Can you believe it's Christmas time? Let me ask you this. How many in here you finish your Christmas shopping? Lemme see your hand. Wow. Can we just give them a hand? That's pretty awesome. How many still need to buy some gifts? Come on. Some of y'all are not buying gifts. Is that I didn't see your hand go up. You're just like, Hey, this year I'm doing me. I love Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. In fact, Christmas time is my favorite time of year, and maybe it's partly because I grew up in Germany and so it was very festive. We've got snow and the lights and all the things that go along with Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. I love the weather. I love the gifts. I love the decorations. I love the gifts. I love what we get to wear our attire, sweaters, cardigans. The turtlenecks I love, I love the gifts.

I love the festivities, I love everything. The eggnog, the apple cider, the hot cocoa with marshmallows. I love it all. And I love the gifts. I love the lights, I love everything. What they would say today, I think is it's giving life. Did I do it right? Okay, then I'll stop. I'll just stick to being myself. I love everything about it. And as a Christian, Christmas is really special, right? Because as a Christian, there are two events in the year that are really kind of at the epicenter, right? They're at the very top of events and festivities. One is Easter and the other is Christmas, right? We recognize those two days, the day of our savior's birth and the day that our savior gave his life. And those are two very, very special days. I love Christmas. I think it's very good to celebrate Christmas, especially as a Christian because we've got the slogan. Jesus is the for the, so y'all know we know this, right? And it is a good reason to celebrate because, and think about the fact that God descended from heaven, wrote himself in flesh and became Emmanuel.

God with us. No longer is there this separation or this curtain or this veil between humanity and God, but Christmas we celebrate the fact that Jesus came to us in bodily form. That's a lot of reason to celebrate. And here's the thing, I've always looked forward to Christmas with anticipation, right? I love Christmas, not just because the festivities and the food and the attire and the gifts. I love Christmas because Christmas to me is a period of time too where you get to kind of close out the year and prepare for the new year. It's almost to me, finals week for the year. It's an opportunity for us to just, whatever went bad, we shut it down. If it went good, we celebrate it and then we get ready for the new year. I love Christmas for this reason, but can I just be honest and vulnerable with you this morning? May I? Yes.

I didn't have that experience this year. It was a very different experience for me getting prepared for Christmas. And what's interesting for me is I love Christmas and I always think of Christmas as being this joyous time and it's celebratory and it has all these amazing factors to it. But this year it was different for me. Can I just be vulnerable with you? Just a few weeks ago, it was after a Sunday service, and Sundays for me after I get through preaching are really great. I get to just kind of relax and rest and kind of ponder what I preached on. There are many times where I'm like, man, it was such a great Sunday. And then there are other times when I'm like, man, good thing we got next Sunday, so I get a do over. But this particular time after Sunday, I just felt a heaviness, just kind of a man, like a sadness. And it came out of nowhere. Has that ever happened to you where when you look around you're like, everything's going great, family is good, marriage is good. Money ain't acting funny. Car drives fine, home is nice, joy in my job, everything in your life seems to be going good. And then all of a sudden you get a sneak attack of emotions that feels, and my initial thought was, now Lord Christmas is coming.

I need to snap out of this because join to the world, all the songs, Lord, normally I got to be in a positive attitude. I got to be excited. And after all, I'm a pastor. I got to give the people a strong positive message to get prepared for Christmas. Why am I feeling this way? And I did what most of us do. I said, I'll sleep it off. So on Monday, I will feel better. I woke up on Monday and I still felt, ugh. And my wife, who is so discerning is like, are you all right? I'm like, man, I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it is. But here's the thing. I've done enough work that I can sit in the discomfort. I've done enough work on myself that I can sit in sadness and figure it out. So it was actually during our prayer meeting in the month of November that I sat on the front row and I just sat there and I asked the Lord, Lord, number one, why am I feeling this way and what is this? And I told the Lord, I feel sad and I'm not sure why. And the Lord nudged me. And he said, you need to grieve some things.

And I said, Lord, that ain't me.

What do you mean? I got to grieve some things? And the Lord reminded me of all the things that I lost this year. Now here's what's funny. I did the good Christian thing, right? I'm like this Lord, nah. Yay. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And God reminded me that you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Let's not forget that. And what's interesting is this year, I'm not going to get into all the details, but my year has been filled with mountaintops and valleys. It's been filled with gains and losses. It's been filled with joy and sorrow. It's been filled with happiness and anguish. And here's what's interesting. If you grew up in the branch of Christianity that most of us have, we usually don't have permission to admit that we're going through a hard time.

