Vote for the Christian Book of the Year

I’m honored that my book, God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, is one of the finalists for the Christian Small Publisher Association Book of the Year Award. 

You can cast your vote for God’s Healing for Life’s Losses at http://bit.ly/zQ3sLL 

Once on that site, scroll down to Non-Fiction Christian Living.

Please share the link with others: http://bit.ly/zQ3sLL 

Thank you.

Official Announcement

Here’s the CSPA’s announcement, released today:

All Christian book readers are invited to vote for the 2012 Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award. Although small publishers are often less well known than larger publishing houses, they produce fresh and innovative books to inspire readers or fill niche needs. The Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year award honors books produced by small publishers for outstanding contribution to Christian life.

The winners of the 2012 Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award will be announced on April 16, 2012. The Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award is sponsored by Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA).

Learn More 

You can learn more about God’s Healing for Life’s Losses and read a sample chapter at the RPM Ministries God’s Healing Page. 

Join the Conversation 

If you’ve read God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, how has God used it in your life and ministry?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Tags: BMH Books, Christian Small Publisher Association, God's Healing for Life's Losses, GriefShare, Grieving

Healing for the Holidays: Part 9—Cropping Christ Back Into Your Holiday Album

Note: This is the ninth in a series of posts on Healing for the Holidays. Read Part 1: A Promise, Part 2: Give Sorrow Words, Part 3: Holiday Healing Q/A, Part 4: A Lament for Your Loss, Part 5: Tidings of Comfort and Joy, Part 6: All I Want for Christmas Is Hope, Part 7: God’s Rope of Hope, and Part 8: Pregnant with Hope. 

God’s Eternal Story Invades Our Earthly Story 

At Christmas, we rejoice in Immanuel—God with us. Jesus leaves heaven to pitch His tent in our neighborhood, to invade our world.

Healing for the holidays requires that we allow God’s eternal story to invade our earthly story. One of my dear friends from Uniontown Bible Church, likes to say, “When life stinks, our perspective shrinks.” She’s spot on.

When the holidays arrive and we grieve the loss of a loved one, when we feel the pain of the miles that separate us from immediate family members, when we agonize over a divorce that pulls families in so many different directions, it’s natural to focus exclusively on our pain.

It’s not only natural, there is a supernatural process involved—an evil supernatural process. Just as we can use digital photography to crop anything we want into or out of our photos, so Satan attempts to crop Christ out of our picture.

When life stinks and our perspective shrinks, we need to crop Christ back into the picture. We need to expand our eyesight to God’s eternal perspective.

See in This Some Higher Plan

Our eyes darkened by despair, we need grace-eyes. We need to weave in another way of looking at life. Biblical weaving is entrusting myself to God’s larger purposes, good plans, and eternal perspective. I see life with spiritual eyes instead of eyeballs only. I look at my suffering, not with rose colored glasses, but with faith eyes, with Cross-eyes, with 20/20 spiritual vision.

There’s an amazing scene in Les Miserables where Jean val Jean, a paroled prisoner, takes advantage of a grace-filled Bishop. Stealing from him, Jean val Jean is captured by the French police. They return him to the Bishop, fully expecting him to implicate val Jean which would lead to a return to prison without hope for parole. To the shock of everyone involved, the Bishop says, “But my brother, you forgot these,” and hands him two silver candlesticks.

Everyone is floored when the Bishops says, “By the witness and the martyrs, by the passion and the blood, I have bought your soul for God. Now become an honest man. See in this some higher plan.” Val Jean, amazed by grace, changed by grace, then concludes the scene by singing, “Another story must begin!”

A friend of my, recounting this to me, commented. “Now everything that happens to me, I’m looking for God’s higher plan. I’m setting my thoughts on things above—always wondering what God might be up to in this. For me, another story must begin—God’s story that doesn’t obliterate my painful story, but that gives it meaning.”

Joseph’s Story: Grace Narratives 

In your holiday hurt, hear Joseph’s words to his fearful family in Genesis 50:19-20. “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Joseph uses “intended” both for his brothers’ plans and God’s purposes. The Hebrew word has a very tangible sense of to weave, to plait, to interpenetrate as in the weaving together of fabric to fashion a robe, perhaps even Joseph’s coat of many colors.

The Old Testament also used the word in a negative, metaphorical sense to suggest a malicious plot, the devising of a cruel scheme. Other times the Jews used “intended” to picture symbolically the creation of some new and beautiful purpose or result through the weaving together of seemingly haphazard, miscellaneous, or malicious events.

“Life is bad,” Joseph admits. “You plotted against me for evil. You intended to spoil or ruin something wonderful.”

“God is good,” Joseph insists. “God wove good out of evil,” choosing a word for “good” that is the superlative of pleasant, beautiful. That is, God intended to create amazing beauty from seemingly worthless ashes for those who grieve (Isaiah 61:3).

Life hurts. Wounds penetrate. Without grace narratives, hopelessness and bitterness flourish. With a grace narrative, hope and forgiveness flow and perspective grows.

Instead of our perspective shrinking, suffering is the exact time when we must listen most closely, when we must lean over to hear the whisper of God. True, God shouts to us in our pain, but His answers, as with Elijah, often come to us in whispered still small voices amid the thunders of the world.

In weaving, God heals our wounds as we envision a future even while all seems lost in the present. Through hope we remember the future; we move from Good Friday to Easter Sunday while living on Saturday. Grace narratives point the way to God’s larger story, assuring us that our Savior is worth our wait.

The Rest of the Story 

We’re nearing the end of our healing journey together. In the tenth and final part in our series on healing for the holidays, we consider worship. How can we find God even when we can’t find answers?

Pausing to Reflect 

How could you crop Christ back into your holiday album this holiday season?

Help for Your Healing Journey 

For additional help on your healing journey, learn more about God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting.

Tags: Christmas, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief Recovery, Healing for the Holidays

Healing for the Holidays: Part 4—A Lament for Your Loss

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on Healing for the Holidays. Read Part 1: A Promise, Part 2: Give Sorrow Words, and Part 3: Holiday Healing Q/A. 

Does My Holiday Loss Count?

I’ve received a batch of emails in response to this series. One theme is: “Does my holiday grief count?” One person asked, “I haven’t lost a loved one, but because of a divorce, half the holidays I don’t even see my children. Is it still okay to grieve over that?” Another friend asked, “My adult kids live in Europe and I rarely see them for the holidays. Is that a reason to grieve?”

In writing God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I communicated that every loss, every separation is a mini-casket experience. Each loss is a reminder of the ultimate loss of death. That is not to say that every loss is of the same magnitude. It is simply to recognize the reality that all loss hurts because every loss is a separation, a tearing away of what was meant to be together.

Yes, your loss counts. Most importantly, your loss counts to God. That’s why He invites you, like He did the saints of old, to lament your loss. Today, let’s ponder six practical principles of lamenting holiday loss—whatever shape or size your loss takes.

Holiday Lament Principle # 1: Getting Started Is the Hardest Part

Many people find that the hardest part of the grief journey is simply getting started. Stepping on the path by facing your pain and hurt can be terrifying. All sorts of questions flood your mind.

“What will I feel? Will I be able to handle whatever I feel? What if my thoughts consume me and my feelings overwhelm me? Will anyone understand? Will anyone join me? Is it worth it? What’s the point?”

But remember, it is worth it. As we learned in Part 1, denial changes nothing. Denial only prolongs the inevitable. Pretending doesn’t change the facts, can’t alter reality.

So don’t beat yourself up because you’re finding it hard to be honest with yourself and God. But do challenge yourself to begin the journey.

Holiday Lament Principle # 2: Other People May Not Understand 

One of the ironies of holiday loss is that your family and friends may think that you’re the one who can’t move on because you’re still grieving. Often, the opposite is true. They can’t move on because they’ve never even started grieving. They’re the ones who can’t even look at pictures of the lost loved one. They’re the ones who don’t dare to talk about the relative who is away during the holidays serving our country in Afghanistan. Don’t let their fear deter you. Don’t let their denial cause false guilt in you about your grief.

Holiday Lament Principle # 3: Be Honest with God—He Knows Everything Anyway! 

What is lament? If candor is being honest with yourself about the pain you feel over loss, then lament is being honest with God about your loss and pain. Lament is facing your grief face-to-face with God.

We somehow think we’re hiding things from God when we refuse to verbalize them. But since God is all-knowing, and since He knows the thoughts and intents of our heart, He already knows all that we think and feel.

The Psalmists understood this, which is one reason why there are more psalms of lament than psalms of praise and thanksgiving. Let that sentence sink in. So tell God the truth…whatever it is you are thinking and feeling.

