Josh Howerton - How to Deal with Grief (01/12/2026)

TOPICS: Grief

Summary:

In this heartfelt message from John 11, the preacher explores how Jesus' response to Lazarus' death teaches us to navigate seasons of grief, especially around Christmas when loss feels amplified. The key thought is that Christians must grieve honestly like Jesus did—expressing pain and anger at a broken world—while holding onto hope in future resurrection. Ultimately, we make it through our «Saturdays» of waiting and sorrow by facing East: fully feeling the grief but orienting our hearts toward the certain return of Christ, when everything sad will come untrue.

Merry Christmas and Celebrations
All right, hey, well, Merry Christmas, Lakepointe family! And hey, if you’ve got your Bibles, head over to John chapter 11. John 11. We are in week two of a series that we are just calling «‘Tis the Season.» Now, I do want to celebrate this last week. We had an unbelievable week. In one week—never want to stop celebrating this—in one week, we had over 200 people signify a first-time decision to follow Christ! Your life, come on, somebody! Man, 200 people crossing a line of faith, and man, we’re all with you.

Now, here’s what I know: if you’re new, there are all sorts of reasons that people like Lakepointe, and they’re very different. I’ll give you my favorite one I’ve ever seen. This is a real Facebook review that was left about our church. She said, «I visited your church with my brother today. Despite having an upset stomach, I have to say that having three-ply toilet paper in the bathroom was a real blessing. I’ve never been to a church that valued the comfort and cleanliness of a congregation like this. Thank you!» You’re welcome! You are welcome!

Come for the Toilet Paper, Stay for the Life Change
Man, you know, anything short of sin to reach people for Christ: come for the toilet paper, stay for the life change! Whatever! We’ll make that our new motto. Let me just say this, in all seriousness: come for the toilet paper, stay for the life change. I mean that. So, I just want to say this: if you are new—and there are hundreds and hundreds of you—I need you to take that step to get to a Next Steps class. Here’s why I say that: because we are not just a bunch of people who come and watch a show individually together in the same room every week. What we are is one blood-bought, redeemed, big, dysfunctional family that God has adopted as a father, and now all of us are brothers and sisters helping each other be conformed to the image of Jesus.

So, listen, we can’t disciple you unless you put yourself in a position to be discipled. A spiritual child without a spiritual family is a spiritual orphan. So, I’m literally asking you—we have so many new people—I am asking you to text the word NEXT to 201411 and hit our Next Steps class. That is literally today! Do it today! I’m asking that! All right, commercial over.

‘Tis the Season to Grieve a Loss
Now, we are in week two of a series that, like I said, we’re just calling «’Tis the Season, » and I’ll be really honest. I love to laugh; I like having fun when I’m preaching; I love all the things. And we’ll do that a little. I’ll be really honest: the emotional tone of today’s message is a little different because what we’re talking about is «‘Tis the Season to Grieve a Loss.» ‘Tis the season to grieve a loss. I’m doing that because, for a lot of people, you are in the midst of grieving a loss, and Christmas just has a way of bringing that out. But what I also know is, even if you are not in the midst of grieving a loss, you are going to have people around you who are in the midst of grieving a loss.

And here’s what will happen at Christmas: for some of you, this season that’s supposed to be about birth feels like it’s about death. And what I want to do in the next few minutes in a very straightforward way is ask the question: how do you make it through a Saturday? How do you make it through a Saturday? Now, Josh, what do you mean by Saturday? Well, here’s what I mean. As Christians, think about life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. What we tend to do is talk a lot about Friday—Friday was the day of the crucifixion—and we talk a lot about Sunday—Sunday was the day of the resurrection. But Saturday just doesn’t get much play. Nobody talks about Saturday. Saturday was the day in between the trauma and the glory, where really, it was just nothing happening but waiting. There was just death and the memory of death. And what you need to know, like it or not, is you’re going to go through some Saturdays.

