More Than an Aspirin: A Christian Perspective on Pain and Suffering is a book of good news about bad news. The bad news is, of course, that you will experience pain. The good news is that by His grace, God can redeem your pain and lead you on a journey into joy and maturity.
Drawing on years of counselling experience, Dr. Gay Hubbard explains that effective stewardship of pain requires both adopting a God's-eye view of your circumstances and developing practical life skills. She shows you how redemptive management of pain can lead you to a deeper relationship with God and a new kinship and community within the body of Christ.
Dr. Hubbard, begins the book with the declaration, "Pain has many faces, but these faces often wear a mask". This assertion couldn't be more true, as most people cleverly put on a façade to mask the strain of the real weight underneath. Once the human nerve buttons are touched, we react offensively with our favorite adverb, "why", picking up a grudge with God, and blaming ourselves simultaneously.
I quite love the way Dr. Hubbard uses a wide range of true-life accounts besides the story of Job and others. Interestingly however, "God neither promised any of His creations a pain-free lifetime nor an instant alleviation of such pain" as we journey through life.
Dr. Hubbard helps you find answers to questions such as: Does God promise a happy ending? How can I think constructively about pain? What shall I do with failure? How can I pray in this pain?
An avoidance, or the numbing delusion, of pain in itself defeats the cause of managing and rising above pain unless we learn to see it from God's perspective. Regardless of whether it's the loss of a precious child, the dissolution of a relationship, or even something as trivial as the loss of a cellphone, our reaction to pain is similar. Yet "loss is not fatal", as Hubbard puts it, "for we either choose to live through it" and allow God to lead us to a good place on the other side of the temporal adversity, or we allow ourselves to be swallowed by it!
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