What To Do When Grief Hits
Natasha Dongell · Tidal Church Moncton · December 29, 2024
Natasha Dongell looks at Mary's hard life and the grace God lavished on her, sharing her own story of losing her husband. She shows how God's grace helps us stay with Him in suffering, see His kingdom, and live in step with Him.
Topics: Grace, Suffering, Grief
Transcript
[0:00] Have you ever paid attention to the life of some of the characters from the nativity after the birth of Jesus? I am particularly fascinated by the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored of God. Greetings, you who are highly favored of God. The Lord is with you." And then Mary gets this incredible honor of birthing the God child who is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, Savior of the world.
[0:55] You know, there's that. But we have these snapshots throughout Scripture of these other parts of Mary's story. And actually her life is really hard, really, really hard. It is filled with suffering. Not only does she experience being so misunderstood, being ostracized because of this virgin birth mystery that of course most people cannot comprehend as a thing.
[1:41] And so she's classified with the adulterers who are stoned in that culture. Not only is she misunderstood, but even later, as Jesus, after He's 12 years old, somewhere in those years that follow, we don't know when, we don't know how, but her one partner dies, Joseph, God's gift to her who was with her in the confusion and uncertainty of that whole pregnancy and birthing Jesus journey. He's gone now. She's alone. She's a single mom. She's got these other kids. She's pretty poor.
[2:30] There's still tensions in her family and community. And then her firstborn son, who is Jesus Christ, He's the Messiah. So instead of stepping in to Joseph's role as carpenter and provider and protector as head of the home and her family, He's over there doing His Messiah thing. And so we see this interesting snapshot of her life in Matthew chapter 12, where Jesus is teaching and it's crowded. The room is full and people are, you know, outside, spilling outside of the house so that Mary can't get in there.
[3:16] And she sends word to Jesus, we're trying to get ahold of Him. And Mary's out there with her other children, Jesus's brothers and sisters, and somebody says to Jesus, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters, they're calling for You." Now, I don't know why they're calling for Him, but there must be a reason. There must be a valid reason why they're interrupting Him in the middle of His teaching. But what does Jesus say? "Who are my mother, brothers and sisters? But you who do the will of God." I don't know about you, but right now I'm living in the South.
[4:07] And let me tell you, southern moms have some attitude like, yes ma'am. You know, I'm just picturing, like, that feels really rude, like really, really rude. I don't know how I would feel as Jesus's mom in that moment. Like, "Excuse me, do you know what I've put up with because of you?" The story goes on. And what is so miraculous to me is that as we see the snapshots of Mary's life, the hardships, the challenges and obstacles her life lived, tensions that are mounting and mounting and mounting, the political tensions, the religious tensions, tensions in her community, as Jesus continues to do His ministry and her home community tries to throw Him off a cliff. In Mark it records that at one time His brothers and sisters say He's out of His mind.
[5:20] So she's got family tension, she's in poverty, she's alone, she's got community tension, there's religious tension and political tension, and yet there she is at the foot of the cross, right there, right with Jesus, her son, dying an excruciatingly painful and horrific death. I don't know about you, but I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I could watch my child go through what Jesus went through.
[6:11] But there she is. And then not only there, there she is with Mary Magdalene going to the tomb. And then not only there, Jesus has risen, He ascends to the right hand of the Father. He tells His disciples, "You go and stay in Jerusalem and you wait for the outpouring of my Spirit." And it says the disciples were gathered in the upper room with the women who were with them, including Mary, the mother of Jesus.
[7:00] She's still there. She's still with Him. When the angel of the Lord came to Mary and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored," that word highly favored is used only one other place in Scripture. And it's in Ephesians chapter 1, when Paul is writing to all believers, all of those of us who are in Christ Jesus. He says, "You guys gotta understand how blessed you are." He's like, "You've been blessed with every spiritual blessing under heaven.
[7:45] You are blessed, you are chosen, you're redeemed, you're forgiven, you're accepted, you're adopted." And then in verse 6, he says, "Praise be to God who has lavished this grace upon us." That word lavished is the same word the angel uses to say, "Mary, you are highly favored." He's saying, "Mary, God has lavished His grace upon you." Paul says to the church, God has lavished His grace upon you and upon me. And I believe that when the angel says that to Mary, it's not just so she can give birth to Jesus, it's so that she can make it all the way home.