What Saturday Looks Like
Here’s what Saturday is: Saturday is the child that will someday meet their dad again in heaven, but for now, dad is just pictures and stories and iPhone videos. Saturday is the person with chronic pain, and someday you’ll get a new body, but right now, the doctors can’t heal what’s wrong with you. And so your Saturday is just empty pill bottles and sleepless nights. Saturday is the first year there’s going to be an empty seat at the Christmas dinner table. Saturday is the sonogram that was never born. Saturday is the first year I’ve got to go to two different Christmases because Mom and Dad aren’t together anymore. Saturday is the indention on the other side of your mattress that you feel every night, and no one will ever feel that indention again because you just lost your spouse.

Now here’s the question: how do you make it through a Saturday? Did you guys know Jesus actually experienced some Saturdays? What I’m getting ready to do is drop you right in the middle of this story in John chapter 11; it’s one of my favorite stories in all of the Book of John. So I need to give you a synopsis. Here’s what’s happening: There’s only one guy in the Gospels that was referred to as a friend of Jesus. His name was Lazarus. He and Jesus were tight. Lazarus had two sisters named Mary and Martha. Unbeknownst to anyone, Lazarus was eventually diagnosed with what became a terminal illness. Now, Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus because they’re like, «Jesus can heal him! He can heal him!» So they send word to Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t make it back in time to heal Lazarus, and Lazarus dies. Now, I’m going to give away the end, but like, you know that’s kind of my job: Lazarus ends up getting healed and resurrected by Jesus. But you’re going to see some things in this passage that tell you how to make it through your Saturday.

Grieve Like Jesus
Now, heads up, this message is going to be very straightforward and very practical. What I’ve learned is that the more pain somebody is in, they don’t need the Greek word for life jacket; they just need you to throw them one. So I’m just going to be very practical and straightforward: What do you do to get through what you’re going through? All right, here you go. Number one: hey, Christian friends, you’ve got to learn to grieve like Jesus. You’ve got to learn to grieve like Jesus. Check this out in verse 32. It says, «When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.’» By the way, that’s true. Now when Jesus, watch this, saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled and asked, «Where have you laid him?» So watch this: he sees the sisters grieving, mourners weeping, and then he’s taken to a grave. And then it says, «Here’s what happens: ‘Come and see, Lord, ’ they replied.» Shortest verse in the Bible: «Jesus wept.» Then the Jews said, «See how he loved him!»

Now, this is really interesting, and I’m going to ask you a little theological pop quiz question here in a second. What’s interesting is the Greek word that’s used to describe Jesus’ emotion here is the Greek word «embrimai.» It’s a really rare word; it’s a combination. It’s not just weeping; it’s a combo of anger and weeping. So it’s like, Jesus began to rage-weep. He’s rage-weeping, and then the Bible just says that Jesus looks around and he just weeps.

Why Jesus Wept
Now, class, let me ask this question: if Jesus is getting ready to resurrect Lazarus in like 30 seconds, why is he weeping? Okay, well, here’s what the Bible says. In the beginning, the Bible says that God created everything through the power of his word, and then John chapter 1 says that Jesus, in the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and Jesus was that Word. So when God created everything in the beginning, he created through the power of Jesus as his Word. So Jesus was there when God created everything in the beginning, and everything was perfect. Everything was totally good.

So when God created initially, everything was perfect. It was a world where there was worship, but there was no idolatry; there was sex, but no lust; there was drink, but no alcoholism; there was baseball, but no Astros; football, but no Eagles. There was all these—in every respect, everything was just perfect, right? It was a world without tears, death, sorrow, or sin. So Jesus saw that, and he was like, «Okay, that’s what’s great.» But then you fast-forward to John 11, and think about this: Jesus is here, and the Bible says that he saw Mary and Martha alive, and they’d been separated from their brother by a sheet of death, and Jesus is thinking, «It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It wasn’t supposed to be this way! He’s gone! There was never supposed to be death! There were never supposed to be sisters that get separated from their brother! There were never supposed to be grieving family members! There were never supposed to be mourners!» And then he looks at a grave that holds the body of his best friend, and Jesus is angry because he’s thinking, «There was never supposed to be death.» See, this world is not as it should be. And so Jesus looks around, sees all of these things, and his response is to grieve.

