Promises in the Dark: Walking with Those in Need Without Losing Heart
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Promises in the Dark by Dr. Eric McLaughlin strengthens the hearts of readers to persevere in God’s calling to walk with those in need. As a missionary doctor in Africa, McLaughlin knows how walking closely with those who suffer and bearing others’ burdens can easily lead to burnout or cynicism—unless we find the path to perseverance that the Lord provides.
This resource explores how to find both calling and hope, living in the tension between a difficult present and God’s promises of renewal, how to cope with despair and futility, the importance of the suffering God for those who suffer, and how the manifestations of God bring life into a dying world.
McLaughlin explores how to endure in such a yet-to-be-redeemed world as ours, which is full of tragedy and heartache, pointing to God’s promises.
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- Strengthens the hearts of readers to persevere in God’s calling to walk with those in need.
- Explores how to find both calling and hope.
- Explores how to endure in such a yet-to-be-redeemed world as ours, pointing to God’s promises.
- Introduction
- 1. Brother’s Keeper
- 2. Insufficiency
- 3. Promise
- 4. Despair
- 5. Hope
- 6. Time
- 7. Ordinary
- 8. Haunted
- 9. Prayer
- 10. Mystery
- 11. Suffering
- 12.Consolation
- 13. Resurrection
- 14. Darkness and Light
- 15. Redemption
- Epilogue: Promises in the Dark
- Acknowledgments
- Endnotes
As a missionary coworker of Eric’s for two years in Kenya, I attest that these ‘promises in the dark’ arise from the heart of a humble servant of Christ whom God has gifted with profound insight for the challenges faced in caring for the sick and dying without losing hope. Each chapter, and the discussion questions that follow, will serve as powerful tools for personal or group discipleship.
—Mike Chupp, MD, FACS, FCS (ECSA), Chief Executive Officer, Christian Medical and Dental Associations
Eric McLaughlin brought me to tears with this honest look at the difficulties of the life of a compassionate caregiver. When dealing with this broken world, there are no simple answers. But there can be hope. Promises in the Dark is essential reading for anyone who walks with others through suffering and questions how to keep on going.
—Dr. Kent Brantly, Ebola survivor; coauthor of Called for Life
Why do we love lawyer and doctor shows? We know both worlds bear extremity, suffering, and passion, and that is at the core of what intrigues and terrifies us. Eric McLaughlin, a missionary physician, engages the raw and compelling questions of what it means to be human and trust God in the face of a world that is stark and at times cruel. Eric offers no simple answers or trite truisms. Instead, he invites us to engage the questions with the confidence that there is nothing we face that Jesus has not first entered. The song sung in this brilliant book is that death is real and horrible, far more so than our antiseptic Western world can bear, but death never gets the final word. There is something about life and love that lingers far longer than heartache, and it is this story that enables us to enter all other losses with hope. This book will intensify your passion and encourage you to live the best story ever told.
—Dan B. Allender, Professor of Counseling Psychology and Founding President, The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology