How to Experience Joy Even After Losses and Grief (Your Grief will Turn to Joy) | Noah James Wiebe

This episode is actually a talk given by Noah James Wiebe at Highfield Baptist Church around Christmastime in 2025, but no matter when you're tuning in, this powerful message could be one of the most encouraging things you listen to today.

Sharing from his story of complex loss and ultimate restoration, Noah James Wiebe shares how you, too, can experience a defiant joy that flows even out of pain, preaching a message out of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Bible.

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Transcript

Noah James Wiebe: 0:07

Father God, we thank you. Thank you so much for Marco and for that wonderful time of connecting with you in prayer. Father, we pray that you would uh bless our hearts today. During this joy Sunday, help us to tune in to what your Spirit is saying through your word today. Help us to cooperate with you in your removal of heavy things from our souls so that we can enjoy your light and easy yoke. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, hi. My name's Noah. I recently became a member here at Highfield United Baptist Church, and apparently they just let anybody do this. Obviously, I'm joking. I work in ministry here in the Freedom Initiative each week. And so you can ask me about that at another time. But uh today uh we're gonna be talking about uh joy. Today is the Advent Sunday of joy, of joy, the time where we recall and act in remembrance as it pertains to Jesus' advent, as it pertains to the anticipation of Jesus' arrival to earth the first time, as well as rejoice in the reality of our hope for his very soon return in the future. I'm not sure about you, um, but uh there are many things that threaten my joy throughout the year. Threaten it anyway. There are many things, complex losses, removal of relationships that I thought were secure, difficult seasons financially, moments where relationships, even in my own home, seem strained with my children or perhaps with another immediate family member in another household. Grief, sorrow, loss, difficulty comes to us in all kinds of forms, through all kinds of avenues, and each seek to take away our joy. But Jesus, in his discourse to his disciples, his sort of last words before going to be arrested and put on trial and crucified for our sins, he reminded his disciples that grief in this life is temporary. It is not meant to have the final word in our life, our emotional life, our mental life, our sense of our hope. Rather, we must have faith that our grief will turn to joy, just as his disciples would experience a grief that turned to joy. So today we're gonna talk about John. Uh we're gonna we're gonna be in John chapter 15 as well as chapter 16. Um it's easy sometimes to sort of slice up scripture, but really a lot of scripture is meant to be taken in as one big discourse, and those chapter and verse references uh are really meant to help us with reference. This entire conversation is a long, drawn-out thing that starts in John chapter 13 and is capped off at John chapter 16, verse 33. So we're gonna read it together and then we'll we'll pick it apart. Okay. But before we do, I'm not sure about you, but hospitals can be a time, a place of mixed emotions. Amen? You can go to hospitals to experience the greatest joys of your life. A moment where the doctor brings a good report, the moment where a family member is getting out of surgery well, alive, and healthy, a moment where a new baby, or two new babies, or three, maybe there's stress and joy together, at the hospital. It's a place that represents all kinds of different things for us. For some of us, it's just a workplace. For some of us, it's a place to recover even mentally. For some of us, it is a safe place. For most of us, it's a place we'd rather not visit. In this very hospital, the St. John Regional Hospital, my first wife was coding on the operating table on July 2nd, around 11.56 a.m., 2018. They weren't sure if they were going to be able to recover her life for all of the seven doctors and the 23 other doctors who were attending in a council for advice for this very, very strange case study and a very, very strange disease that none of the other doctors had ever seen was threatening to take her very life. She had just given birth to my firstborn son who was up here singing. One of them was my firstborn son was up here singing. She had given birth to Levi. James chapter 1, verse 17 really gets really clear when you meet your first baby. Every good and perfect gift, right? But sometimes every good and perfect gift comes from the ret comes with the retaliation of the enemy. And so here we were. I was in the hospital waiting room, uh, or in the hospital waiting area in the day surgery uh waiting hallway, basically, waiting for uh news as to see to see what would happen. The surgery had already been going on for about two hours, and they recovered her life. Only to have her flatline a second time. For her, this grief is eternal. This loss is forever. I've lost my daughter. It's over. My father-in-law sitting next to me, also overwhelmed, but not showing it. He's a pretty strong guy. But no matter how strong you are, no matter how resilient you are, no matter how enduring you are, or how well respected you are at your job, death has a way of leveling the playing field for us, of reminding us that all of us are human. To dust we came, from dust we came and to dust we return. But Jesus offers us a better word through his encouragement to his disciples. In John chapter 15, he's already been talking to the disciples about what it means to love God. Love God and experience a relationship with God in which he makes his home within you by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. This is absolutely earth-shattering news. No Jewish man would have thought that God would take up residence in his being. But here's Jesus saying, If you love me, you will obey my teaching, and my father will love you, and we will make our home with you. Once he gets to John chapter 15, they've actually already left the upper room, supposedly, and started walking, most likely, towards the Mount of Olives. Jesus walking past probably some vineyard or other trellises of crop starts to talk about vines and vine dressers. This practice of husbandry is very common in the ancient world for making sure that branches that are bearing good fruit are pruned properly so that they may bear more fruit. And Jesus uses this as a metaphor. My father is the gardener, I'm the vine, and you're the branches. He cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit. And every fruit that every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful. He starts to introduce this idea that the pain of productivity, the pain of productivity, precedes the pleasure of the produce. And then he says this as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this, so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants or employees, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, so that you might go and bear fruit. Fruit that will last, and so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. This is my command. Love each other. As he went on in this dialogue with his disciples, allowing them to ask questions, cut in with interruptions. Eventually he gets to this part in John chapter 16. He's talked a little bit about a number of different things. He's already mentioned the advocate of truth, the helper who would come to you and make sure that you would know I'm not leaving you as an orphan or as orphans in the world. Rather, I'll come to you. How? Well, by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will come. The Holy Spirit will testify, and you yourselves will testify, he says at the end of John 15. He begins to talk about how the very people that should be loving, accepting, and welcoming them on account of their message of the Messiah coming, will reject them and even believe that murdering them is God's special will, that they're doing God a service by killing them. Brutal. But their grief is not in feeling hated. They've already experienced quite a bit of that by now. Their grief is coming from one other thing that Jesus says: I am going away. And where I go, you will not come until later. And they are consumed with grief. This God man, this Messiah, who they know has come from God, is leaving them and they are absolutely baffled. Have you ever found grief baffling? Have you ever found yourself saying, it just doesn't make sense? What how could how could God allow this? Well, here's the disciple sitting in that exact feeling. How could our Savior, our Messiah, be literally leaving? Going back to the Father? What does that even mean? Even Thomas brought up, Lord, we don't know where you are going. So how can we know the way? So they're filled with grief. And then he says, This very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn. While the world rejoices, you will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy, that a child is born into the world. So with you, now is your time of grief. But I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. In that day you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly, I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask, and you will receive, and your joy will be complete. There's a lot to unpack here, but what we want to focus on is what is Jesus saying to the disciples? What does it mean? And how are we supposed to take it into this Christmas, 2025? Because sometimes these passages get very misconstrued. We think that this grief is somehow just sort of a broad strokes kind of approach. Well, you you you lost this family member. You said goodbye to that situation, and so don't worry, your grief will be covered over. Nothing wrong with believing that God can work all things out for good. But what is Jesus trying to get across in this passage? He says, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. I've highlighted it in yellow for you. For those of you who are colorblind, love is highlighted. As the father is loved me, so I've loved you. Remain in my love, keep my commands, and you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love. There's this theme of remaining or abiding. This idea of abiding is like setting up your tent, like going in and like living in it every day. Keep my commands, which he's already kind of covered. He's kind of already started to unveil this and unfold it to them. But the idea is that if you want your joy to be complete, to be full, then you must love God and love me and remain in my love. Later on, John would write a letter to most likely disciples in Ephesus, saying, We know and rely on the love that God has for us. He goes on to say, What great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. Baffling things to Jewish hearers in that moment. But not all that baffling for men who had grown up being taught day after day to recite the Shema, which says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and all your strength. So love wasn't outside of the realm of familiarity as far as it pertained to experiencing blessing. But here's Jesus reiterating it as the Jewish Messiah. Men of Israel, if you are to bear fruit in me, you must remain in my love. Love is the common denominator. In this way, the world will know that you're my disciples, he says in John chapter 13. If you love one another. So he clears this up right away about this idea of experiencing the byproduct, really, of a fulfilled joy. Because really it's a joy that they already had. They already had a joy by loving Jesus. They already had a joy by knowing that the Messiah had