Running to the Darkness

Memorial Day Special--Grief

May is usually a bittersweet month for us in the Kendall family. Although new life is apparent everywhere we can't help but remember that it is the month that our baby, Megan beat us all into heaven! So we remember and let ourselves take time to reflect and grieve. It is healthy though painful.

Gary and I are also sharing the message this weekend at Indian Creek, What Keeps You Up at Night...Grief? Since I didn't share on Mother's Day as has been my joy the last several years I missed the time and volunteered to share. So we would appreciate your prayers that we may offer hope, help and healing through the comfort that we have received from Christ Himself.

I also composed the Go Deeper section of our worship folder. I have attached it so that you might benefit. The only reason we can share and offer hope and help is through Jesus. Our prayer is that all who read and hear this message and the one on Sunday will experience being held in His arms of comfort.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2m1HZekCcc

What Keeps You Up at Night . . . Grief?

Ready

Good Grief! Everyone’s experienced grief on some level. Think about it. Have you ever lost anything? A watch? Important papers? Your wedding ring? A job? A family? A marriage? A loved one to death? Do you remember the feelings of frustration, sorrow, anger and hopelessness? Grief is universal. How do I deal with loss in life? Does anyone else care?

Set

I believe that God cares when we lose things. I pray about finding lost things like keys, rings or my watch often.  There are three parables in the Bible about looking for that which is lost: a lost coin, a lost sheep and a lost son. Parables are stories that Jesus used as teaching tools to illustrate a point. Let’s look at the first of these three and see if we can gain any insight about looking for the lost.

Read Luke 15: 3 – 7, Parable of the Lost Sheep

3 So Jesus told them this story: 4 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. 6 When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!

Read Luke 15: 8 – 9, Parable of the Lost Coin

8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’

When we lose something all we can think of is searching for it until we find it. We are preoccupied with it. Earlier this week Luke had misplaced his ipod. He could not even think about resting at night until he retraced his steps and found it. It was all consuming. We both rejoiced when he found his it!

·        Think about the last time you lost something.

·        How long did you look for it?

·        How did you feel? Anxious? Frustrated? Angry? Hopeless? Foolish?

·        Did you enlist the help of others in your search?

·        Did you pray about it?

·        What did you feel when you found it?

·        Have you ever lost something you have never recovered?

·        Have you ever lost someone precious to you to death, divorce or distance?

What do you do with a loss of some thing or someone you never recover? Grief of that magnitude will not only keep us up all night it will paralyze us during the day. What do you do with that? Where do you go with it?

Go

Read Psalm 6: 6 -9 

6 I am worn out from sobbing.
      All night I flood my bed with weeping,
      drenching it with my tears.
7 My vision is blurred by grief;
      my eyes are worn out because of all my enemies.

8 Go away, all you who do evil,
      for the Lord has heard my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my plea;
      the Lord will answer my prayer.

On Sunday, May 21, 1989 our youngest daughter, Megan died in her sleep. We were devastated to say the least. Although we knew where she was in and had a firm belief in heaven, she was lost to us here in this life. How do I live with that kind of loss and where do I go with it?

The very next Sunday I found myself in church crying out to God. Where else could I go? I remembered the story of King David when his infant son died. Read II Samuel 12:16 – 20.

God gave us one another to encourage and comfort each another. Read I Thessalonians 5:11, II Corinthians 13:11 and II Corinthians 1:3 – 4. He is the God of all comfort but in times of deep grief we need someone to be His arms of comfort and voice of love.  We as followers of Christ, believers in Him, house His Spirit, and become His arms of love.  We are His hands of help.

Go Deeper Still

The challenge this week is to tell someone else of your deepest grief and ask them to tell you about theirs. If you are looking for a story to read about someone who lost everything: health, wealth, property and family and survived, read the book of Job. I don’t know that we could go any deeper than that in the experience of grief unless it was the story of An Almighty God, Creator of the universe Who willingly surrendered His One and Only Son to die for those who could not have cared less.

Verse to remember: II Corinthians 1:3 – 4.

Isn't she beautiful?

And to think Gary is exactly 50 years older than Nora Lois!!!

Saturday morning some girlfriends and I went to visit a girlfriend who had just delivered a beautiful baby girl! We cooed, and ahhed over her and held her but the sweetest part was when we encircled her and her mama and celebrated in thanksgiving to God for this precious one so fresh from God! What an incredible gift to this precious family! Isn't she amazing!!! Isn't God amazing! I never cease to be awed by that partnership He allows us to have in the creation of new life!!!!

