Your Grief and God’s Comfort

Dannah Gresh: Grief is a universal reality in our fallen world, and Paul Tautges says we can’t ignore it.

Paul Tautges: He created us with tear ducts; those tear ducts are supposed to be filled with tears at certain times. If we keep everything bottled up, eventually it’s going to come out. So we need to learn how to talk to the Lord in our times of grief.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A 30-Day Walk with God in the Psalms, for August 12, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Anytime you and I experience great loss, we’re likely to be hit by a flood of emotions. And let’s be honest, it can be overwhelming! In those moments, how can we make sense of our suffering? Our guest today will help us see God’s perspective.

Paul Tautges is a husband, a father, a pastor and author, and for a long time he served as a hospice chaplain. He has experienced his own tidal waves of grief and sorrow. Here’s Dannah to talk with him about that.

Dannah: Welcome back, Paul.

Paul: It’s wonderful to be with you again, Dannah. 

Dannah: We had a really rich conversation yesterday about anxiety, and how our approach as believers is a different approach. We have powerful tools in the toolbox of our faith tradition and in the Word of God that can help us fight that battle.

But it’s so funny to me, Paul. I find that God allows us to face battles that build upon themselves. So, if you’ve faced a battle with anxiety, you’ve been in training for something. The Lord is training you for something, and out of that comes rich wisdom and comfort that you get to pass on to other people. You are a reservoir of that.

You’ve written a book, A Small Book for the Hurting Heart. The subtitle is Meditations on Loss, Grief, and Healing. What led you, I mean, people aren’t lining up to write on the topics of loss and grief. What led your heart to want to do this?

Paul: You know, it was unexpected in my first pastorate in Wisconsin, the Lord opened the door for me to be a voluntary hospice chaplain for the Visiting Nurse Association. That was really my biggest introduction to grief ministry, if you want to call it that, or just thinking about grief from a biblical standpoint.

So I was doing funerals constantly. I was meeting with family members. I was ministering to people who were sometimes in their final hours of life. I found that God’s Word was so comforting when it was dispensed—if I want to use that word—in very small doses, in manageable doses.

I think that that began to teach me how God often comforts us. He is the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort [others]” (2 Cor. 1:3–4 KJV).

And so, as I was working on just responding to certain losses in my own life, I was also seeing how those promises of God’s presence and His goodness were not only comforting to me, but they were really comforting to others.

Many of these people that I ministered to did not know the Lord. The Lord then showed me how interconnected His comfort is to the gospel, that when we are grieving, what we need more than anything is someone to be close to us.

It’s like in the book of Job. You know, the best thing that those three friends did was to just sit with him that first week and not even open their mouths (see Job 2:11–13). They just blessed him with their presence.

Dannah: Yes, they were doing better when they didn’t open their mouths! (laughter)

Paul: They did! And the Lord has done that for us in the gospel. In Christ, He has come near to us! And so, in grief ministry—responding to other people's loss—I want to be someone who first comes near and is present, not the one who always wants to say something.

Dannah: I think that is really comforting, because sometimes you don’t know what to say.

Paul: Many times we don’t know what to say. I think the worst thing we can do is to just cite some kind of spiritual platitude or something. I think we just need to keep it simple, to let people know, “I’m really sorry you’re going through this, and it must really hurt!” Simple things like that. Not to try to be the one who comes in and removes their grief. Grief is universal, but the way it works out in each of us is unique.

Dannah: Tell us a little bit about how it has worked out in you, because you just mentioned a few minutes ago that while you were ministering to people in hospice care, you were also experiencing some of your own grief. Like what?

Paul: It even started before I was a believer, and I didn’t know how to respond to grief. My grandfather died, just suddenly dropped over of a heart attack in his garden. And then a year later, my favorite uncle was murdered. He was our favorite because he was our only uncle who lived close to us, and so we would see him on major holidays. His wife had died when they were newlyweds and he never remarried, but he kind of became part of our family.

I think back to how those experiences hit me. Then when I became a believer, the Lord was beginning to change my heart, helping me to see things from a biblical perspective.

I guess another example of how differently grief works out in people was when my wife had a miscarriage on Christmas Day. I was the husband at that moment, I wasn’t the father. 

I’ll explain to you what I mean. I went into “care for Karen” mode. So I just made sure she was okay, that she was getting everything that she needed. She felt like she didn’t want to be isolated, so we still went to the family gathering on that day.

It actually didn’t hit me until two weeks later. I had dropped my kids off at some friends’ house, and I was driving through the snow on a Wisconsin country road. All of a sudden it just hit me that I had lost a child! That took two weeks to sink in, and I just started bawling while I was driving down the road. It was the Lord giving me the opportunity to just release all of those pent-up emotions.

I’ve found a pattern in my life when other people are hurting, I step in and I do what’s needed there to help them, to serve them. I may not necessarily process (if you want to use that word) my emotions until later. That’s what happened to me with our miscarriage.

