How Do I Help the Dying and Grieving?
Renewing Your Mind
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 5.3K Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
God’s Word speaks both to the reality of death and to our responsibility to care for the dying. Today, Guy Waters presents biblical principles for ministering to people nearing death and to others in grief.
Get Facing the Last Enemy, Guy Waters’ book and video teaching series on DVD, for your donation of any amount. You’ll also receive lifetime digital access to the teaching series messages and study guide: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/4257/offer
Live outside the U.S. and Canada? Request digital access to the teaching series, study guide, and ebook with your donation: https://www.renewingyourmind.org/global
Meet Today’s Teacher:
Guy Waters is the James M. Baird Jr. Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, and a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
Meet the Host:
Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of media for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, and host of the Ask Ligonier podcast.
Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A person may be decaying on the outside. |
| 0:04.0 | If they're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, their inner self is very much alive. |
| 0:10.0 | Paul tells the Colossians in chapter 3, your life is hidden with Christ in God. |
| 0:16.3 | The ravages of disease and injury, touching body and mind, cannot touch that life. |
| 0:29.1 | When disease and illness touch someone we care about, the grief is very real and often very deep. |
| 0:36.6 | Growing up as an unbeliever, as death took people close to me, I had no answers. |
| 0:42.2 | But as Christians, we understand death. |
| 0:45.0 | We're united to the one who has overcome the grave, and we have the Word of God to help |
| 0:49.8 | us respond to suffering biblically. |
| 0:53.0 | I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and this is the Tuesday edition |
| 0:55.6 | of Renewing Your Mind. Guy Waters helped us yesterday to see how we as Christians may grieve, |
| 1:02.9 | but how do we help those who are in the midst of their own grief, or are dying themselves? |
| 1:08.5 | Here's Dr. Waters with some practical advice. |
| 1:13.4 | We're thinking now about how to encounter death biblically. And we saw from 1st Thessalonians |
| 1:22.0 | chapter 4 in our last lecture that if we wanted one word to capture how we respond to death, it's grief. |
| 1:32.7 | And one thing we saw the Apostle Paul counseling us is that as we grieve, we are to minister to others in their grief, |
| 1:42.4 | encourage one another with these words, chapter 4, verse 18. |
| 1:48.5 | And that provides a nice bridge to the topic of this lecture. |
| 1:55.7 | How do we minister to those who are dying and grieving? |
| 2:00.3 | Now that we have a biblical posture towards death, how do we |
| 2:05.6 | serve those who are dying? How do we serve those who are mourning the loss of someone they love? |
| 2:12.4 | I want to take each of those up in turn. First, how do we minister to those who are dying? Sometimes death comes very |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ligonier Ministries, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Ligonier Ministries and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.