There's no happy ending there. We don't live for this world. And this is what I am coming my conclusions. We were born to earthly parents as eternal beings. We never taste death ever. We instantly we leave this world which is passing at best. And we entered this new place which is which we were made for. That's what we were made for. I wasn't made to die. I was made to live. I wasn't made to be depressed. I was made to have joy. I was made to have to have be happy. I was made to be thorough and complete and healthy.

I wasn't made for the disease and destruction of this life. I wasn't made for that. I was made for something higher than that. In the meantime, we groan and we wait and we knock and we seek. We draw near to God the best we know how. We give ourselves grace when we just need grace. Some of the most humble, godly, sweet, spiritual people in the world have suffered the most. There is no way to chart it. Our our losses are shrouded up in the mysteries of God, in the mysteries of his plan, in the mysteries of his love.

But I have this hope and this word hope and I'll close with this. This Bible word hope is not the same as our English word hope. Janette hopes she wins the lottery. You hope. But I don't think she expects to, but she hopes she does. I hope she does too cuz she'll give me some. And it would be her sin, not mine. I'd just be receiving the gifts. A a biblical hope means I really fully expect to receive it. It's not just something I mean I hope this this I'm going to bet on this. No, as a biblical hope says I expect to receive this.

This is going to happen. As good as I'm standing here, I expect a better home. I expect a better life. I expect a a a better country. I expect that this world isn't all there is and I expect at the last moment, the last breath that I breathe here on earth, my very next breath will be in the presence of Jesus Christ and the people that I love. So we have this forward glance to a home yet realized. As David Crowder sang the last song, earth has no sorrow then heaven can't heal. That's where we live.

It doesn't make the pain go away. Helps you think through it. Helps you find grace for the moment. But I know that earth has no sorrow that heaven won't heal.