Hurt
Everybody I know has suffered a tragedy in one form or another.
It usually comes from either
1. Emotional
2. Physical
3. Relational
The problem is that any one of these problems will usually pour into the other two.
When Bad things Do Happen
How do I help?
- sit knee to knee and eye to eye with your friend.
What do I say?
- you’ve got to learn some listening skills
o don’t jump to “band-aid” tips for their issues
- Don’t feel like you have to give an answer
o just be praying for them and asking for wisdom and the right words to say.
Your friend needs two things
1. To share their feelings
2. To not feel alone.
Reading Headlines VS. Scripture….
- God will make is right
Handling Our Own Pain
Self abuse and suicide.
Do Christians have less problems than others?
- Honestly, no.
The more we get to know God and developing our sense of personal faith the more we discover that He himself was not immune from difficulties and tragedy and the greatest obstacles to connecting like that are the obstacles in life.
Someone dies, an accident happens, somebody gets sick, something doesn’t work out the way we had hoped for, there’s a sense of failure in some area.
And for many people it just builds this barrier between them and God… like “God if you’re so great then why is all this stuff happening to me?”
And what they fail to see is that God was so great that He came into this culture He came into this world and when He did not so great things happened to Him too. But by Him doing this He made it possible for us to know Him in a personal relationship.
God hasn’t asked us to do anything that He hasn’t done.
He suffered the loss of His own son.
The son of God hasn’t asked to go into any places that he hasn’t already been. He’s been through difficulty and through failure.
And so the thing for us is not have an isolated insolated life that knows no pain. It’s to discover the world’s broken.
And until Jesus comes and restores things the world’s always going to be that way.
But He does promise that He’ll be right there with us.
God has never promised me that He’s going to save me from difficulty
In fact the opposite.
“Tom, in the world, you’re going to have tribulation, but have no fear I have overcome the world”
I’ve had my share of pain
- loneliness
- buried a parent
- deep depression
- parental divorce
- other major struggles have come into the inner circles of our families
God has never said “I’m going to protect you because you’re a pastor or because you’re doing this for me”
He has said “I’m going to be with you through it all”
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