Holiday Lament Principle # 4: Be Courageous—God Invites Lament 

But let’s be honest, this is where grief gets very confusing for the committed Christian. We love God; we know He loves us. We know God is good; we know life has now turned bad. So we want to know, sometimes we want to scream it, “How could a good God allow such loss!?”

But dare we ask? Do we dare verbalize our lament to God?

The Scriptures are clear—God invites lament. The Bible repeatedly illustrates believers responding to God’s invitation with honest words that would make many a modern Christian shudder. If you doubt that, read Psalm 13, Psalm 73, Psalm 88, Job 3, and Lamentation 5.

Holiday Lament Principle # 5: Tell God the Truth—He Cares Infinitely 

Lament demonstrates your faith in God. According to Psalm 62:8, if we truly trust God, then we’ll share everything with God. “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

Think about that. The person who can’t be upfront with God about pain, loss, and grief, is the person who doesn’t trust God.

Pour out your heart to God. Why? Because God is your refuge.

When you lament, you live in the real world honestly, refusing to ignore what is occurring. Lament is your expression of your radical trust in God’s reliability in the middle of real life.

Holiday Lament Principle # 6: Honesty with God Draws You Nearer to God 

Psalm 73 is a prime example of lament. Asaph begins, “Surely God is good to Israel” (73:1). He then continues with a litany of apparent evidence to the contrary, such as the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the godly (73:2-15). When he tries to make sense of all this, it’s oppressive to him (73:16). He then verbalizes to God the fact that his heart is grieved and his spirit embittered (73:21).

His lament drew him nearer to God. It did not push him away from God. “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand” (73:23). He concludes, “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge.” (73:28).

It was Asaph’s intense, candid relationship with God that enlightened him to the goodness of God even during the badness of life. “Till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. . . . As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O LORD, you will despise them as a fantasy” (73:17, 20). Spiritual friendship with God results in 20/20 spiritual vision from God.

To deny or diminish suffering is to reject dependence upon God. God wants us to make use of our suffering, to remember our suffering, to admit our need for Him in our suffering, and to rehearse our suffering before Him.

The Rest of the Story 

But what does God do when I am honest with him about my holiday hurt? What are realistic expectations about what happens in me and what God promises to me? Great questions—ones we’ll explore in our next post on healing for the holidays.

Pausing to Reflect 

Psalm 88 is a classic psalm of lament. In fact, some have called it the Psalm of the Dark Night of the Soul. What would your Psalm 88 sound like?

Help for Your Healing Journey

For additional help on your healing journey, learn more about God’s Healing for Life’s Losses: How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting.

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, GriefShare, Healing for the Holidays, Lament

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses Seminar

When you, your family members, or friends are grieving over one of life’s many losses, where can you turn for help?

Saturday, November 5, 2011, Dr. Bob Kellemen will be presenting a God’s Healing for Life’s Losses seminar at New Hope Community Church, 5100 Bethesda Ct, Williamsburg, MI 49690 (219-938-8056).

Learn How To:

• Apply to your life a biblical approach to facing life’s losses with courageous honesty.

• Apply to your life a biblical approach to finding healing hope by finding God.

• Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical process of hurting and grieving: candor, complaint, cry, and comfort.

• Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical process of hope and growth: waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping.

• Build healing communities where Christians find courage and comfort in God and each other.

Attend the God’s Healing for Life’s Losses Seminar To:

• Experience personal healing and biblical hope.

• Encounter God in the midst of your suffering.

• Empathize with hurting people more compassionately.

• Encourage suffering people more competently.

• Empower your congregation to become a “hospital for the hurting.”

Sponsored By:

• WLJN Christian Radio, The Northwest Michigan Jesus Ministries, and New Hope Community Church

• Tickets are available at WLJN, 1101 Cass St, Traverse City MI 49685, 231-946-1400.

• Or call New Hope Community Church at: 219-938-8056.

Seminar Registration:

• Cost: $15.00 per person.

• Cost Includes: The seminar, God’s Healing for Life’s Losses book, seminar workbook, continental breakfast, and light lunch.

• Payment Methods: Check or cash.

• Day of the Seminar: The cost will be $20.00 per person.

Seminar Schedule:

• 8:30-9:00: Registration and Continental Breakfast

• 9:00-10:00: Session One: Launching the Journey of Grief: Honesty with Yourself and with God—Candor and Complaint

• 10:00-10:15: Break

• 10:15-11:15: Session Two: Inviting God to Join Your Journey: Finding God Even When You Can’t Find Answers—Cry and Comfort

• 11:15-11:30: Break

• 11:30-12:30: Session Three: Deepening Your Journey During the Dark Night of the Soul: On the Road to Hope—Waiting and Wailing

• 12:30-1:30: Lunch Provided

• 1:30-2:30: Session Four: Traveling with God on the Journey of Faith: Joining the Larger Story—Weaving and Worshipping

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, GriefShare, Grieving, Seminar

A Lament for Your Loss

This week I’ve been explaining why it is unbiblical to try to forget our past. In Ask the Counselor, I noted that we should reflect on our past. Yesterday, in Blessed Are Those Who Mourn, I described the first part of reflection: candor—being honest with ourselves.

Today we’ll look at a second aspect of reflection: lament—being honest with God. I develop this material further in God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Here’s an excerpt from chapter three: “A Lament for Your Loss Mourn.”

Biblical Lament: Telling God the Truth

Numerically, there are more Psalms of complaint and lament than Psalms of praise and thanksgiving. Lament is vulnerable frankness about life to God in which I express my pain and confusion over how a good God allows evil and suffering.

Lament is a faith-based act of persistent trust. Lament is one of the many moods of faith. Psalm 91’s exuberant trust is one faith mood while Psalm 88’s dark despair is another faith mood. A mood of faith trusts God enough to bring everything about us to Him. In lamewnt we hide nothing from God because we trust His good heart and because we know He knows our hearts.

My Personal Lament Journey

In the weeks and months after my 22nd birthday, I engaged in passionate lament. What made my struggle with my father’s death even more difficult was my lack of assurance that my father was a believer. I had witnessed to him, prayed for him, and he even began attending church with me. Yet even on his deathbed, he made no verbal commitment of faith in Christ.

So I shared with God. I told God, “What’s the use? Why did I pray, witness, and share? Why should I ever pray again? Why should I ever try again, trust again?”

I shared my confusion and my doubt with God. “Why does everyone else’s parent accept Christ in a glorious deathbed conversion? Why can’t I have assurance of my Dad’s presence with You?”

Were my expressions of lament biblical? Can lament be biblically supported? Does God truly prize lament?

Biblical Lament Samplers: With Christ in the School of Suffering

According to Psalm 62:8, if we truly trust God, then we’ll share everything with God. “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

The biblical genre of lament expresses frankness about the reality of life that seems inconsistent with the character of God. Lament is an act of truth-telling faith, not unfaith. Lament is a rehearsal of the bad allowed by the Good.

When we lament, we live in the real world honestly, refusing to ignore what is occurring. Lament is our expression of our radical trust in God’s reliability in the midst of real life.

Psalm 73 is a prime example of Lament. Asaph begins, “Surely God is good to Israel” (73:1). He then continues with a litany of apparent evidence to the contrary, such as the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the godly (73:2-15). When he tries to make sense of all this, it’s oppressive to him (73:16). He then verbalizes to God the fact that his heart is grieved and his spirit embittered (73:21).

His lament, his complaint, drew him nearer to God. It did not push him away from God. “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand” (73:23). He concludes, “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge.” (73:28).

It was Asaph’s intense relationship with God that enlightened him to the goodness of God even during the badness of life. “Till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. . . . As a dream when one awakes, so when you arise, O LORD, you will despise them as a fantasy” (73:17, 20). Spiritual friendship with God results in 20/20 spiritual vision from God.

Asaph illustrates that in lament we come to God with a sense of abandonment and confusion (Isaiah 49:14; Jeremiah 20:7; Lamentations 5:20). We then exercise a courageous, yet humble cross-examination. Not a cross-examination of God, but a cross-examination and a refuting of earth-bound reality with spiritual reality.

That’s exactly what occurs in Jeremiah 20:7; Lamentations 5:20; and Psalm 88:18. In all three passages, it appears by reason alone that life is bad and so is God. Yet in each passage, God responds positively to a believer’s rehearsal of life’s inconsistencies.

In Job 3, and much of Job for that matter, Job forcefully and even violently expresses his lament.

What’s the point of life when it doesn’t make sense, when God blocks all the roads to meaning? Instead of bread I get groans for my supper, then leave the table and vomit my anguish. The worst of my fears has come true, what I’ve dreaded most has happened. My repose is shattered, my peace destroyed. No rest for me, ever—death has invaded life.

In Job 42:7-8, God honors Job’s lament saying that Job spoke right of life and right of God. God prizes lament and rejects all deceiving denial and simplistic closure, preferring candid complexity.

To deny or diminish suffering is to refuse arrogantly to be humbled. It is to reject dependence upon God. Moses chastises God’s people in Deuteronomy 8:1-10 for forgetting their past suffering. God wants us to make use of our suffering, to remember our suffering, to admit our need for Him in our suffering, and to rehearse our suffering (external and internal) before Him.

On the Road to Hope

Will we be disappointed with God or disappointed without God? We can either lament with and to God, or we can complain without and about God.

If facing suffering is wrestling face-to-face with God, then complaint is our decision to grapple with God about life hand-to-hand, eye-to-eye. Will you?

Join the Conversation

How would you compare your response to your suffering to Job’s? Jeremiah’s? Jacob’s? David’s? Paul’s? Jesus in the Garden?

Tags: God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief Recovery, GriefShare, Lament

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn 

In a recent Ask the Counselor post, I addressed the question, “Should I try to forget my past?” I said a hearty, biblical “No!”

I also said that one biblical response to our past is “reflection”: honestly facing our past face-to-face with Christ. In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I call that “candor.” Here’s an excerpt from chapter two: “Candor: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn.” 

Candor: Telling Your Self the Truth

The world has its way of grieving. But, when our fallen world falls on us, when suffering crushes us, we need much more than research. We need revelation—we need God’s inspired truth about how to grieve as those who have hope.

God’s Word offers us profound practical wisdom for moving from denial to candor. What exactly is biblical candor? Candor is courageous truth telling to myself about life in which I come face-to-face with the reality of my external and internal suffering. In candor, I admit what is happening to me and I feel what is going on inside me.

My Personal Candor Journey

I had to move from denial to candor after the death of my father on my 21st birthday. In fact, it was not until my 22nd birthday that the process truly began. I had been handling my loss like a good Bible college graduate and seminary student—I was pretending!

On my 22nd birthday, one year to the day after my father’s death, I went for a long walk around the outskirts of the seminary campus. That day I started facing my loss of my Dad. The reality that I would never know him in an adult-to-adult relationship. The fact that my future children would never know their grandfather.

As I faced some of these external loses, the tears came. Then I began to face some of the internal crosses—what was happening in me. I felt like a loner. Fatherless. Orphaned. Unprotected. On my own. The tears flowed. The process of candor began. The floodgate of emotions erupted. I was being honest with myself.

Biblical Candor Samplers: Fearlessly Facing the Facts

But was it biblical? Does God really allow and even invite His children to be brutally honest about life? Can we support candor biblically?

David practices candor in Psalm 42:3-5.

My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?

Notice that David is honest about his external suffering. He describes his losses—the loss of fellowship, leadership, and worship. He also is candid about his internal suffering. He depicts his crosses—accurately labeling his soul as downcast and disturbed within him.

Job consistently models candor throughout his response to his losses.

What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil (Job 3:25-26).

Again we witness brutal frankness both about external losses and internal crosses.

We could profitably examine the accounts of other biblical characters who practiced candor—Jeremiah, Solomon, Asaph (Psalm 73), Heman (Psalm 88), Jesus, Paul, and so many more. They all convey the same inspired message: it’s normal to hurt and necessary to grieve.

The Apostle Paul does not tell us not to grieve; he tells us not to grieve without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He chooses a Greek word meaning to feel sorrow, distress, and grief, and to experience pain, heaviness, and inner affliction.

Paul is teaching that grief is the grace of recovery because mourning slows us down to face life. No grieving; no healing. Know grieving; know healing.

The only person who can truly dare to grieve, bear to grieve, is the person with a future hope that things will eventually be better. When we trust God’s good heart, then we trust Him no matter what. We need not pretend. We can face and embrace the mysteries of life.

On the Road to Hope

Candor or denial. The choice is a turning point. It is a line drawn in the sand of life, a hurdle to confront.

Faith crosses the line. Trust leaps the hurdle. We face reality and embrace truth, sad as it is. If facing suffering is wrestling face-to-face with God, then candor is our decision to step on the mat. Will you?

Join the Conversation

True faith faces all of life face-to-face with Christ. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being total denial and 10 being facing all of life—internal and external suffering?

Tags: Candor, God's Healing for Life's Losses, Grief, GriefShare