The Godly Response to Brokenness
Now, I’m going to say something that you really have to get. Christians are bad at this. Do you understand what the Bible is showing us? The godly response to the brokenness of this world is grief. It’s grief. Now, I need to do some teaching here because sometimes Christians will have a good emphasis on joy, but we’ll talk about the biblical concept of joy and eclipse the biblical concept of grief. So let me just do a little teaching here. We want to avoid grief, but guys, that’s not how life works. Here’s how life works: There’s no growth without change, there’s no change without loss, and there’s no loss without grief. In other words, if you want growth, if you want anything to change in your life, you are going to experience grief.

In fact, if you try to go through life without grief, that’s like a mother who says, «I want a baby, but I don’t want the pain of labor.» That’s not how life works. Now, grief is a painful emotion, but it’s a helpful emotion because grief is the emotion God has given us that gives the gift of acceptance. Grief gives the gift of acceptance.

Now, there are a lot of dumb things that smart Christians believe, and we’re really terrible about this when it comes to grief. Here’s what some Christians do: Some Christians try to repress their grief, so it’s just like, «Man, I’m just going to deny that it happened. Oh, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t that big of a deal. It didn’t really affect me that much.» They repress their grief. Some Christians don’t repress their grief; what they do is suppress their grief. They just take it and shove it down and use Bible verses to shove it down. «Choose joy! Give thanks for all circumstances!» Well, yeah, but actually, the Bible doesn’t say «give thanks for all circumstances.» It says «give thanks in all circumstances.» Yeah, yes, the Bible does say to choose joy, but it also describes us as people who are sorrowful yet always rejoicing. So we do both of those things.

Express Grief in Prayer
So, what the Bible shows is that we’re not supposed to suppress our grief, and we shouldn’t repress our grief. What Jesus shows us is that we should express our grief to God in prayer. Now, you may have never noticed this. Have you ever noticed how many—this is so comforting to me—have you ever noticed how many theologically incorrect prayers are in the Bible? You ever notice that? Like Psalm 22—this is in the Bible—is a dude praying, and he’s saying to God, «Like you’ve abandoned me! You let me be destroyed! You are not there for me! You’ve forsaken me!» And if you’re reading it, you’re going like, «Huh, actually, that’s not true.» But it’s there in the Bible.

Psalm 88—go home and read that; it’s dark. Psalm 88 is dark, dark! And it ends with this dude—his prayer ends like this: «God, you totally abandoned me! And darkness is my only friend!» And if you’re reading it, you’re like, «Well, actually, that’s actually not true.» So why are those prayers in the Bible? Do you know why? Because God is showing us that he wants us to express our grief to him in prayer. He just wants us to express it with honesty. You right now may be in the middle of grief, and you’re like, «Well, I don’t want to pray because the things that I think about God aren’t true.» Yeah, that’s why he wants you to get them out in prayer. You’re designed to express your grief to God in prayer.

And listen, you may not like to grieve, but here’s the truth: If you don’t let it out in healthy ways, you will act it out in unhealthy ways. This is not in my notes, but I just felt like the Spirit asked me to say this: Let me just get this out here right now. Some of you right now think the biggest problem in your life is your addiction. That is actually not your biggest problem. The reason you have an addiction is you have ungrieved grief in your life: pain, trauma, abuse, loss, and you try to avoid your grief. Instead of dealing with the grief, you’re trying to numb the grief, and that’s what your addiction is—you’re trying to avoid the grief that you won’t face.