come to them. They already had a joy. And Jesus says, if you want your joy to be full, if you want your joy to be complete, if you want your joy to be fulfilled, that word there really just means to like fill the rest of it up. If you had a pitcher of water and a cup, if you were to fill it all the way, that's the word complete. To fill it right up to the brim. And so Jesus is like, you already have joy. But in this way, I'm telling you these things so that in me you may experience my joy. My joy may be in you. In you, infused within you. It's like when you make a cup of tea, and the substance of that tea completely permeates whatever water you put into it. And so Jesus is saying if you want a completely fully brewed joy, then you will have it if you remain in my love. In my love. And then he goes on to talk about suffering, brutality at the hands of people who will hate you. He says they'll hate you for no reason. But keep in mind that they hated me first. There's comfort in that. Because many of us sometimes we have experiences where we are hated by people. We're even hated by members of our own family. The scriptures tell us, even in the prophets in the Old Testament, the members of your own household, otherwise your own tribe, so to speak, will be your enemies. We experience this animosity and hostility, especially when loss, accelerates some of those negative feelings that we have towards one another in families. But we get confused, baffled when we experience hatred and we experience that kind of complex grief that comes from saying goodbye to a family member that we once trusted and confided in. When Jesus gets into John chapter 16 and he begins to talk about their grief that the disciples are experiencing, he doesn't talk just about a simple loss. He's talking about watching their actual hope, the personification of their future being nailed to a cross like a criminal. It was the worst way to die, you know, not just for the person who was experiencing it, but for anyone who is associated with that person. What Jesus was telling them was that very soon you're about to experience a grief like no other kind. And many of us experience grief of all kinds. There's simple grief. And it's never grief is never really simple. But let's say proper grief. Grief proper. We lose someone we love, we lose a favorite animal, and they're gone. We have to live with that wound. And someday we'll still have a scar, but the pain will subside in bouts over time and come back in other times, and we wrestle with that. But there's also complex grief. A grief that doesn't necessarily even have a pinpoint. A grief that is so nuanced that even in our own souls we don't understand it. All of us carry both grief proper and a complex kind. Similar to what the disciples were about to experience, but they were already starting to experience a grief that would yet to be fulfilled because Jesus was telling them, now is your time of grief. You're grieving now. Very truly, I tell you, you're going to weep and wail. He says, This is going to get worse from here, my brothers. But what he's really trying to do is not set them up for failure. Rather, he's trying to set them up for peace. He's trying to set them up to understand that this is all part of the plan. This is all part of what's necessary. All of us experience situations that seem absolutely senseless and ridiculous. Absurd to our own human understanding. But in God's eyes they can be worked out for good, for greater good. My wife on the operating table actually survived. God, I believe, brought her back. Baffled medical staff and doctors worked tirelessly as well. In a five-hour and 46 minute surgery they were able to recover her life. But on account of the septic organs, on account of the death that had woven its way into the cells of her body from her head to her toes on account of the sores that appeared almost like Job on account of the fact that these different equipment for having another child is dead. They had to remove her uterus. It was a full and total hysterectomy. And what that led into was a reality that my wife may have survived the operation, but she died in another way. And then the complex grief continued in that raising a child after having endured four surgeries in total to save her life would have meant that her capacity for caring for our little one was essentially diminished. Even at night because of the pain medication she was taking she would not wake up to tend to the child. She lost her ability to nurse. She lost her ability to look forward to the moments where she would be spending time with her child in simplicity. It was two months before we ended up returning home. And not to mention the fact that we had to live with our in-laws for a couple months which was harder than the hospital frankly nothing against them. It's just tough living with people you know what I mean when you have a baby it's just the truth. It's just the truth and also dad has to go through some adjustments of expectation as well. Very big adjustments very big adjustments. And that grief made its way into our very souls. About a year and a half later we were in a new place serving in a new place enjoying moment after moment with our child only to make it only to have it feel like sand running through our fingers because we knew that every new moment of joy was met with the understanding that this would never happen for us again. Despite all our years of dreaming and desiring for having a large family now we just have this. Now it might seem trite to us but don't diminish another person's grief. What matters to them versus what matters to you might look different. But their experience of that loss is very real just as it would be if you were to lose that precious thing. And for us we had to say goodbye not only to a summer with our brand new baby which was supposed to be met with joy