Page 74 - Advanced Biblical Counseling Student Textbook

First Corinthians 10:13 helps me know that a sovereign God allows us to face differing amounts of pain.
We have different load capacities when it comes to suffering. The issue isn’t to compare your pain with
someone else’s pain. The issue is that you’re in a situation where you’re struggling with a pain that
doesn’t go away and it’s affecting how you do life. First, we’ll answer the question, “How do you pray?”
We’ll read through Psalm 13. This isn’t being melodramatic: This Psalm has saved my life many times,
and I commend it to you, and I encourage you to use this Psalm with your counselees. It’s a Psalm that
shows us how to pray when the pain doesn’t go away.

When you’re in that kind of pain, you need to pray and bring three things to God: Your questions (vv. 1-
2), your requests (vv. 3-4), and your praise (vv. 5-6). God can handle our questions. I don’t think this
meant to be a prayer to recite—it’s a framework for praying when we’re in pain and suffering. Begin
with honestly, reverently bringing our questions to God.

Promises to Live by in the Crucible of Suffering

The promise of a way of escape. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is
faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also
provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” I Cor. 10:13 When we turn this promise
into a prayer, it sounds something like this, “Father right now, I feel like I can’t go on, that there’s no
way out of this pain, but you’ve given this promise. You can’t lie. You said there’s a way out of this
despair I’m feeling. There is a way for me to stand up in it and honor you in this trial. Help me to see that
way and walk in it.”

People

The third gift that God has given us when the pain will not leave is people to do life with—the church. By
God’s design, we’re not alone.

First Corinthians 12:13 says, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks,
slaves or free.” We have been placed into the body of Christ. We are to do life that way. The Lord
intends to use the one another activities of the church to bring hope and help to His hurting children, so
that together we will grow up into Christlikeness and manifest the beauty of His gospel to a needy
world.

You’ve got to see it in the big picture and in the bigger picture of the redemption story. Praise God for
how He uses our pain for His glory.

73