[8:40] And I believe that when Paul writes that to us, he's saying, you don't just have enough grace to endure. You don't have just enough grace to get up and get yourself to church. You don't have just enough grace to begin this journey. God has lavished His grace upon us to take us all the way home. Greetings, you who are highly favored of God. You on whom God has lavished His grace, the Lord is with you.
[9:27] And you know, many years ago, probably my middle school years, I began to sense a call into ministry. But it was kind of like, almost like an angel of the Lord coming and saying, "I've bestowed grace on you." I just knew there's a grace on my life. But you know, just for probably a minute, maybe a few minutes, I kind of thought, this is gonna be sweet. Like, I must be awesome. This is gonna be a great ride. Like, I can't wait to see what God will do. But then I found myself being led by God into hardships, into seasons of darkness, felt like one after another.
[10:27] And the most intense one for me was when I was 28 years old. And I don't mind saying I am 41. So I'm older than Jeremy. I babysat Jeremy. So there you have it. Yeah. Oh, I totally just lost my train of thought because I did. But I knew, well, I was 28 years old and my daughters, who are teenagers over here, they were four and two at the time. And we were in ministry and we were in, you know, we were in the thing, we were kind of poor and struggling in a lot of different ways, but in such an unexpected twist of events, my husband Lynn went out for a run and he was preparing for this marathon.
[11:24] And he had partnered with Canadian Foodgrains Bank and was raising these funds for this project in Rwanda. And he went out for this run, like he had so many times before with his partner, his buddy Andrew. And he got to the end of the run and he just sat down on the grass, something was going on. And then he just laid down on the grass on the side of the road and within minutes, his heart stopped. He stopped breathing and he was dead. And within minutes from that moment, I find myself in the hospital and I have no idea what's going on.
[12:14] And I'm redirected and I'm brought into this room. And then I'm hearing those words. His heart stopped, he stopped breathing, he's dead. And then I go to his body and I'm sitting there with this shell of a human body on this table, and I'm holding his hand until the last bit of warmth is gone. Life is hard sometimes. Life is dark sometimes. And that journey led me into a darkness I didn't know was possible.
[13:05] All of us in this room encounter darkness. All of us in this room encounter pain and suffering of many different kinds. But the angel of the Lord appears to us and says, "Greetings, you who are highly favored of God. I have lavished my grace upon you." Not just to do one really cool thing, like birth the Christ child, but to get through a whole life of suffering.
[13:51] And instead of that suffering pulling you away from God, this grace is here to draw you closer to Him. God has lavished us with enough grace that we can draw closer to God in our suffering instead of being pulled further away from Him. There are three things that I see in the life and journey of Mary and that I connect to as how God is at work in my own heart and life. And it's how God uses this grace in our places of suffering. I believe that God has given us the grace to stay.
[14:41] What it means to actually stay with Him in the tensions and the sorrows and the burdens and the challenges and the sufferings of our lives. And then not just stay, but then learn to see God has given us the grace to then be able to see Him in dark places, to see where His kingdom is being born in places that looked bleak, but can now be filled with kingdom potential. He's given us the grace to stay. He's given us the grace to see. And He's given us the grace to then synchronize our lives with His, so that as we are like Him in His death, we become like Him in His resurrected life.
[15:42] You know, Mary's life was filled with tension. And sometimes when we encounter circumstances that bring pain and suffering to our lives, I don't know about you, but I usually want out. I usually want an out. I usually want a way to escape the pain, escape the tensions. And one of the things I've found on my own grief journey is that there was a lot of talk about getting through that first year, but nobody talked about tensions that would last a lifetime and never resolve. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
[16:30] Some things don't fix, they heal. We can always heal, but tensions continue. Do you know what I mean by that? Sometimes things don't resolve the way we long and ache for them to be resolved. And on my own journey, the very first skill that I had to learn was just stay. Just stay with me here. I know you want out. I know you wanna run. I know you wanna go. I know the grass is greener and you're trying to get somewhere different. You want me to fix this and it's not being fixed, but I need you to stay. And the grace of God began to train me with the staying power of Mary to stay with Christ.
