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Where do you go when your marriage is in crisis? How about when you have a difficult child to parent? Where will you find help in extreme suffering after a death, or in dealing with abuse and its affects? What if you are struggling with porn, habitual drunkenness, or drug use? Our covenant God has given us the gift of community so that in our suffering and sin struggles we find help in the church first and primarily. 

Our covenant God who dwells with us has designed the church to live in community. When the church lives in community as God designed, she practices this with a culture of compassionate care for suffering and sinning saints. And it is sweet! It is a great joy in our lives! When we fail to practice this compassionate care, fellow saints are further hurt and their suffering increases. Therefore, I am writing to encourage us to care for one another in the church and to seek this care in the local congregation and in the broader church world because this is God’s design. I am deeply saddened when I hear of church members who seek help for their struggles outside of the church. I think sometimes this is because the church has not been a place of compassionate care. Sometimes this may arise from the insecurities of those struggling. Or sometimes the church has not helped when asked. Whatever the reasons, God’s call to the church does not change. He calls church members to care compassionately for each other. 

To encourage us in this compassionate care, I want to answer four questions: Why seek help in the church? But can’t we find help in the world? Are the members of the church equipped to help? How can we help all of God’s people who are suffering? 

WHY SEEK HELP IN THE CHURCH?

Although there are many more reasons, here are two. First, it is because the church is a community. The word community means literally “to be one with.” The church is a community of brothers and sisters who are redeemed, regenerated, and traveling together as pilgrims in this world to their heavenly home. The church’s oneness has nothing to do with the superficial bonds that bring so many together today: neighborhoods, sports, food, work, or ethnicity. The church is a community of those who are one in Christ although we are all very different. God made His church a community of saints who know Jesus Christ and live to serve Him with heart, mind, soul, and strength. Together we are saints! We are not super-Christians who have done remarkable things. We are common, ordinary saints who suffer and sin. What brings us together is our common need for the cross of Christ Jesus to free us from sin and to comfort us in our suffering. 

This idea of community has been hijacked by our digital age. In these communities “friendship” is based on a false reality of snippets of life shared with a community of followers to make everything look fantastic or to find sympathy. But fellowship enjoyed in the church must be richer and deeper than this. It is fellowship for the sake of the gospel and is a reflection of God’s covenant with us. It is fellowship reflecting the deep, deep love of God for us in Jesus Christ and a desire to grow in being Christ-like. 

Christian community is needed! This is not hyperbole. Every one of us needs our community, as we suffer and fight sin through this earthly pilgrimage. Just as an army needs all of its soldiers working together to f ight a common enemy, so we need each other in the battle of faith. As brothers and sisters live in a home and learn to serve each other by helping with supper, dishes, laundry, and cleaning, so also in the church we learn to work side by side with each other in our struggles and hardships. When members of the church suffer severe tribulation, we bring them the comfort by which we have been comforted of God (2 Cor. 1:4, 5). When members of the church sin, we do not ignore it, but surround them on a rescue mission to restore them in a spirit of meekness (Gal. 6:1). When a member of the church bears a great burden, we carry that burden with them (Gal. 6:2). We walk alongside each other in our suffering or sin struggles because our good God has given us the rich gift of community. We seek help in the church because this is the way God designed the church to function. 

Secondly, we seek help in the church because the church has the ultimate book that can help us in our struggles: the living Word of God! We believe in the sufficiency of Scripture. The Word of God has the truthful answers for our hard questions. The Word of God is the power of God to transform us into the image of Christ. The Word of God provides our only comfort in life and death: belonging to Jesus Christ. Much more could be said about this, but this leads us to the second question.

BUT CAN’T WE FIND HELP IN THE WORLD?

Can we learn things from the experts of the world today in trauma, anxiety, depression, addictions, for example? My answer to this is, Yes, but…. There are things we can learn from worldly experts, but it must be tested with the standard of Scripture. When listening to worldly experts and reading their books, understand that they have an anti-Christian worldview. Their final authority is not Scripture, but man’s expertise. Most, if not all of them, view man from the perspective only of the physical because they have an evolutionary view of man. This means they find the problems in the world to be physical only—problems of brain and body. Their solutions are man-centered and not God-centered. If you read or hear that the problem is mental or physical and there is no mention of sin as the cause of corruption and suffering, then you will know the “expert” does not fully understand the struggle. If they propose a solution that involves self-esteem, self-care, or doing what makes you happy, they have completely ignored the need for God’s grace and a life lived for God’s glory according to Scripture. 

