Recalling the man named "Help" in Pilgrim's Progress, C. H. Spurgeon has a wonderful chapter in his Pictures from Pilgrim's Progress on how to be a "Help." You'll perhaps remember that Help found Christian in the Slough of Despond, and he compassionately stooped to help Christian out of the muck with his wise counsel.
Spurgeon tells of how he himself knew "about that awful Slough of Despond." He says, "I myself floundered in it for five years, or thereabouts, and am therefore well acquainted with its terrible geography." Moved with pity for those who also find themselves in the mire of despair, he says to his flock: "So, a little knot of Christian people, both men and women, should always be ready, in every church, to listen for cries of distress, and to watch for broken hearts and cast-down spirits."
Urging his people to imitate the man named Help, Spurgeon gave the following instruction for how they might be of help to those who, like Christian, need to be lifted out of the muck:
1. Get him to state his own case. When Help assisted Christian, he did not at once put out his hand to him; but he asked him what he did there, and why he did not look for the steps. It does men much good to make them unveil their spiritual griefs to their comforters. Confession to a priest is an abomination, but the communication of our spiritual difficulties to a fellow-Christian will often be a sweet relief and a helpful exercise.
2. Enter, as much as lieth in you, into the case before you. Help came to the the brink of the Slough, and stooped down to his poor friend. This may seem to you, perhaps, as an unimportant direction; but, depend upon it, you will be able to give very little help, in any, if you do not follow it. Sympathy is the mainspring of our ability to comfort others. If you cannot enter into a soul's distress, you will be no "Son of Consolation" to that soul. So, seek to bring yourselves down to "weep with them that weep," that you may uplift them to the platform of your joy.
3. Comfort these poor brethren with the promises of God. Help asked Christian why he did not look for the steps; for there were good and substantial stepping-stones placed through the very midst of the Slough; but Christian said he had missed them through excessive fear. We should point sinking souls to the many precious promises of God's Word. Brethren, mind that you are yourselves well acquainted with the consoling declarations of Scripture; have them on the tip of your tongue, ready for use at any time that they are required.
4. Try to instruct those who may need your help more fully in the plan of salvation. The preacher cannot, even with all his attempts, make the simple Gospel plain to some of his hearers; but you, who are no preachers, may be able to do it, because your state of mind and education may happen just to suit the comprehension of the person concerned. . . . If my brethren and sisters, the "helps," will be constantly and intelligently active, they may, by homely language, often explain where theologians only confuse; that which may not have been understood, in the form of scholastic divinity, may reach the heart when uttered in the language of daily life. We need parlour and kitchen and workshop preachers, who can talk the natural speech of men; Universities and Colleges often obscure the truth by their modes of speech.
5. Tell the troubled one your own experience. Many have been aided to escape from the Slough of Despond in this way. "What! exclaims the young friend to whom we are speaking, "did you ever feel as I do?" I have often been amused, when I have been talking with enquirers, to see them open their eyes with amazement to think I had ever felt as they did, whereas I should have opened mine with far greater astonishment if I had not. We tell our patients all their symptoms, and then they think we must have read their hearts; whilst the fact is, that our hearts are just like theirs, and, in reading ourselves, we read them.
6. Pray with them. Oh the power of prayer! When you cannot tell the sinner what you want to say, you can sometimes tell it to God in the sinner's hearing. There is a way of saying, in prayer with a person, what you cannot say direct to his face; and it is well, sometimes, when praying with another, to put the case very plainly and earnestly.
—C. H. Spurgeon, Pictures from Pilgrim's Progress (Pasadena: Pilgrim Publications, 1992), 38-48.
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