By Rick Warren
Editor’s Note: At Pastors.com and Saddleback Church,
we’ve all been in a place of mourning for our Pastor, Rick Warren, his wife Kay
and their entire family after the loss of their youngest son, Matthew, who
ended his own life last week after a very long battle with mental illness. You
can read Pastor Rick’s words to the
Saddleback family for yourself. We who are near Pastor Rick
have drawn strength from his thirty-plus years of teaching biblical truth, and
out of that teaching, we’ve adapted a transcript from a message delivered over
a decade ago at Saddleback. Hear Pastor Rick’s words and let them speak to you
in your own places of tragedy and loss…
It would be impossible, in just one message, to go into all
the reasons for suffering and for why God allows tragedy. Instead I want to
focus on five ways that we should respond to tragedy.
I need to release my
grief.
When you go through a tragedy, which is inevitably going to
happen, the first thing you need to do is release your grief. Why?
Because tragedy always creates strong emotions. Did you feel any emotions
this week? We don’t always know what to do with our feelings. If
you don’t deal with them, but instead stuff them deep, your recovery from a
crisis always takes far longer than it should. See some people are
stuffers. When they have emotions, they don’t know how to handle so they
deny them, they ignore them, and they push them down. In fact many people
use God as an excuse for this, believing that God wants everybody to have a
happy face all the time. But real life isn’t always happy. God
doesn’t expect you to be smiling all the time.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who
mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In other words, it’s okay to grieve.
Face your feelings. Don’t repress them by pushing them down or rehearse them by
repeating them over and over. You release your emotions to God. If
you don’t talk it out, you’ll take it out on yourself or somebody else.
I need to receive
from others
The Bible says, “Carry each other’s burdens… By helping
each other with your troubles, you obey the Law of Christ. (Gal.
6:2 NCV) It is a big mistake to isolate yourself from others when
you’re going through a crisis. Our tendency is to want to be by
ourselves, but you need other people in a tragedy. You need their
perspective, you need their support, you need their encouragement, and you just
need their presence. To make it through a crisis, we need not only the promises
of God; we need the people of God.
I need to refuse to be bitter.
One of the things I’ve learned from being in the ministry
for many years, is that there’s absolutely no correlation in life between your
experiences and your happiness. I’ve seen people who had absolutely the worst
experiences in life – things that would shock everyone of us, and yet they
maintain this happy, cheerful, positive attitude, because happiness is a choice.
You’re about as happy as you choose to be.
In the ministry I’ve seen people who had every right in the
world to whine and who chose not to do so. Happiness is a choice.
You refuse to be bitter, because bitterness always hurts you. It never
changes anything. Blaming others never changes anything. It only
makes you feel worse.
How do you keep from being bitter when the inevitable
tragedies of life are going to come?
- You accept what cannot be changed.
- You focus on what’s left, not what’s lost.
I remember what is
important.
Disasters have a way of clarifying our values and pointing
out what matters and what really doesn’t matter. Jesus said, “Life
is not measured by how much one owns.” Lk 12:15 (NCV) Don’t confuse your
net worth with your self worth. Don’t confuse your possessions with your
purpose in life. Don’t confuse what you’re living on with what you’re
living for. A man’s life does not consist of what he possesses.
What matters are relationships. You’re never going to see a hearse
with a U-Haul behind it, so build your life on something that can never be
taken from you.
Can you lose a home? Yes. Can you lose a career?
Yes. Can you lose a marriage? Yes. Can you lose your health?
Yes. Can you lose your youthful beauty? Yes. Can you lose your
relationship with God? No.
I rely on Christ.
Christians get to approach tragedy differently than the rest
of the world. We get to rely completely on Christ. We get to have hope. But
how? By intentionally leaning on Christ for stability, listening to Christ for
direction, and looking to Christ for salvation. He is our Rock, our Shelter,
our Great Shepherd, our Hiding Place. Suffering and tragedy are inevitable in a
sinful world, but Jesus Christ makes all the difference. Decide that you will
rely on Him even in the darkest of hours of your life.
