© Copyright, Grantley Morris, 1985-1996. For much more by the same author, see www.net-burst.net
No part of these writings may be sold, and no part may copied in whole without citing this entire paragraph.
In Australian Spelling
Christian Carer’s Guide
How to Comfort Hurting People
List of Practical Suggestions
Tragically, Christians with the highest of motives are often blissfully unaware of the needless pain they inflict on the people they think they are helping. You, however, can avoid the pitfalls. This webpage summarizes how to move from the illusion that you are a blessing to really blessing people who need support.
1. Rely heavily upon your Christ-bought union with Almighty God. This alone gives you an edge on the help that a godless do-gooder could offer. Prayer enables you to burst through human limitations into divine omnipotence, bringing the unlimited power of God into someone’s life.
Draw from the Lord all the patience, self-control and other graces you need to be as Christ to the people who need you. Pray also for divine insight into the person’s needs and for revelation as to how the Lord would have you express God’s love, wisdom and humility.
2. Be convinced of God’s goodness and of his wonderful plans for the person you wish to help. Strongly believe in God’s love and forgiveness and in what God can achieve in and through the person.
Know that encouragement works miracles because God is already working powerfully within the person. Encouragement empowers a Christian to see through the Deceiver's ploy. It enables God to burst through the drizzle of despair and negativity that dampens the fire of God within a person. It builds the faith that gives God free rein to do the beautiful things he longs to do in the person's life.
3. Always think the best of people. Find the best possible light in which to interpret a person’s actions. Clearly, you need this attitude towards the person you wish to help, but the more the person sees that you have this attitude towards everyone, the more secure he or she will feel. It will increase the person’s confidence that you will not be critical behind his or her back. Your example will also aid healing by helping to diffuse any ill feelings the person may have towards people who have hurt him or her.
4. Arm yourself with the attitude that your friend is delirious with pain and so can say or do anything out of character for a Christian without it affecting your opinion of him or her. Hold your friend in high regard and know that it is the pain talking, not the real person. People under pressure can explode at the slightest additional pressure. If you happen to add that tiny extra pressure, don’t take the explosion personally. Do not feel badly about the person, nor about yourself for what happened.
If someone lashes out at you, feel honored. It is usually a mark of trust for someone to let you see an unpleasant side to his or her character. Letting people reveal an ugly side or express their deepest fears or grief, could be a most valuable contribution to their eventual healing. They will almost certainly feel condemned about the outburst. Being critical of them is therefore quite inappropriate.
If, for instance, an ex-smoker reacted to the stress by reverting to smoking, the person would feel defeated enough without your contribution.
Like Peter just hours before he denied his Lord, we have little conception of how we would react to new pressures, much less how we would cope with an entirely different set of genes and background. Don't dare feel superior to a fallen brother or sister. Instead, be as gentle and longsuffering as you would like God to be with you if you had fallen into the same quicksand.
5. Don’t inflame a situation. Don’t give more fuel to someone who is already embittered towards a person. Don’t provide more doom and gloom.
6. Agree with the person as much as possible and show disagreement as little as possible. Naturally this must be done whilst keeping the above point in mind.
7. Listen intently. Hang on to people’s every word. Enjoy their jokes, feel their pain, be thrilled with their triumphs. Be their best friend. Eye contact can reinforce the person’s awareness that you are interested in what he or she is saying. Don’t stare, however.
8. In most situations, talk less than the other person. Let the other person do perhaps two thirds of the talking. Be relaxed during times of silence. Perhaps give a reassuring smile or squeeze the person’s hand. Don’t feel pressured to fill the silence with chatter. Have confidence in the comforting power of simply being there.
9. Gently probe. Asking the occasional question shows genuine interest. Moreover, some people can be longing to talk but, due to shyness or their conception of good manners, they feel they do not have permission to say much about themselves or mention a delicate matter unless invited to do so. By asking appropriate questions you confirm that you really want to know and that they are not imposing on you. For them to broach the subject on another occasion some would feel the need for you to ask again.
Of course, there are people on the other extreme who feel offended if asked, so we need to try to raise these matters with gentleness and sensitivity and in a manner in which the person can easily decline to answer without embarrassment.
10. Get this right: Satan is the Accuser; God is the Forgiver. Our calling is not to help the Accuser by exposing a Christian’s sin. Our task is to undermine the Accuser’s schemes by lessening the condemnation that tragically leads to people keeping their distance from a loving and forgiving God. Neither trivialize sin, nor highlight sin. Instead, highlight the love and forgiveness of God.
11. Avoid anything that could possibly give the impression of putting yourself above the person. Don’t be a know-all. Where appropriate, briefly confess you own struggles. Give the person opportunities to minister to you.
12. Giving simple advice is like handling a bomb. Even experts are in danger of it blowing up in their face. Leave it alone.
In the eyes of the receiver, giving advice usually ejects you from the position of warm-hearted friend (the position from which you can offer maximum comfort) to that of cold superior. It can also greatly add to a hurting person’s pain.
And that’s just seemingly harmless advice. On the other extreme is a word of correction or implying the person has demons or unconfessed sin or is not trying hard enough, or that the problem persists because of lack of faith. The impact of such ‘helpful suggestions’ is usually nothing short of horrific. Mouth them and you could incur the wrath of God for devastating one of his children. Like Simon Peter, you could temporarily become the devil’s mouthpiece (Matthew 16:23). Disregard this warning, and you could end up driving the person away from the church and even away from God. Your well-intentioned remarks almost make you guilty of spiritual murder.
Don’t infect third parties with your poison by sharing with them your suspicions about a person. At the very least, the more people you tell, the more likely it is that it will reach the person and help destroy them.
Pray that if your suspicions are true that God clearly reveal it to the person, with your only personal involvement being prayer and the giving of comfort. Talk it over with your pastor or a very mature Christian if you must, but don’t take things into your own hands.
If you are asked to give advice, see more.
13. If God reveals to you something about a person, and prayer and fasting confirms that it really is from God, use further prayer to ascertain why you were given this information. Chances are, it was to assist your intercession, not for sharing with anyone. If it was for sharing, you have a grave responsibility to determine exactly how and when God expects you to express it. You must prayerfully find the most uplifting and beneficial way to word the message. It is vital that everything you say must be wrapped in love, humility, and sensitivity.
14. Be as ‘wise as serpents and harmless as doves’ (Matthew 10:16 KJV). Try to anticipate and avoid anything that could be misinterpreted or that has the slightest possibility of adding to a person’s pain.
15. Match the person’s mood. In the precious words of the apostle renowned for his emphasis on joy: ‘Weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15, KJV).’ Obviously, you want the person to be more cheerful, but only gradually and gently edge in that direction. Occasionally, try a little humor and fun to gauge whether the person is emotionally able to respond positively to it, but do it sensitively, never forcefully.
16. Regard tears as being as natural as breathing. If a person cries, try not to add to the person’s embarrassment by displaying your own embarrassment. Give a reassuring squeeze of the hand, or by some other means try to show that you are relaxed about any emotion that is displayed. Assure the person that tears are fitting and nothing to be ashamed of.
17. Feel the person’s pain. Don’t imagine you need to hide your own distress.
go to page two for the rest of the article
------------