What we find in the world will only be descriptive and not prescriptive. In other words, you can come to understand things like trauma, anxiety, and addiction through the world’s studies, but you will not find the full and complete answer of how to view them and how to respond in a way that honors God. Comfort and deliverance are found in God and God alone. This is why we should go to the church with our struggles because the church will gently and compassionately lead to God’s truth using His Word. This is what we desperately need. 

ARE THE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH EQUIPPED TO HELP?

Many today strongly argue that church members, pastors, and elders are not equipped to handle some of the struggles in the church. But Scripture shows that the members of the church are equipped to help saints who are suffering and sinning. I encourage the members of the church to rise up to care compassionately for those who are struggling. Walk alongside these hurting, struggling, sinning saints. You are able to help. Because this is true, when we struggle we can seek help in the church. What equips us to help? 

First, you love God and each other. The Holy Spirit has planted God’s love in your heart (Rom. 5:5). Therefore, you are able to display the love of God to those who are suffering and sinning. Where there is a culture of compassionate care, there is the exercise of compassion, patience, and kindness as a reflection of the very heart of Jesus. 

Second, we are able to help each other because we are tethered to the truth of God’s Word. God’s Word is sufficient to deal with the messy struggles of hurting Christians. If someone is drowning in a rip current and you are watching this happen from a pier, are you supposed to jump in and help them? No! Why? Likely you will both drown. Instead, you find a life-ring, throw it, and pull the person to safety while you remain tethered to the pier. This is what we do when we see that a fellow saint is drowning. We do not join them in their suffering or sin, but we go to them remaining tethered to God’s truth, and we bring them that truth gently and patiently for the good of their souls. 

Third, although we may not have endured the same sin or suffering someone else has gone through, we can still help them. Some might say that only someone who has gone through the same struggle can help. For example, only someone who has grieved the death of a child can help another who has endured this. Certainly, those who have similar suffering can be of great help. But are they the only ones who can help? This idea does not stand the test of Scripture. 2 Corinthians 1:4 says that God comforts us in all our tribulation, “that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we are comforted of God.” We are able to comfort “in any trouble” with the comfort we have come to know. The comfort we have come to know in our particular suffering can be of help to others in their suffering although the circumstances may differ. If you have suffered and God has comforted you, and if you have sinned and God has delivered you, you are able to help others with their suffering and sin. We waste the suffering and sin struggles of our lives if we do not help others in theirs. So, let us rise up to help each other in the church!

HOW CAN WE HELP ALL OF GOD’S PEOPLE WHO ARE SUFFERING?

We cannot. Nor are we called to this. As the wise, inspired writer of Ecclesiastes wrote, “To everything there is a season…” (Eccl. 3:1). In some seasons of our lives, we are very limited in the help we can provide because of our callings and responsibilities. For example, a mother with many young children is much more limited than when the children are all in school or out of the house. At other times in our lives, we will not be able to help others because we are drowning ourselves. This is okay in God’s providence. 

Additionally, our responsibility is not to everyone in the church community because we do not have the same kind of relationship with everyone in our church. The community of the church in which we live can be thought of as larger and smaller circles. The broadest circle is the broader community of Christians in our lives. Slightly smaller is the circle of our local congregation where we are members. Finally, there are the smaller circles of closer friends, children, parents, and spouse. We learn quickly that we cannot possibly help everyone within the church, nor is it our responsibility to help everyone. God’s Word teaches us to develop and focus on the smaller circles and do what we can in the larger circles. 

When God’s people have endured great trials, they have testified over and over again how thankful they are for their church community. It is one of the great blessings of belonging to the church of Jesus Christ. God has given fellow sinners saved by grace to walk together, encourage each other, admonish one another, and bear one another’s burdens. God calls us to serve each other with the gifts He has given. Join me in thanking God for the people He has given. And pray that you will be used for their good as well.

- written by Rev. Garrett Eriks, pastor of Unity PRC in Byron Center, Michigan

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