but also years of experiences that would now be muddled with this little bit of death and we were broken I remember one day crying on the Christian floor and my wife not having the emotional capacity to go there at all just numb. And we began to pray and we said God if it's ever possible we we we we want to adopt we already had it in mind possibly to adopt we started getting this name Jackson Jackson Jackson it just came to mind you know sometimes when you're praying it comes to mind you're like oh I can't forget that dentist appointment and what's that name Jackson about I don't know but it became a theme. Every time we'd pray about adoption this name Jackson would come up and this this hope was born within me where I begin to say Brittany I don't know how to I don't know if this even makes sense but I believe that God will open up the door for us to adopt and we will have the opportunity to adopt I believe this name Jackson is gonna be is going to be the one now there's a little bit of delusion in that isn't it in that moment and yet it was hope nonetheless. And for me even if it would come 10 years later which is what the adoption workers told us it would take then I believed that God would come through that our grief would one day turn to joy which is what Jesus was trying to convince his disciples of in that moment he was both setting the stage for them to experience the most complex and unyielding grief that they'd ever experienced while also experience a hope in the midst of it. Have you ever had a season that way that goes that way something absolutely brutalizes your future your concept of the of your what your life should look like and then all of a sudden God is knocking on your door with hope. And isn't it just frustrating when he does that you're like I want to be mad stop trying to encourage me you know or maybe for you you you experience those those moments of hope with just disbelief no way that can't be me. Or just numbness who cares detached Christmas time is often a time where we experience this complex grief pretty fresh. It's a first Christmas for some of us where we will not have our spouse or our brother or our sister or our favor or our dog or our cousin or our best friend or even that neighbor we started to develop a close friendship with now I'm lonely all over again. Whatever it may look like Christmas can sometimes be met with a mixture of joy and and grief. But in this season we are reminded that the coming of Jesus brings the promise of hope everlasting and we get glimpses of that hope everlasting in our day-to-day life so um in John chapter 16 uh it's important to understand that actually John is a brilliant writer we look at John kind of as the emotional gospel right we have the synoptics or in other words the similar guys you know we got Matthew Mark Luke and they all kind of have a similar vibe right different audiences there's reasons why they were authored there's an important part to that but we think about John as kind of the the emotional one the guy who emphasizes the relationships between people a lot he's like yeah Thomas said that and and and I got to the tomb before Peter right we think about these moments throughout the John's gospel but really John is an absolutely brilliant author with the Greek language. And as a Jewish man he would have been very familiar with different literary devices that the Hebrew texts would have had trickled throughout it. One of these devices is called chiasmus can you say that with me chiasmus chiasmus is another like I just like to think of it as a sandwich okay it's a literary sandwich. And it's the idea that when someone and John's gospel is absolutely full of this actually from the very beginning the very first verse to the very last verse is a sandwich that that centers on one particular point that he's trying to make about Jesus. But at one particular in this particular segment in John chapter 16 the centerpiece of our joy being made complete which is a parallel thing right it's the exact same language in John 15 in the early part of the chapter is the same language at the near the end. It's a sandwich every time you see that now you're gonna have to look for it all the time it's gonna absolutely drive you crazy because I can't read the scripture now without being like is this a sandwich but this is what John centers this joy on the coming of the Holy Spirit. To John, what Jesus was communicating was that in this life there is a helper for your hope. In this life there is a helper for your purpose in this life on the way to seeing me return ultimately there is an advocate for truth there is an empowerer there is a helper there is a comforter there is a strengthener there is an encourager coming to you and for this reason you will have joy made full because it's a good thing that I'm going back to the Father. Otherwise this helper would not come to you he says he clarifies and what does the Spirit do according to Jesus he comes to convict the world to testify against the world about sin about righteousness and about judgment. And one of the main things here is addressing unbelief but also addressing that the power of the prince of this world is made ineffective because the power of the Holy Spirit is about to be poured out on the disciples not long from now. John has this emphasis all through his gospel the coming of the Holy Spirit very soon after Jesus would be resurrected and ascended to the throne at the right hand of the Father the Holy Spirit will come to guide into all truth to bring life John calls the Spirit of God a wellspring of life flowing from within us. And the Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus will testify about Jesus will guide you into all the truth he says and will remind you of everything I have taught you he says so at the centerpiece of this is what? Is the presence of the Spirit of