See, if you don’t let it out in healthy ways, you will act it out in unhealthy ways. And here’s what will happen to you: If you don’t grieve, when we don’t grieve our losses, we get stuck in that phase of life, and you will spend your life responding to something that happened long ago.

Walking with People in Grief
Now, here’s what I want to do again. I’m going to get real practical because some of you right now, you’re not experiencing grief, but you are a part of a family where thousands of people are. So I’m going to give some very practical advice to us as a church: How do we walk with people in grief? Because that’s what we are: we’re a big family. So let me get real practical here.

A few things. Number one: never minimize somebody’s pain. Never minimize somebody’s pain. Sometimes what Christians will do is, because we just want people to be happy—we just want people to be happy and experience joy—so you’ll try to get them to happiness. You’ll try to shrink their grief. But watch out because what you end up doing, you’re actually not shrinking their grief at all! I’ll give you examples in a second: You’re not shrinking their grief at all! You’re not shrinking their grief; you’re just adding guilt to their grief. So here’s what we need to do: remove the phrase «at least» from your vocabulary. Never say it again. We’re going to remove the phrase «at least.» «At least you have two other children.» «At least you have another parent left.» «At least you’ve got your health.» «At least you’re young enough to marry again.» «At least you can adopt.» See, no, no, we can’t do that! You’re not minimizing their grief; you’re adding guilt to their grief.

Number two: never rush people’s grief. Never rush people’s grief. Now, again, this is a dumb thing that smart Christians believe. Sometimes what we’ll do is because we’re like, «Well, I want them to have the joy of the Lord; the joy of the Lord is our strength, “ and you’ll say something like this: „At some point, you’re just going to have to get over it.“ Now can I just say this to you? That’s not how grief works! You don’t „get over it“! You grieve through it! And what we’ll do is we’ll try to rush people through their grief. And we’ll use Bible verses again, and we’ll say things like, „Choose joy, “ but remember what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians? It describes us as „sorrowful yet always rejoicing.“ In other words, sometimes Christians will have joy instead of sorrow; we’ll have joy in the midst of sorrow. We’ll worship in the midst of loss, and I just want to say this to you: You trying to get somebody to avoid grieving is you trying to get them to avoid being conformed into the image of Jesus, who was described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Never rush people’s grief.

Listen More Than Teach
Now number three: don’t talk, don’t teach; listen. Don’t teach; listen. You know what’s really interesting? In preparation for this message, I just do this sometimes, actually. If you could kind of get with me on social and help me out, sometimes I just toss out, like, „Hey, I need some sermon help. What’s the most helpful thing anybody’s ever done for you when you were in pain?“ And it clearly triggered some things. Nearly 500 comments later, one comment stood out. It wasn’t even close: Far and away, the most common comment. I’m going to actually throw it up there. Here’s one example. Megan said this: „They just sat with me.“ That’s it! „It’s hard to be alone in grief, and well-intentioned words often hit wrong. Just being there was enough, and those willing to really listen are as precious as silver.“ You guys get this?

Now, as a pastor, let me help you understand what’s going on here. I’m with people a lot of times when they’re grieving. Here’s a rule that I want to give you in general: the greater the pain somebody’s in, the fewer the words they need. The greater the pain somebody’s in, the fewer the words they need.

Now, let me give a little rebuke to you because I love you. Some of you, you’re like me. You have a spiritual gift of teaching; you love the Bible, you love doctrine, you love theology, and your tendency—when you’re a hammer, everything’s a nail—and your tendency is to see somebody grieving, and because you’ve got the spiritual gift of teaching, you think what they need is truth—what they need is teaching! You think that their head is missing a truth. Listen, the problem is not that their head is empty of a truth. The problem is their heart is full of grief. They don’t need to get something in; they need to get something out. They don’t need your mouth; they need your ears.

So how about this? Maybe instead of you saying something that is not very helpful, maybe this could be a blessing in disguise. Maybe what you do is say something like this to help them grieve: „Hey, I can tell that this person was precious to you; will you tell me about them?“ And then you’re just helping somebody access their grief and get it out in grief with you.