[17:28] This staying is what I think James is writing about in James chapter 1 when he says, "Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds because this testing of your faith is producing this thing that we're calling patience, endurance. I'm calling it staying power. But don't take an out, let this patience have its perfect work until you are complete and lacking in nothing." You see, something incredible begins to happen inside of us when we stay with Jesus in our places of pain, our suffering and the unresolved tensions of our lives.
[18:17] This is a place of sanctification where we begin to change on the inside. Because the only way I can stay with Jesus in my places of pain is if I begin to see His places of pain. The only way that I can actually stay with Him is if I begin to deny my own comforts, deny my own desire to self-protect, to get myself somewhere easier is if I begin to see Him in this staying.
[19:03] We're being sanctified. We're being crucified with Christ. We're choosing Him over us. And we begin to see with new eyes so that I don't only see my pain, I don't just see my suffering in my circumstances. Actually, my eyes start to get opened to God's suffering, to Christ and His sufferings, that God grieves. God's grief is bigger than my grief. He grieves for every human being across the world and who has ever existed, those who are oppressed and abused and broken and wounded.
[19:54] God is carrying all of the pain of the world in His heart, in the staying. We are getting sanctified so that we can see, we begin to see God as something beyond ourselves. And then we begin to see His kingdom. We begin to see that He's actually right here, even in the dark. David says, "The darkness, it is not darkness to Him." You know, I think in that story where Jesus says, "Who are my mother and brothers and sisters?" I think about Mary in that experience, and how much of her circumstances must have been challenging her.
[20:45] I believe that this was God's grace teaching her how to see the things of God's kingdom. See, you're not just my mom, Mary, you're a follower of Jesus Christ. And I'm training you to have eyes that see Me and My kingdom, that there's something bigger here going on, always at work. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul writes about us as these earthen vessels, these jars of clay to contain the glory of God.
[21:33] The thing about it though, he says it, it's like, it's like death in me so that the life of Christ is being displayed. It's death in me, but it's life to you. He says, I'm carrying around the death of Jesus at all times within me, and it's death to me, but it's life to you. Eventually in our suffering, when we learn how to stay, God is teaching us and training us to see us, to see something altogether different, Paul says.
[22:23] And in those temporary afflictions, those temporary afflictions, those things that are visible and seen, eventually we begin to see the unseen, the eternal, the glory of God. The glory of God. Do you know that it's not in our earthly nature to see and perceive the glory of God? Can we see and perceive the kingdom of heaven right here in this place, right here in this room?
[23:09] Do we wake up every morning and think of Jesus's words, the kingdom is at hand? It's within reach. Today is the day of salvation. God's mercies are new every morning. Heaven is coming to earth through me in my life right now. I don't wake up every morning and naturally think that, but God has lavished His grace upon us so that when we stay, we're being sanctified so that we can see. Everything changes when we begin to see the glory of God in our midst.
[24:01] David says, where can I go from Your Spirit? Even if I make my bed in Sheol, You're there. The darkness, it's not darkness to You. You're everywhere. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. God is here. The God with whom all things are possible is right here, but I don't have eyes to see it. God is training us in our suffering to have eyes that can see Him, spiritual eyes, to see His glory right here in our midst. And I think that only because Mary went through the same training process was she able to stand at the cross of Jesus and see the suffering of her son.
[24:58] And maybe just, maybe she's not just seeing her son dying on the cross and experiencing the excruciating pain with Him as any mother would, but maybe she has eyes that see the Father, that see how He so loves the world that He's giving His one and only Son, for whoever will believe in Him will have everlasting life. Jesus helped her have eyes to see the kingdom of God. She stayed, she learned to see.
[25:46] And when we begin to see the kingdom of God around us, right in our midst, the grace of God invites us even further into this process of synchronizing our lives with Him. Now I understand it's never me. It's never Natasha who walks into a room ever again for the rest of my life. It is now forevermore only Natasha and Jesus. Wherever I'm, Jesus is, wherever Jesus is, I am. Synchronizing means that where I am, He is, where He is, I am. What I do, He does. What He does, I do. So we begin now to see Him and then we can align our lives to synchronize with His so that now we are moving in step with His Holy Spirit.
