Skip to content
The Historic Faith
Sign in

Jumpstarter 6 of 10

Ideas to help restart your discussion
Intimacy with God  /  Chapter 16: Caring for Your Neighbor  /  Discussion Questions
All Questions
Question 6
The chapter says God “often sends poverty, disease, and other similar trials…as discipline,” yet the intimate-with-God person can ask God to relieve others from these trials; how do you hold together God’s disciplinary purposes with intercession that asks for removal, and what does that reveal about God’s character?
Another way to ask: If God sometimes uses hardship to discipline people, how can we still pray for God to remove those hardships from others? What does that show you about what God is like?

Direct Answer The transcript holds both truths together by saying trials can be God’s discipline and instruction, yet God still welcomes intercession that asks for relief—showing God’s goodness works through both correction and mercy. The intimate-with-God person participates in that mercy as God’s instrument.

Support from Transcript:

  • Trials are sometimes purposeful: God “often sends poverty, disease, and other similar trials on people as discipline for their past conduct and as instructions for their future conduct.”
  • Yet intercession is encouraged: “Still, the one who is intimate with God can ask God to relieve others from these trials.”
  • The result is kindness, not harshness: “He brings kindness to others, having become the instrument of God’s goodness.”
  • Prayer is presented as effective and humble, supplying needs “without vanity.”
  • The chapter frames events as “divine arrangement for the good,” suggesting God’s purposes remain good even when relief is requested.
Discussion Follow-ups When you see suffering, do you assume only discipline or only accident? How might you pray for relief while still trusting God’s “instruction” purposes in someone’s life?

Jumpstarter 6 of 10
Back Questions Next