God's Healing for Life's Losses

Here are some notes from a seminar at New Hope church, taught by Dr. Bob Kellemen, author of “God’s Healing For Life’s Losses.”

In suffering, God is not getting back at you. He is getting you back to himself.


We need to climb in the casket with other people who are hurting.


Candor is courageous truth-telling about life to myself in which I come face-to-face with 
the reality of external and internal suffering.”


We can be disappointed with God, or without God.


To diminish suffering is to refuse to need God.


Suffering is God’s primary way of uprooting our self-reliance.


If God allowed bargaining/work to work to get us out of grief, no one would ever surrender to God. He thwarts our attempts to manipulate him.  Even as we cry out, we have to ask ourselves if we have a pure heart: “What is our motivation?”


Our prayer is often for God to change our circumstances or feelings.  Instead, we should cry out for strength to serve and glorify Him in the presence of suffering.


Comfort of God in the presence of suffering: a presence that empowers me to survive scars and plant the seeds of hope that I may yet thrive.


There is a difference between surviving and thriving.  Sometimes, it’s okay to just survive as part of the process of moving forward. 


Faith does not demand the removal of suffering; faith desires endurance in the suffering.