Psalm 139:13-18 (NLT)

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
      and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
      Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
      as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
16 You saw me before I was born.
      Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
   Every moment was laid out
      before a single day had passed.

17 How precious are your thoughts about me,^[b] O God.
      They cannot be numbered!
18 I can’t even count them;
      they outnumber the grains of sand!
   And when I wake up,
      you are still with me!

At Indian Creek we supplement the messages every week with a section in our worship folder designed to help people dig deeper personally. Several of us take turns creating this. This week since I have Mother's Day off and we have invited special guest, Melissa Jansen to speak, it is my honor to write the Go Deeper section of the What Keeps You Up at Night . . .Kids? I thought that I would share it here with you. I welcome your comments and feedback.

What Keeps You Up at Night . . . Kids?

Ready

Kristen was our first child and she was very colicky. Gary would wake up in the morning and say, “She slept through the night last night.” I would just smile and say, “No, you slept through the night last night. She woke up five times!” We had four children by 1987. Our last child, Megan was born in August 1987. Luke was two years old. Jeremy was three years old and Kristen was 5 years old. They kept us getting up to feed, diaper or soothe them. After they were old enough and began sleeping through the night then they began to dream and awaken with nightmares. I remember it didn’t matter how long I had been asleep or where I was in the house I always heard their cry. I began to think how that mirrors our relationship with our heavenly Father. No matter where we are or what our need He always hears our cry. I was reading last week and noticing how often people cried out to God and it is noted for us in God’s Word.

Set

God hears our cry to Him no matter where we are or where He is. He hears and responds. Let’s look at it as recorded in His Word. It begins in the very first book of Genesis where God’s people, the Israelites, His children, cry out to Him. Let’s look at his response in Exodus 2:23 (New Living Translation),

23 Years passed, and the king of Egypt died. But the Israelites continued to groan under their burden of slavery. They cried out for help, and their cry rose up to God.

Look in Exodus 3:7 and 9 and Exodus 5:8, 11:6, 12:30, 22:23.

We need not fear. Our God is at tentative to our cries at night. Look at more evidence in II Samuel 22: 7, I Kings 8:28, II Chronicles 20:9, Nehemiah 9:9. The Psalmist records many times of crying out to God. Let’s look at some. Psalm 17:1, 18:6, 22:2. 27:2, 28:2, 34:15 – 17, 39:12, 40:1, and 55:17.

Let’s go deeper and get personal.

·        What are some of the things you cry out to God for for, yourself? Just as we cry out to God on behalf of our children, we are children of God.

·        What is it that we cry out to Him for? What is it that YOU cry out to Him for?

·        Are you as confident as the Psalmist that YOUR Heavenly Father hears you? Psalm 56:9 and 57:2.

·        We sang the song on Easter about Christ being our rock. Is He your rock when you are overwhelmed? Psalm 61:2 and 89:26.

·        What is it you are desperate for Him for?

·        What is it in your life that you can’t fix and you absolutely have to have Someone Else intervene? Psalm 69:3.

·        Is there something that you are crying out to Him for daily? Psalm 86:3.

·        What is it? Psalm 88:2, 102:1, 106:44, 107:19 and 28, 110:69.

·        When I cry out in the night, it is in such desperation that I need someone to save me. What about you? Do you need more than a father? Isaiah 19:20.

·        Isaiah 58:9 (New Living Translation) says, “Then when you call, the Lord will answer. ‘Yes, I am here,’ He will quickly reply.

·        What has been your experience with God? Have you experienced Him coming quickly to your personal cry in the middle of the night, or day?

·        Who do you look to in the darkness of the night? Jeremiah 3:4

Long after my children were sleeping through the night I was still staying up long into the wee hours of the morning crying out to God on their behalf, especially in their teen years when they were on a search for their own identity. There were nights that I was uncertain where they were or what they were doing and if they would return home safe. Of course the ultimate demonstration of a love that longs for a child to return home is found in the story of the son who leaves home with all of his inheritance and loses it all. Read the story in Luke 15:11 - 32 out of a translation that you usually do not read like the Message.

·        Are you watching and waiting for a long lost son or daughter to come home or come to their senses?

·        Do you realize that He is watching and waiting with you?

Go

Okay, here is the challenge part! Have you ever wept for someone else’s child to come home? Have you ever spent time on your knees begging God for the return of a child that was not flesh of your flesh? Every time I travel to India Prati Stephens, president of Women With a Mission challenges hundreds of women and me to do just that. The challenge is found in Lamentations 2:19, “Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him in prayer, pleading for your children, for in every street they are faint with hunger.”

Will you respond to the challenge to cry through the night for God’s children who are not yet Home with Him?