God. And one of the things that the Spirit of God does is that he is in a way the host for this ongoing intimacy and union that we have with the Father and the Son every day. The Spirit of God makes it possible for us to have Jesus live in our hearts. We talk to kids about this all the time but we don't understand just how amazing it is that God himself would make you and I temples of the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit comes to empower you in witnessing and sharing about Jesus empowers you to continue to believe and live out the truth. If you've ever had a moment where you felt that uncomfy feeling of conviction when you're going for that second donut or that hotly worded email and you're like what's the heck? Why do I feel so uncomfortable doing this? Well the Holy Spirit is like hello that's not the kind of thing that we do around here this ongoing union is the context and the environment for your not just your sanctification God being making you holy but God making you to be in your nature more and more like Jesus the scriptures tell us later on in Ephesians that Paul prayed that faith may be strengthened in you that your inner being your inner man or woman may be strengthened in faith so that Christ might be formed in you. He prayed in the same way to the for the Galatians that Christ be formed in you. All of Paul's work was not to establish a brand for Christianity in the Mediterranean was not to establish an idea of a religious concept no no Paul's work and his mind ultimately boil down to whether or not Jesus himself would be dwelling in communities throughout the Mediterranean region to the Gentiles. His concern was whether or not the gospel would make its impact in the hearts and lives of the people who heard it no matter where they were from, what background they had. Paul's interests were seeing Jesus be made manifest in the life of everyday ordinary people like you and me in the midst of our griefs, in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our persecution. So that's the centerpiece of it is the Holy Spirit the only way for us to experience joy at the Christmas season to experience joy in the midst of pain to experience encouragement in the midst of grief is to have a deeper union with God through the Holy Spirit characterized by love and obedience to God it's not about behavior management. It's not about looking good on the outside to everybody at church or at Walmart or wherever you are or at the family dinner. It's not about making sure that you have some good reports when you get to the to get to your family festivities for the family this happened to my son became a lawyer did you hear about that? You know we're not worried about any of that. Because God does not look at the things that people look at God looks at the heart. His concern is about whether or not you have that rich intimate union with Jesus resulting in the presence of Jesus the character of Jesus the wisdom love joy and courage of Jesus in you that's what the Holy Spirit is up to and what happens is a fulfilled joy in us a joy that we already experienced just on account of the fact that we have been saved, rescued, sealed, redeemed, restored and delivered today from sin, from unforgiveness, from bitterness but according to the author of Hebrews and even just of chapter two of Hebrews he says listen we're not going to remind you again about the forgiveness of wrongdoing and all these other initial things that live in the elementary things of Christ. Rather we want to teach you about meat metaphorically speaking we want to teach you about righteousness being trained in righteousness being trained in a deeper knowledge not about God but of God through a walked out lived in one-to-one relationship with him that trickles into every other aspect and dimension of your life in intimate union with him you experience a love of neighbor a desire and an interest to serve people around you and you begin to overcome your grief through good you begin to be reminded of the goodness of God because it's living within you and it's coming out of you in your actions and your behaviors. So Jesus caps off the passage by saying this I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. Jesus had gone on to talk about more persecutions and pressures and trials and tribulations that the that the disciples would experience not long after Jesus would come. But he said this I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace that in me is important because we don't have peace in our circumstances do we don't have peace in the US political geosphere we don't have peace based on what's going on across the pond and A, B, C or D conflict we don't have peace in our economic situation. We don't have peace in things going well even in our own lives. We have peace in thick or thin high water or low in Jesus and in Jesus alone that is where our peace comes from I had this blessing come to me this week when my cellular device stopped working on Sunday evening last week and it didn't start working again until Friday afternoon around 3 30 p.m and I'm not sure about you. But I have learned that I depend on that thing a lot. A lot a lot and something else I learned after I finally got it back almost a week later was that I read the news an alarming amount of times through the day. I check emails probably four to six times in a 15 minute window pretty sure nobody's sending you that many emails my guy you know why am I doing that? Because I'm looking for peace somewhere else other than in Jesus have you ever felt a loss that came not because something valuable was lost but because something very unhelpful was taken away from you and you had a very unhealthy attachment to that thing. Have you ever been a workaholic and then lost your job? Ooh that'll hurt. That's painful. God cares about that loss too it's a different kind isn't