Hey, I'm so glad you guys are here at all of our campuses and all the way down the Gulf Coast, uh, all the way over to Jones County in Laurel. And we're in a series, if you've not been here, called Hide it or Heal It. And, and here's the big idea so that you can get this. And for some people this is a new concept that, uh, you know, just like your body can be broken or your body can get run down or your body can be injured, you have a soul inside of you that can also be injured by trauma and stress and all kinds of things that come into our lives. You know, the enemy is out for your soul because the soul lasts forever.

And so we've been talking about that, that you are body, okay, and your spirit, the spirit of God lives in you and you're also a soul. And so I've been walking through that because I think it's so important. It's taken me years to kinda begin to realize that there's stuff going on inside of me that I want to keep hidden, that I need to kinda get it out in the open so that I'll know about it. First of all, 'cause a lot of stuff we keep hidden, we, we, we hide it because we don't wanna think about it. And so the very first week I talked about the power of shame.

And if you've never read about shame or you've never done any work with regard to the shame in your life, you are missing out on freedom. Because shame is different from guilt. Guilt is where you've done something wrong and you feel bad, okay? But shame says to you, you are bad. You are broken, you are a second class citizen.

And, and when I went to counseling the first time, 'cause I've been a lot of different times, you know, I like to try 'em all out. And uh, and the guy said, what do you think you're feeling? I said, well, I'm feeling anger. He said, now what you're feeling is shame. He said, you're reacting.

Anger is out here. And that's what people see. But you're, you're getting that like the, the foundation of your anger that you're launching from is shame. And so I wrote down this definition, uh, I that shame says, I am stained, defective. I'm a second class citizen because of what I did or what was done to me.

And for a lot of people, it's not just what you did, it's what was done to you. What was said to you. And many of you grew up like me. You grew up in an environment. If you're older, especially where, where people thought the best way to train you and encourage you was to tell you, you were sorry.

I'm not kidding All my coaches, man, you're sorry man. You think you something. Hey Hollywood. Oh, you think and that, that was to inspire you. You know, you, you mow the yard and your dad comes in.

Well, you missed a spot over there fo anybody had that experience where you, you know, you, somebody's shaming you all the time. And this was the woman at the well. And she shows up with her, with her jar of shame. It was a big jar. And she had been with five men.

She had had five husbands. And the one she was with now was not her husband. And, and she had this shame bond. A lot of people have shame bonds to people that will shame them. 'Cause that's all they know.

A lot of people will, will grow up in an abusive home. And guess what? They marry an abusive person. Isn't that crazy? 'Cause all they know, and so Jesus says, let me give you some fresh water here.

He says, let me, let me tell you about me because I love you and I am the Messiah. And she goes, I, I want that. I I wanna be clean. I I I wanna get rid of my shame. I I want salvation.

Give me this. And, and she leaves her jar of shame and goes back into the city and begins to tell everybody, Hey, he knows everything I've done. And he told me about you and you and you and you and you. And he says, he can forgive us. Kyle Warren did a great message on Job.

And I love the, the whole big idea of job is, hey, when things fall apart in your life, you don't know the story behind it. But even when God is silent and there is a fog, like there was early this morning and you can't see and you have to slow down, God is still there. And 30 plus chapters where, where God doesn't speak and Job keeps like just kinda chipping away is why I said, just curse God and die. You know? I'm like, well God, wouldn't you take her?

You know? And just chipping and chipping and chipping and chipping because what you do in the dip has everything to do with what happens when you come out of the dip. That's a word. Thank you. I'll take that.

Yeah. And, and I wish we could do a whole, I I gotta, there's so much I wanna say to you. Like, like, like right now some of you are hurting and you're, you're like, it's a fog and things are bad and you're like, I just can't do this. Man. If you'll just take one more little step with, with God's help, you'll find out.

Like you, when you look back, you'll go, I cannot believe I went that far. I cannot believe I have come this far because I thought I was going backwards. No, you're, everything else is going backwards. It was an optical illusion you're going forward. And then we had Lee Smith come and man Lee is a godly man.

