from my devotional today....

The best way to help discouraged and hurting people is to listen with your heart and not just with your ears. It’s not what they say but why they say it that is important. Let them know that you understand their pain by reflecting back to them in different words just what they say to you. Don’t argue or try to convince them with logical reasoning. Patiently accept their feelings—even their bitter words against God—and build bridges, not walls.

In his book about his wife’s death, A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis wrote from his own painful experience: “Talk to me about the truth of religion, and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion, and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolation of religion, or I shall suspect you don’t understand” (p. 23).

There is true consolation in our faith, but it is not dispensed in convenient doses like cough medicine. It can be shared only by those who know what it’s like to be so far down in the pit that they feel as though God has abandoned them. If you want to be a true comforter, there is a price to pay; and not everybody is willing to pay it. Paul wrote about this in 2 Corinthians 1:3–11.

John Henry Jowett said, “God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.”

Don’t forget: "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze" (Isa. 43:2, niv).