Welcome to Episode #59 of Preparing for the Inevitable – A Podcast on How to Handle Trouble, Suffering, Pain, and Death.
I am your host, Daniel Whyte III, president of Gospel Light Society International. This podcast will help you get ready to face the inevitable unpleasant things that will happen in your life — things like trouble, suffering, sickness, and death — the death of people you love and your own death. Trouble, suffering, and death are common threads that run throughout all of humanity. They are inescapable. You will never meet a person who has not, is not, or will not experience these terrible things in life. Yet, we attempt to hide from these inevitabilities, to pretend they don’t exist or that they won’t happen to us. Our world is filled with news of people dying, children suffering, entire government systems and organizations enduring trouble and turmoil, but we tend to see these as things that only happen to “other people” and never to us. Trouble, suffering, and death come equally to all people, of all races, from every socio-economic status, of every religion, in every country of the world. It makes us all equal. This podcast will show you how to accept these realities of life, and not just cope, but face trouble, suffering, and death in your own life and in the world with confidence, courage, class, and most of all, with faith, hope, and charity.
The Bible says in Psalm 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
The featured quote for this episode is from C.S. Lewis. He said, “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
Our topic for today is titled “Grief and Mourning, Part 11: No Road Map” from the book, “The Art of Dying: Living Fully into the Life to Come” by Rob Moll.
“Grief just is. There aren’t necessarily rights and wrongs,” says Rob Bugh, pastor of Wheaton Bible Church in Wheaton, Illinois. A trim and energetic man, Bugh is still holding back the depth of his pain.
Despite years as a pastor, Rob discovered grief anew when, three months after a close friend died, Rob’s wife, Carol, was diagnosed with cancer. Grief, Rob said nine months after Carol’s death, is an “emotional, visceral response to pain, suffering, tragedy and death.”
Carol’s death came just eleven months after her diagnosis, and that time was filled with doctor’s visits, hospital stays, long- distance travel to specialists, and trips to the emergency room.
Rob says he was unprepared for the turn his life was taking. “One of my closest friends and my wife, they’re both getting horrific news. Their cancers are different, but they’re ravaging their bodies. And they’re brutal. How do you wrap your mind around that?”
“I’m in ministry,” Rob says. “I take care of people going through this, but I really never thought this would happen to us.”
Carol had turned fifty, and on a regular doctor visit she asked about some bleeding in her stool. Doctors performed tests, and the diagnosis was a rare form of rectal cancer. It was aggressive, and the Bughs fought it aggressively. But, as Rob says, they never received good news. Eventually they started running out of options. They continued trying new treatments, visiting doctors, seeking and hoping for a cure.
“Early on,” Rob says, “you’re 100 percent fighting.” But slowly, “There’s a growing awareness that God may be up to something else than bringing about healing.” They didn’t stop treatments, they continued hoping for a cure, yet gradually the realization dawned that there may be none. “There’s this resignation that comes,” Rob says. “Now you know what the gospel describes at Gethsemane when Jesus says, ‘Take this cup from me.’ That was a passage I prayed over and over, ‘God take this from us. Take this cancer from us, but not my will but thy will be done.’ ”
The final three months were hectic and incredibly stressful, and the couple had little time to talk about Carol’s death. And the end came much quicker than they had expected. Two days before Carol died, the family took her home and brought in hospice. And then, “all of a sudden it was all over.”
If the Lord tarries His Coming and we live, we will continue looking at “Grief and Mourning” in our next podcast.
Let’s Pray —
Dear friend, please understand that after you die, you will be ushered into one of two places to spend eternity, Heaven or Hell. Here’s how you can be sure that you will not go to hell and suffer eternal damnation forever and rather have a home in Heaven when you die. The Bible says, ”Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Here’s how you can be saved from sin and hell and have a home in Heaven when you die in more detail.
1. Accept the fact that you are a sinner, and that you have broken God’s law. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:20: “For there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not.” Romans 3:23 reads: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” In fact, I am the chief of sinners, so don’t think that you’re alone.
2. Accept the fact that there is a penalty for sin. The Bible states in Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death…”
3. Accept the fact that you are on the road to hell. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 10:28: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The Bible says in Revelation 21:8: “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
4. Accept the fact that you cannot do anything to save yourself! The Bible states in Ephesians 2: 8, 9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith: and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
5. Accept the fact that God loves you more than you love yourself, and that He wants to save you from hell. Jesus Christ said in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
6. With these facts in mind, please repent of your sins, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and pray and ask Him to come into your heart and save you this very moment. The Bible states in the book of Romans 10:9, 13: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Dear friend, if you are willing to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, please pray with me this simple prayer: Heavenly Father, I realize that I am a sinner and that I have done some bad things in my life. For Jesus Christ sake, please forgive me of my sins. I now believe with all of my heart that Jesus Christ died for me, was buried, and rose again. Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and save my soul and change my life today. Amen.
If you believed in your heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried, and rose again, allow me to say, congratulations on doing the most important thing in life and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour! For more information to help you grow in your newfound faith in Christ, go to Gospel Light Society.com and read “What To Do After You Enter Through the Door”. Jesus Christ said in John 10:9, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”
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