And when our daughter lost her first baby, that was one of those long journeys where we found out early in the pregnancy that our granddaughter was not going to survive. We began praying, and the church began praying that her parents would be able to meet her, that she would be born alive and they could meet her. And God answered that prayer! And so, Isabel was born. They held her for about forty-five minutes, and then placed her into the arms of Jesus.

But there was a whole other level of grief as a son, when my mom suddenly died of a brain aneurysm. Then to grieve as a father, but then to grieve as a grandfather. 

So, like I said before, grieving is universal, but it’s so unique. I think that should remind us to be gentle with one another in times of grief.

Dannah: I just went through a “mini” grief. My husband was sick for a while. And you said, “delayed grief.” I think as caretakers, we women can relate to this. When somebody falls down, we go into help mode. We’re busy, we’re fixing it, we hold it together.

And then I had a pet die—my horse died. Suddenly, I couldn’t hold it together! I went into this crazy month-long . . . I was not okay! But it wasn’t just the horse. It was this grief of my life changing, and my husband being ill, and not knowing if the Lord would heal him . . . finally all catching up to me. 

Paul: Yes. 

Dannah: How important is it, do you think, that when that happens—or maybe even before that happens—we slow down and say, “What are my emotions telling me?” Why do we need to process grief? You used the word “process.” Why do we need to eventually process it?

Paul: Well, I think your examples and my examples demonstrate that emotions are a tricky thing. We may have some immediate emotions at the sudden loss of someone that we love, or even as you said, a pet.

But we tend to just move on from that quickly and just do life, because life doesn’t stop when we have a loss. So we have to keep going. I think that’s one of those examples of where we usually don’t give ourselves time to grieve.

And if we don’t give ourselves time to grieve in the moment, so to speak, or at least within the weeks and the months that follow that loss, it will catch up with us eventually, because it’s just the way that God designed us.

He created us with tear ducts. Those tear ducts are supposed to be filled with tears at certain times. If we keep everything bottled up, eventually it’s going to come out, so we need to learn how to talk to the Lord in our times of grief.

And that’s where I like to turn, in my heart and mind, to the Lord Jesus and just to remind myself that He is the man of sorrows who is acquainted with grief. He was not ashamed to cry at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Therefore, I should not be ashamed to show grief, to show tears. 

That means that He understands my pain. He understands suffering even to a greater degree than any of us can imagine, because none of us will ever suffer to the degree that Jesus did! But I’m also helped by Psalm 56:8, where David is speaking about the Lord—that Lord keeps track of all of David’s sorrows and He collects his tears in His bottle.

What a beautiful, poetic description of God’s intimate care for us . . . that He’s collecting our sorrows. He cares for us. And so, it’s not just that He cares about the sorrow, but He also cares about the pain of the loss that led to the sorrow.

And so we can talk to Him about those things. Psalms of lament are an example of that, where we can honestly pray through some psalms of lament, to talk to the Lord about our pain.

Dannah: Right! Those psalms of lament have been a learning curve for me. They’re pretty raw!

Paul: They are.

Dannah: You’ve probably attended a funeral where the family is perfect. “They’re fine; everybody is in a better place; this is good.” I find that unbelievable! I find the lament of the psalms so much more believable! But how is lamenting—in a biblical sense—different from just being mad about what has happened?

Paul: Well, lament is a godly expression of sorrow to the Lord. So, it’s talking to the Lord about our pain. It’s bringing our honest questions to Him. One of the psalms that I think is so important when we’re grieving is Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord, how long!?” (see v. 1)

The world says, “Give it some time,” or “Time heals all wounds.” That’s just not true. Time does not heal all wounds. There are losses that we experience in this life that will not be fully healed until eternity.

There is a lessening of pain. You know, it’s like when we get wounded or when one of our kids gets a cut or something and it’s bleeding profusely. Eventually it clots, and then it scabs over, and then it scars. But the scar is there, and it will always be there.

And it’s similar, I think, for grief. The loss, the acuteness of the pain, you might say, I think deadens over time. It becomes less and less and less, but the scar is still there. Which I think God, again, can use to the advantage of our sanctification by reminding us that this world is not our home. Full healing, full restoration, the fullness of redemption is not going to take place until we see our Savior face to face. And we need to be living in light of that truth and that reality, rather than being swallowed up by our griefs.

Dannah: Yes. Is it true that, “It isbetter to go to the house of mourning than to a house of feasting (Eccl. 7:2).

Paul: Oh, boy! That’s a hard Scripture, isn't it? I think looking at it through a biblical lens and through a Christ-centered lens then, yes, we can say that because of the deeper work that God does in our lives through suffering.

I don’t like suffering. I don’t ask God to bring more suffering into my life. But when I come through a valley time, and I come out the other side, I always look back and I see that I’m different than I was when I first stepped into that valley.

And I say, “Lord, thank You for the growth. Thank You for the sanctification that You are accomplishing.” So I think that verse only makes sense when we see it in the context of, let’s say, Romans 8:28 and29.

You know chapter 8, verse 28, that “God works all things together for good for those who love Him.” But verse 29 then says what that good is: “that we are being conformed to the image of Christ.”

