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Hope Channel

InVerse 1st Quarter 2025: Renewing the Mind

Sebastien Braxton

Justin Kim

Joe Reeves

Jonathan Walter

01 Renewing the Broken Mind

Sikhu Daco

Israel Ramos

02 Restoring the Whole Person

03 Receiving the Mind of Christ

04 Correcting Cognitive Distortions

05 Overcoming the Strongholds

06 Resisting Temptation

07 Calming the Angry Mind

08 Experiencing Forgiveness

09 Finding Inner Peace

10 Managing Stress

11 Healing from Grief

12 Feeling Satisfied

13 Saving Hurting People

Coming to you from Silver Spring, Maryland, welcome to Inverse, a Bible-based conversation on life principles, contemporary issues, and thought-provoking perspectives.

Now here's your host, Justin Kim, with Inverse.

Hey everyone, my name's Justin and this is Inverse.

Every week, my friends and I, around this table, we talk about the Bible and some of the issues that we face in life and how the Bible addresses those issues.

In this arc, in this season that we're in, about 13 weeks, we've been looking at different principles, different issues, and different solutions when it comes to mental health.

On this week, we look at the issue of grief.

And if you have been a long time watcher of our show, we tend to sprinkle our conversations with a little bit of humor, just to make it a little bit digestible when it comes to grief.

And it's something that all of us, and if you haven't experienced already, you probably might soon in the future, we all experience this part of the human condition.

And if not dealt with, it can easily result in a lot of spiritual pain, mental pains, anguish, and we're gonna be looking at this.

If you don't know already, you can go to inversebible.org and look at the Bible study guides, especially on the topic called renewing the mind.

And we've addressed anxiety and stress and trusting in God and some of these spiritual aspects when it comes to mental health.

Again, the 4 of us are not health professionals, so we totally rely on the medical experts on this, and the psychiatrists when it comes to some of the more chemical imbalances and more of the neurological conditions that people may have.

But when it comes to scripture, there is a space where scripture talks about mental health issues.

So I do want to acknowledge my panelists here, my friends Sebastian, Joe, and Israel.

He's giving that Hawaiian greeting, even though he's not from Hawaii.

And we wanna say hello to you guys out there as well.

If you wanna see past episodes, you can go to hopetv.org slash inverse, and you can look at, we've been doing this for 8 years now, can you guys believe it?

We do 4 seasons a year, and you gotta wade through all those seasons and you can find the 1 on mental health as well.

And some, there are some, not some, I think each episode we've had wonderful conversations on wonderful studies on scripture.

We haven't been able to finish all of them, but you can finish those conversations with your friends, whether it be in small groups or study or whatnot.

All right, we're gonna go into episode 11, Healing from Grief.

Israel, can you pray for us, and we'll get into scripture afterwards.

Our Father in heaven, as we delve into this difficult topic that many of us have gone through already, we pray that you would be with us, that you would give us insight, guidance, and most importantly, comfort as we Remember the different challenges that death brings to our lives and Jesus and we pray amen.

Amen Let me start before we actually read scripture, maybe I can ask a question to Joe is grief what role does it play?

Oh, that's gonna sound too philosophically and too vague.

I was gonna say, what role does it play in the human experience?

Should it play a role in the human experience?

Right as we read this verse that we will in a minute, it mentions sorrow, the word sorrow, which is a synonym for grief.

And that even believers that have hope in a resurrection in the future experience sorrow and experience grief.

It's a different kind because it's a sorrow that is mixed with hope.

But there's a lot of pain when we experience loss and there's no avoiding the pain.

It's very painful, but there's ways to go through it and to cope with it.

Grief is very different from the rest of the topics that we've talked about.

The others may be a result of sin, maybe self-induced, maybe for sure, on this side of Eden, if I can say that.

But grief is something that not intended for humanity, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

I mean, I guess they're all not intended for humanity, anxiety and stress and whatnot.

But yes, God never- It's inevitable that we experience grief.

And I figure we can go through a lot and to get an overall view of what scripture has to say about this experience.

We know that the scripture is very clear on what it teaches about state of the dead.

State of the dead is another way of saying what happens when you die?

And you can actually go to the same, the websites that I mentioned before, and there's Bible studies on what actually happens when you die.

You don't go upstairs and your floating thing doesn't go upstairs and whatnot.

That the body is sleeping until the resurrection.

So we're talking about now the experience of those who are the survivors of the dead and the grief that they experience.

First Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 13 through 18 and Brax can you read that for us?

But I do not want you to be ignorant brethren concerning those who have fallen asleep Lest you sorrow as others who have no hope For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who sleep in Jesus.

For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort 1 another with these words." Thanks.

So first reactions when it comes to not the not the exact state of last day events, what happens when you die, but the human experience when it comes to death.

I think that even to, even though Paul is speaking to a Christian audience, he mentions that there is some kind of ignorance that surrounds what happens with death.

Oh, in verse 1, I do not want you to be ignorant.

Okay, that's cool, I never actually saw it.

And so, There's misunderstanding even back then.

There's a misunderstanding even among Christians about what happened, not just about what happens when you die, but about the impact that death has on the individual.

And these misunderstandings, right, this ignorance about death, this mystery of death, is what causes us as people to sorrow without, as those who sorrow without any hope, right?

In other words, and I think Joe alluded to that earlier, there is a kind of sorrow that happens and then there's a kind of sorrow that happens with hope.

And so the difference here between how we sorrow with hope or without hope is not so much determined on whether or not we believe in God or don't believe in God, but It's on whether we understand death or don't understand death.

And so he says, I want you to understand this mysterious thing about death because when it comes to you, it is important for you to sorrow, but sorrow as a person who has hope.

And then he reminds us, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, then those who also fought, and death is now presented as a sleep, then those who also sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

And then he talks about, he'll bring them when he comes again in the clouds of glory.

I forgot what your question was, but that's what struck.

Can we explore a little bit of, tell me a bit more about this sorrowing with hope and sorrowing without hope.

What does that, I think we may have a mild concept of what that looks like, but maybe there's others, excuse me, that's a little bit too ambiguous.

In both, there's a recognition that what just happened is a really bad chapter.

But with hope, you realize it's not the last chapter.

When there's no hope, it's the end of the story.

There's no more to that person's story, you've lost them.

But with hope, you realize there's still a future.

Yeah, And I think to piggyback off of what Joe was saying, having, you know, I was atheist before and I know Israel alluded to this, that Paul's not just dealing with atheism in terms of ignorance, but I think Death was the ultimate hope killer, as an atheist.

Because losing my best friend when he was 9, I was 6, to a terrible gang violence.

A lady at my school when I was 8 years old.

When you don't have the concept of God and you don't have the concept of a resurrection, the loss feels permanent.

And then you start to question yourself, like why would I even, I don't want to experience this pain again.

And the way to avoid that pain is not to be as close to people.

So you're like, well, why give me such a joyful experience with my best friend only for him to be taken away?

Right, and I think when you have no hope, you begin to look at life differently.

And you begin to- So there's cynicism with God, but also disconnect with other social relationships because of fear of experiencing that pain again.

Series

InVerse 1st Quarter 2025: Renewing the Mind

11 Healing from Grief

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

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