Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I’m delighted to have with me a fellow Missourian, my friend Kevin Carson. He’s the pastor of Sunrise Baptist Church in Ozark, Missouri. In addition to his pastoral ministry, he serves as the department chair of biblical counseling at what was Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri. And it’s now known as Mission University. He also serves as a counselor at Sunrise Biblical Counseling Ministry. He is ACBC certified and IABC certified, and He is a council member at the Biblical Counseling Coalition. He’s an author and frequent speaker at conferences, retreats, and seminars. He and his wife Kelly have four children. Brother, welcome to the podcast.
Kevin Carson: It’s a blessing to be with you.
Dale Johnson: Now, today we’re going to be talking about an issue that is this difficult. There’s no way around it. It is a part of the life that we have here and a part of our central nature that brought in this great enemy of death. And when we’re dealing with issues of death and the shadows of death, we deal with suffering and grief as human beings. And this is a difficult subject, Kevin. And it’s hard for us to think about, but it’s a normal part of life, as we think about grief. I want us to talk this morning about some of our responses to grief. Recently at one of our annual conferences, you did a breakout on this subject, and you used, interestingly, John 13-17. And maybe in some people’s opinion, that’s not a go-to passage, right? We would go to places like 1 Thessalonians 4:13. You know, where the Scripture encourages us that we, who have the gospel, don’t grieve like those who are without hope. And that is certainly on our minds but talk us through how you think through John 13:17 as helpful in suffering and grief.
Kevin Carson: Well, I was thinking about Jesus, as He was sitting there with His disciples. They’re around a table and unique to most of us, He knew the day He was going to die. He knew that He was set with, then literally at that point, just hours of taking His last breath on earth. And so, I know with my own children, when I sit down with them, especially if I know something’s coming—maybe a death of a loved one—I’m going to talk to them and start getting them prepared. I’m going to start prepping them for: “this is what’s going to happen,” You know, “we need to be praying this way.” “We need to be thinking this way.” So, I was reading, John 13-17 and I realized this is literally moments before He dies. He has them all around of a big table, right? This is the Lord’s Table and basically, He’s talking about end-of-life: This is what’s going to happen. This is what I want you to do. This is what I want you to be thinking. And He is preparing them for the thing that’s going to happen next, even though they’re unaware of the significance of it.
Dale Johnson: That context is really helpful, to be honest. You know, when I’m teaching my students about the work of the Holy Spirit, we talk a lot about John 14-17, and those are proper emphasis. That’s what Jesus talks about, but the context of what He’s describing is, as you said, end-of-life. And talk specifically about what you see in this passage about how Jesus is preparing the disciples for the grief that He knows is coming for them.
Kevin Carson: Well, when He’s sitting there with His disciples, I noticed three major things that He does: He serves them, and He gives them instruction on serving. He teaches them, which in our case would be that we remind people. And then, He prays for them. And basically, that wraps up His time with them, and then they move out into the Garden of Gethsemane. If you think about it, they’re arguing an argument that started in Luke 9 and continued all the way to Luke 22. This, of course, is the John version of that, but they’re arguing over who’s the greatest, and He has something so much bigger on His mind. And He’s trying to help them get ready for what will be the biggest moment of His life and the biggest moment of their lives as they move out then and live, after His death.
Dale Johnson: Now, what I want us to make sure that we don’t do, as many people do, is sort of dehumanize people in the Bible, especially when we’re talking about the disciples, right? And here they are, this is a guy that they followed, and given their lives to follow, and now He’s talking about death. And you remember times in the gospels where they’re like, “No, no, Jesus—That’s not going to happen. We’ll defend you. We’ll take care of you.” These guys are human beings, right? And I want to go back to the breakdown that you gave. Serving was the first point. And I want you to talk about how service can actually help in grief, because we wouldn’t often put those two things together, but this is exactly what Jesus encourages the disciples with at this end-of-life discussion.
Kevin Carson: Yeah, as Jesus is spending time with them, He says specifically in chapter 13 this: “I am a pattern for you. I am the example,” and He goes around to each one of them. Again, you have to keep the context in mind—Literally He’s getting ready to die within just a few hours, within less than 24 hours—And He goes to each one, and He washes their feet. He confirms His love, and He says, “In what you’ve seen me do, you also do.” Now, I was a senior adult pastor for six years before I got into the counseling world, and I’ve walked with many many families through death. While we had a ministry of several hundred senior adults, so I was in those moments with people regularly, and of course now, since I have been a senior pastor for years. What I have observed is that those who serve, while they’re going through their own grief, the grief tends to get lighter, right? Often, in the middle of grief, we turn inward. We quit thinking about others. We quit trying to reach out. And we receive help: 1 Thessalonians 5, of course, encourages us. At times, somebody does need to hold us. Grief has all kinds of different looks, and it comes at different times: at the end of life, maybe though a divorce or through the loss of a job. There are many ways to think about grief, and one of the ways to make it lighter is like Jesus—we choose to serve along the way. We look for opportunities, or outlets. Because we love Christ, we want to serve.