Like he is a, a licensed counselor. He's a great counselor, but, but he's a Christian. And like he, he, he, he helps people through the lens of the Bible in the spirit. And, and he said, Hey man, nothing is better than you getting with someone who can draw that out of you. And the enemy has kept people like you and me from going to counseling because of our pride, the very thing that got the devil kicked outta heaven.

Oh, I don't need that. Some of you grew up in homes. Oh, you just crazy man. You're crazy like your uncle and them, you don't need that. Listen, do not listen to them.

You are not crazy. But everybody needs someone. Like if you, you, you, you break something, you go to physical therapy, you don't think anything wrong with that, do you? But when you're broken, you don't go to emotional therapy. I mean, would you work with me here?

And, and so we kinda rolled through that. Then we got to Elijah last week and I thought, Eli, I thought that sermon was so good. And uh, you know, like occasionally I'd go, God, that was a good message. No, the delivery wasn't that great, but the word was amazing because here's a man of God who runs outta gas. He Goes, and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes and he goes, I'm doing this for God.

No, he's doing this for himself. I'm telling you, you get up on the stage, you start thinking about yourself a little bit. Whoa, whoa. That's when you get in trouble. And he gets to the cave and he is so broken down, he wants to die.

And God simply says to him, Hey man. Like, like would you just stop talking and would you lay down and take a nap? Would you rest? Would you cut some things out of your schedule? No, we got, no, we got this weekend, Saturday, we got three kids.

One of 'em has gotta be at basketball, one of 'em gotta be at baseball, and one of 'em gotta be at soccer. And there's two of us. And there are different places. It's hard to do unless you're the Holy Spirit. And, and so the idea was, hey, when, when you need to slow down and realize you've outrun your capacity, that you begin to get help and you kinda pull some things back and, and you go, God, I need help.

And some of you, the food you need is medication because you've got a chemical imbalance that's genetic. You say that's not a faith. Yes, it is a faith. Let me tell you, I pray in faith and I go to the, to the CVS and, and that's what's kept me from murdering some of you. Now, I'm not kidding you, some of you, I'd have already murdered if I, if you don't tighten up, I'm gonna get off my medicine, okay?

Alright. But today I wanna talk about something a hundred percent of you deal with. And if you're not dealing with it, you will. And if you're in it, there's hope. And if you're coming out of it, there's a testimony and it's grief.

You say, I don't know what grief, when don't we talking about grief in church? 'Cause God grieved Genesis six, six says, when God saw humanity, he grieved that he had made mankind. Oh, this terrible Jesus wept Jesus grieved over Jerusalem. Jesus was a man acquainted with grief and sorrow. Paul said, Hey, you, you, you must grieve, but you don't grieve like those who have no hope.

Now I have a little definition for grief, and these are all mine. You won't find these anywhere else in the world. Grief, in my opinion, is God given capacity to deal with loss in a healthy way. The word grief appears 275 times in the Bible. Um, grief is a big deal because you're gonna suffer loss.

And it doesn't have to be big things. I mean, you don't get chosen for a sport. You know, you don't make the all-star team, man, that's grief for, you know, you say, well, that's pu that's, that's like puppy love. Well, it's a big deal if you're a puppy, you know, if you're 10 years old and, and, and there's grief there and there's loss there and there's hurt there. And what do you do with that?

Well, there's a little book in the Bible tucked away in the Old Testament 56 verses where you get to see behind the curtain with one man who has a conversation with God. And you get to see the stages of grief that he walked through. And, and it's only a conversation between him and God. And his name is Habakkuk. Now, how many of you have heard messages on Habakkuk?

Raise your hand. He had a series on Habakkuk. Okay, two people. Okay, great. Well, it's in the Bible, believe it or not.

And you can go to our app and you can see the Scripture. Or if you have a, like a Bible that looks like this, they have these things that are, that are made of paper that you can also use. And, and I wanna read to you out of Habakkuk, and I wanna show you the stages of grief. When, when, when you are faced with loss and change and things you can't control, you are going through the process of grief that God created you to go through. And if you go, I'm not doing that one, you'll get stuck there.

And so here's the first stage. And the first stage is simply this, where you are shocked and you are angry. If you've ever lost anything, if you've ever had some tragedy, you, you, you can't believe it's happening. Did you hear? Did you hear?

So here he is, ha back at chapter one, verse two, and, and look how relevant the Bible is. He says, how long Lord must I call for help? And you won't listen. He says, I cry out violence, but you don't save. Why do you make me look at injustice?

Well, why do you tolerate wrongdoing, destruction and violence are ever before me. There is strife and conflict, a bounds there is the law therefore is paralyzed. And justice never prevails. If you ever said that the wicked him and the righteous, so that justice is perverted and the Lord answers him. I'm gonna tell you something and I talk about this a second, but, but if you really prayed and God spoke to you, you know what?

You'd have to change your clothes. And this is what he says. He says, look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed. Well, I'm about to do something in your days that you would not believe it, even though I'm telling you, he says, you ain't gonna believe this. You, you say, what's all, what is all of that?

Like? How does that work into grief? Well, he works into grief that this is the first stage of grief where you go, why, Why is this happening to me? Why would a good God allow this to happen to me? I love him.

I have served him. I went to church, I went to Easter, I went to Christmas Eve service. I I have, I have tried my best to do right? I don't do like these other people do. Is shock, like, I can't believe this.

Have you ever been at that point where you, you just said, God, why God, why can't I find somebody? God, what God, why did I have to lose my job? God, why did I have to lose my, my friend Covid? You probably remember Covid, it happened in 2020 and I saw the whole world going through grief. There was this shock, like, how, how could this happen?

Like God, how can you, how can you allow the whole world to be shut down? And and I remember on Easter about this time, uh, uh, in 2020, I was standing on this stage preaching to an empty room. And I was saying in my mind as I was preaching about hope, God, why we can't gather, we can't see each other. We can't talk to each other. Uh, that, that we, the the mask.

Man, were you mad? Who was mad about the mask? Would you raise your hand? Yeah, the rest of you, we were mad at you. And so here's the, in the political environment, I mean, everybody's angry and is so polarized and people are looking for something to be offended by.

And you don't have to look very far. And and this was Habakkuk. And so God speaks to him and says, well, let me tell you the answer to your prayer. Why, Lord, how long, what you gonna do? He goes, well, I'm gonna raise up the Babylonians.

You, you know, the people over in that Iraq, Iran, uh, Iran, uh, region of the world, and and I'm gonna raise them up because they're so bad. I'm gonna bring them in to do scorched earth on Israel so that I can discipline you. He says, huh? See, if you ask God a question and he answered you, that's what you'd say. You know why?

'Cause you ain't God. You're stuck in time. He could say, well, well, here's a cool thing, okay, Haba, uh, uh, Daniel is gonna rise up and be in charge of Babylon. And there's gonna be mesha, shader and bindigo, and then Nebu Nisia is gonna turn to God and, and serve him. And then a long time, 2000 years from now, there's going to be three wise men who will sit on a coffee table and they're gonna bring like Jesus some.

And he says, huh, do you know when you get to heaven, one of the first things you're gonna say when you walk into heaven? Oh, I see, I see now, but you're not gonna see it all right now because you're not God. It'd be like you trying to explain to a kindergartner all about astronomy and, and all about like science and, and everything that they could not possibly understand, magnified. So there's shock and anger. You're ma because you're not God and you don't understand, and you wanna know why.

But here's the second stage. The second stage is denial and depression. Look at ABA at chapter two, verse one. And after God answers him, he says, well, I'll stand at my watch and station myself on the wall of Jerusalem and I will look to see what you will say to me and what answer I'm to give to this complaint. In other words, I I, I'm gonna look to see my response to what you say.

And, and God begins to respond. He says, well write down this revelation and make it plain on the tablets so that a herold may run with it for the revelation. Awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false, though it linger. You're stuck in the waiting room.

