Malcolm Cox

Introduction In my last two sermons for the Watford church of Christ and the Thames Valley churches of Christ I including some vulnerable personal sharing about a recent incident in my life. I noticed it had a profound effect on both groups, even causing some people to cry. Afterwards they came up to me to thank me. I apologised for making them cry, but they thanked me again, saying it was healing. So today I thought I would post a brief recording on how we use such sharing to help people, rather than manipulate them. I assume we are agreed on the value of personal sharing, so I will restrict myself to comments on best practices. “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Corinthians 1:8-