Grief: The Deepest Well of Blessing
Preface
To the natural mind the ways of God are paradoxical beyond comprehension (Isa 55:8-9). In his kingdom “first” and “last” are reversed (Mark 9:35; 10:31). Long these lines, I have long sensed that prophecies of a “nameless, faceless” revival ring true, because they reflect the marred crucified Lord of glory (Isa 52:14; 53:2). The prophetic teaching below is grounded on this foundation.
Background
There is a whole lot of shaking going on across the world! Pentecost Sunday was a crazy- good day. First, I received a video clip of a Movement Day event, where Peter McHugh from Melbourne gave a deep exposition of the trinitarian unity into which we are called as Church. I believe it was Ian Shelton, via Toowoomba who closed with a profound confession in prayer, “we have failed to receive your glory” (John 17:22). Then I saw an email sent me from an older American brother which read, “Only at the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. have I witnessed so much racial tension. The economic crises caused by the Corona virus shutdown has most affected those with the lowest paying jobs many of whom are ethnic minorities. John, the prosperity Gospel endemic in the “God only for Me” of the popular churches in the United States is proving to be the curse and aberration of the truth the Bible warns it will be.” Then there was info on the Prepare meetings coming up in Central Australia in 2020 spearheaded by Indigenous people. Then followed a prophetic word from the “Young Deborahs”. Then at 1pm we had the Global Day of Prayer event on Zoom, with folk praying from S. Africa through to Brazil. From 5pm we had our own state-wide Prayer Together WA with dozens of pray-ers livestreaming. Overall, a torrent of prayer, praise, and unity. At the very end of this presentation Ps. Steve Davis remarked that the Lord had seen “every tear wept”. My sense was that the Spirit had something more to say about this, about grief especially.
A Grief Without Beginning
The Bible isn’t afraid of grief, because the Lord of all is himself a griever. This first becomes apparent early in Genesis, “the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land…for I am sorry that I have made them.”” (Gen 6:6-8). It is universally true that the greater the attachment the greater the grief. We mourn more over a lost parent/spouse/child than over a deceased pet. The Creator mourns from his heart, because the rebels who have lost his glory (Rom 3:23) were destined to be his children (Luke 3:38). But something much more profound concerning grief is at work here inside of the divine nature. We must discern a sadness in God’s heart far before the Fall of Adam.
Adam is but “a prototype of the Coming One.” (Rom 5:14) i.e. Christ. And Jesus is “the Lamb who was slaughtered from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). From eternity, the Father was grieving the loss of his Son to be given up for all the lost sons and daughters of humanity. This became real to me some years ago as I was praying for a young woman who had recently been diagnosed with a form of chemically induced infertility. She was in deep grief. As I prayed for her, I had a clear sense that the Lord identified with her condition; I could sense his mourning over all the children he had never had. As I prayed this out, she said she had always had an awareness that God somehow understood her pain, but now was able to receive his empathic presence. God’s eternal grief raises a sharp question; how was he able to make the decision to create knowing the immeasurable pain that would flow from such a choice?
The answer lies within Paul’s comforting words to the Thessalonian Christians about their departed believing friends, “we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (1 Thess 4:13). Grief in the world means mourning the loss of that which will never return, “worldly grief produces death” (2 Cor 7:10), this is a grief characterised by hopelessness. From eternity however the Lord’s grief has motivated him to plan, purpose and perform the creation of a universe in which there can never be the loss of anyone in his love (Rom 8:28-30). This is the infallible new creation, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”” (Rev 21:4-5). Understanding this means seeing that godly grief “is the deepest well of blessing”. In the overall plan of God, the ultimate purpose (telos) of grief is the release of resurrection life.
The Deepest Grief of All
Jesus prophesied of kingdom realities, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” (Matt 5:4). Ultimately, he was speaking of himself, but beyond that he was prophesying the truth for all in him. This is at central the message of Revelation. When John ascends to heaven he has a vision of the throne room of God, but something is wrong. “I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” (Rev 5:4). The seer is sharing in the grief of all creation over its seemingly unhealable brokenness. Comfort comes only through the revelation of the Lamb, slaughtered and raised (Rev 5:6), who takes up the scroll and whose triumphant testimony is the message of the rest of the book. No matter how vast and devastating the apocalyptic trials of this age, they are fleeting in time but eternally purposeful in the overall plan of God.
The gladsome message of the New Testament is that the sorrow of God does not induce paralysis, it brings a revelation that the Lord’s grief over all that was lost in Eden has moved through the greatest of all conceivable griefs of the cross to release the resurrection power that will finally renew the cosmos. The joy of our resurrection sonship in Christ (Rom 8:11) limitlessly exceeds whatever was lost in Adam (Rom 5:20). Only on this basis could God the Father embrace a plan whose centrepoint is the anguish of the cross.
Isaiah prophesied that the Suffering Servant of the Lord would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa 53:3). Grief was never far away from Jesus. We hear of him withdrawing “to a desolate place by himself” (Matt 14:13) at the news of the execution of his kinsman John the Baptist. We see Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35), lamenting with tears at the coming destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). In hearing his words in Gethsemane, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matt 26:38), we appreciate that Jesus knew he must bear “our griefs” and carry “our sorrows” (Isa 53:4). He would shoulder our mourning in a manner and degree like we never could or ever desire to. It had to be as the prophet lamented, “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.” (Lam 1:12).
Christ’s great unmatched trauma is seen in the cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). This is a unique fulness of grief where deity and humanity are one in bereavement. The Lord loses his consciousness of the Father as the eternal Son of God and as the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim 2:5). Since the deeper the attachment the greater the grief, this grief is unfathomable in its scope, and so too in its saving power (Eph 2:7). Thankfully, the depths of his shared grief with the Father bear fruit in the new life emerging in resurrection. Holy grief is the doorway into the glory and immortality of eternal life (Rom 1:4; 2 Tim 1:10).
