Getting Through What You're Going Through-Part 1 Notes (Stage 1-Shock) by Rick and Kay Warren

When Your World Collapses

Ecclesiastes 9:12:  People can never predict when hard times might come. Like fish in a net or birds in a snare, people are often caught by sudden tragedy.

Three scenarios: know someone in a crisis, in a crisis yourself, a crisis is coming

HOW TO HELP A FRIEND
Galatians 6:2:  By helping each other with your troubles, you truly obey the law of Christ.

1. Show up
Job 2:11:  When Job's three friends...heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.
-don't have to say anything

2. Share their pain
Job 2:12-13:  Then they saw him from a distance...they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.

3. Take the initiative
Proverbs 3:27: Whenever you possibly can DO GOOD to those who need it.
-give them options

SURVIVING A CATASTROPHE
-Cry out to God
Psalm 50:15: Call to me in your trouble; and I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.

Lamentations 2:19: Get up, cry out in the night. Cry all through the night. Pour out your heart like water in prayer to the Lord. Lift up your hands in prayer to him/
-can't sleep when in shock

-Let others help
Proverbs 17:17: A friends loves at ALL times, and a brother is born for adversity.
-postpone major decisions
-take it easy on yourself
-friends are made for this

INCREASING SHOCK RESISTANCE

-Cultivate strong relationships

Ecclesiates 4:9-12: Two can accomplish more than twice as much as one...and if one falls down, the other can pull him up; but if a man falls when he is alone, he's in trouble!...One person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer; and having three is even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.

-Grow spiritual roots

Jeremiah 17:7-8: Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they go right on producing delicious fruit.
-redwoods grow in groves

Colossians 2:6-7:  Just as you trusted Christ to save you, trust him too, for each day's problems; live up in vital union with him. Let your roots grow down into him and draw up nourishment from him. See that you go on growing in the Lord, and become strong and vigorous in the truth...

My notes:
have to go through
shock into service
turning our sorrow into someone else's hope
the greater the grief, the fewer words needed
ministry of presence
don't say-call me if you need anything, or how can I help
natural reaction-to withdraw
in shock-need fellowship
planted in tears, to harvest with shouts of joy
Ruwanda genocide
-fellowship, Word of God
-church, went back to Ruwanda
deepest level of fellowship is suffering together