Wait for it. It will certainly come and will not delay. Now, I I love that. And, and, and, and here's the back. He's going, I'm just gonna watch and see if that happens.

I don't think it's gonna happen. And he waits and he waits and he waits. Well, I think this may happen. Then all of a sudden he gets depressed. Have you ever been depressed?

Depression, unless it's, unless it's a chemical. It's where you're angry and you turn it inward and you won't tell anybody. And you get down into a deep hole and, and, and all of a sudden you can't get out and everything is dark and everything is black and everything is, you're hurt. You're hurt in every way. And there's, there's no hope.

And, and there's nothing around you where things are gonna work out. And, and the reality is, when you are depressed, it, it feels like everything in your life has been shattered. If I could tell you how many people that I've talked to that are just like that brokenness in their life, I want you to hear one of those stories from Gene. And I want you to hear how God has brought her through the greatest losses a human being could go through. Listen to this.

Well, my, my dad was one of the founders of Hattiesburg Clinic, one of the eight original doctors we moved here to from Laurel to do that. Um, my brothers are doctors, my sisters are nurse practitioners. My father offered to send me to medical school when Matt was very small, my son. And I knew that I would not get to be a mother to him if I did something like that. So I had to make a choice.

And I chose to be the mother and work that nine to five, you know, eight to five on weekdays. And so that's where my career path went. I've been through some, some very, very hard times. Uh, my marriage fell apart. I had my son, uh, and uh, it was just the two of us.

And it was me and him against the world. He, uh, was a National Merit finalist. He was a great athlete. He couldn't make people laugh. He had the greatest sense of humor.

He was the prize. And I thought, you know, God is gonna do something with him because he is so incredible and I'm so gifted to have him in my life. And then I lost him. Uh, he was killed by a drunk driver. And at right before he turned 21, I was devastated.

I was shattered. It, I, I didn't know that I would survive. And I came very close at times, not surviving, um, except that I, I had made a promise. We made a promise to each other one time that if anything happened to the other, we would go on. And I told him, I said, Matt, I thought about that.

You need to promise me if something happens to me that you'll be strong and you'll make it. I know you'll grieve and I know you'll hurt. You'll have the rest of your life to live and I will be proud of you if you go on and live it and do something meaningful. And he said, mama, don't you think I feel the same way? He said, you've dedicated your whole life to me.

And he said, I need to know you'll go on too. And he did the finger thing. And I went, I cannot do this. And then I thought, I've just gotta lie. Put that finger in.

And we promised. And after they told me he was dead, that was the first thing that came to my mind was, why did you make me promise that I was looking up a pottery term? And I came across the term Ken Roy. And I went, what in the world is that? So I looked it up, it came up and it dropped me to my knees.

I went, oh my goodness, if I could have only had a piece of this when Matt died to remind me day in and day out, that if I keep going, God can put those pieces back together in ancient Japan, they passed down pottery from generation to generation. If they had tea sets and other things that had been handed down for 400 years in the same family, if they broke it, it was a tragedy. But they would take it to an a Kent Roy artist who would put all the pieces back together with gold, with the understanding that it is more valuable now for having been broken and having the gold in it than it was before. And we are too. If we use the brokenness that we've been through to help others going through the same thing, we become more valuable.

I said, I think I could make this. And that's when I bumped into Susan. Well, when Jean called and, uh, she said, I'm just on fire about this, you know, Kent Roy. And I said, what? I had no idea what it was, but when she told me, um, I said, well, Jean, I do pottery all the time.

I would love to, you know, to do it with you. You know, she, and I said, now I can't break it. If I make it, you gotta break it. So she, she's always, and really that's the harder job. The breaking is therapeutic, especially if you've been having a bad day.

