Updated on November 29, 2018
Source Bible Verses for Death of a Loved One
The loss of a loved one is already devastating for anyone. When the loss is unexpected, the pain is beyond words. I know this because three years ago, my 19-year-old daughter passed away after an auto accident. My world came crashing down and I was engulfed in a wrenching pain that can only be known by another parent who has lost a child.
In the future, I hope to write more about my daughter and what God has taught me and is still teaching me, about the comfort He has given me, and the peace that is inexplicable. At this point, I can only write on the surface and without detail, but I want to share some Bible verses that have been and continue to be an encouragement for me in hopes that some other grieving mom may be looking for the same comfort and assurance that I searched for in the months following my daughter’s accident. I hope these help you as well.
Source Bible Verses for the Passing of a Loved One
- Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return. They will enter Jerusalem singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will disappear, and they will be filled with joy and gladness.
Isaiah 51:11 - The young women will dance for joy, and the men—old and young—will join in the celebration. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and exchange their sorrow for rejoicing.
Jeremiah 31:13 - Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.
John 14:1-4 - I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.
John 14:27 - Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began.
John 17:24 - Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? … No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:35-39 - No eye has seen no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.
1 Corinthians 2:9b - And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.
1 Corinthians 6:14 - Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.
1 Corinthians 16:13 - All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.
2 Corinthians 1:3 - Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.
2 Corinthians 4:10 - For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.
2 Corinthians 5:1 - For we will put on heavenly bodies, we will not be spirits without bodies.
2 Corinthians 5:3 - We would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.
2 Corinthians 5:8b - Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4: 6-7 - He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.
Psalm 147:3
Source
- And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 - So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
1 Peter 1:6-7 - Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.
Hebrews 11:1 - Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
Isaiah 41:10 - He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.
Revelation 21:4 - And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
Romans 8:28 - God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Matthew 5:4 - The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.
Psalm 34:17-18 - Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths
will rest in peace when they die.
Isaiah 57:1-2 - Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4
If you have a favorite verse that has helped you in times of trouble, please do share it in the comments!
For Those Who Are Suffering
During the worst days following my daughter’s accident, God surrounded me with people who had gone through what I was going through—both in person and online. In fact, some of the greatest comforts for me during that period came from strangers online who are now friends. If you are struggling now, please feel free to contact me. I don’t even begin to have answers, but I understand the pain and I will walk beside you and share your grief.
If you are the friend of someone who has lost a loved, please read my article on how to comfort a friend.
Table of contents
Note
All quoted scriptures are from the New Living Translation.
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For Those Grieving the Loss of Loved Ones
Dedicated in loving memory of Pastor Bertril Baird, who was like a grandfather to me.
Jehovah Jireh, there is none like You. Every day I want to praise and worship Your glorious name. Today I weep at the death of my friend/family/loved one. But Blessed Father, I can rest assured knowing You are there for me. I know I can find comfort and peace within You, in the midst of my tears and grief. Lord, I shout Your praises, because You have turned my mourning into dancing.
Psalm 18:22 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer. My God, my strength, in whom I will trust? My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Matthew 5:44 Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Comfort in times of loneliness
Console me Lord as I grieve today. Give me Your strength, Heavenly Father. Remind me of Your promises. Comfort me when loneliness strikes and I feel lost. I pour out my heart to You today Lord, for I am broken, shattered and weary.
Heavenly Father, I need You. I am crying out in desperation, in search of that peace that will soon emerge as I cling to You.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
Revelation 21:44 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.
Mending the broken heart
Jesus, my Savior, my friend. You are the resurrection and the life! You wept at the loss of Lazarus, yet You are capable of overcoming death and the sorrow of death. Help me as I feel despair, to find hope in You.
Mend the broken-hearted. Reward us with the consolation of Your presence and Your love. Set us free from this burden on our hearts, dear Lord. Help us to emerge whole and brand new as the circumstances strengthen us.
Even in the midst of my grief, I declare that all I pray for will come to pass, in Jesus mighty name, Amen!!
1 Thessalonians 4:13-15 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who are asleep.
christianstt.com
For what it is worth, I thought I would pass this incredible testimony onto the rest of you. Awhile back ago on TBN, they had a middle-aged couple on one of their talk shows that were really anointed.
They had their own church and ministry, but I cannot recall where it was at. But part of their testimony was on the death of their young daughter.
Here they were, serving God full time with their church and ministry, and their daughter ends up dying at a fairly young age. I came in on the story right as they were talking about it. I did not catch the age of the daughter or what the cause of her death was.
The wife had really been wrestling with God. How could You take her away from us so early in her life, how could You allow this to happen, why didn’t You heal her, why didn’t You protect her?
