How to Thrive While Living with Chronic Illness & Pain

Reclaiming Lament

Teaching Series

Series: Help for Those Living with Chronic Illness and Pain

How do you live well when the physical foundation of your life is crumbling? This is the challenge for millions who live with diseases for which there is no cure. These incurable ailments produce a life of constant pain, fatigue, numbness, dizziness, and other debilitating symptoms that create chronic suffering. Can you thrive in life while experiencing the suffering persistent sickness provokes? This class, based in part on Dr. Craig Svensson’s book, will provide practical and biblical help in understanding and living with the suffering incurable illnesses create.

Class Overview

Goal: To provide practical and Biblical help for those enduring the pain and suffering of chronic illness, or those who wish to minister to others who are living with chronic illness.

Session Topics:

• Overview of Chronic Illness (Class 1 & 2)

• Dealing with Difficult Medical Issues (Class 3, 4 & 5)

• Addressing the Spiritual Challenges of Chronic Suffering (Class 6 & 7)

• How to be of Practical Help (Class 8 & 9)

• Q & A or Special Topic (Class 10)

Craig Svensson. When There Is No Cure: How to Thrive While Living with the Pain and Suffering of Chronic Illness, Consilium Publishing, 2019. A practical guide to help patients navigate the various challenges living with the pain and suffering of chronic illness brings. Directed to a general audience, the final chapter includes the author’s personal testimony of how the Christian faith impacts his response to chronic illness.

Books/Audio Books

Throughout Scripture, we see that God is deeply emotional; each member of the Trinity has experienced grief. Lament is about tapping honestly into our emotions in a deep and primal way that often transcends words…Lamenting is a painful process, but it’s more painful to live a life of pretend strength, of keeping God an arm’s length away because you’re shutting the conversation down with a “fine.”

-Esther Fleece Allen on Reclaiming the Lost Language of Lament

Five Things to Know About Lament, by N.T. Wright

What exactly is a lament? Is it a gripe session? Is it venting? Is it a synonym for grief? The Book of Psalms—an ancient collection of songs and prayers from a people who were no strangers to suffering—can guide us in this practice.

The Gospel According to Job, by Mike Mason

Anyone who has suffered knows that there is no such thing as "getting a grip on oneself" or "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. The only bootstrap in the Christian life is the Cross," says Mason. "Sometimes laying hold of the cross can be comforting, but other times it is like picking up a snake."

Job knew this firsthand. From him we learn that there are no easy answers to suffering. That the mark of true faith is not happiness, but rather, having one's deepest passions be engaged by the enormity of God. And through Job we learn the secret of the gospel: that "mercy is the permission to be human." The Lord never gave Job an explanation for all he had been through. His only answer was Himself. But as Job discovered, that was enough.

The Gospel According to Job sensitively brings the reader to this realization, using a devotional commentary format that reminds them that it's all right to doubt, to be confused, to wonder-in short, to be completely human. But what will heal us and help us endure is a direct, transforming encounter with the living God. - From the Back Cover

Companions in the Darkness: Seven Saints Who Struggled with Depression and Doubt, by Diana Gruver & Chuck DeGroat

The church's relationship with depression has been fraught: for centuries, depression was assumed to be evidence of personal sin or even demonic influence. The depressed have often been ostracized or institutionalized. In recent years the conversation has begun to change, and the stigma has lessened--but as anyone who suffers from depression knows, we still have a long way to go. In Companions in the Darkness, Diana Gruver looks back into church history and finds depression in the lives of some of our most beloved saints, including Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr. Without trying to diagnose these figures from a distance, Gruver tells their stories in fresh ways, taking from each a particular lesson that can encourage or guide those who suffer today. Drawing on her own experience with depression, Gruver offers a wealth of practical wisdom both for those in the darkness and those who care for them. Not only can these saints teach us valuable lessons about the experience of depression, they can also be a source of hope and empathy for us today. They can be our companions in the darkness. - From Good Reads

Walking Through Pain & Suffering

Spiritual Maintenance & Prayer

Bible Apps

Audio Sermon Series

Suffering: Light of My Lantern - I found and continue to find this to be a rich & nuanced sermon series on knowing how to navigating grief and suffering. It weighs & takes serious the question of God & suffering, how to reflect on and handle suffering, and stories from both Scripture & from real parishioner lives on engaging with God in the dark. Thus, the need of lanterns. - Taken from Pacific Crossroads Church in Santa Monica, CA. (2015)

When Things Fall Apart - A current sermon series from City Church of San Francisco, CA (present)

Books/Audio Books

Turn My Mourning Into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times, by Henri Nouwen

In times of suffering, simplistic answers ring empty and hollow. But Henri Nouwen, beloved spiritual thinker and author, offers real comfort in the concrete truth of God's constancy. Nouwen suggests that by greeting life's pains with something other than despair, we can find surprising joy in our suffering. He suggests that the way through suffering is not in denial, but rather in living fully in the midst of the trials life brings our way.- From Back Cover

