God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting
Post 15: God’s Megaphone
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting
Post 15: God’s Megaphone
How do you help others to move from a self-sufficient, works-oriented, bargaining with God response to suffering? How do you help your hurting, grieving spiritual friends to move to a God-sufficient, grace-oriented, dependence upon God response to their grief?
There are many effective ways to move with others along the healing path toward crying out to God. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.
Sample Crying Out to God Trialogues
Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward crying out to God in humble dependence.
“How could your pain cause you to cry out to Christ for help, love, strength, joy, peace, deliverance?”
“As in Psalm 13, how could your situation cause you to cry out to God for help and strength?”
“If you were to write a Psalm 72 or 73 (Psalms of crying out to God), how would it sound? What would you write?”
“What would it be like for you to believe that God collect your tears in His bottle?”
“Psalm 34:17-18 teaches that God’s good heart goes out especially to the humble needy. How could you apply this truth in your life now?”
“C. S. Lewis once wrote that ‘God whispers to us in our suffering, but shouts to us in our pain,’ and taught that pain is God’s megaphone to get our attention and to cause us to depend upon Him. What message is God shouting to you in your pain? Does He have your attention? Your dependence?”
“God doesn’t seem to be going along with this bargain: you reform; He relents. Since He may not change your circumstances, perhaps you could change your prayers. Praying for inner strength . . .”
“What Scriptures could we look at that illustrate how God’s people have talked to God when they felt that He was not hearing their cry?”
“What’s it like when God seems to rush to your side when you cry?”
There are many effective ways to move with others along the healing path toward crying out to God. We’ll focus again on trialogues: three-way conversations between us, our friend, and the Ultimate Spiritual Friend: Christ.
Sample Crying Out to God Trialogues
Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward crying out to God in humble dependence.
“How could your pain cause you to cry out to Christ for help, love, strength, joy, peace, deliverance?”
“As in Psalm 13, how could your situation cause you to cry out to God for help and strength?”
“If you were to write a Psalm 72 or 73 (Psalms of crying out to God), how would it sound? What would you write?”
“What would it be like for you to believe that God collect your tears in His bottle?”
“Psalm 34:17-18 teaches that God’s good heart goes out especially to the humble needy. How could you apply this truth in your life now?”
“C. S. Lewis once wrote that ‘God whispers to us in our suffering, but shouts to us in our pain,’ and taught that pain is God’s megaphone to get our attention and to cause us to depend upon Him. What message is God shouting to you in your pain? Does He have your attention? Your dependence?”
“God doesn’t seem to be going along with this bargain: you reform; He relents. Since He may not change your circumstances, perhaps you could change your prayers. Praying for inner strength . . .”
“What Scriptures could we look at that illustrate how God’s people have talked to God when they felt that He was not hearing their cry?”
“What’s it like when God seems to rush to your side when you cry?”
And What About You?
It's one thing to help others to cry out to God. How about you? Me? Let's return to the journey tomorrow to discover some personal routes to crying out to God for help in our hurts.
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