Side by Side E-Book

Edward T. Welch

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 179

Beschreibung

Everyone needs help from time to time, especially in the midst of painful circumstances and difficult trials. In this short book, a highly respected biblical counselor and successful author offers practical guidance for all Christians—pastors and laypeople alike—who want to develop their "helping skills" when it comes to walking alongside hurting people. Written out of the conviction that friends are the best helpers, this accessible introduction to biblical counseling will equip believers to share their burdens with one another through gentle words of wisdom and kind acts of love. This book is written for those eager to see God use ordinary relationships and conversations between ordinary Christians to work extraordinary miracles in the lives of his people.

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Side by Side

Walking with Others in Wisdom and Love

Edward T. Welch

Side by Side: Walking with Others in Wisdom and Love

Copyright © 2015 by Edward T. Welch

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Faceout Studio

First printing 2015

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4711-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4714-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4712-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4713-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Welch, Edward T., 1953–

Side by side : walking with others in wisdom and love / Edward T. Welch.

      1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-4335-4712-6 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4713-3 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4714-0 ( epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4711-9 (print)

1. Helping behavior—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Caring—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Friendship—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.

BV4647.H4

241'.4—dc23             2015001390

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Sharon

Contents

CoverNewsletter Sign UpEndorsementsTitle PageCopyrightDedicationIntroduction: Side by Side: Needy and NeededPart 1 We Are Needy  1  Life Is Hard  2  Our Hearts Are Busy  3  Hard Circumstances Meet Busy Hearts  4  Sin Weighs a Lot  5  Say “Help” to the Lord  6  Say “Help” to Other PeoplePart 2 We Are Needed  7  Remember: We Have the Spirit  8  Move toward and Greet One Another  9  Have Thoughtful Conversations10 See the Good, Enjoy One Another11 Walk Together, Tell Stories12 Have Compassion during Trouble13 Pray during Trouble14 Be Alert to Satan’s Devices15 Prepare to Talk about Sin16 Help Fellow Sinners17 Keep the Story in ViewConclusion: A Community Works Best Side by SideNotesGeneral IndexScripture IndexCCEF adBack Cover

Introduction

Side by Side: Needy and Needed

This book identifies the skills we need to help one another.

It is for everyone—friends, parents, even neighbors.

Along the way we will find that God is pleased to use ordinary people, ordinary conversations, and extraordinary and wise love to do most of the heavy lifting in his kingdom.

The basic idea is that those who help best are the ones who both need help and give help. A healthy community is dependent on all of us being both. So the book is divided into two parts. The first part guides you in sharing your burdens; the second part guides you in bearing the burdens of others.

We all need help—that’s simply part of being human.

The help we need goes beyond things like getting our house painted or finding a good mechanic. It’s deeper than that. We need help for our souls, especially when we are going through hardships. Help can be as simple as connecting with someone who understands or with someone who genuinely says, “I’m so sorry.” We were not designed to go through hard things alone.

But it’s not easy to ask for help. We spend a lot of time hiding our neediness because we are afraid of what people will think. Speaking personally, on most days I am happy to give help and reluctant to ask for it. For me, being needy is a sign of weakness, and, given a choice, I prefer to appear strong or at least competent.

Yet weakness—or neediness—is a valuable asset in God’s community. Jesus introduced a new era in which weakness is the new strength. Anything that reminds us that we are dependent on God and other people is a good thing. Otherwise, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are self-sufficient, and arrogance is sure to follow. We need help, and God has given us his Spirit and each other to provide it.

We are all helpers—this too is part of being human. A young child is most satisfied when helping parents cook or clean. They delight in contributing to the household. In this, they illustrate how God has given all people gifts “for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7), and all gifts are needed. There is no such thing as an unnecessary person.

Actually, we offer help so often that we might not even be aware of it. We listen to a roommate or a spouse about struggles at work, we commiserate with a friend who is full of fears, we give advice to the member of our small group who is going through a bumpy relationship, we ask how we can pray.

We were meant to live that way. We were meant to walk side by side, an interdependent body of weak people. God is pleased to grow and change us through the help of people who have been re-created in Christ and empowered by the Spirit. That is how life in the church works.

And yet fear enters in. We are afraid to jump into the complexities of someone’s life. Who are we to help someone else? We have troubles galore. Our past makes a mess of the present. Sin always threatens to overtake us. And who doesn’t have a psychological disorder? We feel broken ourselves and fear we will only make things worse for others. We feel unqualified.

In our era we consult experts, professionals, and specialists, but when you look at your own history of having been helped, it’s likely that you’ll notice very few experts among those who have helped you. Who were your helpers? Were they professional counselors or specialists? Probably not. Most often, they were friends—the regular, everyday people in your life. Friends are the best helpers. They come prepackaged with compassion and love. All they need is wisdom, and that is available to everyone.

It’s the perfect system. If God used only experts and people of renown, some could boast in their own wisdom, but God’s way of doing things is not the same as our way. We ordinary people have been given power and wisdom through the Holy Spirit and are called to love others (John 13:34). From this beginning, we are compelled to move toward others rather than stay away.

