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Discover how to care like Christ by developing the biblical arts of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. Learn how to empathize, encourage, enlighten, and empower others using God's Word.
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How to Care Like Christ: Changing Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth 1 Thessalonians 2:8
Session Two: How to Care Like Christ
Spiritual Friendship: Can Feel Like a Maze!
Pastor Carl’s Story • Where would you start with Pastor Carl and why? • How would you minister to Pastor Carl in his suffering? • How would you minister to Pastor Carl in his struggle against sin? • What “map” or “model” would guide you?
Why Are We Here? Everyone wants to “do biblical ministry” and to “be a spiritual friend,” but what does it actually “look like” in practice? We are here to learn how to use God’s Word to empathize, encourage, enlighten, and empower others. You are here to be equipped to become a skillful spiritual friend by developing the biblical soul care and spiritual direction arts of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding to care like Christ.
Our GPS: Suffering and Sinning “Pastoral care is defective unless it can deal thoroughly both with the evils we have suffered and with the sins we have committed.”
Our GPS: Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding • Sustaining: “It’s Normal to Hurt” • Healing: “It’s Possible to Hope” • Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin, but Wonderful to Be Forgiven” • Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Mature”
Our GPS: Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding • Sustaining: Empathize—Romans 12:15 • Healing: Encourage—Genesis 50:20 • Reconciling: Enlighten—Romans 5:20 • Guiding: Empower—Philippians 3:10
Our GPS: Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding
Soul Care Comfort for Suffering • Comfort: Co-fortitude • Parakaletic: Called along side to help • Sufferology and Sanctification: “God is good even when life is bad.” • Find God even when they can’t find relief.
Sustaining • “It’s normal to hurt.” • Permission to grieve. • “Life is bad.” • The earthly story.
Listen to Their Earthly Story “It was in the fall of 1879 that I met Charlotte Brooks. I have spent hours with her listening to her telling of her sad life of bondage in the cane-fields of Louisiana.” Do Not Be Ignorant of One Another’s Suffering: 2 Corinthians 1:3-8
Empathize with Their Earthly Story “Poor Charlotte Brooks! I can never forget how her eyes were filled with tears when she would speak of all her children: ‘Gone, and no one to care for me!’” Climb in the Casket!
Empathize with Their Earthly Story “Aunt Charlotte, my heart throbs with sympathy, and my eyes are filled with tears, whenever I hear you tell of the trials of yourself and others.” Compassionate Commiseration
Comfort Them in Their Earthly Story “The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.” People Need Our Silence More Than Our Speeches
Comfort Them in Their Earthly Story “Are the dearest friends and relations still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery with the small comfort of being together, and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?” Shared Sorrow Is Endurable Sorrow
Enter Their Earthly Story “Happy should I have ever esteemed myself to encounter every misery for you, and to procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own!” Incarnational Suffering
Point Them to Jesus in Their Earthly Story “La, me, child! I never thought any body would care enoughfor me to tell of my trials and sorrows in this world! None but Jesus knows what I have passed through.” Jesus with Skin On!
Engage in Sustaining Trialogues • Trialogues
Engage in Sustaining Trialogues • “Pastor Carl, I’m so sorry for all that you’re going through with your daughter’s illness and this unjust criticism.” • “I can only begin to imagine what you might be feeling.” • “If it were me, I think I might be feeling _______. How does that relate to how you’re feeling?” • “Who has been a source of comfort for you? Who has wept with you in your weeping?”
Engage in Sustaining Trialogues • “Pastor Carl, what are you grieving over the most?” • “What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling and expressing anger and even doubt in a situation like yours?” • “The Apostle Paul admitted that he despaired. How do his feelings compare to yours?”
Sharing and Growing As a Soul Care-Giver • Who has sustained you by helping you to sense that “it’s normal to hurt”? Who has “climbed in the casket” with you? How? • 2. How could you use the principles of sustaining to empathize with and comfort Pastor Carl?
Healing • Healing—“It’s possible to hope.” • Encouragement to grow. • “God is good.” • The eternal/heavenly story.
Stretch Them to the Larger Story • When Life Stinks, Our Perspective Shrinks. • Crop Christ Back into the Picture! • Ask: “What is God up to in this?” • Celebrate the Empty Tomb!
Stretch Them to God’s Story • “Written expressly for God’s honor and people’s encouragement.” • “They were exhorting the people, warning them to remember the judgment of God.” Cling to Our Image of God’s Holy Love
Stretch Them to God’s Story • “Perpetua followed with a quick step as a true spouse of Christ, the darling of God, her brightly flashing eyes quelling the gaze of the crowd.” Cling to Our Image of Who We Are in Christ
Stretch Them to the Eternal Story • “Her friends were equally sad at the thought of abandoning such a good friend to travel alone on the same road to hope.” Travel Together on the Road to Eternal Hope
Stretch Them to the Eternal Story • “The day of their victory dawned, and with joyful countenances they marched from the prison arena as thoughon their way to heaven. If there was any trembling, it was from joy, not fear.” Weave in the Truth: We Are More Than Conquerors!
Stretch Them to the Spiritual Story • “Perpetua was singing victory Psalms as if already crushing the head of the Egyptian.” See Life with Faith Eyes
Stretch Them to the Scriptural Story: Engage in Healing Trialogues • “Pastor Carl, God’s timing and ours are often light years apart. What are you experiencing as you wait on God?” • “Satan wants to use your suffering to suck the life out of you. How can you connect to Christ’s resurrection power to find new zeal for God? How can you not only survive, but thrive?” • “How could you relate Paul’s perspective on his suffering in Romans 8:17-39 to your life? How could taking on his perspective alter yours?”
Stretch Them to the Scriptural Story: Engage in Healing Trialogues • “Pastor Carl, what might God be wanting to accomplish in your life through your circumstances?” • “God is all-powerful, holy, and loving. What impact do these attributes of God have on you as you face this?” • “How have you been able to worship God in the midst of this?”
Sharing and Growing As Soul Care-Givers • Who has joined you in the healing process by helping you to sense that “it’s possible to hope”? Who has “celebrated the resurrection with you” and stretched you to God? How? • 2. How could you use the principles of healing to encourage Pastor Carl to see life from God’s perspective?
Spiritual Direction Care-fronting for Sinning • Care-fronting: Nouthetic—Care-fronting out of Concern for Change (Growth)
Spiritual Direction Care-fronting for Sinning • “You must be aware that you have become cold, have given your heart to idols… I am concerned about your soul. I cannot permit myself to cease praying for you and being concerned about you. For then I am convinced I would cease being the Church.”
Spiritual Direction: Reconciling • Sin and Sanctification: Grace! • Reconciling—“It’s Horrible to Sin but Wonderful to Be Forgiven!” • Romans 5:20
Spiritual Direction: Reconciling • “It’s Horrible to Sin!” • In Love and Humility, Load the Conscience with Guilt • Godly Sorrow: 2 Corinthians 7:8-13 • “You have fallen away from such good beginnings and become a very different person. You are sharply and severely oppressive to your subjects. God will not suffer this.”
Spiritual Direction: Reconciling • Expose the Heart Sin: False Worship • “The human mind is so inclined that as it turns from the Creator it of necessity becomes addicted to the creature. He who rejects the Creator needs must worship the creature.”