Connect to a Life Group
Okay, now number four—this may sound self-serving; it’s not, you need to get this—number four: you need to connect to a Life Group. And I’m like for real, for real about this. You need to connect to a Life Group. I’ll give you one other example. Another example of a comment here. Here’s what the Bible says: it says to carry one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. What that means is grief has got to be gang-tackled; you can’t do it on your own. I’ll give you one other comment that was on my little Facebook page. Here’s what Ronnie said: „I lost my soulmate on hospice at Christmas last year. My Life Group provided meals and filled my Christmas tree with gifts for my children. I will never forget that. I have no family, but my Life Group is my family, and I love them. Some of the men would come and have Bible study with my husband and pray for him weekly. They organized carpools so he could get to his radiation appointments. Along with their righteous prayers, they have held me up over and over. They truly have been the hands and feet of Jesus.“

I love this last sentence: „They are my people!“ Y’all, can we just—let’s celebrate spiritual family! Come on, that’s what that’s supposed to look like. So let me just say this: you’ve got to get this—grief has got to be gang-tackled. You need people around you who will be Aaron and Hur holding up your weary arms when you don’t have the strength to do it anymore. And I’ve seen this so many times in these many years of pastoring—when you experience loss, it’s a fork in the road. And if you walk it alone, it will lead to isolation and bitterness. But if you walk it with the people of God that love you, you will actually be redeemed and transformed to becoming a person of greater depth, greater substance, greater joy, greater glory. That fork in the road stands before you.

So let me just, like, dude, I’m going to say something right now, and some of you are going to hear it and be like, „That guy’s a jerk.“ I’m saying it because I love you. Let me say something that’s got a bit of an edge to it, okay? Just hang tight, and I just need to say this, okay? It’s our job to care for you, but it’s your job to put yourself in a position to be cared for. We cannot do your job for you. So listen, it’s our job to care for you, but you’ve got to take the step to put yourself into a spiritual family, and a spiritual child without a spiritual family is a spiritual orphan. The most spiritually helpful, comforting thing some of you could do today is before you leave, text the word GROUP to the number 20411 and get connected to a Life Group that can be a spiritual family with you to walk through the valleys of life. So connect to a Life Group.

Believe God Will Leverage Your Loss
Now, practical number two, okay? The next two go quicker. If you’re walking through a Saturday, number two: you’ve got to believe that God will leverage your loss. You’ve got to believe he’ll leverage it. Check this out in verse 3 of John 11. So the sisters sent word to Jesus. Now, by the way, I’m going to read this, I’m going to have this on the LED screen because there’s a word in this verse that everybody misses, and I really need you to see it. So when we get to the highlighted word, I’m going to have you shout it out loud so I can highlight it. So here’s what it says: „So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’ When he heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son might be glorified through it.’“ Now, here comes the word. Check this out: „Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, so when he heard Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.“

Now, keep that up there. Here’s what I want to point out. If you’re paying attention, you may be going like this: „Well, you would think it would read, ‘Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, but when he heard Lazarus was sick, he stayed two more days where he was.’“ You’d think it would say „but, “ but in fact, it says „so.“ In other words, Jesus intentionally stayed where he was and allowed that pain to happen. Now here’s the question: why? You may be going, „Why did he do that?“ Heads up, that little three-letter question is the question that you will face when pain and loss happens in your life: „Why?“ Jesus himself asked the question „Why?“ when he experienced pain, hung on the cross, and said, „My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?“

Giving Up the Right to Understand
Now I want to answer that question because you need help here. Number one, let me just say this: this is tough. Some of you need this morning more than anything else. You remember that verse that says that God will give you a peace that surpasses all understanding? You remember that? Okay, watch: what that means is in order for you to have peace that surpasses understanding, you have to give up your right to understand. You cannot have the peace that surpasses understanding before you first give up your right to understand.