And the putting back together is therapeutic because you get a sense of loving this pot and wanting it to be beautiful again and wanting it to be valuable. And, and you, you think maybe that's how God is feeling when we are hurting, you know, together, there's some pots that don't want to be put back together. Sometimes you have to just pull it all apart and clean the sneeze of stuff off and start over again and not give up. And, and God doesn't give up on us. You know, if sometimes there is a piece that's so shattered, it won't fit back in, but it can be, the space can be filled, it can be filled with something valuable and, and people who've lost, they feel like they're walking skin and they're empty.

And you have to find something to fill that emptiness. And God can do it. And it may not be exactly what it was before, but it can give you a purpose in life. I started off by making a piece for myself, and then I began to give it to people I knew who'd lost children. And then people started wanting to give it to this person or that person.

And that's what I do now, you know? And that's, that's my, I'm also a painter. That's my artwork. This is my heart work. So I love the symbolism of, you know, once we were broken, but we're back together.

And the beauty of the whole Kent Roy, um, it, it's just really meaningful. I, I'm so pleased to be a part of it. It's just taught me perseverance. Um, and leaning on God and trusting even when you think it's not going like it's supposed to. When you wanna rail at him, um, at least you are railing at him.

'Cause you know, he exists. It, it is perseverance and encouragement of others and some sort of symbolism, which people can look at day in and day out. And I finally looked at the piece I made for myself and I went, gene, you are not struggling to get there. You're there. You've already been put back together and you're trying to use that to help other people struggling to be put back together.

You can look at it in struggle, but you can look at it in victory also. Some pots are hard to break. I love that. But I tell you, the world brings enough pressure on all of us that at some point there's a breaking point. Some pots are hard to mend.

And and I have seen people take not just weeks or months, but years. And each breaking is as unique as a thumbprint. And when people say to you, I know what you're going through, they, they do in general, but specifically they don't. And I got to thinking, and one of our staff members, Kelsey said, Hey, not only that, but when you refuse to work through the healing process and let God put you back together, it's not just you that shattered, but the people who love you get hurt and cut. And so as we look at Habak, I'm gonna show you where Jean has gotten to in her life, which is a remarkable statement.

The third stage is acceptance and healing. Listen to what Abaki says. And, and it's so powerful. I've come to it several times in my life. And the third chapter, verse 17, he says, though the fig treat is not bud and there's no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fills produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will be joyful in my savior because the sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to tread on the heights. He's starting to move forward in his grief. You say, well, I, I I'm not there yet.

Listen to this. Everything will be made right in the end. And if it's not right, right now, it's not the end. God has you. He loves you.

You say what? Well, Jeff, how do you know that? Well, because Jesus was shattered on the cross. Not just, not just He. He was beaten.

He was shattered. And three days later, when he walks out of that tomb and the disciples are putting their fingers on the scars on his hands and the scars on his feet and the puncture wound on his side, they're seeing a treasure that saves the world. I got to thinking about 26 years ago, I did the math on it. When Gene lost Matt and I, I never wanna go through that, but she could have no idea 26 years later that Matt would bring hope to thousands of people. It's the way God works out of death.

He brings life. You may be in a dark season, but the light is coming. There's hope for you. There's healing for you. God sees you where you are and he walks with you.

In a moment, you're gonna have time to respond. And at all of our campuses, you can come down to the front and pray, because I know there are a lot of you grieving 'cause I talk to you. You can come to the cross and you can place something on the cross there that you're going, Hey God, I need help with this because I don't understand and I'm stuck. But I hope most of you will come to the table and take the elements. And when you peel back that top layer and get to that little wafer and you crush that in your finger, remember what he did for you.

I don't serve Jesus because I have to. I serve Jesus because I can't help it. His body was shattered for you. His blood, we sing about it was spilled for you. Don't ever think God doesn't care.

She said, it hurts me to break a pot. You think it doesn't pain God who made you to see you broken. He wants to make you into a Treasure. He's not giving up you. He's about to give you your best life with him.

Treasure. Would you bow your heads? Prepare your hearts to worship the God who's putting you back together. Oh, they thought they had you. They thought you were down for the count.

They had no idea. At the right time, at the right moment, he's back. He's back. She made a comeback. She's better than ever.

Give that just a moment to settle in.