So I am writing for people like me, who are willing to move toward other struggling people but are not confident that they can say or do anything very helpful. If you feel quite weak and ordinary—if you feel like a mess but have the Spirit—you have the right credentials. You are one of the ordinary people God uses to help others.

As we get the knack of this rhythm—being needy and needed—Jesus will be in it and over it. He was weak before we were; he was dependent on his Father and dependent even on mere human beings. He also came to serve rather than to be served, and he did it side by side. As far as we are able, we do this with one another.

Part 1

We Are Needy

Your neediness qualifies you to help others. Your neediness, offered well to someone else, can even be one of the great gifts you give to your church. You will inspire others to ask for help.

Think of a time when you were in a group and someone spoke openly about a struggle in daily life. What happened next? In most instances, the group suddenly became more like a family. Other people opened up about their lives, and the prayers of the group sounded more and more like the Psalms. When something like this happens, the myth that we all have life figured out is exposed, and we begin to share one another’s burdens, which is the way God intended it to be.

We spend too much time concealing our neediness. We need to stop hiding. Being needy is our basic condition. There is no shame in it—it’s just the way it is. Understanding this, accepting it, and practicing it will make you a better helper.

This part of the book begins with a simple sketch of who we are. From there, it will help you understand, admit, and practice your own neediness.

We Are Needy

Life Is Hard

Our Hearts Are Busy

Hard Circumstances Meet Busy Hearts

Sin Weighs a Lot

Say “Help” to the Lord

Say “Help” to Other People

1

Life Is Hard

Life is too hard to manage single-handedly. That’s why we are needy. Life is also good, but it is hard. There is never a day when we have immunity from difficult circumstances.

To admit that is not complaining. It is simply true. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33), and, if we stop to think about those tribulations, we realize they are unending:

• Our health

• Our family’s health

• Job and financial unknowns

• Discrimination and injustice

• Local violence

• International terrorism

• Broken promises

• Conflict with friends

• Too much to do

• Mechanical breakdowns

Why do we bother identifying such hardships? We do it because human beings do best when they take their hardships public to God and at least one other person. When we survey the Psalms, we discover that this is God’s desire for us.

To you, O LORD, I cry,

and to the Lord I plead for mercy. (Ps. 30:8)

Through psalms like that one, the Lord essentially says to us, “Come to me with your hardships. That’s what children do with their Father.” The hard things of life are important to God, and if they are important to God, they are important to us, and we will labor to put them into speech.

Life Organized

Where do we start? Since there is so much, it might help to organize the circumstances of our lives. Figure 1, below, is a way to do that. It organizes those circumstances, both good and hard, in a series of concentric circles. Think of it as an X-ray of ourselves and the world around us. The heart and the first circle (our body) represent us; the additional concentric circles are circumstances that surround us. They are the world in which we live.

Figure 1. A biblical X-ray of a person and the surrounding world

Consider first a few of those circumstances that shape our lives. (We will deal with the heart in the next chapter.)

Our Body

Our body is an integral part of us, but it is also a kind of circumstance that affects us. It blesses us with health, and it brings hardships such as daily aches and pains, sleep loss, headaches, and the gamut of medical diagnoses. The body, including the brain, contributes to psychiatric diagnoses. If you’re experiencing mania, certain features of depression, or attention deficits—the list can be long—there might be elusive yet physical problems coming at you.

Our Relationships

Relationships are where we find the best and worst of life. Here is the pleasure of growing and peaceful relationships, and here is where hopes are dashed and love is lost. Here is where we experience aloneness, victimization, and rejection. Whether or not we like it, we need people, but they can make life difficult.

Our Work

Work includes the job we have or would like to have, the futility of some work, and the money we earn. Money, in particular, can have a significant influence on our lives. Both poverty and riches leave us vulnerable. Poverty suggests that God is not with us, so we trust in ourselves, and riches suggest that we have what we need, so we trust in our money. Work and money shape our lives more than we know.

Spiritual Beings and the World

Spiritual beings are behind the scenes, but they pack a punch. Angels protect us, while spiritual beings in cahoots with Satan oppose us. These spiritual beings have power to afflict us physically, as we see with Job. But their primary weapons are lies, half-truths, and temptations, tactics that are much more powerful than any physical affliction.

The world is included among these influences. Scripture uses world in two different ways. Sometimes world means the inhabited creation, in other words, the earth. Other times, and the way I am using it here, it refers to Satan and those who stand hand in hand with his against-God ways. Together they create a chorus of voices that quietly yet powerfully speak against the character of God and announce that sin is just fine. You can hear the world especially in our culture’s chorus about sexual license. This means that we are, indeed, vulnerable people who need God’s power and protection (e.g., Eph. 6:10–12).

The Triune God and His Kingdom

The circle that envelops everything is God himself. We live, in all ways and at all times, before God—Father, Son, and Spirit—and in his world (Acts 17:28). God is over all things and surrounds all our circumstances. He is sovereign and active, never asleep. God is in the details of daily life; he is in the broad strokes of history as he moves all things to a final climax, and we need him in order to “have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). He is by no means a bystander, off on the side, silently observing our troubles—though we could easily think such things. Instead, he created all things, so he owns all things.