The church has done a terrible job at teaching us how to hold hurt and hope intention. And so generally what happens is you have people walking around that act like everything's going great in their life and they're hiding their hurt and they're hiding their pain, and they're hiding their sorrow and they're acting like nothing ever happened. And just as long as nobody knows that I'm fine. And here's the truth. As your pastor, I will tell you that mostly you see mountaintops, you see my experiences that are on the top, but I have had some weary days. And you know what? I refuse to be the type of pastor that hides that from you. Thank you. You know why? Because we're all human. And the Lord reminded me, and here's the funny thing, again, I'm, I'm generally not a sad person, so I said, Lord, I need you to snap me out of this because after all, Christmas is my favorite season of all.

I'm ready for candy canes. You can keep the Turkey, but give me the ham. I don't need the cranberry sauce, but give me everything else, the mashed potatoes. Lord, I'm looking forward to something that's just great. After all, you are the reason for the season. And this is joyous. And God reminded me, Tim Rivers, let's talk about why Christmas is even necessary. We talk about Christmas and it's finality, but we don't talk about what leads to us needing Christmas. Here's the thing, if we were going to be honest, the reason why Christmas was necessary is because humanity lost something. Adam, the story of Christmas begins in the garden with Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are in the garden. They're in perfect harmony with God. They're in perfect fellowship with God. They're having a utopian experience. They're in paradise fruits that are growing. They're getting to communicate with God on a regular basis. They're naked and unashamed. They're in this paradise with God. And when sin comes in, guess what happens? They lose it all. They lose their relationship with God. They lose their position in the garden. They lose the ease of fruitfulness.

And yes, God gives them a promise and says, Hey, you see, the woman will bruise the head of the serpent. But what do you do between the fulfillment of the promise and the loss? What do you do when you're standing between, when you're in the waiting period, when you've lost something and you're praying for a miracle and the miracle is on the way, but you got to wait because you don't know when it's coming? What do you do when your theology is not matching your reality? What do you do when you come to church and the preacher says everything is going to be all right, but everything's not all right in your world? What do you do when you're standing between orthodoxy and orthopraxy?

When you stand in between what you believe about God and what you're experiencing in real life? And for most of us that grow up in a church environment that's all positive, we're not given permission to even admit that waiting hurts, that there's pain while you wait. Remember the story of Adam and Eve, and we love to talk about at this time the promise, right? That the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. And we holler and scream at that, but we miss two key passages where God says to eve, Eve in pain, you will a promise, Adam, you're going to see some fruitfulness, but it's going to be in the pain of your toil. Lemme tell you something, miracles are only necessary when we've come to the end of our own human capabilities. We love to talk about miracles, but we ignore the fact that somebody has got to go through some loss in order for us to experience the miracle. There is no reason for you to ask for a miracle unless there's something that you experience that you have no answer for. So what do you do while you wait? What do you do while your intention see, the Christmas story really begins with the reality of loss, pain, and grief. And I know you're thinking, man, Christmas is next week. Can we get a positive message? What you talking about this for?

I want to give somebody permission today to feel what you lost this year. Don't trick yourself into a positive attitude and miss the whole point of Christmas. Adam and Eve had to sit after they lost their innocence and they lost their peace and they lost the garden. They had to sit with the what ifs they had to sit with the what could have been. And guess what? The seed wasn't the Messiah. So what do I do? I keep having kids, I keep having kids, and they're not. So when is this going to happen? God, and it doesn't happen in their lifetime, so they have to sit with loss. So what do you do when you've come to the reality that you've lost something and you're waiting for the promise to come? What do you do with that? And as I pondered that and as I asked the Lord about it, I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said, you grieve.

You process it. And I hate that the church has not normalized holding faith and disappointment and tension when in reality all somebody say all of our biblical heroes had to go through grief, every single without exception. And here's the amazing part about God. God did not hide the fact that they had to go through something from us. He didn't just give us all the fluffy and the cool stuff. He let us know that David had to go through to paint. He let us know that job had to go through suffering. He let us know that Samson had his eyes gouged out. He let us know that Elijah had to hide himself. He let us know all of these things that happened to these heroes of the faith. In fact, God is so kind to us and so generous to us that he said, I'm giving you a whole book called The Book of Lamentations that is simply dedicated to processing sorrow and grief.

