A weary college freshman flops down across from me in the student center. He looks bedraggled and sleep-deprived. I wonder when he last showered. When I ask how his week is going, he talks about falling behind on his work, staying up late watching YouTube videos, and routinely straying into porn. He admits to feeling defeat, shame, inadequacy, and a lack of motivation. On campuses across the country, students are struggling with mental health. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, and a lack of purpose are common. Princeton’s Counseling and Psychological Services estimates that 30 percent of the university’s students will seek help each year. Campus ministers are frequently the first responders to students in crisis. When Christian students come to us with their private struggles, how will we respond? Where will we turn to give them hope? To answer these questions, it’s helpful to reflect on why students seek us out. Why Are You Coming to Me? The student described above didn’t come to me because I’m a credentialed therapist; I’m not. He also knows I’m not a medical doctor. Often, the students I meet with have already gone down those paths. This student came to me because I’m an older, wiser, and more experienced follower of Christ. He came hoping for a word of understanding and encouragement. Campus ministers are frequently the first responders to students in crisis. When Christian students come to us with their private struggles, how will we respond?   I suspect the same is true in your ministry. Students come to you for something more—for a sense that God cares about them, for a word of wisdom from above, for a word of truth. In my eagerness to be helpful, I’m often tempted to think that what the sagging, struggling student before me needs most is a sympathetic listening ear, some practical advice, and a good night’s sleep. Sometimes a student does need medical assistance. Perhaps all these would be helpful. But they’re not all I have to offer. In critical moments of care, I must open my Bible and point struggling students to God. Open the Word You’re no doubt familiar with a well-meaning dosing out of Bible verses that leaves others feeling alone and unloved, perhaps even judged for being unspiritual or “ye of little faith.” You may have been on the receiving end of this response to your own suffering. But such experiences shouldn’t lead us to avoid Scripture in the name of showing genuine, boots-on-the-ground compassion to students in crisis When counseling students, we should make sure we’re choosing appropriate Scripture texts (not verses plucked out of context), and we should communicate the text with gentleness, love, and patience (not as a quick fix to excuse ourselves from further involvement). Ultimately, the counselor’s goal is to help the sufferer understand the Scripture text for herself and apply it to the particulars of her life both in that moment and throughout the future. If we’re reluctant to use the Bible when counseling college students, we fail them in two crucial ways. First, our reticence drives a wedge between meaningful care and Scripture. Avoiding Scripture subtly fosters the sense that when real trouble comes, hurting people need something more robust than, or different from, God’s Word. When you catch yourself pivoting away from Scripture to medical and psychological resources, you should ask yourself, Do I believe Scripture is sufficient to speak to the whole person, and to the full range of human anguish, or do I think it’s weak, outdated, and ineffectual? Second, when Christian ministers veer away from Scripture, we deprive sufferers of what they need most: to hear a word of hope from God. Amid their pain and discouragement, we must remind hurting students that there’s a God who loves them with an everlasting love. We need to teach them to orient themselves and their suffering under God and his promises. Offer More Psalm 42 offers a beautiful example of how we can use Scripture to help those in distress. The psalmist has every reason to be discouraged. He’s in difficult circumstances; he’s isolated, marginalized, and oppressed. He feels abandoned by God. Those are his circumstantial realities. No easy fixes or three-step plans can put his life in order. So what does he do? He talks to himself. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? (v. 5) Better still, he reminds himself of the greater and abiding realities that ground his life, the truths that establish his identity and give him hope even amid his pain. Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. (vv. 5–6) Is it superficial or uncaring to gently remind the student who just flunked an exam that her grades aren’t her salvation? Is it cliché to direct the young man whose girlfriend just broke up with him to put his comfort in God instead of people? Amid their pain, we must remind hurting students that there’s a God who loves them with an everlasting love. Do we think God has nothing to offer in these moments? He does, and he’s given us what suffering students need most. We have his gospel word. We can point them to God and his eternal hope. Certainly, students in crisis may need an array of resources to help them, and we should be prepared to direct them to these resources. But let’s not forget we have more to offer. We have the living, life-giving, powerful, good, wise, and true Word of God.