We could add more circles. Ethnic and religious heritage is the circumstance of life for many people. We could also add our geographical and political environment, but those listed above can get us started. Life includes so many influences and hardships, and God is up to something in all of them.

Think about what you would jot down in those circles. What comes to mind? What is good, and, especially, what is hard?

Our task for now is to acknowledge some specifics of the fragility and uncertainty of our lives and the difficult circumstances we face and then to speak about them to God. Just speak. That is his desire—for us to speak honestly from our heart. We don’t have to add requests. Just speak.

Discussion and Response

1)   There are a lot of hard things coming at you. What are the top three? You could also take one from each of the categories that surround each one of us.

2)   Take time to speak your hard things to the Lord-who-hears.

We Are Needy

Life Is Hard

Our Hearts Are Busy

Hard Circumstances Meet Busy Hearts

Sin Weighs a Lot

Say “Help” to the Lord

Say “Help” to Other People

2

Our Hearts Are Busy

The circumstances of life are easy to understand, but it is at the center of these—our hearts—where things get complicated. Our hearts are always stirring with activity. They guide our thoughts and actions as we interact with all our circumstances: our body, our relationships, our work, spiritual beings and the world, and God. Here in the heart we find the very essence of who we are. Our hearts are seen most readily through our emotions but are also expressed in the good—and the bad—that we do. And our connection to God resides here. Yes, our hearts are busy.

Since Scripture itself is so interested in our hearts, it uses a rich and varied vocabulary to identify this controlling center of life. Spirit, soul, heart, mind, inner person, and conscience are the most familiar terms. Each of those words has a particular emphasis, but they have one thing in common. They all identify our spiritual center, that is, how we are connected to God, at all times, whether we know it or not.

It is tough to picture something you cannot see, and you cannot see the actual heart, but Scripture does provide images and analogies such as a fountainhead, a well, a tree, and a treasure chest.1

A fountainhead is the real source of the more visible streams (Prov. 4:23), and a well has depths that must be drawn out (Prov. 20:5). They can yield either fetid water or living water (John 7:38).

A tree has roots that search for a life source (Jer. 17:5–8). Either those roots will find their rest in other people, which Scripture likens to being a withering shrub in the desert, or they will settle for nothing but the Lord alone, in which case they will be sustained through the most difficult times.

A treasure chest is where we put our valuables (Matt. 6:19–21). This is what we truly love. Some treasure is prone to rust and corruption—we can be sure that our fears would accompany such a treasure. Other treasure is stored away in Jesus and is secure.

These pictures capture how our hearts work behind the scenes, quietly determining the course of our lives, and have much more to do with God than we might realize. They can also be brought into the light and examined. One way to do that is by following our emotions.

Emotions Come from the Heart

Our emotions are our first response to the world around us. They appear without any apparent thought. Yet they are much more than mere reactions in that they say more about us than they do about our circumstances. Our emotions, it turns out, reveal what is most dear to us (e.g., Pss. 25:17; 45:1). That’s why our emotions identify us. They are us. We recognize our friends by their passions and emotional responses. When our friends’ emotions are blunted by head injury or intensified by side effects of medication, we say that they are not themselves. Our emotions point out those things that are most important to us.

When happy, we possess something we love; when anxious, something we love is at risk; when despondent, something we love has been lost; when angry, something we love is being stolen or kept from us.

Or look at guilt and shame. We might not say that they reveal what we love, but they certainly reveal what is dear to us. When we feel shame, we feel as though someone has taken off our human covering and left us naked. It separates us from relationships, and relationships are dear to us. When guilty, we feel like our relationship with God is potentially in jeopardy, and this relationship gets to matters of life and death.

What is most important to us? What do we love? What is most dear to us?2 We shouldn’t be surprised that these questions get to the core of our being. They also point to where we are headed. All roads eventually lead to our relationship with God. Do we love what he loves? Is he most dear to us?

So track down those strong feelings, first in yourself and then in others. When do you notice yourself getting excited? What are your joys? Your sorrows? Watch friends light up when they talk about a child, a spouse, a musical group, Jesus, work, or a sport. We will hear them slow down when touching on something that is especially hard, as if they were suddenly carrying a weight. We might notice a flash of anger: “I will never be like my father.” If we are trusted, we might hear of fears, hidden pain, and shame—matters that we prefer to keep private.

We could sum up our emotions this way: they usually proceed from our hearts, are given shape by our bodies, reflect the quality of our relationships, bear the etchings of both the goodness and the meaninglessness of work, provide a peek into how we fare in spiritual battle, and identify what we really believe about God.

One qualification: we could say that emotions usually reflect what is happening in our hearts. Occasionally, since emotions are given shape by our bodies, emotions can be unpredictable assaults that come from disordered bodies and unruly brains.

Depression, for example, might say that something loved is now lost, life has lost meaning and purpose, or something desired will never be possessed. But depression could also say, “Something is not right in my body or brain.”