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Grieving is an involuntary and natural human reaction to loss of any kind. It is what we do with grieving that makes all the difference in our lives. We can stuff it and pretend it does not exist, or we can grieve continuously throughout our lives and stay in self-pity. Both of these responses will keep us in bondage. However, there is a healthy way to deal with grieving that will allow God to give us the freedom that He desires to give to us. Jesus died for our losses, He traded places with us, and now we need to learn how to appropriate His healing.

You need to be real with God over losses in your life. They can be regrets from your youth, perhaps people who have passed on, the loss of a spouse or child through death, divorce or rebellion, and the list goes on. People grieve over the loss of their dreams, visions and plans for their lives.

Often they get mad at God over their losses. Many people do not even recognize their pain as a loss, in which case those issues are buried deep in the soul as a wound effecting their entire life.

Matthew 5:2-4 says, "Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted."

Mourning comes from deep in the heart, not for sinful acts, but from knowing that you are poor in spirit, repenting from trying to make it on your own, and seeing His love and grace to come to your aid.

I saw a movie that was based on a true story in an American school that dealt with young people from different inner city ghettos. The populations of these ghettos were made up of varied cultures which all came together in a high school. The 15-year-old children were members of gangs, drug users, and totally undisciplined with no interest at all in school. Violence and even murder was common. The various cultures, Blacks, Latinos and Asians all hated one another. On the scene came a young white teacher with a heart to change things. She struggled for some time with insolent children who hated her, but she did not give up.

The teacher tried an experiment, which makes the point about the value of grieving in the proper way. She gave each student a notebook and asked each one to keep a daily journal. They could write whatever they pleased, and were not required to show their journal to her. However, the students all voluntarily turned in their journals and wanted the teacher to read them. They wrote about their horrible childhoods, their suffering in the gang infested ghettos, the abuse from their parents, and other such things.

These children were grieving. They caught the ear of compassion and poured out their hearts. This true story was amazing. The students began to love and respect their teacher, they began to read books about other's sufferings, even the Nazi holocaust, and the different cultures began to bond and love one another. What happened? They discharged their griefs and were healed. Journaling with the Lord about your losses is powerful.

The following are excerpts taken from the Inner Healing book we have been using in this series.

One of the most important things we need to learn is how to grieve. Grieving is the ability to recognize and mourn the losses we have experienced. God has given us the ability to grieve. If any of us have lost a family member through death, we may have grieved that loss.

Problems arise within us when we experience losses in our lives, but do not grieve those losses. Instead of grieving, we allow ourselves to become hardened inside. As a result, we react to those things in the wrong way. We become resentful and angry about them. We do not recognize the hurt, pain and loss, and we do not allow the Lord to minister to us in those areas.

Society has told us a lie we believe to be true. We were told that men don't cry; therefore brave little boys don't cry if they want to become men. A man should not show hurt or emotion, or pain. But that is a lie.

It becomes a major problem with us when we don't allow ourselves to express the sorrow we feel. We don't realize that if we will be open and honest with God, He will heal us in those areas of our lives. As we bring these things to the light of Christ, He is able to minister His healing to us.

Many of the things that hurt us in our lives have been jammed into the inner recesses of our minds with the hope that they will be forgotten. What we don't realize is that these things continue to affect us in our reactions to the events and the people we encounter daily. We need to learn how to be honest, how to bring out the emotions, and how to grieve about them. As we allow them to surface, God begins a process in us that gives us insight and wisdom about them. The healing can then take place.

One obstacle to our healing is that when we are hurt, we are able to see only our side of the situation. We are unable to see the situation from God's side. This means we are unable to see the whole picture, we see only one side of it.

There is one danger in grieving. We can become caught up in it and never allow ourselves to get out. If we are caught up in grieving, we become very depressed. We find ourselves filled with self -pity and self-condemnation. There is a legitimate time for grieving but there is definitely a time to move on.

I don't think that there is anybody that would turn down an offer from God to allow Him to produce in their life what His original purpose has always been for them.

How can we cooperate with God, what are some of the main ingredients? I submit that there are several. However in this chapter we will cover what I believe to be the first, the most important, and the one without which we will certainly never realize God's purpose for our lives, that is being real with God.

Psalm 85 says that when our truth rises up from the earth, that we receive righteousness from heaven. In other words, Jesus, the Truth, is already there, but in order to make contact, we have to "send" our truth to Him.

"Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth shall spring out of the earth, And righteousness shall look down from heaven. Yes, the LORD will give what is good; And our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before Him, And shall make His footsteps our pathway" (Psalms 85:10-13).

"This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us" (1 John 1:5-10).

We cannot deny, nor successfully bury our actual feelings, experiences and emotions without paying a horrible price. While we are not supposed to live on our ungodly feelings, nor are we to be guided by our emotions, we do have to "give" them to God as something that really exists.

We don't deny that feelings and emotions exist; but we do deny their right to govern our lives. We confess them to the Lord Jesus and He takes those parts of them that are not of Him, the sin, and forgives and removes them.

God's original design for your life was to be in a living relationship with Him. The purpose of this book is to help you find that relationship and walk in it. It is not to add to the layers of roles that we play in life, especially religious roles and religious play-acting. I pray that this book will encourage you to become transparent with God, your Creator, and through that transparency to experience God's wonderful love and grace which will mold you into His original design for your life.

The "want to be's" become roles that we play. Quite often these decisions are made subconsciously. All of these roles build up like layers of an onion in our lives. It is God's purpose to take us back to who we really are, to the real "you." That is the "you" that God really loves and it is the only "you" that God can really work with to make you whole and fulfilled in life.

Over the years we have constructed layers of self-deceit upon ourselves similar to layers of an onion. We have so many ways of hiding behind roles that others or ourselves have constructed. These roles are self-deceiving and we have become so lost behind them that we are incapable of rescuing ourselves. Before we know it we are hiding behind so many layers that we are totally self-deceived and fit into what Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).

True contentment in life is knowing that the real you is acceptable. It is knowing that you can be real with God. It is knowing that you don't know how to be completely real in one big event, but that as you go through life, God will cause the layers to be taken off little by little as you can tolerate it and accept it. You discover that God accepts you just the way you are, however He wants to peel back the layers to get to the real you. You will find out that God is gentle throughout this process. You will discover that quite often even the gentleness can be painful.

There can be hidden compartments in your life that you do not want anybody, especially God, to uncover and expose. You know it would be too painful. But God would say to you, "Go ahead and trust me to touch that hurt just one time. I may cause more pain in your life by touching it, but after that, healing will come. Is it worth it?" It is like the surgeon asking, "Is it worth it to bear the pain of my knife if it means cutting out the disease?"

There is a law on planet Earth that always works: it is called sowing and reaping (Galatians 6:7-8). One will ultimately reap whatsoever he sows. This law applies to truth also. If you sow the truth you will reap the truth. If you sow deception and dishonesty, you will reap darkness, and the truth will not shine in your life. "Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice" (John 18:37 b).

King David made the following statement in Psalm 32:2-3 after trying to hide his terrible sins from God. David could no longer live with himself, but he discovered that God honors the truth and that the truth will make one free.

"Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long" (Psalms 32:2-3). I suggest that you read the entire Psalm 32.

There is usually a price for being truly honest. Proverbs 23:23 says, "Buy the truth, and do not sell it, Also wisdom and instruction and understanding." One price you need to be prepared to pay is humility.

I believe that evil came to pass in our world and continues to exist by man's dishonesty. The cartoon below illustrates this. To the degree that you are not real, is the degree of potential evil or darkness that exists in your life. The wider the gap, the greater the potential is for evil.

Being real is the first aspect of truth, the second aspect of truth is Jesus.

His Word is the ultimate Truth. However His Word will not be revealed to those who do not first practice the first truth, which is gut level honesty with themselves before God.

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me'" (John 14:6).

"But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me" (John 15:26).

When the two aspects of truth outlined above touch each other, God can go to work. Other conditions stated below in John chapter 8 are abiding in His Word, being Jesus' disciple, obeying Him and not claiming a right to your own life. Then you will know the Truth, which is to have a relationship with Him, Truth incarnate!

"Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, 'If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' They answered Him, 'We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, 'You will be made free'?' Jesus answered them, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed'" (John 8:31-36).

You must be real about your emotions, feelings and pain in order to enable God to set you free.

God set up the grieving process for us. However, if we are not cautious, we can get into un-godly grieving.

There are six stages of grief which usually manifest themselves in the following sequence, however it is natural to move back and forth between these steps as we progress:

2. Bargaining with God. If God will restore or repair or replace what we are grieving about, we will do whatever He wants.

3. Anger. We are totally undeserving of what has happened and we feel we have been treated unfairly. This justifies our anger.

4. Acceptance. We accept that it happened, and we concede that we can do nothing about it.

5. Grief of the loss. We become honest about our feelings, share those feelings with others and allow ourselves to be healed.

We also want to be honest about our sinful reactions to what has happened to us. There are three principles we may have violated in our reactions to what people have done to us or to what life has delivered to us.

2. Honoring our father and our mother. If we do not, our life will not go well with us.

"Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted" (Isaiah 53:4).

When we let out the truth of our grief, we then can reap the truth of His healing. He took our place! Jesus took the sorrows and griefs of everybody that ever lived when He died on the Cross. He took it for you that you might be free!

