The Grieving Christian

July 11, 2023

Life can be tough. Ever since Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden, the

world has been broken. Your body doesn’t work perfectly, the weather

doesn’t work perfectly, the economy doesn’t work perfectly, no

relationship works perfectly. And, life is full of losses.

In order to face life… the real, raw, hard and unavoidable seasons of

life that we will ALL go through (because we are all human) and we live

in a fallen world… we need to understand some truths about life and

grief.

First, God doesn’t expect you to be happy all the time.

There is this myth that Christians should be always smiling, always happy, always cheerful.

In fact, the Bible says, “There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens . . . a time to weep

and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4 NIV).

Sometimes the only appropriate, logical response to life is grief.

Expressing grief isn’t lack of faith. Expressing grief is healthy.

The Bible says you are to grieve over your losses, including your

disappointments, your sin, the suffering in the world, and your friends

who are spiritually lost. God doesn’t expect you to be happy all the

time. In fact, he wants you to be intentional in your grief. 

Second, grief is essential to your health.

Grief is a painful emotion, but it’s also a healthy and helpful emotion. It can be valuable when you allow yourself to grieve.

Maybe you were hurt many years ago growing up. Maybe your parents

divorced. Maybe you were abused. Maybe you were hurt by something

somebody said about you. As a child, you didn’t know how to grieve in a

healthy way, so you just pushed it down deep inside you.

You need to go back and grieve over it. Why? Because if you don’t

grieve, you get stuck emotionally, and you spend the rest of your life

reacting to something that happened a long time ago and taking it out on

the people around you now. It’s unhealthy!

David talked about this in Psalm 32:3: “When I kept things to myself, I felt weak deep inside me. I moaned all day long” (NCV).

The bad things that happen to you are not your choice. But grief is a choice. Jesus grieved. 

You may say, “I don’t like feeling sad.” Not everything that’s

helpful and healthy feels good. You’ve got to let yourself mourn losses

so that you can move on with your life and receive God’s blessing.

Matthew 5:4 - Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.