So if you want to be biblical, sorrow is biblical. In fact, this is what Isaiah prophesied about Jesus in Isaiah chapter 53. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hid their faces, he was despised, he was esteemed, and we esteemed him. Not surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him. Stricken, smitten by God and afflicted grief is the experience of processing loss. That's what grief is. Grief. What's interesting about grief is grief is never planned. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and say, alright, at 9:00 AM I'm going to start the process of grief. It doesn't work that way. Anyone who's ever gone through grief, you know that grief just happens. Grief just is. There's no expiration date. You can't just wake up and say, I'm going to grieve for 30 days, and that's it. No grief just happens and then it's not. It is, and then it's not. And you can't determine it. What's amazing is God has determined that in our human body, the body knows when we have fully grieved.

Can I give you tell you a personal story? I lost a friend in 2015 to a heart attack. He was my age. He was 32 at the time. And I remembered I was just so hurt when I got the phone call and I cried and I went to his funeral and I cried some more and I felt like I had processed the grief for years. I felt like I, but every now and then I would have a thought of him and I would get emotional and I would relive it all over. And then about two years ago, our family was in Puerto Rico and we were on the beach and I had my snorkel stuff on and I was on the beach having a good time, and the family was here. And I said, I'm going to go down the beach and just go see what I can find in the water.

And I went down probably about 200 yards away and I turned around and I was coming back and on my way back out of nowhere and the beauty of Puerto Rico, white sand, clear water, little fish swimming all around me, I was overcome by heavy emotion and sadness at the loss of my friend. And it came out of nowhere. I wasn't even thinking about 'em, but it just came. And I wept and I cried and I was by myself. So I was like, I'm getting it all out. I wept and I cried and I had tears and it took everything for me to get back to where my family was. And when I got to my family, I'm crying and Janice is in the water, she's like, are okay? And I said, no, I just need you to hold me. And I just floated in the water with Janice holding me and I didn't cry. I wept. I wept. And I said, I'm going to do this until it's out.

And from that moment, my grieving subsided. I still get sad when I think about it, but now I can talk about it without reliving the emotion all over it. It's because I allowed myself to finally grief my loss. I'm going to mess with your theology because everything that you've probably been taught or most of what is taught about grief is actually wrong in the church. Often grief has been taught as a curse, as a lack of faith in the chin, in the armor. But really you need to write this down. Grief is a gift from God. Grief is a gift from God. You know why? Because grief is what helps us transition from one season to the next. Grief is what helps us transition from one season to the next. Can I tell you, you will not be able to clearly appreciate the gift that is Emmanuel until you come to grips with the reality that you didn't have Emmanuel.

You will not appreciate the fact that God is giving himself to you unless you come to grips with the fact that you don't have God. You cannot leave what you do not grieve. You cannot leave what you do. Not grief. Sadness is not weakness. It's human. Here's what I can tell you about grief. There are many people who have not processed grief correctly and they're stuck in a period of time in their life. There are people who are 57, but they're still living as their 17-year-old self because something happened when they were 17. Their father walked out, their mother abused them. They went through kind of a sexual trauma. People get stuck at 21 and 25, the divorce, they never got over it. They never got over the rejection, they never processed that. And they are acting out at 57. They weigh, they did when they were 21, all because they would not allow themselves to feel the sadness, acknowledge the loss, and process the grief. You cannot get to Emmanuel without first recognizing that you lost the garden.

What makes Emmanuel God with a special is that it reconciled what we lost in the garden. And so many people will not process grief correctly. They really have two unhealthy responses. They either repress it, which means they unconsciously block the pain from the mind or they suppress it, which means they consciously try to block the pain. Have you ever seen somebody go through a traumatic event? They lose something, they go through a divorce, they have in the fidelity in their marriage, they have something. And then when you talk to 'em, they're like, no, it's all good. We'll make it through. And you're like, you're lying because it's not humanly possible. It's literally not humanly possible. If Jesus gets moved with compassion and sorrow at the loss of his friend, how are you not moved by the loss you've experienced? You're not fooling anyone but yourself. You've got to process this. There is a healthy way to process grief though. It's called confession.

