Calvary Road Baptist Church
“AN IMPORTANT ROLE FOR GRANDPARENTS”
Good morning, grandparents. Today is our tribute to you for the vital role you ought to play in the lives of your children and grandchildren, and my opportunity to challenge you in a way you may never have been challenged. I will challenge you for the benefit of your beloved grandchildren.
I take the liberty to challenge you because it is integral to the ministry God has called me to conduct over these last 49 years. Ephesians 4.11 broadly outlines my duties as a pastor:
“For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:”
The primary focus of my calling as a pastor is to equip people (children, parents, and grandparents) to facilitate the work of the ministry so the body of Christ, the members of the Church congregation, will grow spiritually and numerically. More specifically, Paul reminded Timothy, in Second Timothy 4.2-4, to
2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
I am delighted for those of you who are here at the behest of your grandchildren. I am delighted for you grandparents who have your grandchildren here with you. I feel sorry if you are a grandma or a grandpa and do not have the influence to get your grandchildren here. That saddens me.
I am a preacher of God’s Word. Some will not endure sound doctrine but will run off to entertainment-oriented pretend ministries or shut down completely, spending their Sundays watching television, viewing videos, or spending time on social media, pretending to live a life.
Since this is your special day, I will focus on an aspect of ministry that you grandparents can sometimes be uniquely qualified to discharge in your grandchildren’s lives. I pray that you will figure as prominently in your grandchildren’s lives as my grandparents figured in my life.
I am sorry my mom and dad did not exercise the wisdom of remaining as near to their parents as I always wanted them to live (these days, grandparents often move away and not parents). Still, I was always grateful for the summer vacation times every year that we could spend weeks with both sets of grandparents. I loved them dearly.
As I reflect on my childhood, I appreciate my grandparents’ wisdom in complimenting the efforts of my mom and dad rather than seeking to correct them. You don’t want your parents to correct you in front of your children. God gives children to their parents most frequently and not to grandparents (except in the case of tragedy), so it is typically not wise for grandparents to thwart the efforts of you parents or interfere in the rearing of their grandchildren.
Instead, it is a role of gentle and complimentary influence and reinforcement in supporting the plan and efforts of parents (hoping parents have a plan and put forth the efforts). It is one of those roles that I want to speak to and about grandparents about this morning.
What role in your grandchildren’s lives am I referring to, a role that you very well could become far more qualified than anyone else to fulfill in your grandkids? It is the role of showing your grandchildren how to grieve. How much convincing do you need to realize that your extended life and many experiences have given you far more occasions to grieve to experience intense emotional suffering caused by loss, misfortune, injury, or evils of any kind than your children or grandchildren have experienced?[1]
Are you ready to teach your grandchildren how to grieve, properly grieve, and negotiate the pain and heartache of grieving to become a better and more substantial person rather than an empty shell of someone who is just marking time until they die? Job, who experienced more suffering than you or I ever will, surmised that,
“Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.”[2]
His observation was accurate. Some of our troubles are self-inflicted and the result of stupidity, while the rest are the lot of every human being. Not all trouble produces grief, but much of it does. The question is how one deals with the trouble we experience. More to the point of my message this morning is how you deal with the grief resulting from your troubles.
We consider this matter of showing your grand kids how to grieve under three headings:
First, WHAT IS GRIEF?
I have already rehearsed the Webster’s Dictionary definition of grief as the experience of intense emotional suffering caused by loss, misfortune, injury, or evils. Let me flesh out that definition by pointing out some specific grief-related feelings.
First, of course, is the pain of loss. The loss of a person, the loss of place, possessions, and the loss of powers (physical abilities) results in pain. The pain is such that the line that divides physical pain from emotional pain can be blurred, with emotional pain spilling over into physical pain or physical pain spilling over into emotional pain.
The two kinds of pain can bring on tears, sobbing, and a wrenching heart. What are you to do after that person who was so loved and so dependent on you is now gone? How do you relate to the world around you when that person with whom you related to everyone and everything is now gone?
There is a reason why our Church has a formal ministry to widows called Joy In The Mourning. Do we not have as much of a need for a ministry for widowers? Someone to speak to, pray with, share a cup of coffee, reminisce with, a shoulder to lean on, and one to take a call in the middle of a lonely night. Are you ready to be that other person?
And that is related to the loss of one’s longtime spouse. What about the loss of a son or daughter, the loss of a mother or father, the loss of a brother or sister, the loss of a home, the loss of a career, or the loss of physical strengths and abilities? With each kind of loss, there is a particular kind of pain and associated grief.
