This section has some great resources and thoughts about how to think about ourselves and how to talk to God & others
Pray During Trouble
"Then we return to that familiar ground: God is at the center of all our swirling emotions and the must human thing we can do is speak to him." (113)
How to pray
Prayer for healing
"Sickness is always a spiritual matter in that it raises questions about God's care and goodness, and it is an opportunity to grow in trust and obedience." (116)
Prayer for Comfort
"Comfort might mean simply that the storm of suffering would lessen, or it might mean that the suffering would be increasingly outweighed by the knowledge of Christ and what we have in him (2 Cor. 4:16) - or both."
"If comfort is slow in coming, we pray especially that spiritual benefits would outweigh the hardships." (117)
Be Alert to Satan's Devices
"We follow Jesus in suffering, but suffering does not have the final word. Jesus's resurrection leads the way to our own resurrection, and there is nothing Satan can do to stop it." (128)
Prepare to Talk About Sin
"Our church inadvertently communicates that preachers can talk publicly about sin, and a men's group convened to deal with pornography can talk about it, but as a general rule, it is impolite to talk about sin one to one." (133)
"The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners... The fact is that we are all sinners!" Dietrich Bonhoeffer quoted on page 134
Examine yourself first
"Humility means that we already see our sins as worse than others' sins, so we have no reason to defend ourselves when someone points out our sin (Matt. 7:2 - 5). (137)
Acknowledge the Hard Circumstances
"Sin can be provoked by the hard things of life and as a general rule, we acknowledge those circumstances before we move on to the sin itself." (138)
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