Now, to help us understand, God did give us some promises. Check this out: in Romans 8, it just says, „God works all things for the good of those who love him.“ Now, God will work all things for the good of those who love him, but it doesn’t tell us you’ll be able to see how God will work all things for the good of those who love him. Have you ever noticed this? In the Book of Job, there are 42 chapters of Job asking „Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?“ Have you ever noticed God never answers Job’s question? He never gives him an answer; he only gives him his presence.

Side note: some of you need this: when you’re in deep pain, what you most need is not answers. What you most need is the presence of God because even if God answered every question of yours, you would still be hurting. But in his presence, there’s fullness of joy. So yes, that’s what you most need!

Now, God never answers Job’s question, but Job didn’t know why God allowed it. Here’s what we can see through the vantage point of time: what we can see is 3,000 years later, people are still being comforted by the story of Job in their pain. Now, here’s my point. It’s easier to see how God will redeem your pain when you’re looking backwards through the rearview mirror than when you’re looking forward through the windshield. You guys remember? Like, you’d be in high school and like some girl breaks up with you, and you’d be like, „Why, God? Why?“ You know, shaking your fist in the sky, „Why did you allow this to happen?“ You see the same girl 30 years later, and you’re like, „God was with me!“ You know? It’s just—it’s easier!

A Personal Story of Loss and Redemption
It’s simply easier to see how God was working when you’re looking backwards through the rearview mirror than when you’re looking forwards through the windshield. Now, you have to understand this: I’ll give you an example. I don’t want to belabor this point. Some of you are aware of our story, but if you’re new, you’re not. Let me just share: Jan and I, right after we got married, we immediately started trying to have kids, and you know, like, we try: „Okay, what’s going on?“ Eventually, we were diagnosed with what’s called unexplained infertility, which is a diagnosis that is exactly as helpful as it sounds. It means you can’t have kids, and we have no idea why—that’s what that means!

And when we were in the midst of that, honestly, there were a lot of „why“ questions. Like, just—I’m going to shoot you straight—like, „Why, God? Like, why can two high school kids go to prom, get drunk, hook up, and have a one-night stand and then get an abortion? But we just want to honor you with our family; we want to raise kids who know and love Jesus; we want to build something that glorifies you—like why them, not us?“ And in the moment, we couldn’t see anything good that would come out of that.

But looking back now, here’s what we didn’t know. We didn’t know that God would use that season to cause us to draw near to him in a way that we never had before. We didn’t know that we would actually, in that season, become better, more compassionate people than we’d ever been before. Now we look back, and I’m like, „Man, I’ve got these three precious adopted kids: Elena, Felicity, and Hudson. I wouldn’t trade them for a million biological kids in the world! Wouldn’t trade them for anything!“

Hudson, now he’s getting to this age where we’ll tell him about adoption and like, „What does that mean, Dad?“ And I’ll just explain, „Buddy, it means we picked you! All these boring parents or their boring biological kids got stuck with their kids! We picked you! We picked you, buddy!“ And like we can explain this to Hudson; we explain all these things we didn’t realize.

In that season, we would launch a ministry called No More Fatherless, that ended up paying off the mortgage of crisis pregnancy centers and helping families toward foster and adoption care. There are a few hundred people that we know of that have adopted because of Jana’s testimony. Dozens and hundreds of women have sat in our living room over the last 15 years, being ministered to by Jana out of her experience of God walking her through that season of infertility.

And what we couldn’t see then is that God wasn’t taking Jan’s child; he was giving Jana a ministry—that’s what we couldn’t see! Now can I just tell you this? This is what the Bible says God will do. 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, „God comforts us in all of our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.“ To prepare you to minister to people, God has to take you through what they’re going to go through.

