Part 3: Counseling Those In Pain Series

Your friend is going through some terrible physical or emotional suffering, or is overcome with grief over sin or some great loss, and comes to you for help. She does not have a specific behavior that needs to change; she just needs to know how to handle it. How do you give biblical counsel?

Those who are suffering have two needs: comfort and strength. Some parts of the suffering can be alleviated; others cannot. Comfort sooths and restores joy in the areas where pain can be reduced or eliminated and strengthening enables and empowers the person to endure the portion of the pain that must continue.

Comfort Definition

The most common Greek word for encouragement (parakaleo) appears in the New Testament in a context of sorrow nine times. In that context it means “to comfort or console.” Comfort reduces or eliminates the person’s pain.

Sorrow is a disruption of joy. A person is walking along the path of joy and some painful ordeal slams into him and knocks him off that path down into the deep, dark pit of sorrow. Comforting means coming alongside the person in that pit, taking him by the arm, and helping him make his way up the steep trail toward renewed joy.

The “coming alongside” part is crucial. The word parakaleo literally means to approach, or to be next to the person. It is a word that speaks of personal nearness. Comfort is not merely helping a person get back to joy; it is helping the person by being near him.

The person who is in the torment and agony of sorrow is often unable to call to mind anything comforting. He may have a great deal of information in his brain that would be comforting or encouraging, but in the pit of sorrow that information just seems to be locked up in some remote, inaccessible place. God’s design in times like that is for a brother or sister in Christ to come close and speak words of tenderness, hope, compassion and instruction. Even the trained theologian, in times of pain, needs someone else to come near and tell him things he already knows. The suffering saint needs help doing the hard work of putting his current, specific sorrow into perspective so he can apply the appropriate balm from God’s Word to this particular wound. Not just any principle from Scripture will comfort. He needs the right medicine for this ailment, and pain has a way of clouding the mind to the point where the person is unable to call to mind the principles he needs from the Word of God. Never hesitate to speak even the most basic and elementary principles of comfort from God’s Word to the suffering saint.

Comforting a person requires a tender, gentle heart.

1 Thessalonians 2:7,11-12 … we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. … [W]e dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.

First, Paul compares himself to a gentle mother of little children, then four verses later he uses himself as an example of encouraging, comforting, and exhorting others as a loving father deals with his own children. There is no greater illustration of compassion than a loving parent who is deeply moved by the suffering of a suffering child. This is our model for comforting one another.

One key element of comfort is refreshment.

2 Corinthians 7:13 By all this we are encouraged. In addition to our own encouragement, we were especially delighted to see how happy Titus was, because his spirit has been refreshed by all of you.

For Timothy, comfort came in the form of refreshment. The term “refreshed” (anapauo) is a beautiful word; it literally means “to be made to rest.” Sometimes a person simply needs rest. In his spirit, he may be fighting, straining, struggling, embroiled in turmoil and strife - close to the breaking point, and more than anything else he needs someone to come alongside him and speak refreshing words from Scripture that enable him to draw near to the one who said, Come to me all you who are weary … and I will give you rest. (Mt.11:28)

Resistance

Comforting the afflicted is difficult for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the person’s own resistance. Ironically, there is something in us that tends to resist comfort when we are in the pit of sorrow.

Genesis 37:35 All [Jacob’s] sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. "No," he said, "in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son."

Psalm 77:2 …my soul refused to be comforted.

Jeremiah 31:15 …Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted