The TIME Approach to Grief Support (BOOK EXCERPT, PT 1-4)
The TIME Approach to Grief Support (BOOK EXCERPT, PT 1-4)
The Book Stop Blog is featuring excerpts from The TIME Approach to Grief Support by Edmund Ng and WinePress Publishing.
At the age of forty-nine, Jessie was an active and health- conscious mother of two children in their late teens. She had seldom complained of any sickness apart from an occasional headache. June 22, 2005 started as a normal working day for the both of us, but at 6 P.M., she came home feeling weak. When she vomited, I admitted her to the hospital. The doctors said she’d had a brain aneurysm—a rupture of the artery to her brain. She was pronounced dead in the early hours of the next morning.
Without warning, my whole world collapsed on me! Known as a loving couple, 
Prior to Jessie’s death, I was involved actively in and outside the church. Due to my involvements, we have many friends, and the three wake services were jam-packed with people. Many pastors and Christian leaders came and extended their condolences. However, the weeks and months that followed her death were a different story altogether! Many of my friends discreetly avoided me. Others talked to me superficially, acting as though nothing had happened. They did not mention my loss, or they quickly changed the subject. I could relate to C. S. Lewis, who once wrote after the loss of his wife, “Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers. To some, I’m worse than an embarrassment.”
A senior leader of the church I was then attending did visit me a week after the funeral. After a short while, this person ran out of words to say and started discussing the affairs of the church with me. As this was just several days after I had lost my dear wife, it was a time when I was not quite able to distinguish night from day, and helping to solve church problems was certainly far from my mind. A few others also came to visit, and while I appreciated those who visited me then, much of what they said did not help me to deal effectively with my grief.
Outwardly, I put up a brave front to show that I was doing fine. Like most Christian leaders, I thought that if I appeared weak and in need of help, people would think less of me, especially concerning my spirituality and leadership capabilities. In reality, I was crumbling inside. I was in deep pain and exceedingly lonely. I longed
for someone to understand what I was going through and to walk alongside me.
It dawned upon me that while our churches have no problem in conducting funerals, we are ill-equipped to follow-up with the bereaved to comfort and offer support on a competent, consistent, and comprehensive basis. It is perhaps the result of our prevailing church culture. We are more inclined toward programs, activities, corporatization, and celebration than giving individual attention and showing compassion to those who are hurting.
This should not be the case, for in God’s order of things, the strong are to help the weak. The Word of God clearly commands us to comfort those who mourn. As our God is the Father of compassion and comfort, He wants us to comfort those who need comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3, 4). We are the body of Christ, and so we have a responsibility that is critical to people’s healthy recovery from grief.
When I met and courted Pauline, a widow for fifteen years, we sensed even before our marriage that God had put us together and called us to the ministry of reaching out to people who are grieving over the loss of loved ones. We further sensed that God wanted to use us to restore this neglected area of our Christian lifestyle back to the churches. Therefore, we also understood that we need to motivate all Christians to be committed to supporting and caring for all who grieve and teach them how to do it.
Immediately after our honeymoon, in January of 2007, we launched the ministry of Grace to Grieving Persons (called GGP Outreach). Since then, we have ministered to large numbers of widows, widowers, grieving parents, and grieving children. I also have taught extensively on this subject in churches and seminaries and have spoken in national and international counseling seminars and
conferences.
In hindsight, I marvel at the perfect timing of God in calling the both of us to this ministry. For fifteen years, Pauline was wholeheartedly devoted to bringing up her son. The young lad lost his father when he was just one year old. Only in recent years was she more open to a second marriage. Her son is now a teenager, and he will be leaving home soon. So she would have been all alone when that happened.
On the ministry front, God has been preparing me for years for this higher calling. For six years before Jessie’s death, I served as a pastor and elder of a local church. Earlier than this, I would have felt inadequate and less equipped to embark on such an unusual ministry. On the other hand, if God had called me several years down the road, I may have passed my prime years to start and venture into a new undertaking.
In addition, God prepared our families. My two children and Pauline’s son are just old enough to understand and accept our marriage and adjust to one another as a closely-knit family.
More importantly, I came to understand what before had been mere head knowledge: we are not ready for a higher level of service to God until we totally have been crushed in the human spirit. Our Lord Jesus Himself had His own share of spiritual brokenness in rejection and betrayal before His final victory on the cross! The process serves to mold our character, as suffering brings about a spiritual brokenness that leads to greater dependence on God. For one whole year following the death of Jessie, I walked “through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps. 23:4a).
The TIME Approach to Grief Support (BOOK EXCERPT, PT 2)
The Book Stop Blog is featuring excerpts from The TIME Approach to Grief Support by Edmund Ng and WinePress Publishing.