And here’s what I’ve seen: let me just tell you this—everybody wants a message; nobody wants a mess! Everybody wants a testimony; nobody wants a trial! But it’s the experience of God bringing you through a mess that gives you a message! You’ve got to walk through a trial to have a testimony. And what you’re going to learn is that in God’s garden, even broken trees bear fruit. Your greatest ministry will come from your deepest misery. You’ve got to believe that God will leverage your loss.

Face East: Hope in Resurrection
Now the last one—this is my favorite one—let me land it right here: number three, to get through what you’re going through, you’ve got to face East! That’s how I like to say it: you’ve got to face East! Now you may be going, „What the heck does that mean?“ Just hang on. In order to get through what you’re going through, you probably don’t need to learn something new; you need to remember something old. Let me show you from this passage. This is verse 43: „When he had said this, Jesus called out in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out! ’“ By the way, I love this. Charles Spurgeon, my preaching hero, he says that Jesus had to say, „Lazarus, come out!“ because if Jesus had just said, „Come out!“, every dead body on earth would have been resurrected in that moment. I love it so much!

Man, the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth around his face. And Jesus said to them, „Take off the grave clothes and let him go.“ Now, you may be going, „Well, it’s super easy to preach about getting through grief when the dude gets resurrected in the moment!“ But here’s what Bible scholars have pointed out: it’s not that something happened to Jesus that won’t happen to you; it’s that the same thing that happened to you happened to Jesus—just in a shorter amount of time—because someday, resurrection’s coming for everybody!

Now let me land it like this. So if we haven’t gotten to know each other, I hide it real good because I like to watch sports and try to lift weights, exercise, and fish and be outdoors. So I hide it real well. I actually have a very strong nerd streak. I have a very strong inner nerd. I’m on my 11th reading of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if that tips off anything, okay? Okay, I’ll find some friends later, you know; let’s hang out, and we’ll talk about weird things.

But there’s this—in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, at the end of the trilogy, it gets to this spot where all the little Hobbits, I’m going to nerd out here, all the little Hobbits, they did the whole quest, and they’re trying to destroy the ring and throw it in the mountain and kill Sauron, the evil one—all this stuff—and they get to the end, and the two heroes of the story, Sam and Frodo, they get to the end, and they pass out. I’m condensing: they pass out thinking they’re going to die.

And when they go dark, what they think is that the quest failed, evil won, and that all of their friends, everyone that they love, either is already dead or is getting ready to be killed. And they think they’re going to die—that’s what they think. Now, I’m getting—by the way, I’m going to spoil the end, but like, if that frustrates you, that’s on you, not me! It’s 70 years old; that’s on you, okay?

Now, they think they’re going to die, but these eagles come, and they sweep them away. They get them back to this place called Rivendell, and they heal them up. And what happens is Sam wakes up, healed—fully healed! And when he wakes up, he thought he was going to die, but he wakes up, and obviously he’s alive. He realizes he’s told that actually the quest was victorious—they destroyed the ring, they killed the evil one, and everybody that he loved that he thought was dead is alive and in the house with him! And as he’s coming to these realizations, he just screams out this question: „Will everything sad come untrue?“

And y’all, listen, the Christian answer to that is yes! Everything sad will someday come untrue! Why? Because someday, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the last trumpet will sound, and Christ will return. The dead shall be raised imperishable! Someday, the one seated on the throne will shout in a loud voice, „Behold! I am making all things new!“ And he will wipe away every tear from every eye, and in that moment, death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things will have passed away!

Grieving with Hope
So in our moments of grief, we grieve, but we grieve as those who have hope! What that means is we face East! Now Josh, what do you mean „face East“? All right, everything builds to this. So a lot of people don’t know this. Every grave you’ve ever seen in the United States—they bury people so that the bodies and the eyes of the people are facing due East. Now, people are always skeptical when I tell them this! So I sent one of our staff—I want to prove it to you—sent one of our staff members to six different cemeteries, and you’re getting ready to see some pictures up here. I just want to prove it to you—like for real, for real—every grave you’ve ever seen in America faces due East!