Do not grandmothers and grandfathers typically have far more experience with the various types of grief than do their grandchildren? So, what are they to do when their grandson or granddaughter suffers a great loss and begins to grieve? Do you say nothing while your grandchild suffers in agony? Do you just say, “There, there. It will be okay”? What if it does not turn out to be okay? What then? What if it is grief caused by a debilitating and chronic disease?
Research the 65 times in the Bible that mention sorrow, sometimes synonymous with grief. Pay attention to the passages that commend sorrow over laughter and the warnings against being flippant and lighthearted during times of sorrow. There are times you should not try to be funny.
Second, HOW IS GRIEF EXPERIENCED?
We must understand the distinction between the wrong way of grieving and the right way of grieving:
I was introduced to an uncle in 1961 who epitomized the wrong way of grieving. He was a Baptist pastor with a godly wife and four wonderful children. But in the winter of 1957, his oldest daughter, and the apple of his eye, contracted strep throat and died. He was overwhelmed by the tragedy and never recovered. I mean, he never got over it or moved past it. As much as I can be sure, he was bereft for the rest of his life and without real joy. As nearly as I could ascertain from my parents, he was a broken shell of a man, husband, father, and pastor until the day of his death decades later. I have no assurance that he ever expressed gratitude to God for the precious years he did have with Sally before she was taken. What a terrible example he was to his children and eventually his grandchildren concerning grieving. And what about my unsaved parents? I was never aware of how impressive my uncle’s God and Savior were to comfort him in his grief. My mom and dad were unimpressed.
But we see that kind of lousy example of grieving in the Bible, right? Remember Jacob’s response to the loss of his son Joseph, who he thought had died but was thriving in Egypt? Though in his advanced age, he learned that Joseph was still alive and was reunited with him, what a waste of decades of opportunity to show his trust in God was not taken while setting the worst example to his children and grandchildren of grieving. When he was introduced to Pharaoh in Egypt, he responded by saying,
“few and evil have the days of the years of my life been.”[3]
His appraisal of his life was accurate and based on his misguided approach to grief.
That said, there are good examples of negotiating the pain and suffering of grief in God’s Word. It always hurts. There is always suffering and pain. But to what end? Where is the focus on yourself and how do you feel? Or is there a larger purpose? Is there a bigger plan? Does God have something to do with your pain and suffering? How did Job grieve over the unexpected deaths of his sons and daughters and everything he held dear? Job 1.20-22:
20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
How did Isaac grieve the loss of his mother, Sarah? Genesis 24.67 tells us how Isaac was comforted following the loss of his mother:
“And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.”
For all we know, Job seems to have grieved quite alone, even though he had a faithful wife. Isaac, on the other hand, was comforted in his grief by his bride, apart from any mention of his father, who may have been wrapped up in his process of grieving over Sarah.
Do you imagine the Apostle Paul had some familiarity with grieving and sorrow? Consider what he wrote to the Corinthian congregation in Second Corinthians 1.3-4:
3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
My aunt was greatly comforted after the loss of her daughter, Sally, while my uncle was inconsolable. God’s comfort was available to him through God’s Word, Spirit, his wife, and his three remaining children. But he refused God’s comfort. So sad. Jacob had eleven sons and two wives to comfort him over the loss of Joseph, even while the ten older sons held their secret. But Jacob, too, was inconsolable.
And then there are the passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Romans 8.18:
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
Romans 8.28:
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8.18 promises future glory to offset the present pain of grieving. And if verse 18 speaks to our experience compared to what it will be, verse 28 addresses the Who, that God has a future purpose He is unfolding amid our present pain of grief. We, who love God, are assured that things will turn out well, in the end. And who loves God? Those who obey Him, Second John 6.
Finally, WHO IS AFFECTED BY GRIEF?
Everyone, obviously. That said, let me quickly relate the various kinds of relationships we all have that are affected by our grief, who you grandparents can prepare yourselves to help properly cope with grief:
First, there is yourself. My introduction to grief began while sitting next to my great-grandmother in her home in Wheeler, Texas, at the age of thirteen, as we watched my great-grandfather, her husband of some seventy years, pass from this world to the next while my grandmother and great aunt tended to their aged daddy. Then came the deaths of my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my mother and father, as well as many beloved Church members (too many to recount). I know grief. And I know that one is not adequately prepared for grief until one knows the Savior, Whom to know is life. Even then, a person can grieve improperly, selfishly, foolishly, and in a way that dishonors God and denigrates His Son, Jesus Christ. How dare someone who does not live for, love, and faithfully serve God pretend to show others how to grieve? What does anyone who is unsaved know of God’s plan, God’s comfort, and God’s consolation while rejecting Christ and ignoring eternity? I hope you have experienced pain, suffered loss, and known grief so that you can effectively minister to your grandchildren when their time of grief arrives. And I hope you know Christ so you can point them to a relationship with the God of all comfort through faith in Jesus.
Next, there is your spouse. Unless, of course, it is the loss of your spouse that you are grieving. What words of comfort and consolation do you have for the person who shares your bed, say when your mother or father-in-law or a son or daughter dies? How do you help your mate grieve? When the painful loss arrives, you must have something prepared: words of consolation, a lap to serve as a pillow, a shoulder to lean on. But your words are hollow unless you have a relationship with God, the God of all comfort. He comforts you so you can comfort others.
Third, your children. What will you tell your little one when daddy is gone, never to return? Or when you break the news that mommy is not coming home? Have you no obligation to ease the pain, to point to the merciful Savior? Excuse me, but telling them that you love them is not enough. And unless you walk with God and are familiar with eternal matters, just saying that mommy or daddy went to heaven is not nearly enough! Children do want to be fooled into thinking everything will turn out well for a while. But they are not genuinely and deeply comforted by someone who does not live for God, exalt Christ, and anticipate the eternal state.
Then there are Church members, colleagues, neighbors, and the lost surrounding you. What good did my uncle do anyone with his grief? Did he have any care or concern for his family? He seemed to have no concern for his brother-in-law, my dad. Or my mom. His grief over the loss of his daughter displayed no comfort from God that impressed anyone, most especially my dad. Why do you imagine God gives grief to people who suffer great and painful loss? Is it so we can spend our time and energy self-absorbed and feeling sorry for ourselves? Or could it be that through our pain and tears, the comfort of God and the joy that begins to shine through will be a testimony to our children, our grandchildren, and so many others? Though they are not explicitly mentioned, do you imagine Job had all those kids without any of them giving him grandkids? What do you think his reaction to his grief showed those grand kids? “When grandpa found out daddy died, he worshiped God.” “When grandpa was told mommy died, the first thing he did was worship God.”
Granddad?
Grandma?
Someone is going to die. Someone is going to divorce. Something awful is going to happen, and it will break your grandchild’s heart. The greatest fear of any child growing up is the fear of losing a mom or dad to death or by divorce.
What if something else that is very bad happens? If it is tragic, it will hurt, be the occasion of great sorrow, and the result will be grief. But what kind of grief will your grandson or granddaughter experience?
Will it be the mindless and meaningless suffering and grief associated with life that makes no sense because there is no God, no Savior, no plan, and no purpose? Is it all meaningless and random? Are you willing to expose your grandchildren to that kind of grief?
How is one comforted by the flip of a coin, a cosmic accident, or the absolute absence of meaning? Will you remain silent, saying nothing because you have nothing to say? You will let them suffer silent agony because no one cares enough to comfort them with truth from God’s Word?
That is the helpless and hopeless grieving of the unconverted, of the godless, of the Hell-bound, in response to pain and suffering and the grief that comes with it. Don’t be that kind of do-nothing grandparent.
However, when you are a grandpa or a grandma who has grieved and been comforted by God, who has been comforted so that you can, in turn, comfort others with the comfort you have received from God, you can point your grandchildren to the Savior, through the Gospel, to a life of meaning that lies beyond the pain and suffering of the moment.
What it is like to have that kind of grandmother and grandfather. I have memories of my grandparents sitting at their kitchen table with their Bibles open, reading a devotional guide, praying for their children and grandchildren, praying for my mom and dad and aunts and uncles, and praying for me and my cousins.
Those are grandparents who knew how to grieve the pain of loss and showed me how to grieve the pain of loss. You need to become that kind of grandpa or grandma.
Can we talk? I will show you how to become that kind of grandfather or grandmother for your grandchildren.
They are going to suffer great pain and begin a time of grieving. That is the way life is. And I want you to be useful for them then, not useless to them then. Become the kind of grandparent that little boy or little girl will someday stand up and praise God for.
__________
[1] Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996), page 801.
[2] Job 14.1
[3] Genesis 47.9
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