When Someone You Love Dies Without Christ

The death of a loved one who never professed faith carries a grief few people know how to talk about. Discover why the secret things belong to God, and how that gives you room to grieve with hope.Losing someone you love turns everything sideways under any circumstances. When the person who died never professed faith in Christ, there's an added layer of grief, and most people don't know how to talk about it. You replay old conversations. You wonder if there was one more thing you could have said. You want to know what happened between them and God at the end, in a moment you weren't in the room for, and you can't. That not-knowing can eat at you for years.This episode opens with Trudy Harris, a hospice nurse who sat with hundreds of people in their final days. One patient was an older man who had spent his life with no use for God and made his opinion of faith clear. Trudy cared for him anyway, and near the end she felt she should tell him plainly that God loved him.Moses gave grieving believers something to hold on to. Deuteronomy 29:29 says the LORD our God has secrets known to no one, but that we are accountable for what He has revealed. There are things God has shown us plainly, including how to be saved and how to come to Christ. And there are things He keeps to Himself. What passed between your loved one and God in their final hours is one of the secret things. You don't have the whole picture. Only God does.That is grounds for hope rather than dread. The God who holds those secrets is more merciful than you can imagine, and more just than you can imagine, both at once. He is not looking for a reason to turn someone away. He knows what happened in that last hour, the thought your father never said aloud, the prayer your friend may have breathed when no one could hear. Who knows but that they understood the gospel and trusted Christ before they died. You can't see it. He can. You can trust Him with what you can't know, because He loved that person even more than you did.That is the kind of hidden thing Trudy witnessed at the bedside, and it is a reminder that God is often at work in a person's final hours in ways their family never sees. This episode also turns the grief outward, toward the people still living who don't yet know Christ, and the chance you still have to tell them.BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:Why the death of a loved one whose faith was uncertain carries a grief few people nameWhat Deuteronomy 29:29 says about the secret things that belong to God aloneHow to hand the question you can't answer to God, and let your grief move you toward the livingThe secret things belong to the Lord. You can grieve with hope and leave what you can't know in the hands of a God more merciful than you can imagine.Share This Episode:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/295Need Prayer? Leave me a voicemail:https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/voicemailWant to keep these devotions coming? Please consider supporting this podcast.https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/support/Rate and Reviewhttps://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/reviews/new/Connect with BartFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/dailydevotionsforbusylivesWebsite: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.comFeeling spiritually drained? Start here. Download your free copy of my eBook Making Time for Jesus here: https://www.dailydevotionsforbusylives.com/subscribe.