A Grace Disguised (Part 2) - Jerry Sittser

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Walking By Faith Through Irreversible Loss

Guest: Jerry Sittser

From the series: A Grace Disguised (Day 2 of 3)

Bob: Jerry Sittser understands grief and loss in a profound way. He and three of his children escaped from a car accident that took the life of his wife, his mother and one of his four children. How long would it take for someone to recover from a loss like that? Here’s Jerry Sittser.

Jerry Sittser: Through a long and often difficult journey I really did discover the Christian faith is true. Grace really is available to get us through these hard stretches of life. The ultimate message of Christianity is not self help. It is God’s help.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, July 7th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife Dennis Rainey and I’m Bob Lepine. Jerry Sittser says when the landscape of life has been permanently altered God’s grace is there to help you make some sense of the loss and to give you peace.

Welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. We have been talking a lot not just this week but in recent weeks about the subject of loss. We’re trying to help listeners understand that your responses to the loss you will experience in life will help shape you and your family and your marriage and your whole life.

Dennis: It will. In fact, our guest on today’s program is really the result of losses that Barbara and I have experienced in recent days. In fact I want to welcome Barbara to the broadcast again.

Barbara Rainey: Thank you.

Dennis: Thanks for joining us again Sweetheart and thanks for recommending Jerry Sittser’s book A Grace Disguised. Jerry I want to welcome you to our broadcast. Welcome back.

Jerry Sittser: Thank you. It’s a privilege.

Jerry is the professor of theology at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington. As we mentioned earlier Jerry’s book was used in our family as it was recommended to Barbara by a friend. She started reading it after our daughter Rebecca and her husband, Jake, lost their daughter Molly after only seven days. This book really helped Barbara and me as well as Jake and Rebecca process through how the soul processes grief.

We mentioned earlier how you lost your wife, your mom and your daughter in a tragic car wreck in 1991. That really is the genesis of this book. I have to ask you a big picture question. If you could summarize what you think God is up to when He allows us to experience grief what would you say? You’ve experienced it on a profound level that few people will ever experience it. What do you think He’s up to in grief?

Jerry Sittser: I am not sure I can answer that question in a word. That’s a very difficult question actually. I think over all I would say that God is in the business of reclaiming people who have turned away from Him. He created us in His image. He created us to be gloriously beautiful people who participate in the divine glory. The perfect relationship that exists between Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we’ve turned away from that.

That divine image has been marred and made perverse. He wants not simply to save us. He wants to reclaim us and restore us and one of the ways that happens like it or not is through suffering. I honestly think suffering is necessary in the Christian faith.

It happens in lots of different ways some we can choose like the suffering that comes when we deny our appetites and practice self discipline. John Calvin called it self denial.

Sometimes that suffering is imposed upon us through some kind of loss or tragedy. Either way we need some kind of suffering not masochistically but honestly realistic to become the holy people God wants us to be and to draw us into a vital relationship with Him.

Bob: Grief that we experience when we go through a loss to what extent are we in…I don’t want to use the word control but to what extent do we have power over that grief? And to what extent does the grief have power over us? Do you know what I’m asking here?

Jerry Sittser: Well, I’ll start by saying this. I don’t think God causes these things as if He were some kind of divine manipulator who hovers above the ground and zaps us with cancer or divorce or job loss or loss of portfolio or loss of a loved one. I think that is a very poor mechanistic view of the sovereignty of God. I think God is in it. God’s sovereignty is in it. I don’t think God causes it in that kind of crude kind of way. I will say God uses it. God’s in it in that sense.

Our choice is whether we’re going to respond to the work the sanctifying work God is trying to do in our lives. Does grief and loss have power? Of course it does. It can change the entire course of our lives.

But I think the greater power is the way we respond by faith to God’s work in our lives. It’s a hard thing to say. It sounds so easy and so trivial. Oh you know God’s trying to sanctify us. I almost resist saying it because I don’t what it to come across kind of cheap as if I’m quoting a Bible answer or a Bible verse and that verse is going to make everything right. Well, God works all things out for good for those who love Him. I mean that is a true statement. I believe that with all my heart but I also believe that is extraordinarily hard to work out in normal life.

Bob: There were times when I’m sure the grief had to be…I don’t know if I want to say overwhelming or just so compelling that you felt powerless against it.

Jerry Sittser: Of course. I think any true catastrophic loss leads to that. That’s the difference between a normal loss from which you’ll recover like you’re high school athlete and you break your leg and lose the season. It’s a big loss and it’s hard but you’re going to get your leg back again and you might be able to play another season.