Session 3: Facing life-threatening illness

Martin Down

  • Study Guides

Read: Chapters 2 and 3

Chapter 2

  1. Have you ever had to walk through this process of coping with a life-threatening illness yourself, or with someone else?

  2. What are the reactions that you have had to deal with: anger, denial, panic?

Chapter 3

  1. How do you feel about the medical decision to stop curative treatment and to change over to palliative care?

  2. How would you go about discussing this decision with someone else with a life-threatening illness?

  3. How do you think you would cope with this decision yourself? Have you thought of making an Advance Decision (Appendix 3).

  4. Pray for any you may know who may be facing such a decision now.

This course is designed for Christian Study Groups, meeting in a trusting environment where people can talk confidentially about their hopes and fears.

Each person should have a copy of the book Talking about Dying, Wilberforce Publications 2017.

It would also be good if people brought Bibles to the meetings of the group to refer to.

The Leader might like to prepare a short Bible Study to lead into prayer at the end of each session, but not so as to inhibit the time or the opportunity for people to express their own views and emotions.

These studies look at the subject in a different order from the book. The book was designed to start from where the average reader was likely to start: with talking about dying with a friend or a doctor. Only later does the book open up the subjects of life after death and prayer for healing.

As Christians we should start with the question of prayer for healing and our faith in the life of the world to come. All our later discussions can then take place in the light of those.