Before You Speak to Someone Who is Suffering
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 affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. —2 Cor. 1:3-4
Have you ever been on the receiving end of poor help? I have.
A theology lesson when what you really needed was a shoulder to lean on.
Friends who nod their heads in sympathy and say, “I know how you feel” but clearly don’t.
The sting of Romans 8:28 used insensitively.
Sometimes it’s even worse: I was the person giving the poor help.
But isn’t this often the conundrum for those of us who want to help? We want so much to weep with those who weep but are completely clueless as to how to do it. We either say the wrong thing or don’t say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing.
And so we fail to be a comfort to those who suffer. How might we change this?
Prepare to Help
Depending on where you are at in life, there are two things we can do to prepare to help.
Learn to suffer well in your own sufferings.
If you are in a season of suffering yourself, learn to suffer well through your own sufferings. As 2 Cor. 1:4 tells us, knowing the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions” is often the prerequisite to being able to help others in theirs.
In my previous posts, this can include challenging the assumptions behind your suffering, remembering truth about God while you’re suffering, and learning to live and love well despite your suffering.
From personal experience, this is important because this is how I form my testimony, soften my heart, and experience firsthand the greatness and goodness of God. Without a real and personal experience with God, our words of comfort ring hollow. With it, we have the potential to be of true help to those who need it.
While simply being a fellow sufferer can bring a certain level of camaraderie, learning to suffer well, in a Christward direction, can be of tremendous help to others.
Develop a solid theology of suffering.
From my own experience, the best time to develop this theology is actually when you’re not suffering. This could be during a good season of your life, when things are stable. However, because things are good, it’s easy to not want to think about it.
But we need to be willing to see this as an investment in the future, a training course and preparation for when (not if) suffering should arrive again, either in your life or in someone you love. Sometimes the greatest suffering is seeing someone you love deeply suffer and not know how to help. So prepare yourself.
By grappling with suffering—whether it’s personal or in preparation—we learn how to suffer well. We don’t end up being a “Looky Lou” as we zip by on the freeway like the priest or Levite when we see a person in need of help (Luke 10:25-37).
Be courageous. Get up and close with suffering and don’t distance yourself from it. Move toward it with God’s help, for He’s an expert at it. Here are a couple truths to remember:
God will relieve our suffering.
One thing we can believe is that God does desire to relieve that suffering. In His earthly ministry, we see Jesus heal the sick, the demonized, the grieving. So it is appropriate to turn to Him who holds the power to heal and ask Him to remove it.
However, sometimes relief does not come this way. Sometimes our situation does not change. The symptoms continue to plague us. Our tormentors do not leave us alone. No miracle checks arrive in the mailbox.
But God does offer relief—with Himself. We are often so focused on temporal answers that we fail to appreciate the spiritual ones: The promise of His presence to help you through the pain. The hope of resurrection power to endure and persevere as you keep faithfully look to Him and move forward.
For His children, for the saints, we can be sure that we will never be put to shame, never abandoned, never hopeless. When we have a friend whose faith is flagging, it is often because their eyes are looking for an answer that is temporal, not eternal. One way we can help is to walk with them to help them fix their eyes on Him.
God will redeem our suffering.
A second thing the Bible tells us is that our suffering will never be wasted when we believe that it is in His sovereign hands. Though we want to know why, the greater thing we want to remember is that He is going to use it for His good purposes, to further His eternal Story. Yes, even our “little” sufferings!
While we should refrain from telling others why they are suffering (that is not in our ability to know), we can focus on the Who. We can trust that in His good hands, there is a reason for it, even if we don’t know why right now. We can hold confidently to that truth and offer it to others.
While there are many others, these are two clear truths to help guide us as we walk with people in their suffering. We cannot promise temporal relief, but we can help them to look to the One who is able to not only walk with them through their most painful moments but turn it into good.
When You’re Not Sure What to Say
So what are some tangible things we can do when we have the opportunity to walk with a hurting friend?
Be present.
Sometimes there’s nothing more powerful we can say than “I’m here for you.” And that doesn’t even require words: just show up and be present. In our suffering, Christ offers His compassion. We incarnate Him by doing likewise. Pray that God will use you to be His hands and presence at this time.
Be willing to welcome your friend, dirt and all. Know that you may hear some unsanitized speech and raw emotions. Starting here requires us to take the posture of a servant, being willing to be splashed with their mess. When a response is required, consider these suggestions.
Make listening and understanding thoroughly your first goal.
We like to give advice. And truly, we want to be of help. But there is nothing worse than being on the receiving end of poor advice—words we think are helpful but are actually a knife-twist to the gut.
So one of the most helpful things is to change your goal. As your friend is sharing, make it your aim to understand it thoroughly, to be able to know their suffering from their standpoint—not to offer a good solution.
One way to physically communicate that you are present and listening is simply by giving them your full attention (put away distractions!), stopping what you’re doing, and facing them. When appropriate, a hand on their arm or across their shoulders can also be helpful.
As they share, enter the conversation by summarizing what you’ve heard them say. This allows you to speak without giving advice that is unwarranted. This also helps them to make corrections to your comments if necessary.
Ask thoughtful questions.
One of the best ways to speak helpfully is not to make statements of assumption or solution. Instead, take the opportunity to understand the different facets of the problem at hand.
What is your day like?
What are you feeling?
What’s going through your mind?
What have you already tried?
What help have you received?
What are you most worried or afraid will happen?
After you have gotten a grip on what is going on and how they’re experiencing it, probe a little deeper and ask some questions about their understanding and experience of God in this situation. Ask things like
Where do you think God is right now in your situation?
Is it hard or easy to trust Him—and why?
What are you praying for? What do you hope He will do?
Again, the aim is not to be listening for correct theology (and it is certainly not time to debate their finer points!). But hearing their answers to these questions will give you a lot of insight on how to broach the truth when it is time to speak (a topic I’ll tackle in my next post). What are some assumptions they have that might skew their perspective? This is another important piece to understand before you say anything.
When in doubt, pray.
One last question you can ask is How can I pray for you? Then do it.
When we do this, we are doing several important things.
First, we are taking our own bewilderment to God. When you don’t know how to answer, it is entirely appropriate to tell God that. He is actually the only one who will not look with shock or surprise. And because it is a humble admittance of dependence, it actually delights Him because we are relating to Him as we are created to do.
Second, we are pointing our friend to the only source of help and hope. Sometimes when someone is suffering, the world closes in on them. They are blind to the hand of God. When we pray, we are helping them to look up again, to point their feet and orient their hearts to Him.
Lastly, we give voice to their grief to God on their behalf. Instead of using your prayers to preach, let them demonstrate that you have heard and understood the depth of their pain and as the friend, be the one who stands in the breach to advocate when they cannot, like the Spirit or even Christ Himself, who intercedes before the Father (Rom. 8:26-27, 34; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1).
What Will You Do?
When the next friend comes to you with their problems, what can you do? We don’t need to be shocked or surprised, but instead, learn to become a good listener, understanding their plight, asking good questions, and praying for them.
That already is a powerful ministry. You’re not giving answers, nor suggesting you have the solution. But you are also preparing them to hear truth from the Lord—perhaps through you. In my next post, we’ll talk about what to do when it is time to speak.