Dale Johnson: You know, that’s right. And I mean, as you mention it, it really helps us to focus on the meaning, purpose, and value that God gives us in giving our life for the sake of someone else. And it raises the value of life, even as we think about the end of life. You also mentioned not just service, but you also mentioned teaching. Talk about some of the things that Jesus’ focuses on in this conversation—that He teaches them in responding to grief and loss.
Kevin Carson: In our short time together, we can’t work through every verse here, but it is essential to see that Jesus teaches them, in my mind, three specific lessons. He starts with love, and He confirms His love to them. And then, He says. “And abide in my love and as you abide in my love, what that’s going to provide you is the opportunity to love one another.” In chapter 15, He works through: “If you love me, and you abide in my love, then I want you to love one another. It’s a command that I give to you.” And He knows that in grief, It’s essential that we’ve got not just the vertical love of God in our mind and in our heart, and that we’re abiding in Christ, but that we’re abiding as part of the body of Christ. He’s given us each other, and so He reminds them of that in the section. You’re not alone from the standpoint of you have each other.
But along the way, the second thing he tells them is that you’re not alone because I’m sending you the Holy Spirit. So, “not only do I love you, but you will never be alone.” And in grief, I think often we hear people say, “I’d just feel so alone, I don’t want to go home. It’s an empty bed. An empty room. The night gets so long, the house is quiet,” and all the various ways that the voice of grief can come across. But Jesus says, “No, I am leaving, and I’m sending you the Holy Spirit and you will be with Him. He will be with you.” He says, “I’m not going to leave you as orphans.” So, He sends us the Spirit and He teaches them here about that.
The third thing, He teaches them, is the importance of eternity. He says, “I don’t want your heart to be troubled. I am going to prepare a place for you and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. Where I am, there you may be also.” And then He doesn’t even leave them guessing. Thomas is like, “Oh, what are you talking about?” He says, “no, I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father, but through me.” And so in this most intimate time with His disciples, He tells them, “You need to know that I love you, and you have each other, and you have each other’s love. I’m leaving you the Spirit, so that you will not be alone, and there’s a bigger plan, and it’s the plan of eternity.”
Dale Johnson: And those are such comforting words as we think about what Jesus taught. And not just what He taught, but the purposes behind what He taught—that it was to provide them comfort. It was to provide for them perseverance, and endurance, and to hear who Christ is and to hear about His promises. But he didn’t end there, right? He moved in close, and He prays. I want you to talk about this prayer of Jesus. How does it help us in our grief?
Kevin Carson: I love this prayer, because as He works through praying, of course, He starts with God, the Father, and His relationship with Him. And then He moves to His disciples, and He prays for them, specifically that God would continue to work in them through His Word. And as biblical counselors, the beauty of what we get to do is we get to share the Word and minister the Word to people. And He’s praying that God would specifically continue to protect and help them through the Word. And then, with each other, He prays about unity. And so I think that’s just another sweet spirit that we see in Jesus as He is gathered with His friends, right before the golden garden of Gethsemane. He takes them to a place that they could never get to on their own. And that is, He brings the fullness of the Trinity into the room where He’s praying to God the Father. He includes them. And then in this prayer, He even says “those that follow,” He includes us along with.
Dale Johnson: I think that’s so important. I want to hone in on one of the things that you described here, Kevin, where you talked about this idea of sanctification. It is certainly an emphasis in John 17. The work of the Holy Spirit by the Word, this truth that God has given us. And this really matches the Bible’s view of sanctification. We talk about this a lot in biblical counseling, as we walk through life with Christ, in the Spirit. Talk about how this model matches what we talked about a lot in biblical counseling, in terms of sanctification.
Kevin Carson: Oh yeah, Jesus fascinates me because He doesn’t just say, “I don’t want your heart troubled,” Although, He does say that in this text a couple of times. “I know that you’re full of sorrow, I don’t want you to be troubled.” So, He starts with the heart, and then He helps them to think about what they believe. He helps them at the level of content. “This is what the Bible teaches, this is what you need to remember.” But then in each one of these instances, He pushes it forward to, “And this is how I want you to live. I want you to go serve. I want you to obey. I want you to walk in unity.” So, He doesn’t just include an idea or a sense of comfort, but He also says, “And this needs to push all the way through to the way that you live every day.”