Sharing the Power of Divine Grief
Brokenness is the signpost hailing every coming move of God; just as it was characteristic of the “continuous revival” of New Testament Christianity. Unlike so many contemporary self-styled apostles, Paul was, like Jesus, a man “familiar with grief” (Isa 53:3). He speaks of a “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” (Rom 9:2) concerning the lost state of the Jewish people. Elsewhere he talks of inducing a “godly grief” that produces repentance and brings life (2 Cor 7:8-11). He understood that his apostolic authority would at times cause others to suffer.
Paul’s own experience of grieving seems somehow concentrated in his relationship with the Ephesian Church. In saying goodbye to their leaders Paul describes, “serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials… for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears…. when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. 37 And there was much weeping on the part of all…” (Acts 20:19, 31, 37). There seems to be a profound association between the grief of Paul’s heart as it is exposed to the Ephesians and the riches of Christ expounded in their letter (1:7, 18; 2:4, 7; 3:8; 3:16). (Compare the language of spiritual “riches” in Rom 9-11 (9:23; 10:12; 11:12, 33), flowing on from his confession of pain in 9:2.) The conclusion seems inescapable, as the apostle himself puts it, “So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory” (Eph 3:13). Suffering in obedience to Christ unveils his glory. If we believe the preaching and teaching of today’s pastors is weak, we should pray on their account, “Lord, give them grief!”
There is a wisdom from heaven at the heart of the apostolic ministry that most of us seem to have missed. In 2 Corinthians 6:4-10 Paul mixes together a string of seeming opposites about his life, like “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”. How is it possible to mix pain and jubilation? It is possible because Paul is a Spirit-filled man united with the life of God where the greatest sadness and the most exalted joy co-exist (Isa 63:9-10; Zeph 3:17). The apostle was a man who lived by faith at the core of his existence (Gal 2:20). He had faith to believe that his agonies would infallibly release the presence and power of the glory of God – which they repeatedly did. It’s no accident that Paul’s most exalted Christ-centred writings, Ephesians and Colossians, comes from his period of Roman imprisonment. This sort of faith is a great challenge to us but what Paul understood can dwell in us today.
There’s something extraordinarily persuasive about indwelling the sorrow of the Lord. I distinctly remember hearing Bill Hybels tell a story of a dialogue with a non-Christian friend with whom he shared. “I can’t bear the thought of being in heaven without you.” Unsurprisingly, the man later came to Christ. An indispensable dimension of the life of George Whitfield, making him perhaps the greatest English-speaking evangelist of all time, was that whenever he spoke of hell he wept. His heart was transparent to the heart of God so others could see the Father’s longing for them. In Christ we are called to share in the grief that is the well-spring of the healing of the universe.
A Grieving Spirit
Paul exhorts his beloved Ephesians, “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Eph 4:30). Charles Spurgeon calls this, a “very sweet expression”. He goes on to explain, “Love sweetens the anger, and turns the edge of it, not against the person, but against the offense.” Whilst our Father is no longer wrathful against our sin, the grief it causes him is as deep as the cross. He grieves because of the destruction my sin causes me, as well as others.
The Holy Spirit is grieving, inwardly labouring, over the desolate state of the Church. The relative absence of conversions, the infrequent miracles and healings, the lack of holy living and the general apathy of God’s people are signs of a grieving Spirit. Even more so, if the text we started with from Genesis is a lead (6:6-8), the Spirit grieves over the state of Australia. This has never been clearer to me. As we look to the death tallies through COVID19 in other parts of the world and at the race riots ripping through America (June 2020) we cannot miss that there is something in mainstream Aussie culture that obstinately refuses to “give God thanks” (Rom 1:21) for all the advantages we enjoy. Whilst photos of police officers kneeling and praying with protestors are emerging from across the United States this sort of public devotion in Australia is almost unthinkable. There seems more hope for a national revival in America than here. We are in a dangerous position.
The Church broadly acknowledges that the wisdom of God is crystallised and concentrated in the saving lowliness of the cross (1 Cor 1:17ff.), but very few appreciate that grief (sorrow, lamentation) in the Spirit of Christ, is one of the most powerful resources the Father has given his Body for the release of resurrection life.
Conclusion
“Revival” is bringing back to life that which has died. We long for this, but most of us struggle to traverse the unpleasant in-between stage between death and renewed life, grief. It is humanly impossible to desire grief for every fibre of our being recoils from it. By faith however Jesus embraced it (Mark 14:36; Heb 12:2). We, the Church, need an infusion of Spirit-filled faith to believe God for a greater share in the grief of Father and Son over the spiritual decline in our midst and the lost state of the world. The spiritual depth of a ministry/church can never exceed the depth of grief embraced for the gospel of Christ. We have been deceived about the place of grief in God’s overall purposes, we have failed to see it as a resource for new life beyond measure. “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Cor 2:10). The Holy Spirit longs to share with us the sorrows of God’s heart over all his lost children.
In Christ the words of the ancient Preacher are prophetically true, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.” (Eccl 7:3). This was the experience of Jesus in his passage from death to resurrection, it was the shape of the apostolic life and it has always been the trajectory through which the Lord revives his people. In heaven-sent grief we see things as God sees them, we turn from the trivia of our sins, abandon our useless idols and hunger for a pure heart. (Matthew 5:4 and 5:8 are inseparable.) May the Lord visit our fun-loving lifestyle addicted nation, and its Church, with an extraordinary gift of grief. In union with Jesus we can receive the high spiritual gift of sharing the sorrows of the world. This will prove to be the deepest well of blessing.