God has His ways of putting us within His constraints to test and prepare us so that we will know that our faith and calling are authentic. The sudden and untimely death of our spouses can be considered one of His most intense ways. This is not to suggest that we should seek after such painful episodes in life, but when suffering is unavoidable, we should face and endure it by trusting that God has a larger purpose for us. In hindsight, I know that His larger purpose in my life was the birth of a ministry of compassion so neglected by our churches today.
Our vision is to see that all who grieve and mourn over a loss—whether it be the death of a loved one; a failed marriage; or the loss of health, property, investment, or employment—are ministered to by Christians. This can be on a one-on-one basis, through support groups operating in local churches, or from individual homes in every community. In this way, not only are we committed to attending to those in the body of Christ who are hurting, but also we are reaching out to grieving unbelievers in our communities. When such people are in the darkest hours of their lives, they are most open to the love, compassion, and good news of God.
Across every continent, more and more people are dying from accidents, cancer, heart attack, AIDS, and other diseases. Many bereaved people in grief are crying out for support in the most difficult times of their lives. Wars, famines; natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, and tsunamis; and epidemics like bird flu and H1N1, cause numerous deaths and much misery. While government, international agencies, disaster relief, and crisis intervention services may provide physical and financial aid at the organizational level, there is limited emotional support for individuals who mourn and grieve over losses after these types of traumatic events. Local churches are best placed to fill this role and be relevant to our society. Christians also must be equipped and ready to meet the opportunity and demand for such emotional and practical support services, even on a large scale, should the need arise.
Furthermore, in times of financial and economic uncertainty, more people will lose their jobs. Jobless people can get depressed easily. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the suicide rate dramatically increased. In the difficult times that we are now in, more and more people will need emotional support from us.
Although this book deals primarily with how to reach out to and comfort people who are grieving over the loss of a loved one, the same grief counseling principles will apply whether it is a death, a relational loss (like separation or divorce), or a material loss (wealth, job, possessions, health, etc.). Hence, this book is written for a number of reasons:
1. God commanded all Christians (not just ministers, pastors, and leaders) to comfort those who mourn and to visit widows and the fatherless. The body of Christ today is not doing it.
2. Most Christians are not reaching out to grieving people, not because they lack the compassion or concern for them, but because they lack the understanding, knowledge, and skills as to what to say and do.
3. Most Christian books on grief are written to help people who are grieving. They are not written to address how an ordinary Christian, as a fairly long-term commitment, can reach out and offer support to those who are grieving.
4. There are very few Christian books that are written from a first-hand account of an individual’s struggle with grief that combine personal experience, extensive professional counseling knowledge and skills, and the truth of God’s principles and promises. This book offers such a combination in one integrated and easy-to-apply approach that can teach and motivate the body of Christ to comfort those who mourn.
Even the Scriptures emphasize the importance of knowing what to say and how to comfort those who mourn; although, this is put to us in an indirect way. The passages in the book of Job tell us that his three friends made a mess of it when they tried to reach out to him after his great losses. They had good intentions, but they did a bad job because they had no access to such a book as this, and hence, they did not have the proper understanding, knowledge, and skills needed to help their friend. In the end, Job called them miserable comforters. We do not want anyone close to us to call us miserable comforters.
In churches these days, even the most conscientious ministers and pastors will not be able to meet the ongoing needs of the bereaved and grieving for comfort and support. Hence, this book is written for both the clergy and the laymen who want to learn how to comfort those who grieve. People who are grieving also will benefit much from reading this book, as they will learn how to grieve properly and more completely.
In addition, it should be noted that this book does not teach the reader how to pray for the bereaved or administer inner healing. I mention this because I am amazed to learn that some pastors send grieving people places for “inner healing” where they are asked to confess their sins and release forgiveness , and then they are prayed over to cut off generational curses. In grief, there are no quick fixes through deliverance! It is not something we cast out in Jesus’ Name.
The bereaved need comfort and support in their season of grief. What this book does do is teach us how to walk alongside them in their journey of grief with understanding, knowledge, and skills to help them recover healthily and completely. At the same time, we must point them to our God as the only source of lasting comfort and hope. Spiritual language in the book is minimized as much as possible so that the same principles can be applied, with some discretion, when reaching out to the nonbelievers in our communities.
Personally, I do not believe in doing any ministry unless I am specifically called by God and it is for His sole purpose. There must be no other agenda, and all glory belongs to God! I am blessed that Pauline is gifted not only in prayer and intercession but also in encouraging others. We complement each other perfectly in this work. Our three children, Colin, Pearly, and Yong Shen, stand by us completely. They are among the first to give out of their own pocket money to the Widows’ Fund, which was set up by GGP Outreach to help widows in financial difficulty.
