1. Being perfect doesn’t help anyone.

Let's say you're in a rough patch. It's been a hard day. You're tired, stressed, and on your last string of patience and hope. You finally decided to phone a friend and vent about it all. After a long text or a one sided phone call, you get a response like this: "I am so sorry! I am praying for you; God is with you always and this is for your good, just trust Him!"

This response is not wrong, but in the midst of trials and hard circumstances, you want someone to come and embrace you with understanding, not toss prayer at you from a safe distance and neglect to minister to you personally. It's no better than a wounded man being tosses a surgeon kit and being told, "Just don't think about the pain; it'll get better!" What people need is people who understand what they are going through and seek to relate to their situation. If anything, responses which lack empathy and understanding will break one's will to confide in you again.

2. Avoid gossip and slander, but talk to someone about your struggles.

(Gossip means speaking lies about someone; slander means speaking truth deconstructively about someone.)

Prayer is the way we talk to the Lord. It's how we communicate with Him and seek His glory. I believe communication was severed not at the creation of the cellphone, but at the fall. We are now ashamed to talk with other people about our struggles. We fear exposure and vulnerability, so like a Polaroid we practically have to shake honest answers out of people beyond, "I'm good; how are you?"

God uses people in our lives mightily to draw us to Himself. One Pastor, Tyler Staton, said, "Confession is a weapon." When we confess our struggles to one another in a way that is honoring to God's view of us individually as image bearers and constructive when it comes to the other people involved, we honor God by recognizing our trials as being against God's perfect design and worth fighting against.

3. God is glorified when we are humbled by our sin nature and talk about our sins.

Wait, what?

2 Corinthians 12:9a says, "But he (God) said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (ESV Bible, 2 Corinthians 12:9a, parenthesis added).

While God designed mankind to perfectly display His glory, our sin does not stop God from being glorified. Salvation? That marks the first time God opened our eyes to our weakness and need for a Savior. Scripture even says angels in heaven rejoice at the moment of salvation. After salvation? The testimony of our lives is built upon God's power in our failures; His faithfulness in our wanderings. The book of Judges wouldn't exist had not Israel constantly turned away, only to be brought back to God through discipline and mercy! God was glorified as Israel cried out to God, admitting their sins and seeking forgiveness.

Paul ends this same verse in 2 Corinthians by saying, "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (ESV Bible, 2 Cor. 12:9b). Can you imagine boasting in God's work in our lives instead of hiding our every flaw? I am not saying run around and say, "Look at how much of a jerk I am." I mean for the church to be a place of healing. Would it not be foolish to hide a wound from an able-bodied doctor? So is it foolish for brothers and sisters in Christ to hide their hurts from God first and foremost, but also from one another. After all, how can we expect non-believers to open up about the condition of their souls, when we can't even get a long time church member, or even a friend, to tell us about their weekend?

When we look to God and sharpen one another through encouragement and honesty, we honor the Lord with the greatest form of humility.