Helping The Hurting Heart

June 22, 2014

Job 6:14

FOUR PRINCIPLES ON HOW NOT TO COUNSEL

Speaking words without empathy. Job’s friends were good comforters for one week. Then they opened their mouths and ruined everything. “An ounce of listening is often worth more than a pound of speaking.”
Don’t speak until you feel their pain and understand their problem.
A poor theology of pain. Eliphaz never considered God may have a plan for Job’s pain, and it wasn’t due to sin at all. God can use suffering for good in our lives.
Whenever we begin with the presupposition that Christians are never to experience grief, pain, discouragement, poverty, ill-health it will always lead to giving bad counsel.
We must stop trying to figure out what we can never know— What is God’s purpose for pain. Only God knows that.
Suffering equals sin. Technically speaking this is true since it can be traced back to Adam’s sin. If Adam had not sinned in the Garden of Eden, there would be no suffering. But not particularly speaking. All “particular suffering” is not caused by some particular sin.
All suffering is the same. All three of Job’s friends offered Job the same “one-size-fits-all” package solution to his problems. Suffering is individualized—tailor made for what you need. What helped me in my suffering may not help you in your situation.

Eliphaz counsel was calloused and insensitive to Job’s hurting heart.

One of the greatest needs in the church today is for Christians to know how to counsel hurting people—The book of Job is a textbook on this subject.

Bearing another’s burden starts with loving them and stepping into their shoes to feel the pain they are feeling and the sob of their heart.

This is where Job’s friends failed—They never entered into Job’s agony to feel what he was going through.

How was Job feeling? What was he going through?

I. He had a feeling of HEAVINESS (vs. 1-3).

A. Job is under a heavy burden (“…weighed…laid in the balances… heavier than the sand of the sea…”).

B. His friends were not listening to his complaint in chapter 3— “… my words are swallowed up.” They did understand what he was saying.

C. When you try to counsel a hurting person, approach them with the perspective they are living under a heavy burden of emotional stress and uncertainty.