Welcome to Healing Scars with Pastor Burton. Here you'll find practical, relevant, biblical information.
The Bible will be broken down verse by verse so that you get the full context of the scripture to better grow in your relationship with Jesus.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Sanctuary. It's great to have you with us as always.
Now, Memorial Day weekend has just passed here in the US and with that said, a lot of emotional baggage is pulled out with it, right?
Not only that, but there are people who have recently lost loved ones so it's a very emotional time of year even for them.
Or in the case, you know, there's people that are out there on hospice even, you know, and will soon be dealing with the heartache of loss.
It's not easy losing loved ones. When it happens, there's truly no words that any of us can share that makes that load any lighter.
Sure, we can try many things, you know, jokes, sharing memories, you know, quoting scripture, all that kind of stuff.
Yet for those that are bearing the load, it's still just a little too heavy to carry, let alone to try to unpack all at once.
You know, what we all need and can help us though is knowing where to turn in these dark times.
And we're all going to face these dark times at some point. That's part of life.
Of course, the place that we turn though is God. As hard as it is, we all find ourselves mourning at some point.
And if you haven't already, well, rest assured, it will happen.
Grief and mourning are very much Old and New Testament concepts. It goes all the way back to the, you know, the beginning.
There's nothing new there. The clearest places that we can find these concepts really as an outline are in Isaiah and in Matthew.
Isaiah 61 verses one through two, the word says, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance, our God, to comfort all who mourn.
Jesus refers to this passage himself even in Luke chapter four.
While this speaks of captivity, keep in mind we can also become captives to death. And oftentimes we don't realize that we've been snared by this trap. And I'll give you an example.
A loved one dies and every year on the anniversary or should I say death aversary, some people use it as an excuse to be sad and sorrowful for the day.
What they're really doing is being selfish and they're lashing out and they can be just downright vindictive and not even realize it.
They're not really mourning. Right. They're bottling up their feelings and just letting out that little piece.
They're using it as an excuse basically to just do whatever and essentially treat people like garbage because they haven't fully dealt with the issue themselves.
They haven't truly fully mourned yet and turn things over to God. And every year it turns into this thing where they tell people, you know what, this is the anniversary of, you know, so and so.
And I'm not all right because of it. And they excuse themselves to behave poorly.
And often cases, these are the same people. They'll go out and, you know, they turn to drugs and alcohol on top of it to deal to to deal or not to deal with these issues, you know, just drown them out.
And I'll tell you now, that's not love. Matter of fact, in these cases, if the decedents were still alive today, they would be downright ashamed and embarrassed by what their loved one is doing in their name.
You know, especially if this is your mother or your father, you're not doing anything to honor their memory or to honor them. Right.
Let's face it, the vast majority of us, we don't want people, you know, moaning and wailing and crying over us for, you know, the end of time.
It's like, yeah, mourn me and then move on with your life. You know, in claiming to honor the dead, too many actually dishonor them.
And turning to Matthew, chapter five, verse four, in this section, this is a section that is normally called, you know, we refer to as the Beatitudes.
So if you hear that, that that that little term, that little piece of Christian ease, the Beatitudes, this is that section right here.
And this verse specifically that we're looking at, the word says, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Again, it is said, you know, comfort is said here. It is said comfort, specifically comforted. Right.
And this is because the Lord is our comforter. You'll notice that the word says those who mourn, not those who cry, those who whine, those who lash out, but those who mourn.
And there is a difference. In one case, you're looking at an act and the other is someone actually taking the step in healing.
And I'm going to provide examples here. All right. Matter of fact, dating all the way back to ancient times.
And this is something that's still in existence today. All right. You can actually get professional criers.
These are hired people who fill in seats at funerals and related services, you know, and they cry and they play the role of a mourner.
They take part in the various things that are going on. Right. But, you know, just the same, they're actors.
And believe it or not, family members and friends can do the same thing and fill in that same role, but without the pay.
And they do all the things that are expected as a mourning friend or a mourning family member. Right.
Another example here. Matter of fact, the first time I witnessed this myself. Right.
It was I went out to Zuni, Zuni, New Mexico. A family member had passed away.
The body was brought out, placed in the traditional position and location. Chairs were all pulled out. Food was prepared, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, some people were clearly mourning throughout the day. You know, they're very sad. Tears were being shed.
You know, they were going through the process. There is no doubt about it.
However, there were many others that were sitting in that room and they're laughing and they're carrying on like it's another family gathering.
Right. Almost like a family reunion. And then at a specified time, everybody comes into this room and they take their seat.
Nothing's really said. Right. It's just kind of the ceremonial stuff that's done.
And all of a sudden, just like that. Right. The alligator tears commence and there's moaning and wailing the whole nine yards.
And then even faster than it all started, they just stop. They stopped.
And then they went right back to what they were doing just minutes before as if nothing had just happened.
You know, the first time I saw this, I thought, man, this is weird. Right.
But then after seeing it a second, a third, fourth times and on and on, you know, I've witnessed this several times now.
It was very obvious, very quickly what was happening.
People were playing the role of what they believe they're supposed to do in a given setting.
Oblivious to the fact that they're playing a role and living out a lie.
All right. Like I said, you do have your mourners. You have people who mourn and we all should mourn.
You know, and you could tell the people who are mourning, they're processing a plethora of emotions, shock, denial, pain, guilt, sadness, confusion, hurt, anger.
That's a big one. Loneliness.
But just to name a small handful of the emotions that we all deal with when we go through the mourning process.
You know, some people, they try to bottle them up. Others just let it flow.
However, dealing with these emotions and these thoughts are essential.
No harboring them for an anniversary date to let loose of small doses like I was mentioning earlier.
See, this is the God is our comforter.
These are who we need to be at some point, are the people who turn to God and are dealing with these things.
You know, as we've seen twice now, God is our comforter.
And the word says this in multiple other places throughout the Bible as well. New Testament and old.
Turning to John 14 verses 15 through 17.
Jesus says, If you love me, keep my commandments.
And I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another helper, that he may abide with you forever.
The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him.
But you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
Now, depending on the translation that you read, when you look at the word helper, this word might be translated as advocate or comforter.
When we truly accept Jesus as Lord of our lives, we turn to him for everything.
He is first and foremost, right?
The word tells us here that we need to stop and pray to the Father.
In other words, we need to talk to Jesus.
John 14 verse 6 states, Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
So in other words, we need to take our hurt and our pain and the of the emotions that we're feeling and going through.
And we need to take it all to Jesus.
We need to take it to Jesus.
And when we truly accept him, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit guides us and comforts us.
This is why you see people that, yes, they're mourning, but they're at peace with what they're doing as well.
Right?
You don't see them just absolutely shredded.
And they're not just statues either.
You know, they're dealing with stuff, but you could tell there's still a certain peace about them.
In Psalm 119 verse 50, the word says, This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.
And in Psalm 147 verse three, he heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.
Second Corinthians chapter one verse three, Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies.
And God of all comfort.
And in Matthew 11 verse 28, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
When we talk to Jesus and we trust in him fully, we find peace in the darkness.
We find light in the darkness.
We will find healing where we didn't know that there was any.
And we will find a bright new day waiting for us when we get through it.
You see, death, death is a storm that's all around us.
And it's one of the harder ones at that.
So it's easy to get caught up in it and not see the way out.
And what happens is when this when we get caught up in the storm, we tend to lean on our animal instincts instead of turning to Jesus.
And again, you know, just I'm going to provide an example.
When a storm is moving in, how the cows react?
Well, they try to run from it.
What do people do?
Well, they run and they look for ways to get out of it.
It's all a bit panics, really like, oh, no, I don't want to get wet.
Well, there's a storm coming in. It's about to get nasty out.
And they run. So let me get out of this.
You know, we've all been to the store at some point when there's a hard rain coming in and you have people just standing there in the doorway because they don't even want to go out to their car.
Right.
And then you have the bison.
Bison have a very different approach.
When the storm is coming in, the bison turns to look at the storm.
And once they see it, they run headlong right into it.
It deals with it right then and right there.
And as a result, the bison spends less time in the storm.
Meanwhile, the cows take the storm's beating.
Instead of being level headed and trusting what needs to happen.
It sets itself up for failure, which is what we do when we don't deal with our grief and we don't mourn as we should.
We shouldn't be trying to bury our feelings. We should we shouldn't be avoiding or ignoring or bottling them up.
What we need is to look the storm in the eyes and deal with it right then and there.
We need to take it to Jesus and let him guide us through the storm.
We should keep our eyes on him.
Turning to Matthew chapter 14 verses 28 through 31, the word says, Lord, if it's you, Peter replied, tell me to come to you on the water.
Come, he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, cried out, Lord, save me.
Immediately, Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.
You of little faith, he said.
Why did you why did you doubt?
You see, grief and mourning, it's a process. It takes time.
However, when we let go of our pride and we turn to Jesus and we trust in him,
then like the bison, we get through the storm a lot faster and we get back to enjoying the blessings in our life.
It's not to say we're not going to continue to feel the loss.
But we're at peace.
However, when we take our eyes off of him, like Peter did, and we focus on the storm that's going on around us, we try to do things our own way.
We fall.
We get sucked into what's all around us and we don't heal.
We spend more time taking a beating from that storm from grief than what we're supposed to.
Don't be the cow.
Take your baggage to Jesus.
And make him your focus.
And you'll find healing and peace beyond words when you do that.
Because he loves you and he wants to help you.
But only if you'll let him.
Remember, you are blessed and you are loved.
Now go and be the church.
Thank you all for joining us here today at Healing Scars with Pastor Burton.
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