The Bible teaches us that there are times of different types of emotion. Ecclesiastes, we read it all the time for everything. There's a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted and a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down, a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, and time to mourn, a time to dance, a time to cast the away stones, a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sow, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

And we always love to just kind of work on the positive column. I want to plant, I want to receive the plant, I want to gather, I want to do all this. But what the writer of Ecclesiastes is telling us is that you cannot appreciate living until you come to grips with the fact of dying. You cannot appreciate building unless you've experienced being broke down. You cannot appreciate gathering of stones unless you've cast stones away. You cannot appreciate the loss of time until you've sought. It is juxtaposed. It doesn't make one wrong in the other, right? It just is.

And the reason why I'm preaching this, and believe me, I wanted to preach you some positive message that's going to get you ready for Christmas. But what it felt like the Lord was telling me is that there are people in here and that are watching online that you've gone through some loss this year. And if you don't process that, number one, you won't really understand the significance of Christmas. And number two, you're just going to take it into the new year. Grief is not something, loss is not something that is just material that you can just leave. I'm going to leave this December 31st in 2024, I'm going to leave this here. No, no, no, no, no. It's in you. It's got to come out of you.

So I want to show you through the scripture, through one the best examples ever, how to process grief healthily. Mark chapter 14, verse number 32, Jesus. And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took with him, Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful even to death remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, Simon, are you sleeping? Are you asleep? And could you not watch one hour?

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. If you want to process healthily, there are really three steps. The first from the example of Jesus is don't grieve alone. Don't grieve alone. Jesus the son of God, Emmanuel God with us, God robed in flesh when he was sorrowful and he went to pray. Number one, he went to pray. He went to experience that. He took with him his disciples. And then out of his disciples, he gathered three of his best friends, Peter, James, and John. He said, I need y'all to go with me as I experience grief. Jesus would not allow himself to experience grief by himself. And if Jesus, by his own example, gathered close friends with him to experience the sorrow that he felt, how much more should we have? An example in the scriptures where somebody was going through grief and his name is Elijah, after the miracle of what happened with the prophets of Baal, Elijah is overcome with disappointment in his own self. And he thinks that nobody knows what's going on and he runs away. And the scripture says that he is found far away by himself with his head between his knees. And you know what he says to God? He says to God, take my life. Because when you grieve alone, it never leads to a good place. It only leads to the desire for self-destruction.

And you know what God's response to him was? God didn't say, oh man, you all by yourself, oh man, no, no. God says, listen, you don't even realize that I have 7,000 prophets who have never been to need. You don't have to do this by yourself. You have to be in community. Can I tell you it is the job of the enemy to get you to grieve by yourself so you think that you're all alone. How many have ever experienced loss in this place? Come on, lemme see. How many have ever gone through a hard time? Look around. You are not alone. And let me tell you something, we will not be a church that walks around like we don't go through stuff.

No, no, no. We're going to admit the fact that we, you know why? Because I need your strength. When I am weak, I need your comfort. When I'm going through grief and sorrow, there are people in this. I'm a pastor. I'm your pastor. I know this for a fact. There are people in this place. You've gone through a divorce, you've got to grieve that. There are people in here that you lost that job. You got to grieve that. There are people in here. You've dealt with infidelity, you got to grieve that there are people in here that people in your family have divorced, and Christmas is not what you thought it was going to be this year. You got to grieve that. There are people in here that you have gone through trauma years ago, but you're just now realizing it. You got to grieve that you didn't think that your kids would ever act out like this. And they are. You've got to grieve that grief is God's gift to us to process sorrow.

God has gifted us with grief as the release valve because here's what happened. If you don't grieve, number one, you can't put anything new in. And number two, what you have will expand you until you explode. And it's just a matter of time. And many of you are exploding on people and you're trying to gaslight folks. No, that's the way you act. No, it's the fact that you got some stuff that you got to deal with and it's okay. You have permission from Jesus to deal with it. So number one, don't grieve alone. Number two, be honest.

Be honest. Stop hiding. Stop acting like it's all good. Cool. You made it to 57 and no one knew you still got a long life ahead of you. How do you want to get there? How do you want to live the rest of your life? Constantly hiding, constantly trying to pull a whale over people's face? No, no, no. Be honest. Look what Jesus did. The Bible says that Jesus was greatly distressed, which means to be or become excessively affected by emotion. It says that he was troubled, which means to be despondent in anguish to be or becomes subject to extreme mental or spiritual anguish and distress sometimes to the point of losing one's composure. Now remember, mark is the one who is writing this right? He's writing this about an internal emotion about Jesus. How would Mark have known that this is how Jesus felt unless Jesus lets somebody know how he felt.