Jesus' mission is to make us free people, healed on the inside and free from the sin perpetrated against us by losses.

First notice the exchanges that Jesus came to give us, then notice the promises to those who accept His gift.

1 "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, Because the LORD has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn [grieve],

3 To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified."

4 And they shall rebuild the old ruins, They shall raise up the former desolations, And they shall repair the ruined cities, The desolations of many generations.

5 Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, And the sons of the foreigner Shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.

6 But you shall be named the priests of the LORD, They shall call you the servants of our God. You shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, And in their glory you shall boast.

7 Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs.

8 "For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery for burnt offering; I will direct their work in truth, And will make with them an everlasting covenant.

9 Their descendants shall be known among the Gentiles, And their offspring among the people. All who see them shall acknowledge them, That they are the posterity whom the LORD has blessed."

10 I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, My soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, And as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

11 For as the earth brings forth its bud, As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.

1. Jesus came to help people who had losses in life, the poor, brokenhearted, captives and prisoners who were bound up with internal bondages.

2. Then He sets them free and takes vengeance on those who perpetrated the sins against those victims, that being Satan and his army.

3. After that He comforts those people. That word comfort means to have compassion to the point of causing the recipient to repent. It means that the people who were bound up see the love of God understanding them and leading them into a new life.

4. Then He consoles those who mourn in Zion. Zion represents the Kingdom of God. The word console means to appoint, ordain, teach and transform. God wants to console us after we get into Zion, the Kingdom of God. This is His method of sending out those who had previously been losers and mourners.

5. Then look at verse 61:4-11 to see the promises of what God will do with us and through us.

Just a few months after the Lord saved me in 1979 I had been "mourning" about wasting so much of my life before I found Jesus. I was telling God how I felt. I had wished that I could start over, that I was glad that I was saved, but sad about the wasted time.

I had been hungry for the Word of God and I was pursuing Pentecostal preachers since their message seemed to satisfy me more. I was receiving an audiotape each week from Church On The Way in California. Pastor Jack Hayford was preaching in a Sunday service, and he broke out in a prophetic message that was intended personally for me. I was amazed since it was on an audiotape and I was listening to it at my place of business. God was speaking directly to me.

Pastor Hayford said, in a prophetic statement, "Your life is like a scroll that had your life's plan written on it, but the scroll had been burnt around the edges. The edges of your life's scroll had turned to ashes and they fell to the ground. You cannot paste them back together to read your life's purpose. However, I am able to resurrect the ashes and put them back into your scroll so that your life's purpose can be whole again. As a matter of fact, I, the Lord, '…will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the LORD your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; And My people shall never be put to shame. Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: I am the LORD your God And there is no other. My people shall never be put to shame' (Joel 2:25-27). I will make it as if there had been no wasted time in your life."

At the writing of this book, 29 years later, I can honestly say that has happened, super abundantly beyond my greatest expectations! He gave me beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning.

Notice in the Isaiah 61 Scripture that everything that is promised to us, all of the good things, are conveyed in the form of a swap or an exchange: Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, etc. That exchange is the principle of the Cross, or in other words, the blood covenant with God. Everything we have goes to Him, and everything He has goes to us.

"He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted" (Isaiah 53:3,4).

He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; by His knowledge of Himself [which He possesses and imparts to others] shall My [uncompromisingly] righteous One, My Servant, justify many and make many righteous (upright and in right standing with God), for He shall bear their iniquities and their guilt [with the consequences, says the Lord] (Isaiah 53:11 -Amplified Bible).

Pouring out your grieving, giving Jesus the losses in your life, will enable Him to pour out to you and through you supernatural resurrection "jewels" that could not have been produced except through your losses, your "death and resurrection."

Before we can get on with inner healing, it seems to me that we must first "reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin"--Rom. 6:11, which includes death to self (including and especially that part of us that harbors the hurts that we need inner healing for). Watchman Nee explains that we already "know" we died in Christ, but we must reckon it so. That means coming to the place that we not only give up our right to our very self (our right to our own life lived as we desire and control and our feelings as well), but going deeper and relinquishing our "right" to our hurts and all that has happened to us which up to this point has been WHO we are and have known ourselves to be! I would think that very often we have become what our hurts are--our identity in large measure. This means to let go of our right to react in self-pity, anger, resentment, getting even, etc. This is the true death to self, I believe. It is a willingness to say that all I've experienced can be done with never to be brought up again as if it never happened--let it be buried with Christ just my sins are buried with Him. We rejoice that our sins are taken away, but we don't also realize that the next thing is the death to self that brings us life in the Spirit but which also requires that we die to our right to our hurts.

Inner HealingCopyright * 1992 by Dunklin Memorial Church – Used by permission ISOB

Quote taken from the book Be Real with God – by Larry Chkoreff