Walking with God through Pain & Suffering, by Tim Keller

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering is a definitive Christian book on why bad things happen and how we should respond to them. The question of why there is pain and suffering in the world has confounded every generation; yet there has not been a major book from a Christian or Biblical perspective exploring why they exist for many years, namely C.S. Lewis’s Problem of Pain, and Howard Kushners’ Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. - Taken From Good Reads

Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering, by Kelly Kapic

Kapic's book on theological meditations on pain and suffering is an excellent resources both for counselors and laypeople to gain a deeper understanding behind how best we are to react to pain and suffering in the Christian community. While the author wrote this book on physical pain it can be easily applied to all forms of pain such as psychological, emotional, or spiritual. The emphasis of the book is on the character of God and how growing deeper in our understanding and worship of the Creator can lead to peace and comfort in times of pain. I most appreciated the part where he discusses Job and how God allowed him to cry out "Why is this happening to me!" and where God doesn't respond "Because..." but instead responded "This is who I am".That was so powerful to me that in light of our pain we can cling to our Creator and Savior and know that in His sovereignty we can have peace in pain without every fully understanding God's purposes behind them. This book can be a comfort to those in pain as well as a training tool to those who want to learn how to comfort others. -Review: From Good Reads

When God Doesn’t Heal Now, by Larry Keefauver

God has healed in the past and wants to heal now. But though they pray in faith, go to healing meetings, and strive to have enough faith, many are not healed as they would wish to be. When God Doesn't Heal Now examines the myths about healing that are built on partial truths and looks at the profound relationship between prayer, healing, and the sovereignty of God. This guide offers a balanced look at teachings on healing, faith healers, and ways to bring biblical clarity to beliefs that often foster guilt, defeat, and despair when believers are not immediately healed. When God Doesn't Heal Now is an encouraging book which affirms the biblical truth that God is our healer. - Taken from Back Cover

Leaving Egypt: Finding God in the Wilderness Places, by Chuck DeGroat

The Exodus story is your story. The Israelites' liberation from Egypt and journey to the promised land is one the Bible's most compelling stories a breathtaking account of competing wills, freedom and slavery, faith and doubt. But theThe Exodus isn't just a long-ago Bible story. It's the overarching theme of every person's life. We each find ourselves enslaved: to work, to destructive relationships, to food, to spending . . . but beyond our personal Egypt lies God's promised land. In Leaving Egypt, Chuck DeGroat shows how our wilderness journey helps us face our fears, receive our new identity, experience transformation, and live into our new found freedom.- Taken from Good Reads

Grace Eventually, Anne Lammot

In Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, Lamott examines the ways we're caught in life's most daunting predicaments: love, mothering, work, politics, and maybe toughest of all, evolving from who we are to who we were meant to be. This is a complicated process for most of us, and Lamott turns her wit and honesty inward to describe her own intimate, bumpy, and unconventional road to grace and faith.

"I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things," she writes in one of her essays, "that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace's arrival. But no, it's clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark."

- Taken from Good Reads

Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace

Michael Beates's concern with disability issues began nearly 30 years ago when his eldest child was born with multiple profound disabilities. Now, as more families like Michael's are affected by a growing number of disorders and difficulties ranging from autism to food allergies, the need for programs and paradigm shifts is greater than ever. Beates thus seeks to motivate churches to pursue ministry to children and adults with developmental disabilities. He works through key Bible passages on brokenness and disability to develop helpful principles for believers and churches, teaching them first to embrace their own brokenness and then to embrace those who are more physically and visibly broken. - Taken from Good Reads

Second Choice World, by Viv Thomas

Second Choice challenges some of the assumptions in Western culture and gives a different slant on the idea of success. Viv Thomas insists that to live our lives well it is vital that we are able to live in world of second choice or no choice at all. Through the lens of Daniel's experience in Babylon as well as contemporary stories and reflections, Viv Thomas explains that when our lives are dislocated wonderful things can happen. Second choice situations can become places of grace, community, imagination, and maturity if we learn to embrace life as it is. - Taken from Back of Book

Apps

Pray As You Go (Android) (Apple)

This has been one of my favorite go-to prayer apps, with material written by a number of Jesuits, both in Britain and abroad, couched in the spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola. Pray as you go is a daily prayer session, designed for use on portable devices, to help you pray whenever you find time.A new prayer session is produced every day of the working week and one session for the weekend. It is not a 'Thought for the Day', a sermon or a bible-study, but rather a framework for your own prayer.It is produced by Jesuit Media Initiatives,

Soul Space - free

Soulspace meditation app has been created to help anchor your thoughts to the love of God and the way of Jesus. Most meditation is focused on emptying the mind, which can be helpful in moments of crisis and anxiety, but our goal at Soulspace is to rid the soul of fear and stress while filling it with truth and life. This creates the opportunity for true and lasting wholeness.

YouVersion Bible App - free

This is a great place to begin. It is so much more than a Bible app!

• Free app, available in over 60 different languages.

• Helps you stay connected with friends and social media.

• Verse of the day.

• Discover new Bible study plans related to the verse of the day or any search.

• Audio or video selections easily accessible.

• Numerous translations of bible passages.verse of the day or any search.

• Audio or video selections easily accessible.

• Numerous translations of bible passages.