There is no doubt that grief is the most challenging aspect of our current existence on this earth. Anyone who has experienced grief knows that it is an absolute nightmare to deal with and that it is very challenging not to be swallowed up by it. I have had to handle a certain amount of grief in my life as both of my parents are dead. However, I am aware that there are some people who have to handle much more grief than I have. For example, those who have lost a child are experiencing grief that, I believe, is much harder to bear than the grief of losing a parent because one is also grieving a life that was cut short too soon and the loss of the future that you had hoped to be able to spend with your child.
In my experience the most effective thing in the battle against grief is belief. The thing that helped me the most to cope with the death of my parents was the belief that they are both with the Lord and that I will see them again when I die. God had to build this belief into me Himself. It took Him years to do it because I was not helping Him with the process. I did not recognize at the time that I was experiencing the most intense grief, that it is possible to be an active participant in building up this belief, this faith, that you will see your loved one again. In the Bible we are told that faith is built through reading the Bible and through praying in the Spirit. We are told that the Word of God is like medicine to our spirits. When you are grieving you need this medicine. It also helps to read books by people who have had the privilege of seeing Heaven and coming back to tell us about it. God used the book Heaven is for Real powerfully in my life to help me cope with my father’s death.
If you are not sure that your loved one has gone to Heaven because they were not a Christian, it is a particularly difficult thing to bear. However, the Bible gives us hope regarding the fate of our non-Christian loved ones. My understanding is that God has made provision in eternity for the family members of Christian believers, even if they have not actively served Him on the earth. He does this for the sake of the Christian believer because He knows that they could not be truly happy in Heaven without their loved ones. There are precedents for this in scripture.
For example, in the case of Noah, even though Noah was the one who served God, God saved his family with him in the ark. In Exodus 12 the lamb was chosen for a family:
3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb[a] for his family, one for each household.
Exodus 12:3
In the case of Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho who helped the spies that Joshua sent to Jericho, her whole family was spared by God when the Israelites attacked Jericho because she had helped the spies:
15 On the seventh day, they got up at daybreak and marched around the city seven times in the same manner, except that on that day they circled the city seven times. 16 The seventh time around, when the priests sounded the trumpet blast, Joshua commanded the army, “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city! 17 The city and all that is in it are to be devoted[a] to the Lord. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall be spared, because she hid the spies we sent.
Joshua 6:15-17
Similarly, when God saved Jacob from the famine in Canaan, He took the whole of Jacob’s family to Egypt even though Joseph’s brothers had tried to murder him and had sold him into slavery. This is because both Jacob and Joseph loved these men in spite of what they had done.
When I look at these precedents in the Old Testament, I believe that God gives the family members of Christian believers the option to choose to remain in Heaven after they have died and seen that God and Heaven are actually real. God will not force family members to remain In Heaven if they do not wish to be there, but I believe that they are given the option to remain there if they want to. Obviously, if one of your family members is a total nightmare, that person will not be given the option to remain in Heaven, but you probably wouldn’t want them there anyway. However, all of the family members who are not downright evil or insufferably arrogant, something which God cannot bear, will be given the option to remain in Heaven and will be sanctified by God. The New Testament alludes to this in 1 Corinthians 7:14:
14 For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
1 Corinthians 7:14 NIV
We see in this verse that the state of a person in the sight of God affects how He views their family members. This is a Biblical principle. We see this principle multiple times in scripture. For example, I believe that God saved Lot, even though Lot chose to live in Sodom, because he was Abraham’s nephew and Abraham loved Lot. In the case of Lot’s daughters, God saved them with Lot when He took Lot out of Sodom. Lot’s daughters were saved with him even though they were not the most morally upstanding women in the world. We know this because they got their Father drunk and had sexual relations with him:
30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
Genesis 19:30-32
Story after story in the Old Testament makes it clear that God respects family and that He understands how important family is to us. The Bible makes it clear that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, so why would He have changed in the New Testament and stopped saving people’s families with them? I personally don’t believe that He has changed. If you are a Christian, I believe that He has, because of His love for you, made provision for the people that you love to spend eternity in Heaven with you, as long as they agree to be there, because He will not violate their freedom to choose and, as long as they are prepared to conform to the rules by which Heaven is governed. The New Testament represents a better Covenant, so, why would it not also make provision for the loved ones of believers? If it did not make this provision, it would actually not be as good a covenant as the Old Testament.