[PTC 301-Ed Welch] SUFFERING: final exam study guide - outline

2) Suffering
a) Brief Description
Suffering tests our heart to trust God’s presence in purposing good and God’s faithfulness to show mercy. God has revealed Himself particularly through human suffering. The Son fully experiences suffering to bring about salvation. God uses suffering to make us more like Christ and to give us the hope of a new creation.

b) The Most important Question/Feature/Issue to consider
• Practical Deism. In suffering God may seem like He is hiding or doesn’t care about mercy and compassion.
• Can I trust Him?
• Who is this God?

c) Issues you need to be particularly alert to in your relationship with the counselee

• Compassion: Be compassionate, regardless of cause of suffering. Be careful not to ignore/minimize it.
• Judgmentalism. Resist the temptation to be quick in making definitive connection between a person’s suffering and personal sin, unless it’s obvious to everyone.
• Sin. Suffering will always seem to eclipse the problem of sin. Forgiveness/cleansing of sins runs a bit deeper than the alleviation of suffering.
• Christ suffered. A person’s suffering will seem to eclipse the suffering of Christ. Christ’s suffering is greater than our own. He draws near to sufferers.

d) One significant biblical text relevant to the problem area, why the text is relevant.

• Hebrews 2:10 – “In bringing many sons to glory it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.”

• Jesus’ obedience as a Son was perfected through suffering so that He might know how to minister to us in our sufferings and temptations. Suffering is a sanctifying agent.

e) A biblical conceptualization (Causes? Roots?)
a) There are multiple causes for each grief.
A prominent cause is not always known.
b) God, Satan, other people, Adam’s curse/disease, human heart.

f) Two homework assignments showing awareness of uniqueness of the problem.
1) use Psalms to direct our faith in suffering to God who hears.
2) Study “suffering” passages in relationship to hope/joy for future.
g) Your basic method of approach

1) First, I would towards the person in love/compassion, to mourn, pray, encourage, help.
2) Then, I would try to determine a prominent cause for a place to start in counseling.
3) Then, I would encourage a person to speak their suffering to God (esp. through the psalms.)
4) Then, I would encourage a person to recognize Jesus’ experience of suffering as representing/fulfilling human suffering so that the ministry of His Spirit might change human suffering into a means of life/hope/glory.