Both the wife and husband were really having a hard time in getting over her early death with the Lord. They could not understand or get a direct answer from God as to why He allowed their daughter to be brought home at such a young age and rob the both of them the joy of seeing their daughter grow up.
After all of this wrestling with the Lord for quite sometime, the wife said she then received a direct word from the Holy Spirit that immediately set her free from her mental captivity. And boy did I get a whopper witness off this Word!
I will give you exactly what the Word was and an additional revelation that God gave the both of them on the death of their young daughter.
For those of you who have lost close, loved ones in your past – grab a hold of this direct Word from the Lord. This Word from the Lord has been used by this couple to set many other people free from the depression and anger they have slipped into as a result of not being able to deal with the death of a close loved one.
The wife said she was in the kitchen when she heard the Holy Spirit speak directly to her.
The words were: “Your daughter is no longer in the past – she is now in the future.”
Think about these words!
The wife said as soon as she heard these words – she immediately knew what God was trying to tell her and it immediately set both her and her husband completely free of the mental torment they were still going through with the death of their daughter.
God was telling them that their daughter was no longer in their past. She had died and she was now in heaven with God and Jesus!
God was telling them that they now had to move on with their lives, to let the past go, including the death of their daughter, and to continue to press forward into the divine call that He had placed on both of their lives.
Their daughter is now in their future!
When they both die, they will both cross over into heaven and be immediately reunited with their daughter once again.
God was telling them to change the “angle” with which they were looking at their daughter’s death from.
Instead of seeing her as being “dead in the past” – start seeing her as being “fully alive in heaven” – and understand that you will be reunited with her once again in a very short period of time.
Our time on this earth is not even a blink of an eye compared to the eternal time frame that is operating in heaven.
. You have to step back and look at the big picture. We are all going to die and cross over – no exceptions!
Some just go sooner than others. When you die is irrelevant.
What you do with the time that you have down here is what really matters.
It’s quality – not quantity!
When you really grasp the meaning of the words that the Holy Spirit spoke to her – you understand that they should actually be rejoicing.
Their daughter is now in the most perfect place imaginable and they are both guaranteed to be reunited with her once they die and cross over.
They should be keeping the picture of their daughter in front of them – in their own personal futures – which will also be heaven for the both of them when they die and cross over.
God was also telling them that if they did not quit wallowing in their past, they would eventually die in their past, and they would no longer be able to move forward for Him because they would end up staying stuck in their past.
Too many people are bound up with things that have happened to them in their past. They cannot let go of some of the bad things that may have occurred in their past.
As a result, their past slowly starts to eat away at them until they get to a point where they no longer have any joy or zest for living.
They then start slipping into depressions and then lose all of their desire to even want to live anymore.
2. Shortly after receiving this direct revelation from the Lord and being set free, they came across a woman who had also lost her son.
Her son had died about a year ago and the woman had slipped into a severe depression. She had literally boarded up her house, closed all the drapes and curtains, and would no longer even go outside.
She had completely shut down due to the pain and heartache she was going through at losing her son at what apparently was also a fairly young age.
This couple had given their testimony on the above revelation to a church this woman had been attending. The testimony was taped and one of the church members then slipped the tape to this woman who had boarded herself up in her house.
The woman took the tape into her bedroom. She listened to it over and over again all night along, literally until the sun broke at dawn.
When the sun broke at dawn, she later testified that she knew God was speaking to her through this couple’s testimony on this tape. She said the message and revelation from this couple that was on this tape set her free from the mental captivity that she had placed herself under as a result of not being able to see the truth of her son’s death.
The Bible says that the truth will set you free and this is a perfect example of this biblical truth coming into full operation!
Once she heard the revelation given by the Holy Spirit to this couple – she knew she had been looking at her son’s death from the wrong angle.
Her son is now in heaven and she should be looking forward to being reunited with him in heaven once she crosses over – not dwelling on his death, which was now in her past.
Once she fully grasped what God was trying to tell her, and it apparently took all night for this revelation to really sink into her mind, she was finally set free and was able to start fully living again.
This couple said that these specific words spoken to them by the Holy Spirit has helped many other people deal with the death of their close loved ones.
Bible Verses For Death of Loved Ones
1. Here are 3 good verses from Scripture that will back up the words spoken to this couple by the Holy Spirit.
- But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)
- “… but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)
Look at the words in this second verse: “forgetting those things which are behind” and “reaching forward for those things which are ahead.” This verse perfectly lines up with what the Holy Spirit was trying to tell this couple – to let the death of their daughter go, which was now in their past, and to look forward, to press forward for the things which are now ahead of them in their futures.
And one of the things ahead for this couple in their futures will be their own physical deaths and their own crossing over into heaven and being reunited with their daughter, where they will never be separated from her ever again!
