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

Healing for the Holidays: Part 10—The Light of the World

Note: This is the tenth and final post in a series 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, Part 8: Pregnant with Hope, and Part 9: Christ in Your Holiday Album. 

Two Paths toward Healing Hope 

Traveling from grief to growth is a long, winding road. Healing for the holidays is not a series of steps or some secret plan. More than anything, healing is relational—our relationship with Christ and the Body of Christ.

As we begin our tenth and final post about healing for the holidays, I want us to focus on the two options we have for healing: Christ or self.

Path # 1: Digging Cisterns—Pursuing False Lovers

If we follow the beaten path, the way of the world, then our holiday hurt guides us to false lovers. Idols of the heart. Digging cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Something or someone who will rescue us from agony’s clutches—or so we imagine.

God describes digging cisterns in Jeremiah 2:13. “My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

In the Ancient Near East, you had two choices for life-giving water. You could settle near a clear, pure, bubbling spring of fresh underground water, or you could dig a cistern which captured run-off water and held it in a stagnant well that often cracked leaking in more filth and leaking out water.

Spiritual cistern digging involves rejecting God as our Spring of Living Water because we see Him as unsatisfying, unholy, and unloving (Jeremiah 2:5, 19, 31). Once we reject the only Being in the universe who could ever satisfy the last aching abyss of our souls, we choose to turn to substitutes—worthless, putrid, empty, futile substitutes—cisterns.

Now what? Is that all there is?

Not at all. God offers us so much more, infinitely more—because He offers Himself.

Path # 2: Worshipping God—Glimpsing the Face of God

Rather than turning to false lovers who tame your soul, you now turn to your untamed God who captures your soul. You worship God. In the midst of life’s losses, yes you can choose worship—engaging God with love, which leads to ministry—engaging others with God’s love.

“Worship” is such a common word. But what is worship really? Specifically, in the midst of grief, what does worship look like?

• Worship is wanting God more than wanting relief.

• Worship is finding God even when you don’t find answers.

• Worship is walking with God in the dark and having Him as the light of your soul.

We must understands the truth that every problem is an opportunity to know God better and our primary battle is to know God well. Thus, if we want our holiday hurts to lead to worship, we have to ask ourselves a primary question, “How is my grief influencing my relationship to God?” Grief can either shove us far from God or drag us kicking and screaming closer to Him.

Whom Have I in Heaven but You? 

The Bible consistently invites us to worship God in the midst of suffering. Worship as the end result of suffering has always been the testimony of God’s people.

Asaph, reflecting on his suffering, concludes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25).

David concurs, as his suffering creates a God-thirst. “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Psalm 42:1-2).

Paul looks back upon a lifetime of suffering and says, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:8, 10).

What these biblical writers present, the hymn writer, Katharina von Schlegel poetical states:

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: the best thy heavenly Friend,

Thro’ thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Grief’s ultimate goal is worship: exalting and enjoying God as our Spring of Living Water—our only satisfaction and our greatest joy.

The Rest of the Story 

We’re at the end of our blogging journey, but our healing journey continues ever onward until heaven. My prayer for you is that you will not only survive the holidays, you will, in time and through Christ, thrive in the holidays as you walk with God in the dark and find Him to be the light of your soul.

Pausing to Reflect 

How is Christ leading you through a thorny path to a joyful end?

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.

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.

Healing for the Holidays: Part 8—Pregnant with Hope

Note: This is the eighth 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, and Part 7: God’s Rope of Hope. 

What About the Three Easy Steps? 

I counsel often with grieving people. I read a lot about grief. Articles that offer a few quick quips, three steps, or secrets to survival rarely provide lasting help for profoundly hurting people. Healing for the holidays requires God’s curing truth for our troubled souls. True grief recovery demands Truth from the Author of life. Nothing is more relevant because only the Creator and Lover of the soul knows what cures the soul.

Nowhere is this truer than with holiday healing. God’s Word shows us how to stay alive to life even when it tries to crush us to death. Through the Bible, God speaks to our wounded souls with words of life. As the great Soul Physician, Christ treats our labor pains by encouraging us to remain pregnant with hope. He teaches us to:

Long fervently for heaven and live passionately for God and others while still on earth.

Loving Hope, Hope That Loves 

Paul personifies hope that loves in Philippians 1:23-25.

“I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith.”

Paul neither deadens his longing for heaven nor minimizes his calling on earth. Paul grieves the “not yet.” He hungers and thirsts; he longs and wants what is promised, but what he does not possess. As he writes, he’s jailed. Separated from all who love him. If anyone has an excuse to give up hope and to give up loving, it is the Apostle Paul.

But he chooses to remain pregnant with hope, to participate in loving hope, in hope that loves. He says, “I want to go home. This world is messed up. I ache for heaven, for Paradise. But I’m pulling weeds until the day I die! My grief is not excuse to ignore your growth. I’m living for your joy and spiritual progress.”

My Problem with Typical Grief “Remedies”

That’s other-centered grieving and groaning. And that’s why I have a boatload of problems with typical grief remedies, especially related to the holidays. In a desire to express empathy, writers on grief seem to start and stop with what we might call “self-care.” “Take care of yourself. Nurture yourself. Be good to yourself. Be patient with yourself.”

In perspective, there’s biblical wisdom in such cautions. I’ve tried to convey the same empathy throughout this series. But there are two pointed reasons not to stop with or focus on self.

1. The Bible teaches us to focus on others. 

Enough said.

While the Bible never minimizes our hurt, it always maximizes hopeful loving. While Christ identifies with, feels, and even experiences our suffering, loss, and grief, He always encourages and empowers us to take the comfort we receive from Him and comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:3-6).

Do you long for profound healing for the holidays? Offer Christ’s healing hope to others.

2. Life teaches us to focus on others. 

Research study after research study comes to the same conclusion. Healing comes when we start focusing on others.

History teaches us the same lesson. In my book Beyond the Suffering (http://www.rpmministries.org/writing/beyond-the-suffering/), I trace the amazing and inspiring legacy of the heroes of the Black Church. Despite horrific suffering and agonizing grief, men and women of the Black Church not only endured the suffering of enslavement, they moved beyond the suffering. How? By hoping in God and by loving one another—hope that loves.

Thriving—In God’s Love 

Where does hope that love come from? It comes from the God of love. In Romans 8:28-39, Paul insists that even in the midst of trouble, hardship, persecution, and suffering, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Paul teaches that in all our suffering we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us so.

“More than conquerors” comes from the Greek word nikao from which we gain our word “Nike”—victors, winners, Olympic champions. Being pregnant with hope empowers us to long ardently for heaven and to live victoriously on earth. Loving hope, hope that loves, moves us from victims to victors in Christ.

On the Road to Hope 

You’ve just encountered another choice point on the road to hope. At this fork in the road, you can turn one direction and choose the journey of living for self. Taking that route, your pain never goes away; it’s just buried beneath any number of self-centered diversions.

Or, you can choose the route of being pregnant with hope. You’ll feel the pain—the deep pain of grief, of being out of the nest, of living east of Eden, of longing fervently for heaven but living in our fallen world. However, you’ll experience the profound joy that accompanies living passionately for God and others. God’s Spirit will empower your spirit so that you can be more than a conqueror—now!

The Rest of the Story 

Where do we find the faith to pursue love that hopes? We find it when we weave God’s eternal story into our earthly story of suffering. Join me in our next post for God’s wisdom from before the dawn of time.

Pausing to Reflect 

Do you believe that in Christ you are more than a conqueror—able to offer others hopeful love even in the midst of your painful grief?

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.

Healing for the Holidays: Part 6—All I Want for Christmas Is Hope

Note: This is the sixth 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, and Part 5: Tidings of Comfort and Joy. 

Paul Tells It Like It Is

For Christians, surviving the holidays is an admirable first goal, especially when memories of loss and separation flood the mind. However, our ultimate goal is not just surviving, but thriving. That’s where healing hope enters the picture.

The Apostle Paul models the healing process in 2 Corinthians 1:8-11.

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”

Paul begins by modeling what we discussed in Parts 1-4 of our blog mini-series. He’s candid and honest with himself, God, and others about his suffering. He talks fearlessly about his external suffering—the things that have happened to him, his losses and crosses. He also shares courageously about his internal suffering—his agony of soul.

But Paul doesn’t stop there. Despairing of life and feeling the sentence of death, Paul clings tenaciously to the Author of life.

I’d like to ask you to stop reading. Reread 2 Corinthians 1:8-11.

• Reflect on Paul’s grief and on his hope.

• Reflect on your grief.

• Pray for your healing. Ask for hope. Ask God for the faith to believe that a new beginning is possible—it’s possible to hope, to thrive.

Grieving and Growing 

Grieving can produce growth. Spiritual emergencies can produce spiritual emergence. It’s supernatural to grow.

Grief admits, “Life is bad.” Healing says, “God is good—He’s good all the time.” In grief, we candidly enter the smaller earthly, temporal story of hurt. In healing, we enter the larger, heavenly, eternal story of hope.

In grieving, we’re in a casket—the tomb of grief and loss. In healing, God rolls the stone away. We celebrate the resurrection. We trust in our God who raises the dead.

So Heavenly Minded/Great Practical Earthly Good 

“Nice,” you think. “Just another batch of platitudes: pie-in-the-sky, sweet-by-and-by, too-heavenly-minded-to-be-of-any-earthly-good!”

Not at all. In fact, biblical hope is so heavenly minded that it is of great practical earthly good.

Think about the fifth and final phase in the world’s grieving process: acceptance. The goal is to face calmly the finality of loss. If it is one’s own impending death, then it’s a time of quiet resignation. If it is the loss of a loved one, or a relationship, or a job, then it’s a time of regrouping. “Life has to go on, somehow. How? What’s next?”

In Christ, loss is never final. Christ’s resurrection is the first-fruit of every resurrection.

“Acceptance” and “resignation” are too earthly minded to be of any earthly or heavenly good! Acceptance can’t halt retreat because it has no hope for advancement, no foundation for growth.

I refuse to accept the hopeless remedy of acceptance. I also refuse to accept simplistic platitudes. I choose to embrace Christ’s healing hope. I choose to embrace the biblical truth that “it’s possible to hope and supernatural to grow.”

How about you?

Are you clinging tenaciously to the Author of life?

The Rest of the Story

Healing celebrates the resurrection by waiting on God (trusting God with faith), wailing to God (groaning to God with hope), weaving in God’s story (perceiving suffering with grace), and worshipping God (engaging God and others with love, even during suffering). In our final installments in our mini-series, we’ll learn how.

Pausing to Reflect 

Do you have the faith to believe that it’s possible for you to hope—that not only can you survive the holidays, you can thrive during the holidays—because of Christ?

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. 

Healing for the Holidays: Part 5—Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Note: This is the fifth 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, and Part 4: A Lament for Your Loss.

Comfort and Joy

When we lament to God and cry out to Him when we’re experiencing holiday loss, what does God promise? Does He promise to remove all grief? No, for this side of heaven that would require removing all memory of our loved one—something none of us would want. Does he promise to change or “fix” everything? No, that’s not what God promises either.

When we cry out to God, here’s His promise: He comes. He comes in His comforting presence.

In God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, I defined comfort as:

Comfort experiences the presence of God in the presence of suffering—a presence that empowers me to survive scars and plants the seed of hope that I will yet thrive.

My Personal Comfort Journey 

My Father passed away on my 21st birthday. It was a year later, on my 22nd birthday, that I began to experience God’s comforting presence.

For me, comfort reflected itself in my decision not to give up on God and not to give up on ministry. I was in seminary, preparing for ministry, and secretly doubting God—doubting His goodness, His trustworthiness, His ability, or at least His desire, to protect me and care for me. As comfort came, I came face-to-face with God. We had some wild talks. We had some fierce wrestling matches.

God won. I surrendered. I was still confused about the details of life, but committed to the Author of Life. More than that, I surrendered to Him and was dependent upon Him. My attitude was like Peter’s when Jesus asked His disciples, “Will you, too, leave me?” Remember Peter’s reply? “To whom else could we go? You alone have the Words of life.”

I was surviving again, surviving though scarred. I was not and never again would be that same naïve young Christian who assumed that if I prayed and worked hard enough, God would grant me my every expectation. My faith was not a naïve faith, it was now a deeper faith—a faith that could walk in the dark.

Asaph’s Personal Comfort Journey 

According to Psalm 73:21-28, suffering is an opportunity for God to divulge more of Himself and to release more of His strength. When Asaph’s heart was grieved, and his spirit embittered, God brought him to his senses. Listen to his prayer. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).

In grieving we say with Asaph, “My flesh may be scarred, my heart may be scared, but with God I can survive—forever.”

Thus faith perceives that God feels our pain, joins us in our pain, and even shares our pain. In fact, faith believes that, “in all their distress he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63:9). His sharing of our sorrow makes our sorrow endurable.

Faith does not demand the removal of suffering; faith desires endurance in suffering, temptation, and persecution (1 Corinthians 10:13). Faith understands that what can’t be cured, can be endured. Faith delights in weakness, because when we are weak, then God is strong, and we are strong in Him (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

Grieving is a normal response to loss. However, God does not abandon us in our dark, dank casket. God, who is Light, shines His light of comfort into our hurting hearts.

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen 

The traditional Christmas carol, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen beautifully communicates the comfort we find in God’s presence. The carol is about the incarnation of Christ—Christ’s being born in the flesh so that He could be present with, dwell with us.

Like all true and faithful Christmas carols, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen tells a story in stanzas—a story that progresses from Christ’s birth to His death and resurrection on our behalf. The final stanza captures our Christmas comfort, our holiday hope.

Now to the Lord sing praises,

All you within this place,

And with true love and brotherhood

Each other now embrace;

This holy tide of Christmas

All other doth deface.

O tidings of comfort and joy,

comfort and joy,

O tidings of comfort and joy.

Our “tiding” at Christmas is “Merry Christmas!”

The holy “tiding” of Christmas is “Comfort and joy!”

At Christmas, you may not feel “merry.” But in and with Christ, you can experience comfort (God’s comforting presence). And you can experience joy. Joy is not happiness or merriment. Joy is a settled, quiet peace and confidence that God is good even when life is bad and sad.

My tiding for you this holiday season is more than “Blessed Thanksgiving,” or “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy New Years.” My tiding to you through Christ is, “Comfort and joy.”

The Rest of the Story 

Surviving the holidays is, for many, a pretty major goal. But…is it possible that even more could occur? Could we move from surviving to thriving? We’ll discuss that journey beginning in our next post.

Pausing to Reflect 

How could you experience God’s presence in order to experience His comfort and joy 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.