[26:40] Why does that matter? That's a lot of work to get there. Why does that matter? Is it worth the staying in the suffering, learning how to see the glory of God when our tensions are not even getting resolved, so that we can give up our lives and the life of Christ can live in and through us? Paul writes in Philippians chapter 3, I wanna know Him and the power of His resurrection. I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings, to be conformed to the likeness of His death, that I might someday somehow attain to the resurrection of the dead.
[27:39] Paul is engaging this process of the fellowshipping of Christ in suffering in order to also know Him in the power of His resurrection. God has lavished His grace on His church, not for us to live in a kind of pain and suffering that keeps us and pulls us away from God, but He's lavished us with a grace that allows us to draw closer and closer and closer to God in our suffering by staying with Him, learning how to see Him and see His kingdom and learning how to synchronize our lives with Him so that we are crucified with Christ and we no longer live.
[28:36] Now Christ is living through us. So now, everywhere that I go, it is the power of the risen Christ coming with me and the church, and this church and every follower of Jesus Christ who hears those words, greetings, you who are highly favored of God. You are invited into oneness with the risen Christ in a way that brings His kingdom come and His will to be done here on earth as it is in heaven, in a way that brings the power of God into our earthly circumstances, in a way that brings the power of God, the agape love of God into our marriages, into our parenting relationships, into our workplaces and the neighborhoods and communities and all the spheres in which we live.
[29:48] It's no longer just me bringing me and all my baggage and all my bondage. It's now me and the risen Jesus and me and the risen Jesus. There is always the possibility of heaven moving in, of bringing God's kingdom, of setting people free, of bringing healing and life that is supernatural. It is a life that is more. It is a life where we see the unseen and we live and know the eternal everlasting kingdom of God here and now as well as later in all of its fullness.
[30:42] So greetings, you who are highly favored, you on whom God has lavished this grace like Mary, not just for one event in your life, but to take you all the way home, to take me all the way home to a life of oneness with Him where I'm found in Him, and I know the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection. So I invite you this morning to consider, what does staying with Jesus look like for you right now?
[31:36] Where are the places of pain and tension in your life right now? Where are you really tempted to escape or giving into coping mechanisms that just pull you further from God instead of closer to God? Where is God inviting you to stay? And can you bring yourself to Him in that place? Will you stay? And then in those places, where is God inviting you to see, to give you new eyes, to see the kingdom of heaven around you?
[32:24] Can you see it? Can you perceive it? We need spiritual eyes to see spiritual things. God, give us eyes that see You, and then where is God saying, I want you to synchronize your life with Mine. I wanna be where you are, and I want you to be where I am. What in your life is just you? Is there somewhere in your life where I'm here, but I don't think Jesus is over here doing this with me? And Jesus is like, "I'm over here.
[33:11] Come over here, align yourself with Me. Align your life with Mine. I want to move as one with you. Will you synchronize with Me?" You are lavished with grace. We are lavished with the grace to go all the way home. Will we stay and engage and stay and see and synchronize, that the power of His resurrected life will live and move through us?
[33:58] Let us pray. God, we're so thankful that You've given us enough grace that we might draw closer to You in our suffering. God, I confess that there are some things in my life that really challenge me. There are places I wanna give up. There are things I wanna walk away from. There are things I want an out from. There are things I just need to cope because I can't handle it.
[34:43] Help me learn how to stay and let that staying have its perfect work until I am complete and lacking in nothing. God, I confess that I don't naturally wake up every morning and see You and Your glory and Your kingdom all around me. I see the bills. I see the dirty laundry. I see the mounting responsibilities and tasks that are on my plate. That's what I see. Lord, I need new eyes. Give me new eyes that I might see You. Train me in my places of hardship to see Your kingdom.
[35:37] Father, help me to align my life with Yours. I wanna be one with You. I wanna synchronize with You. I wanna be like Jesus, who only did what His Father was doing. He's one with the Father, and He wants us to be one as He was one with the Father. Lord, help us to align our lives in oneness with You and Father as Your church, as Your body. Let us fellowship with Your sufferings on the cross and also know the power of Your resurrection so that through us, Your kingdom comes and Your will is done here on this earth as it is in heaven.
[36:34] They bless You and love You. And trust You in Your mighty name. Amen.