The reason they did this is because the Bible says when Jesus returns for the resurrection of the dead, that his feet will descend on the Mount of Olives in Israel, and the Mount of Olives in Israel is due East from you. And so the Christians that started our country, they were like, „Man, here’s what we’re going to do: these people are dead, but we’re going to bury them with their eyes facing their future hope because someday they’re going to get up out of all these graves, and they’re going to live again! And so we’re going to point their eyes towards the place where their hope will come from.“

Do you all know what it means to face East? What it means is that some of you right now—like, you’re in this spot. By the way, this one—I have Facing East—would have been a better camera angle over here, but I wanted it facing East. It means to face East. It means that you’re in the midst of the grief; you’re at the funeral; you’re feeling the pain of the empty seat at the dinner table; you’re going to two Christmases for the first time—but here’s what you’re doing: you’re going, „Man, this is hard; God, I’m grieving! Like, I’m letting it out! It feels like darkness is my only friend. I’m in it, but I’m facing the direction of my future hope because what I know is this won’t last forever! Because I know that right now, I’m in a veil of tears, but someday you’re going to return, and you’re going to wipe away every tear from every eye! Right now, my body hurts, but I know that someday you’re going to return, and you’re going to heal everybody everywhere, and never again will there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore!“

To face East means to go, „Right now, I’m grieving the loved one that I just lost, and I’m in it—God, I’m feeling it! But what I know is that someday I’m getting my eyes eased! Someday that last trumpet is going to sound! Someday the dead are going to be raised imperishable! And in that moment, our real lives, our true lives, the lives that we were always meant to live for them and for me, they’re going to start in that moment. And so right now I’m grieving, but I’m grieving with hope because someday all of this is going to come untrue—in Jesus’ name, it’s going to happen. So I’m going to face East!“

Closing Prayer for the Grieving
And right now, what some of you need is, in the midst of that pain, is you need to be going, „Man, I’m going to face East!“ Now, what I want to do is I just want to have a moment where I want to ask you to do something maybe uncomfortable for you. We are a family here; don’t you ever let somebody make you ashamed! Don’t ever be ashamed to get prayer in church! If we’re ashamed to pray in church, something is wrong, wrong, wrong! So right now, at all of our campuses, if you’re in the midst of grief and you need the presence of God in your life in a fresh way, I’m going to ask you to stand in a second. I’m not going to ask you to do anything weird; I’m not going to ask you to come down front; I’m not going to ask anybody to talk to you. I’m just going to ask you to stand.

And again, don’t ever be ashamed to get ministry; don’t ever be ashamed of that! Now, stay standing. And hey, Lakepointe family, these are the people that God has called us to love and pray for, and we’re going to do that right now! And so right now, I’m just going to pray; lead us in prayer. So do this: don’t touch them; some will think that’s weird; don’t touch them! But I do want you to do this: wherever you are, I just want you to stretch out a hand towards the people around you that are grieving, and would you pray with me, please?

God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our afflictions, Lord, I pray for a special presence, a unique grace, a fresh touch on these people. Your word says that you are near to the brokenhearted and you save the crushed in spirit. And so God, these are the people that we commit to you today. Holy Spirit, you are welcome! For all the people who are standing, they are welcoming you into their lives!

So Lord, I pray that your Spirit, who is a comforter, would rush in. Lord, I pray that you would give them a peace that surpasses understanding. Lord, I pray that you would give them a strength that they don’t have. God, I pray that you would surround them with people that love them who would hold up their weary arms when they don’t have the strength to do it themselves.

God, I pray that in those moments in the next month when they’re grieving during the holidays, that they would feel the precious presence of Christ, the aroma of Jesus, just rushing through the corridors of their soul, and that they would be fixed, feet firmly planted on the reality that all of these things will someday come untrue! So Father, fix their eyes on that great truth, and give them a felt sense of your presence. We commit them to you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen and amen! Amen, amen!