Now, it's one thing to write that Jesus felt this way. You could even take a guess. Oh man, the way he's acting and he's distressed. He's troubled the way he's stumbling into the garden. He's going through some stuff, but then Jesus is honest. He gathers his three disciples. This is what he says to them. My soul is very sorrowful even to death. Jesus then confesses Emmanuel confesses to his disciples that he is sorrowful. The word sorrowful means extremely sad. It means crushed by grief, understood as if surrounded by sadness. One of the reasons that the church has had a problem with attracting those who are in the world is that many in the church act like they are just perfect. Ain't nobody in here perfect. You got to be honest. We try to sprinkle this Jesus glitter on everything. This little faith glitter, right? But listen, you wouldn't require faith unless you lost something.

You wouldn't require a miracle unless you're going through something that you can't fix by yourself. And the fact is you got to deal with your brokenness. This is why the scripture even says blessed are those who mourn. Come on to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. You've got to be honest. Here's number three, final stage. Process your grape food. Don't do it alone. Be honest and then process it. This is the hardest part because many of us will be transparent, but we won't be vulnerable. And there's a big difference. Transparency is when I'm telling you what I'm going through. Vulnerability is when I let you touch what I'm going through.

Transparency is like water in a clear bottle. You can see it, you can see right through it, but it's only showing you what it wants to show you. Vulnerability is when you take the cap off and you pour it out and let it be touched and felt by others. You got to process your grief. Mark chapter 14, verse 35 through 36, and going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, father, this is an informal way to address God, not just Father but Abba, which is a more intimate way to process the words like saying, dad, instead of Father, all things that are possible for you, remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And then the scripture says that as Jesus prayed in the garden, that he prayed with such agony that sweat was coming from his brow as great drops of blood.

And some say it's a metaphor. Others say that it could actually happen. That when you're under such stress that the capillaries in your forehead will burst and out of your sweat glands will come drops of blood. That's an extreme, extreme experience of grief and sorrow, whether it be real or figurative. We know that Jesus was at that point. You've got to process your grief. Number one, you got to process it with humans. That's what Jesus did. He told 'em what was up. He made sure that they were there. And a lot of us, we like to go hide in our corner and just process it with God. No, you got to process it with humans. Confess your false one to another. You may be healed. There's something that happens in the confession to a human, but you also must process it with God. It's okay to stand before God and say, God, I'm going through a hard time and I know you know this, but I got to tell you just for me, listen, you can say God, but sometimes you got to tell God from your human experience what he already knows.

Believe me, I wanted to preach some really fancy cherry message and I will next week get ready, but I cannot lead you to Emmanuel until I lead you through the pain that produces Emmanuel. Isn't it interesting? It's not a coincidence that Mary who was selected by God to carry Emmanuel, did not come from opulence, did not come from royalty, was not handed the lack of luxury. In fact, until the very second of Jesus' birth, it was hard. It was painful, it was sorrowful. It was rejection. It was the rejection. It's no wonder that the pre figurations of Christ's birth all began with the sorrow of bareness. All throughout the Old Testament, there are foreshadows parallels of Christ's birth, and in each example, each foreshadow of Christ's birth, it always began with sorrow. It began with bareness. Sarah was barren and then was given the promise and then birthed to Isaac.

But it started with barrenness. Manoa's wife, this is Samson's. Mother was barren first, and then she received the promise. She had to deal with the grief of being barren. Hannah was barren. She was grief. Where did the man of God, where did Eli find her? In the house of God being sorrowful. She was in a place of bareness, and it's somehow in the barrenness that God decides to bring forth Samuel Elizabeth was barren. She becomes the mother of John the Baptist. All the women who carry promises had to first of all go through the grief of barrenness. Ooh, I just feel like there's somebody in here that you are dealing with miscarriages, and I want you to know that God knows and he sees you and you can process it and you can be sad. You have permission to be sad, to feel it.

God works this way. He always has. Since the creation of the world, since the creation of the world, when God was creating all things, he created it out of darkness, out of void. In fact, when God got ready to call to define what a day is, we like to define days by, we wake up in the morning, we go to bed at night, but God flips it on his head. God always started from the night to the day. This is why in every day of creation, God said, and the evening and the morning were the first day and the evening and the morning was the second day and the evening and the morning was the third day. Because God always imputes his promises and darkness and you have to deal with it.

