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Tag: #suffering

Faith Under Fire – “Incurable Faith” when you face an “incurable” disease – 10/05/23

Faith Under Fire – “Incurable Faith” when you face an “incurable” disease – 10/05/23

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A very personalized take on this week’s “Faith Under Fire“. Rather than national and cultural issues we often cover here, today we offer insights and inspiration on how Christians can maintain their faith — while fighting life-threatening diseases, chronic conditions, and/or long-term stays in hospital or rehab center.

Our guest has a personal story full of such challenges. Christian writer Andrea Herzer tells us about her 20 years of serious diseases, chronic pain, dozens of treatments, and more. Even through these hardships — including eight years unable to walk — she saw how the Lord offered her such confidence and blessings. To use her experiences and discoveries as encouragement for others, she has written a Biblical devotional book with the appropriate title: “Incurable Faith“. Her message to people who are suffering is simply this — even when you have a season when your vitality feels like it is fading, your faith can still be flourishing.

In her devotional writings, she recognizes that some patients (and some of their caregivers) are not up for much reading or in-depth spiritual reflection. Based on her first-hand journey through this series of so-called “incurable” diseases, she offers a three-part menu of readings — short and simple spiritual thoughts, more extended devotions, and longer detailed writings to guide someone through their current challenge (be that medical or something else).

In this interview with Greg Gillispie, Herzer speaks her wisdom to three audiences:

  • the people personally going through a long battle
  • the caregivers, who also can feel exhausted as that process continues for themselves and the loved one
  • friends, neighbors, co-workers, and fellow church members — who may rush in with prayer and casseroles and support immediately after a crisis or diagnosis, but may not know what to say or do as the situation stretches across months (or even years).

Through all this, Herzer has found that long medical circumstances are an opportunity to draw closer to God, and to even more fully realize the presence and the power of the Lord.

 

For further information:

 

Inside Out – When your friend is hurting – 09/20/23

Inside Out – When your friend is hurting – 09/20/23

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When a friend is suffering, we want to help, but so many of us just don’t know how, or feel inadequate for the task. 

Vaneetha Rendall Risner is familiar with suffering. She also knows how it can draw us to God. Her first suggestion for those of us who don’t know how to support a hurting friend is to pray. Risner grew closer to God through her own suffering: polio, partial paralysis, bullying, the death of a child, an unfaithful spouse, and an unwanted divorce. She knows the value of friends showing up. 

“We should pray for their needs—like their spiritual needs, their emotional needs, their physical needs–that they would turn to the Lord and find peace. That’s the biggest thing: just that they would find God in their suffering,” she says. “Show up at their doorsteps, go to the hospitals, sit in the waiting room, ask them if they want company to go somewhere. Just be there,” she says. “Jesus, we see Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, and He just wanted His disciples with Him, so presence is such a powerful thing.” 

And if your friend has been hurting for a while but you’ve never known how to help, Risner says showing up even now has value. Show up, encourage, and listen.

“I would also say, ‘It’s never too late.’ If something really hard happened to a friend and it’s been months, even, you can still reach out. Don’t think, ‘I wasn’t there in the middle of the crisis, I can’t be there now.’  It’s never too late to reach out.” 

Risner’s Desiring God article that inspired this conversation is titled “S.L.O.W.: How to Love Suffering People.” Learn more about Vaneetha Rendall Risner here.

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