2. This next verse talks about plowing forward in hope.
“… he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be a partaker of his hope.” (1 Corinthians 9:10)
This verse is telling us that each one of us should continue to plow for God with whatever time we still have left down here on this earth – with the understanding that we will eventually be reunited with all of our saved loved ones who have gone home before us.
And not only should we continue to plow forward with this hope in mind, but we should also be a partaker of that hope. In other words, really believe that when you die, you will be reunited with all of your saved loved ones, and this time it will be for good – for all of eternity!
Heaven is going to be the final and ultimate reward for all Christians. The Bible tells us that we cannot even begin to imagine all of the good things that God will have in store for all of those who will be entering into His dwelling place. But one thing we do know for sure – we will all be given the two greatest rewards any human can ever hope to receive once we cross over to the other side.
- We will forever be united with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and we will be able to have direct contact and fellowship with the both of Them for the rest of all of eternity.
- And then to top it all off – we will forever be reunited with all of our saved loved ones who have made it into heaven, and we will once more be able to enjoy the friendships that we had established with each one of them while living down here on this earth.
Now that’s an incredible one-two punch that can’t be beat. And to top it all off, there will be mansions and who knows what else from God the Father.
For all those of you who have lost very close loved ones, you have to step back and see the real big picture – the real ending to the story.
So many people have lost the rest of their earthly lives because they could never get over the death of a close loved one.
And the reason they could not get over their deaths is due to the fact that they were looking at their deaths from the wrong “angle.”
The Holy Spirit gave this couple what I feel is a very powerful and liberating Word on this subject. He gave them a Word that was pure, solid, God-truth. And once you receive a direct truth from God the Father – it will set you free if you are willing to accept it and then work with it.
The other thing that happened with this couple is that before they received this direct Word from the Lord, they found themselves taking their daughter’s pictures and photos out of a lot of their family portraits because it was too painful for them to see her and to be reminded of her death.
After receiving the above Word from the Lord, they were then told to put all of her pictures back in with the rest of the family pictures.
He told them that she was not dead – that she was fully alive in heaven – and that they should all be rejoicing because their time would come when they would all be reunited with her once again.
They were told not to try and put her out of their memory. They were to keep intact all of her photos and all of their memories of her.
They were all to look forward to the future when they would once again be reunited with her in heaven.
When this couple received all of the above from God the Father through the Holy Spirit, they were then all set free from the mental captivity they had placed themselves under, and they were then able to pick themselves back up and get back into fully living in their present again.
The other revelation that the wife received from God the Father was on the question as to why – why did God allow her daughter to be taken home so early?
God basically told her there will be times when He will not tell you why He allows something specific to happen in your life, like the early death and departure of a close loved one.
Sometimes it may be better that you not know why God brings someone home so early. Maybe that person was going to have something really bad happen to them somewhere down the road and God wanted to spare them the pain of having to go through it – so He arranges to have them brought home early.
There could be many different reasons as to why God may have brought this person home early, and maybe with half of those reasons you are better off not knowing.
She finally came to the conclusion that if it was God’s will that she not know why He had brought her daughter home so early – that she would simply have to trust God that He did have a good enough reason to bring her home early and to let it go at that!
The Bible says that we can only “know in part.” We will never get all of the answers to all of life’s problems and dilemmas. God will answer many of our questions if He is properly approached.
The Bible says to “ask, and you will receive.”
But when God does decide not to answer a specific question you may have, then you have to accept the fact that He has a good enough reason not to give you His answer, trust that He knows what He is doing and what is best for the situation at hand – and then move on with the rest of your life.
If you don’t, you will run the risk of getting stuck in the misery of your past. And if you do not pull up out of the misery of your past, then you will never fully accomplish whatever God’s perfect plan and destiny would have been for your life.
Conclusion
For those of you who have had a very difficult time in accepting the death of a close loved one, really chew on the above Word given to this couple by the Holy Spirit.
For those of you who may know someone who is really having a hard time handling the death of a close loved one like a child, a spouse, a parent, or a best friend, give them a copy of this article and/or sit down with them and give them the above Word from the Spirit of God.
Share the above testimony with them on this couple and the other woman who had lost her son.
Pray that God will move in on them with illumination and insight so they can fully grasp and understand that even though the death of a close loved one is a very painful experience, that their loved one’s death is now a new beginning for them.
Their close loved one is now in the most perfect place imaginable and they will be reunited with them once again in just a very short period of time. This life on this earth is just for a very brief moment in the eternal scheme of things – but the life to come, where they are at now, will be forever.
Remember what the Holy Spirit Himself has spoken – your loved one is no longer “dead in your past” – your loved one is now “fully alive in your future” – which is heaven.
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