It's no wonder that children are planted and grow first in obscurity and darkness. And it's no wonder that through the pain of childbirth that the baby is born. God always works this way. It's no wonder that a sea has to first of all be planted in darkness before it sprouts into the light. Lemme tell you something, God will not, it's not in his mo. God will not lead you from light to light. God will lead you from darkness to light. Anytime God has done something extraordinary through people's lives, he's never done it from the mountaintop. He's always done it from the valley up.

And there are some people in this place. You have experienced valleys and you just can't wait for this year to be over. So you can start over in January. But let me tell you something. If you don't properly grieve what you have gone through this year and maybe over the last several years, you're just going to take it in the 2025. You won't understand the significance of Christmas if you don't understand why Christmas is necessary. You know what makes Christmas so special? I finally get free from the thing I lost. I finally get it back after thousands of years. We finally get reconciliation. We finally get redemption. We finally get the promise. We've been praying for it. We've been asking for it. We've been read the Old Testament. It's full of sorrow, it's full of pain. And guess what? God's okay with it.

It's interesting to me that the most significant gifts are usually wrapped in packages where you can't guess what it is. What makes a gift so special is finally unwrapping it after it's been hidden in darkness for a while. That's what makes Christmas special, is finally the gift is unwrapped, but you have to deal with the fact that it's hidden. I don't know what you may have lost this year or what disappointments you have dealt with. What hurts that you've gone through? I don't know what aches are in your heart or in your mind. I don't know what you've had to endure, but I do know this. There are people in this place and watching online that you've gone through some significant losses this year, significant losses, and you've done, you think you've done well by holding a brave face because that's what people affirm. Man, if I was you, I don't know how I could go through that. That's a cool compliment, but it's not reality because God actually prefers for you to feel it. That's why he's giving you the gift of grief because it's God's way of giving you a human way to process what you just went through.

You have to be okay with that. But I promise you this, if you can process this, when you get to hold the promise, you can't tell me that Mary wasn't elated when she finally got to hold. Oh man, this is it. Anyone that, any of you ladies that have had a child, you know the experience, man, the pain, the discomfort that you have to go through for nine plus months, the discomfort, the pain of actual childbirth. I was there for all three of ours, and man, it is a lot to bear just being beside the bed, the pain, the hurt. And it's so amazing to me to have watched all three of our children that as soon as they were born, oh man, and Janice help.

It's like she forgot about the pain. Maybe later she'll feel it again, but in that moment of holding the promise, it's like, wow, all the pain was worth it. All the pain that you've been going through, all the stuff that you've been going through, you've got to grieve it. Why? Because when you get to the other side of it, you look back, you'll realize why God let you go through it. Emmanuel, spoiler alert, Emmanuel, God with us is coming. Spoiler alert, Christmas is going to happen. But what do you do between now and Christmas? You've got to acknowledge what you've lost. You've got to acknowledge these losses. If you want to close your eyes, bow your heads, great things await you on the other side of grief, but you got to process it.

And I want to offer you permission by the word of God to feel your sadness, to feel your grief, to feel your hurt, to feel your pain. Some of you are hurt. You're just dealing with shame. Even you got to process that too. You got to do it. You got to do it. You got to do it. And this is the perfect place to do it because you're among friends. You're among people who have lost stuff. You're among those who have grieved or may be grieving. You're in a safe space if you would stand to your feet all across this place. This is what we're going to do. We're just going to create some space. We're just going to create an opportunity right now. So if you are in this place and you are dealing currently with a loss, disappointment, some hurt, you feel like, Lord, this message is for me, I need to grieve some things. Just slip your hand up if you're going to be honest, this is going to be an honest environment, so just slip your hand up. Lemme see it. Good, good, good, good, good. Number one, thank you for being honest. Thank you. This is a safe space. Thank you for admitting. Thank you for standing in the light of God and saying, God, I'm not going to be like and Eve at Hyde. I'm coming out. Here I am. I tried with the fig leaves. They didn't work.

I need something a little more to cover me. I need something greater than me to cloth me. Just keep your hand up. If that was you, this is what we're going to do. Wouldn't have a time of Sila. We're going to let the song wash over us, and as it does, if there's somebody around you that has a hand up, I just want you to either point a hand toward 'em, touch 'em on their shoulder, and pray for them right now. Because here's the thing, you may not be going through grief right now, but you got to grieve with those who grieve. You got a sorrow with those who are going through sorrow. You got to weep with those who weep. You got to rejoice with those who rejoice, and there's coming a time when you're going to need somebody to pray over you, and this is a family. This is a church. We stand in the gap for each other.