finding life in the way of Jesus
Session 5 Resources: Persevering Through Suffering
These websites and books explore principles and postures for understanding, facing, and enduring suffering in our walk with Christ.
Online
Living Well: Based out of North Langley Community Church, Living Well is a community for supporting mental health, building and restoring hope through Christian fellowship and prayer in a safe, warm and confidential environment. Join us for teaching, testimonies, worship, prayer and small group discussion.
Freedom Session: Hosted by numerous churches including North Langley Community Church, Freedom Session is a healing-discipleship journey that uncovers the roots of pain in our lives and invites Jesus Christ to heal those areas of our hearts. Freedom Session deals with issues by freeing us from the things we use to attempt to escape the pain in our lives.
Bereavement Journey: Hosted by numerous churches including North Langley Community Church, this five-week course is for anyone who is bereaved, whether recently or dating back several years. Topics covered include: attachment, separation, and loss; the impact and pain of bereavement; adjusting to change; anger and guilt; coping with others' reactions; and the Journey Ahead.
Divorce Care: Hosted by numerous churches including North Langley Community Church, DivorceCare helps you recover from the pain your separation or divorce has caused; to you, your family, your friends. It’s a special weekly support group and seminar conducted by people who understand what you are experiencing.
Books
Find freedom and healing from painful memories and relational struggles and learn how your past has uniquely prepared you to experience more joy.
Tim Challies, Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God (Zondervan, 2022)
An honest look at grief and fears, faith and hope. Combining personal narrative, sound theology, and beautiful writing, this is a book for anyone who has loved and lost.
Comer combines cultural analysis with spiritual formation, identifying the role lies play in our spiritual deformation and laying out a strategic plan to overcome them.
My Name is Hope is the story of one follower of Jesus who went through the horrors of anxiety and depression and came out the other side. It is his ruthlessly authentic and scripturally authoritative account of prophets and poets, mothers and fathers, and even a Messiah who all came up against anxiety and depression.
In this eloquent account of her current struggle with physical pain, quadrapalegic author Joni Eareckson Tada offers her perspective on divine healing, God’s purposes, and what it means to live with joy.
Joni Eareckson-Tada & Steve Estes, When God Weeps: Why Our Suffering Matters to the Almighty (Zondervan, 2000)
This book is not so much a book about suffering as it is about God. It tackles tough questions about heaven and hell, horrors and hardships, and why God allows suffering in this life.
Pete Grieg, God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer (Zondervan, 2020)
An honest, soul-searching pursuit of biblical answers to one of Christianity’s most challenging questions: What do you do when God meets your prayers with silence?
Timothy Keller, Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering (Penguin Books, 2015)
Keller shows that there is meaning and reason behind our pain and suffering, making a forceful and ground-breaking case that this essential part of the human experience can be overcome only by understanding our relationship with God.
After forty years of counseling abuse survivors around the world, Dr. Diane Langberg, a world renowned trauma expert, remains certain that what trauma destroys, Christ can and does restore.
C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain (HarperOne, 2015)
Lewis examines a universally applicable question within the human condition: “If God is good and all-powerful, why does he allow his creatures to suffer pain?”
Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society (Doubleday Religion, 2010)
Emphasizing that which is in humanity common to both minister and believer, woundedness can serve as a source of strength and healing when counseling others.
Amy Orr-Ewing, Where is God in All the Suffering? (The Good Book Co., 2020)
This book gives a heartfelt yet academically rigorous examination of how different belief systems deal with the problem of pain. She explains the unique answer that is found in Christ and how he can give us hope in the reality of suffering.
Jerry L. Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss (Zondervan, 2004)
With vulnerability and honesty, Jerry Sittser walks through his own grief and loss to show that new life is possible--one marked by spiritual depth, joy, compassion, and a deeper appreciation of simple blessings.
Jerry L. Sittser, A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life (Zondervan, 2012)
This book reveals God’s redeeming work in the midst of circumstances that can easily destroy us.
Tyler Staton, Searching for Enough: The High-Wire Walk Between Doubt and Faith (Zondervan, 2021)
A unique and validating look at the tension you feel between disillusionment and a desire for truth, Searching for Enough helps you see your doubt not as an emotion to fear but as an invitation to be followed.
A.J. Swoboda, After Doubt: How to Question Your Faith Without Losing It (Brazos Press, 2021)
This book offers a hopeful, practical vision of spiritual formation for those in the process of faith deconstruction and those who serve them.
Lysa Terkeurst, Forgiving What You Can’t Forget (Thomas Nelson, 2020)
With deep empathy, therapeutic insight, and rich Bible teaching coming out of more than 1,000 hours of theological study, this book helps understand biblical forgiveness and implement it in ways that can heal relationships and yourself, even in the complexities of our relationships.
TerKeurst unveils her heart amid shattering circumstances and shows readers how to live assured when life doesn't turn out like they expected. What do you do when God’s timing seems questionable, His lack of intervention hurtful, and His promises doubtful?
Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud (Zondervan, 2015)
This book gives us permission to look directly into our doubts and reckon with them, uncovering the real and lasting hope that can found in the midst of darkness and disillusionment.
Philip Yancey, Reaching for the Invisible God: What Can We Expect to Find? (Zondervan, 2009)
This book offers deep, satisfying insights to the questions you’re sometimes afraid to ask. Honest and deeply personal, here is straight talk on Christian living for the reader who wants more than pat answers to life's imponderables.
Let your roots grow down into him,
and let your lives be built on him.
Colossians 2:6
Social Media Under Construction
North Langley Community Church
21015 96 Ave.
Langley, BC
V1M 2Z3
604-888-0442
© 2022 Tim C. McCarthy