I wish to thank GGP’s spiritual oversight team, Pastor Dr. Chew Weng Chee, Pastor Dr. Rosy Leong, and Pastor David Goh, for their encouragement, guidance, and prayers. Also, my special thanks go to the Anglican Archbishop of South East Asia, Yong Ping Chung (retired), for writing the Foreword. He sat through one of our teaching seminars and later told me that he caught the vision of our ministry.
The TIME Approach to Grief Support (BOOK EXCERPT, PT 3)
The Book Stop Blog is featuring excerpts from The TIME Approach to Grief Support by Edmund Ng and WinePress Publishing.
Biblical Perspective
Our God is a God of love, compassion, and comfort. So God has a special concern for those who are needy and hurting. In two places in the Bible, Deuteronomy 10:18 and Psalm 68:5, God specifically declares that He is the defender of widows and father to the fatherless. His special interest toward widows and the fatherless is echoed in many other passages of Scripture, including Deuteronomy 14:29; Isaiah 1:17; and Jeremiah 49:11.
In line with this unique characteristic of God, the Bible consistently reminds us of our responsibility to care for widows and the fatherless, and by implication, all others who are hurting and in hardship following the loss of their loved ones.
Old Testament Teaching and Practice
In ancient times, people would come, sometimes from afar, to mourn with and comfort the bereaved when someone in the family died. These people who came included “sons and daughters” (Gen. 37:35), “relatives” (1 Chron. 7:22), “friends” (Job 2:11), and “servants” (2 Sam. 10:2). After the loss of his children and his possessions, the Bible tells us that Job’s three friends came “to mourn with him and to comfort him” (Job 2:11 kjv). This story perhaps is known to many of us. Note that the incident took place during Job’s period of mourning and not just at the time of the funeral and burial of the deceased.
We have limited indications of the duration of mourning apart from information in the Bible that the Egyptians mourned for Jacob for seventy days (Gen. 50:3) and the Israelites mourned for Aaron for thirty days (Num. 20:29). The tradition in Israel until today is that they will mourn for the death of a family member for as long as one year by abstaining from merrymaking.
God’s exhortation in Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort, comfort my people,” was issued to the leaders of Israel near the close of the Jewish captivity in Babylon. The Hebrew word used here for comfort, nacham, has its root in the word “sigh,” meaning to groan or grieve with. Its meaning also connotes turning one to the truth. It is the same word that is used in the context of comforting those who mourn over the loss of loved ones, as seen in Job 2:11 and the other Old Testament verses mentioned above. Therefore, God’s call to comfort the grieving covered consoling both the Israelites who were mourning because of their sinfulness and those suffering from the loss of their loved ones, possessions, and nation.
Likewise, in the context of God’s prophetic proclamation in Isaiah 61:1, 2, “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me ... to comfort all who mourn,” comforting those who mourn refers to those who mourn over sin as well as those who mourn the loss of loved ones. The same Hebrew word, nacham, is used.
Whether nacham refers to mourning over sin or the loss of a loved one, the gospel of Jesus has afforded abundant sources of consolation. So in the New Testament, God’s command to comfort widows and others who mourn over the loss of a loved one becomes clearer and more directive in content and application to reflect that quality of God’s character as the defender of widows and father to the fatherless.
New Testament Teaching and Practice
Evidently, the Old Testament practice of comforting those who mourned over the loss of a loved one was practiced in Israel in the days of Jesus. The passage in John 11 tells us that Jesus went to Bethany because Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary, was very sick. When Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus already had been dead and buried for four days. Verse 19 says, “Many Jews had come to Martha and Mary
to comfort them in the loss of their brother.”
Jesus Himself alluded to the compassionate aspect of God’s character that comforts those who mourn when He applied the Messianic passage in Isaiah 61 to Himself, proclaiming, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me ... to heal the broken-hearted” (Luke 4:18 kjv). On another occasion, when He spoke to His disciples during the Sermon on the Mount, He said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). The meaning is likewise twofold and does not preclude the proclamation that those who mourn over the loss of loved ones will be comforted.
Indeed, the apostle Paul pointed out to us this same aspect of God’s character when he called God “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” in 2 Corinthians 1:3. In the next verse, Paul went further and said that God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble.” The dynamics of how this works out in practice then become clear: because Jesus has come, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted; for after His death and resurrection, the body of Christ becomes the channel through which God will comfort those who are in need of comfort.
In Romans 12:15, Paul even went so far as to issue a direct command from God to comfort those who are in need of comfort. He exhorts us to “mourn with those who mourn.” The King James Version puts this as “weep with those who weep.” The Greek word for mourn or weep is klaio, meaning to wail aloud. God expected that the body of Christ will have so much compassion for and empathy with those who are grieving over a loss that we will go to the extent of wailing aloud with them in their sorrow!