 

So, God’s big agenda for us is to remake us into the image of His Son. And like that furnace illustration in 1 Peter, God heats up the furnace to melt the ore so that the crud rises to the surface and can be skimmed off. And eventually, we’ll be, as Job 23:10 says, like pure gold! That’s what God is after. So when we understand suffering, the goodness of God in suffering, then that verse makes sense.

Dannah: Yes, right. The day my horse died was like four days after my aunt’s funeral. So there was just my husband sick, my aunt’s funeral, and I remember seeing a trickle of blood from the horse just going down the driveway. I remember crying and thinking, This is why Jesus died, to stop this insane grief forever! And in that moment, I felt like I had more clarity about the gospel than I do on my happy days, on my good days, in my easy months and years.

There was this certainty of Jesus that was just so solid! And I thought, Uh, maybe this is why it is good to go to the house of mourning . . . maybe. 

Paul: It is! And that’s why Revelation 21, the first four verses, are just so incredibly beautiful for us; that there is coming a day when He really will wipe away every tear, and that He is making all things new!

I think that is one of God’s purposes for us in suffering is He wants us to be living in light of eternity, He wants us to be setting our minds on things above, not things on earth (see Col. 3:2). And when we have that desire—the desire of our heart being to set our minds on Christ and to be more like Christ—I believe we need to be prepared for what the Lord might use in order to turn our hearts in that direction. Because we usually don’t turn to the Lord in deep meaningful ways when everything is rosy!

Dannah: Right, right. No, it’s different. You know, I feel like I’m sitting with an expert, and I need to ask this question. So, you’ve been to hospice care, you’ve been through your own grief, you’ve written a book on grief. What do you think it means that He’s going to wipe away every tear? What do you think it means that all these pains are former things?

Paul: Well, that is a tough question!

Dannah: I know! I’ve been rolling it around in my head. 

Paul: Yes. Well, you know, I have to believe that some of that is going to happen at the judgment seat of Christ. I think as we see the rewards that we receive and perhaps the rewards we lose, maybe there will be some tears. There will have to be some tears there, in order for them to be wiped away.

But I do think that the primary focus of that truth is future glory; that we are to set our hearts and our minds on future glory; that we could actually get to the point of honestly being able to say, like Paul said, “To die is gain,” to be with the Lord in His presence (Phil. 1:21).

For all the groaning of Romans 8, the groaning for redemption is going to be complete, and all those sorrows will be wiped away, all of the griefs that were brought into our human experience because of the sin in the Garden of Eden. 

They’re all going to come to that final resting place in the Lord Jesus Himself, the Man of Sorrows who bore our griefs. So I think it’s Scripture’s way of pointing us to Christ as really ultimately being the only true comforter! Does that make sense?

Dannah: Oh, yeah, more and more every day!

Paul: That’s right. You mentioned earlier the surface things that people will say at a funeral. (“Oh, he’s in a better place!”) I just have come to the point where, really, the only comfort that is really worth having is comfort that is connected to Jesus, because that’s where everlasting comfort comes.

Every other comfort is temporal. For us to come alongside one another in times of loss, times of sorrow, to have that kind of Jesus-centered comfort, is so, so vital!

Dannah: I wonder, Paul, if you’d just take a moment and pray for the woman who is grieving right now and needs to feel the nearness of Jesus.

Paul: Yes! Oh, dear Father, I thank You that You are the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our affliction. And Lord, I pray today for the dear listener who is struggling, whatever her loss is, whatever her grief is that she is carrying. May she really know in the depths of her heart that Jesus will carry that grief with her and for her; that Jesus is the One who says, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you” (Matt. 11:28–30). Jesus wants to take her griefs, wants to take her burdens, wants to take her sorrows and to carry them with her and for her. 

Lord, turn the eyes of her heart to the Lord Jesus as the One who can truly comfort her in her time of sorrow. And may God be glorified, may You be glorified, may Christ be honored through His work in her life! In His name we pray, amen.

Nancy: We’ve been listening to Pastor Paul Tautges comforting the grieving and inviting us to do the same. I love the way he took us back to Scripture, especially the places like the Psalms and the book of Job, to help us view our suffering through the larger context of God’s good purposes.

If you’d like to soak in more tender counsel from Pastor Paul, I hope you’ll read something he wrote. It’s called A Small Book for the Hurting Heart. As he shared earlier, grieving people need God’s Word dispensed in small manageable doses, and that’s exactly what this resource offers with its fifty daily readings.

As you read, you’ll be pointed to our gentle Savior who is well acquainted with grief and sadness. This month when you make a donation of any amount to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, we’d love to send you this resource!

Again, it’s called A Small Book for the Hurting Heart. It’s by Paul Tautges, and it’s our way of saying thank you for your support. To make your gift, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569–5959, and be sure to ask for Pastor Paul’s book when you do.

Well, tomorrow we’re going to receive more biblical help for when life is hard! We all need that, don’t we? We’ll hear from a wise and precious friend, Colleen Chao, about enlarging our hearts for eternity even in the midst of trials and suffering. You won’t want to miss it! So please be back for Revive Our Hearts! 

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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