Fourth in a series about managing change in healthy ways

Change invites choice. You can choose to view change as a pain or as a gain. You can choose to focus your mind and heart on Who gets you through it, not the circumstances. You can choose the lie about change (you are vulnerable) or choose the truth (you can be victorious.)

Yet change also walks hand-in-hand with loss. How you face that loss is part of change, too.

One Way to Grieve a Loss

Image: Catherine Gardner

During a time of change, you enter a new set of circumstances and leave the old. Take the Israelites, for example, as they perched on the edge of Canaan: they had left four centuries of slavery in Egypt. God provided them with clear instructions in how to live by giving the 10 Commandments and the Law. While en route to the Promised Land, they enjoyed God's physical presence and leading in the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud. Now He promised them their own land to build a nation!

But as 12 Israelite spies described the challenges Israel faced in the Promised Land, the people lost their vision for a simple, easy Canaan takeover. Messiness would reign. The people grieved.

Yet how they went about their grief compounded their loss. As Israel complained and grumbled, they did not seek God's movement. Instead, in a willful display of obstinacy they refused to believe God's promises - in spite of all the miraculous signs He had performed among them (Numbers 14). Soon there was talk of a mutiny and stoning.

The Israelites denied what God would do to their loss, isolating them further and delaying their victorious entry into the Promised Land.

Another Way to Grieve a Loss

Forty years later the children of Israel sat poised, once again, on the edge of the Promised Land, facing change. They were about to move from a life as nomads to a life as warriors and settlers.

Looking back, the nation might have thought they had lost 40 years. Wasted days, weeks, months, and years could have been spent building their new home in Canaan.

Yet as they reviewed what had transpired over the previous four decades, God reminded them, "You shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart ... to do you good in the end" (Deuteronomy 8:2, 16, NKJV).

During that time God had been preparing the new generation to enter into the land. What the Israelites could have seen as a loss, this time they could now choose to see as a preparation.

Hearts were humbled. God can work with that.

Your Wilderness Can Become a Canaan

During different seasons of change in your life, your losses may take various forms: the passing of a loved one. A pink slip. The move away from a home. A diseased limb or organ. The death of a dream, of innocence, or of hope. Squandered time or a missed opportunity. Your losses can be major or minor ... losses can be physical, mental, emotional, financial, or spiritual.

Should you grieve a loss that is inevitable during change? Of course. Yet when you suffer a loss and don't seek what God can do in it, then your loss is compounded.

You needn't stay in that desert.

There is a gift with loss. When you allow humility to weave its way through your loss, then God promises to work in what may seem to be a waste ... to do you good in the end.

Will you receive that gain during a time of change and loss? You can. Do your part -- bring your humbled heart before God. Then let Him do His part. He promises to do you good in the end.

The choice is up to you.

Part 1: Change: Is It a Pain or Is It a Gain?  

Part 2: Stress - Your Body's Response to Change
Part 3: Distress and the Most Common Lie Told During Change 

Growth Point 

  

Grieve loss during change - but look to see what else God is doing.

 

Scripture

You shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart... to do you good in the end. (Deuteronomy 8:2, 16, NKJV)  

  

Prayer Points

• Why can it be difficult to see God's hand while you grieve a loss?
• Identify a time in your life when God used a seeming loss to create a gain.
• Why is an attitude of humility so powerful during times of change?