In fact, Paul repeated the clarion call from God to reach out to those in need of comfort in 1 Thessalonians 4:18 (kjv). He stated, “Wherefore comfort one another.” And in almost the next breath, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11, he said, “Wherefore comfort yourselves together.” It is almost a resonance of God’ s call in Isaiah 40:1, “Comfort, comfort my people.”
Another apostle, James, made this call more explicit when he wrote, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27 kjv). To paraphrase this in reverse, if we are not committed to visiting grieving widows and the fatherless and bringing relief to them in their time of distress, our faith in God is neither genuine nor sincere.
We see in the Bible that in accordance with God’s instructions, the early church continued to take care of widows. First Timothy 5:16 reads, “If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.” In other words, it was the practice of the churches in the early days to help the widows according to God’s command, but due to their limited resources, priority was to be given to the more needy ones.
The TIME Approach to Grief Support (BOOK EXCERPT, PT 4)
The Book Stop Blog is featuring excerpts from The TIME Approach to Grief Support by Edmund Ng and WinePress Publishing.
Our Modern Church Culture
God’s unique instruction to churches is “Give proper recognition to widows” (1 Tim. 5:3). The passage in Acts 6:1–7 tells us that the early church had organized leadership structures to care for widows. The wider implication, as we have seen, is that churches are expected to reach out and help bring relief to all who are grieving and suffering after the losses of loved ones.
However, our modern churches today have to a large extent neglected such a ministry of compassion, one that is at the heart of God’s character. Very few churches equip their leaders in advance by educating them in how to minister to and help such hurting and needy people in a consistent, competent, and organized manner. As a result, they often are caught unprepared and do not know how best to comfort and offer support to the family of someone who has died.
As stated earlier, when Jesus arrived at Bethany four days after Lazarus’ death and burial, many Jews were there at the house of Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother (John 11).
Today, we typically shy away from spending individual time with the bereaved family after the hustle and bustle of the funeral is over. However, it is often in the weeks, months, or even years following the death of a beloved spouse or family member that the deep pain, loneliness, and hardship sets in. This is when the family members are most in need of ministry and assistance.
The modern church culture often exhibits an attitude of unconcern and lack of commitment toward those who grieve and suffer following the death of a loved one. Bereaved Christians generally feel neglected and isolated by the body of Christ. The result is tragic! Dr. William Worden of the Harvard Medical School reported, “Earlier, people would have looked to religious leaders and religious institutions for help with their grief ... people (now) turn to the health care system and the mental health system for support and for care that previously would have come from other sources.”2
Some of the reasons why churches today are not committed to reaching out to bereaved families may be as follows:
1. We are afraid of not saying the right words. We take the easy way out and avoid saying anything at all rather than run the risk of hurting them by our insensitive or invasive words. Many people who came to us for ministry typically remarked that their pastors did visit them once or twice but soon ran out of words to say and quickly offered to pray for them. Often, the pastor felt inadequate and never came back again.
2. Churches these days are so corporatized with programs and activities for the congregation that we are not prepared for consistent and fairly long-term commitments to individuals who require our personal attention.
3. Most churches today are so focused toward celebration and triumphalism that grief and suffering are inevitably viewed as unpleasant and defeatist.
4. Some may harbor a subconscious fear of death and grieving, as if loss and grief can be contagious. Sadly, such cultural superstitions still affect the behavior of many Christians.
5. We lack teaching and training on this subject.
Seen from another perspective, we generally have no problem in obeying the first part of Romans 12:15, which says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice,” but somehow we seem to ignore what follows immediately, “... mourn with those who mourn.” Selective obedience to the Word of God is still disobedience. It is a sin of omission. James 4:17 says, “Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
We already have noted that the early church cared for widows according to God’s command, but due to the church’s limited resources, they had to give priority to the more needy widows. Churches today generally have much more resources, especially financially. So how much more does God expect us to reach out to help and care for widows, the fatherless, and others who are bereaved?
Nevertheless, I do believe that an awareness of our responsibility and present neglect toward those who are grieving and mourning is beginning to emerge. God is equipping individuals all over the world to restore this neglected ministry back to the churches in these last days.
Jesus would leave the ninety-nine sheep to look for the one lost sheep (Luke 15:1–7). Although the context was with respect to a lost sinner, the principle is the same. Are we prepared to leave the ninety-nine sheep on which the spotlight is shining to attend quietly to the one sheep that is needy and hurting?
Leave a comment and / or appreciate the article!
CLICK HERE to read more:» http://www.radio-elshaday.de/
CLICK HERE to read more:» http://www.radio-megapower.de/
CLICK HERE to read more:» http://christliche-radiosender.blogspot.com/
CLICK HERE to read more:» http://radiomegapower-nonstop.blogspot.de/
Posted by: Daniel Ioan Notar *DJ_DANY*
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen