HELD THROUGH THE NIGHT - by Brent Lokker

Each of us encounters night seasons where life crashes in and around us in a way we didn’t see coming and often don’t know how to navigate—the death of a parent, a sibling, a best friend, or a child; the end of a marriage or other significant relationship; the loss of a dream, now shattered in a million pieces. Jesus, who knows the sheep he came to save, says to us, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) The Lover of our souls didn’t come to judge or scold us, but to hold and comfort us. The root word in the Greek for ‘comfort’ is the same used for the Comforter, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. Jesus is saying to us, “Open your heart to expose the deep pain you’ve experienced and let me in to comfort you. Don’t stuff the grief deeper inside of you but express to me and with me the sadness and loss you feel. Mourn with your questions or anger or lostness you feel within. My promise to you is that I will never leave you and that I will walk through your grief and the sadness of your heart with you.” “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18 You are not alone. Nor will you ever be. Just as a caring parent rushes to comfort their child who’s crying and needs comfort, this is precisely who your heavenly Father is for you, his beloved son or daughter, in the midst of your deep pain.  All he wants is a relationship that’s real, not fake. He wants you to be raw with your emotions and to do so without fear of punishment. Though some of us learned that punishment follows when we were trying to be honest with our parents, this is not the nature of your tenderhearted heavenly Father. Last Saturday Greg Yu shared about losing his adult daughter and then I shared about how I laid my heart as open as I could before the Lord when my dad, my mom and my sister died. The path with the Lord through each was different. There are no right or wrong ways to mourn, other than to allow yourself to grieve with God and experience His comfort. If you want to hear about those experiences of grieving and how God lovingly brought us through, you can watch here: Greg:  1:57                        Brent:  2:13 I pray you will know the tenderness of God’s heart for you so you will be able to entrust your heart to him and pour out what may have been locked inside. Our journey into the most intimate places with the Lord has to go through the places of deep pain and heartache. But that’s exactly where he meets you!