it's the kind of loss that reminds us that we've been placing our hopes on the wrong stuff. Amen there are days when we hope that our kids do well not because we're only caring for their well-being but because in some way or another how they do in life is gonna societally impact my relationships with other people because they're gonna reflect on our family. How many of you guys have a lot of family secrets only because you don't want anybody to know that you guys are not perfect go figure. You're dysfunctional and so am I we all are because nobody is called to be perfect other than in the context of this union. Jesus says be perfect as my father in heaven is perfect. In other words be complete be mature think like an adult and have the heart of a child with God where you develop a realization that when you're corrected by God you can go in that direction. When you experience conviction you adapt to what God is saying you adjust yourself to what is right as you know it in the scripture and the Holy Spirit will comfort you guide you encourage you help you heal you but Jesus calls us not to have peace not to have a sense of all of our well-being in the things that are surrounding us or even the things that we access on our social media or through our job or through our money or through our family's well-being vicariously but rather in him alone and then he says in this world you will have trouble but like the Greek word for this, I'm not gonna say what it is because I can't pronounce it right now. I got to look it's all Greek to you anyway I'm sure but the thing is with with with John chapter 16 verse 33 is that the word trouble or tribulation as some other tri some other translations have it is that he does a great job at communicating just that in general sense of feeling troubled, distressed. But the word actually means pressure or persecution because that's what Jesus is talking about the entire chapter. He's talking about pressure in this world you'll have pressure you're gonna have grief you're gonna have weeping you're gonna have mourning you're gonna have discouragement you're gonna have pain you're gonna have rejection loss people hating you for no reason and all kinds of other things and you know what depression is you ever heard of depression right I sure have depression the reason why we call it that is because of the word depression downward pressure that feeling of that crushing weight in this world y'all gonna get depressed but take heart have courage because I have overcome the world you might be in the world but I have won I have conquered I have overcome the world as Paul says later in Romans chapter 12 verse 21 do not be overcome by evil by trial tribulation pressure depression grief loss hurt pain discouragement of any kind or of any fear do not be overcome by the pressures that come from taking care of an ill family member or someone with special needs. Do not be overcome by the struggles that you have in your own being Fitting in with others because of the challenges that you're experienced. Do not be overcome by the loss of a precious family member. Do not be overcome. Not because God is condemning you if you do, but rather because he is calling you up to have a strength to overcome through good. Jesus is using the same word here. To conquer, to take over. Jesus has taken over the world. Even before he goes on the cross, he says, I've overcome the world. That is to say, I have overcome these pressures, and because I have, on account of my victory, you can have victory. There is nothing stopping you and I, as followers of Jesus Christ, from overcoming any loss, any pain, any discouragement, any fear, anything at all in this life, no matter how painful. And that's not to devalidate the reality that those things need space. That's not to devalidate the reality that sometimes we got to go to the hospital, whether physically or metaphorically. We got to recover at times. That's true. But the scriptures tell us that we have joy because we have a savior that has already overcome all the exact same kinds of challenges that you and I face every single day. As a normal ordinary person, you know, for 30 years Jesus was just a blue-collar carpenter. 30 years, well, about 15 years, I suppose, really, because it would have been 15 by the time he probably would have been likely to take over the family business. Fifteen years? Living as just a human? Living a human life like you and me? Dealing with family members who are cantankerous? Dealing with the loss of his adopted father? Jesus doesn't understand grief. He's, you know, we read about stuff that he did 2,000 years ago. Jesus knows exactly what you're going through. Not just because he's altogether holy and God, transcendent, and able to understand all things. He lived it too. He is living it through you now. You are not alone in what you are going through. You're not abandoned as an orphan. That's Jesus' word, not mine. I will not leave you as orphans, he says. By the power of the Holy Spirit, you have access to the most powerful force in the very universe and the most frightening force in the universe to the things that oppose you. Amen? Alright, cool. Well, let's wrap this up, shall we? Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. So sorrow does not have to have the final word. Jesus does. Jesus has the final word on your sorrows. Jesus has the final word on death. Discouragement. The end of all things. There will come a day when death and grief and loss are thrown into a fiery pit forever. Done. And he will wipe every tear from your eyes. When Jesus says, this is now your time of grief, it can be described as sorrow, distress. So sadness, anxiety, fear. How does it feel? How many of you moms in this room know how it feels when you go into labor and you're like, I'm happy about the baby, I'm happy about the third trimester being over, but I'm not too, you know, I'm not too high and dandy on the whole labor thing, right? It's scary. Jesus is saying the same kind of thing to us when that mom is being encouraged. This might be your time of grief. But you will have joy. Sorrow doesn't have the final word. Jesus does. In that hospital seven years ago, my wife coded on the operating table, and I believe God brought her back twice. Thank you, Jesus. Well done. But I also know that she died in a different way. And she had to recover. And one of the ways we had to recover was through our hope. I'd mentioned the name Jackson to you already, didn't I? For an entire calendar year, we prayed that God would bring into our life another baby. Not because we deserved it or because we were somehow better parents than somebody else, but because that's something that was on our hearts. We believe that in some way or another we're called to be adoptive parents. And what better reason than because we absolutely have to do it in order to build our family? It's like kind of a win-win, you know, makes sense. So for a whole year we prayed until we got a text from a family member saying that there was a baby up for adoption. Jackson wasn't his name, but we're like, hey, maybe we can just rename him. You can do that. But then that fell through. Oh, the pressure, the loss, the depression, the sadness, the anger that I felt at seeing my wife experience her hopes being restored, only to have them dashed all over again. And a few months later, we're praying. I remember driving home one day, and I said, God, I just don't get it. But like I know that you're in control of all things. And if you believe you're supposed to have this baby, bring that Jackson kid into our life. Stop bringing it up. Bring him. We're ready. We were not ready, by the way. We were living in a 600 square foot cottage with another couple, another dog. And my uh we didn't even have a door on our bedroom. I said, We weren't ready, really. But I said, I'm ready, Lord, bring that baby now. Amen. You know, God can take your boldness, okay? And I got home and my wife said, I got a text from that same family member. There's two kids up for adoption. One of them is named is named Axel, and the other is named Jackson. And there's another baby on the way, she's pregnant. So we get into a room on Zoom where the birth mom confides in another person, unknowing that we're listening, that she wants that baby to go to us. She had a little bit of a say in where the baby would go. She wanted us to have the baby, knowing everything we'd gone through and our heart's desire to have a larger family. And three years to the day, July 1st, 2021, at 9.03 p.m., we went back to that hospital where we were first admitted, went to the same hospital floor where my wife was first admitted to have her life-saving surgery. Three years to the day that my wife was seeing people that had already passed away in the corner of a room. Three years to the day when doctors told me, Noah, I've been in medicine for 22 years, I have no idea what's going on, we're doing everything we can, but we're giving her the gold standard and nothing's helping. Three years to the day. And we were holding a baby boy in our arms, and we took him home that week. I don't know what it is for you. But whatever pain you're about to face or are already facing or have faced in the past, you can trust that joy flows out of pain. Pain is purposeful, even if it seems senseless and unnecessary to you. God can use the senseless and unnecessary. He used me. He's used all kinds of losses, I'm sure you've already suffered and remembered only in passing. So whatever grief comes to you, make sure you practice it well. Practice good grief. Good grief is practiced when we boldly process our pains with God. Good grief is practiced when we study the word and we receive encouragement. The fruit of study is often joy. You practice good grief by deciding to give an offer when everything within you is trying to isolate and run away. You practice good grief when in your prayer life you give thanks. You honor God, you praise His name, you sing and dance, you rejoice, not because of everything going your way, and maybe the promise for that won't even come. I've had plenty of complex losses this very year that I'm still working through today. In that very same hospital a year ago, my father-in-law passed. 54. Not right. But I know that that grief will turn to joy. And I speak that all the time. And I said I said to the Lord the other day, uh, we had our family over, we were visiting, and I say, God. I wish Peter were here. But I practice good grief. Because I'm like, well, he's probably having a great time. Because I know where he is. He's probably having a great time. He's with Jesus. Whatever it is you need to do to reestablish your trust in God, establish it. And it's a practice, it's a discipline, it's a commitment. Witness to the goodness of Jesus, even when you're struggling to feel it. Share the gospel. Give to the Christmas offering, give to something that matters to you. That could see grief turned into joy in the life of another. Offer your time, offer your presence. I'm gonna finish with this uh with this quote. The sorrow and grief that come are real. We have a God who is well acquainted with them. He doesn't ask us to ignore our grief, but to invite him into it that we might bear it together. No matter what, we can know an internal, defiant joy because death has been defeated. Life has won. There is suffering, yes, but always there is the potential for joy. In the face of the ultimate reality won for us by Jesus, we don't have to pretend that life is better than it is, that we don't hurt as much as we do, or that we feel happy when we are not. We are invited to be fully alive, awake, alert, and oriented to the truth, and to know that because of Jesus, we can be defiantly joyful.