Dale Johnson: What I’m fascinated by, as you’ve mentioned, is it was intended to bring comfort—knowing what the disciples were about to go through in deep grief, which is very common to us in humanity, as we mentioned earlier. I want you to describe some final thoughts on: How Jesus works here to describe how we serve, the things that we should know that we’re taught by Him that are anchoring to us, and then also calling out in prayer, and how these things are helpful and are intended to be a pattern for us to follow. So, give us some thoughts, especially about how this is to be related to our own suffering and how we can use a model like this to help us.
Kevin Carson: Yeah. So, as counselors, I think that we can see what Jesus did, and it helps give us almost a pattern, right? As we see someone in suffering, we want to serve them and selflessly serve them as Jesus did, right? He took the lowest spot to serve those who were getting ready to go into grief and were already troubled. And then we see that He actually says, “And this is what you need to remember.” He doesn’t say, “Remember.” He teaches them, but we would say and don’t forget this, this is critical: Jesus does love you. God loves you. Abide in Him. And don’t forget, the Spirit is with you. You’re not alone. And the fact that we can go back and help them think about eternity, right? All of those things. So, there’s a ministry of Word that we should have as we’re spending time with people in grief. And then, just remembering to not forget to pray. Do not forget to pause. I received a sweet card from one of those senior adults from a family and they said as their dad was going through his particular struggle, the thing that most impacted him was something I had forgotten. We just passed each other in the hallway, in a hospital. He was there. I was there. I didn’t know he was, right? We just ran into each other. He said, “I am here, receiving cancer treatment.” And in the middle of that hallway, people going on each side, and I said, “Can we just pray? Let’s just stop and pray.” And I received a card from his wife and said, “During that entire journey, the thing that had most impressed him with encouragement over that time, was when you paused your busy day, and you paused in the middle of all of those things and prayed with them.” And so, I think that’s what Jesus is doing here. He’s praying with them. Now, that’s good for us as counselors. I think it’s good for us to help our counselees here in the similar way. So, while you’re going through grief, don’t forget to serve. Don’t forget to remember these things because they’re critical for living. And don’t forget to pray as you go along.
Dale Johnson: I don’t want to forget that today. And we might not run into nobody in the hallway as we’re talking about a podcast, but what we do know is that we’re bumping into people, as they listen. I’m thinking about all of you who are listening. Even now, you maybe walk through some difficulty, because we know it’s very common that we would have to endure suffering and grief with loss in terms of death and struggle. And so you may have just lost a loved one. Maybe you’ve just found out that that one of your loved ones has a terminal disease. Maybe you’ve been given that terminal disease. And how do we model something like that? And Kevin, I don’t ever want us to pass over what the Lord has given us as rich resources. I want to give you an opportunity to model, even what we’ve talked about, to pray for those who are listening who are walking through difficulty, as a means of suffering and praying for them to suffer through this well. Brother, would you lead us in prayer for this?
Kevin Carson: Sure, what a pleasure. Lord, we do love you, and we are glad that in this text, you tell us you love us. You invite us to abide in your love. You invite us to think carefully really about this ultimate demonstration of Jesus: who died on the cross and came and lived and did all of those things, all specific demonstrations in history of how much you have loved us. And so we’re thankful for that. Lord, we are thankful that you are with us, no matter where the person is that’s listening today. You are with them. Not just, simply the Spirit, which we’re glad that Jesus emphasizes in this text, but Jesus said, “And I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.” God over and over talked about the fact that, “You’ll never leave us or forsake us.” We are so thankful for that, that no matter how alone they feel, the reality is that they’re not alone. Thank you, Lord, for anchoring us in that. And Lord, we are so glad that you have a plan, and that you said, “I don’t want you to be troubled.” Instead, you went, and you’re preparing, and that preparation includes a beautiful eternity. Thank you that you have taken the sting out of death. Thank you that you have moved, and you’ve made a plan in such a way that death becomes the doorway to eternity. And for that, we’re very grateful. And Lord, we do pause to just reflect and ask that you would give us a spirit of service—that in the midst of our own grief, and in the midst of those that are listening today that are in grief, that you would help them look outward as well. That the love of Christ would motivate them to go and share what they can and how they can with someone else. And that they would enjoy, not just this word that we’re praying together, but that they would also be committed to the prayer of the saints. So that, they would walk with you with brothers and sisters in Christ, all together, as we’re trying to work through this grief. Lord, we have no idea the intensity of the disciples suffering over those few days, all of their hopes just crushed. But you knew, and you spoke the Words they needed to hear, and we receive those Words. And we pray that as even these listeners go back and look at chapter 13 to 17 that you would help them internalize it and think about it and consider the wonderful truth here, in Jesus’ name.
Dale Johnson: Amen. Thank you, brother.
