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Introduction

With this lecture we begin to talk about Biblical Counseling proper. Everything that has gone before has been framework on which we begin. We’ve talked about what we are doing as opposed to non-Christian psychology. We’ve talked about what we are doing with respect to the use of the Bible in counseling. We have talked about who should be doing counseling and what that is in the context of the church at large. And we have talked about some theological bases on which we base Biblical Counseling. This lecture will be about how to create a loving atmosphere in which to help others come to a more mature relationship with Christ than they have right now.

Another Quick Caveat

Most Biblical Counselors make a distinction between counseling Christians and non-Christians. I do not. It is true that a non-Christian cannot be obedient, or walk with God and in a sense cannot become more mature than they are right now. However, a non-Christian can and should be confronted with his inability to do what God requires and this is a perfect place to face that reality. When the counselor assigns homework the Christian will be able to do the homework and should get great reward out of doing it. But the non-Christian can read the assignment, but cannot be obedient to the Word of God. This should frustrate him to no end. And if the counselor is doing his job, he can point out that if the person wants his problematic life to get better, he has to give his life over the Jesus Christ in repentance and submission. In this way, the counselor is really doing evangelism, not counseling. He is giving the counselee good news, not good advice. It is not until the counselee comes to the end of his rope that the Good News turns into good advice.

The Air

In Reforming MarriageDoug Wilson mentioned that what you want in your home is a wonderful aroma. You want to have love be in the air, the context of all you do as a Christian; with trust, faithfulness, hope and deep joy following close behind. This is also what you want the air to be made out of in the counseling process. You want to be walking with God yourself, and to invite others to share in that walk with you. You do that largely by the tone, attitude, and feeling that you bring to the table. Sometimes you can create this atmosphere in a synthetic way by the setting or surroundings of the place you meet people, but what you really want is for people to catch your attitude toward them as you meet with them for the first time and then in all subsequent visits.

You Need to Love the Counselee

From the beginning, the people you counsel need to know two things: first, they need to know that God loves them and wants something better for them. Second, they need to know that you love them and agree with God about wanting something better for them. You can do this by telling them, and you can do this by loving them yourself. Much of this comes from you in the way that you interact with people. You need to care more for them than you do for yourself. You do this by starting with the way you think about the person sitting in front of you. You need to remember that but for the Grace of God, I might be sitting in his/her chair.  You need to keep in mind that things wouldn’t be all that different for you had you been through the same things as the person you are trying to help.

Another way for you to love people is to think about them the way God thinks about them. God loves them, but he also acknowledges their sin. He will not let their sin slide, but he is always holding out his hand in a gracious way to bring them to himself and into a joyous relationship with Christ and with his people. God is for people, not against them. He sent Jesus to die for sinners.

Begin to Love by Listening

One way you can express God’s love for the counseling will come about in the way you listen to their story. You need to be a very intentional and attentive listener. Listen to their story; don’t interject yours, except in such a way as to encourage the person to continue to share. You should take notes on what they say. If you are afraid that the counselee will think you are being distracted, let them know that you are taking notes because you don’t want to miss anything.

People tell stories when they tell about their lives. Listen to the stories. When you take notes, take them in terms of stories. Notice the characters in the stories. Pay attention to the specific events and actions that make up the stories. Notice the emotion in the stories and the emotions the stories elicit in the telling. List the motives, goals, desires, gods, idols, and actions that the counselee contributed to the story. See if you can tell, through the telling of the story, what the counselee wanted out of what they did, thought, felt in the story. Notice if they received what they were after. Pay attention to any God talk and to its accuracy. Do they understand the Gospel and does it show at all in the story? What do they understand about God and how God works in their world and in the world around them? Ask a lot of questions beginning with the word ‘what.’

Listen with a Godly Agenda

You need to always remember that we are not Rogerians. We do not believe that just “talking it out” will solve a person’s problems, or change anything. Only bringing a person to the throne of God, in confession of sin and repentance of heart, will change a person. Only God changes people. With that in mind, our conversations with people will always have a trajectory. We will always have a redemptive motive in our discussions. We have an agenda, which is often very different than our counselee’s agenda. God has a higher goal for us than we have. We want happiness, God wants holiness. With this in mind, our counseling will always have as its goal to bring people to Christ in order to help them to become more mature in Christ.

Love by Identifying

When talking with a person who is going through trials and trouble, don’t stop listening to the story by only listening to the facts of the story. Pay attention to what is going on in the heart of the counselee as they are telling the story. It may be that you have never been beat up by your father, but you probably have experienced the terror of being confronted by someone or something much larger than you. You might not be able to share that event, but you can share the feeling. You can identify with the counselee’s struggle.

Without condoning sin, be very careful to be encouraging to a person in the midst of suffering. A person might have committed terrible sin, but may also be suffering under a load of guilt, pain, real physical pain, and heart ache of various kinds. We need to acknowledge the suffering and lead the person to God as the source of ultimate relief. The sin needs to be acknowledged too, and dealt with, but don’t forget that suffering is going on. Sometimes, in fact usually, the sin can be reached through the suffering. In the alleviation of suffering we can bring God into the picture by helping the counselee see that God knows what suffering is about. Then we can bring up the fact that much suffering is a result of our rebellion against God—sin. Sometimes dealing with sin, is all that is needed to deal with suffering.

Suffering and God

1. The Bible clearly declares that God is sovereign over all things—even suffering. Many of us mistakenly think that God has nothing to do with the bad things that happen in our world. Yet Scripture takes us in a completely different direction. It roots our hope in the reality that God is not the author of sin, but he is the source of our other suffering. And he is with us in our suffering (Gen. 50:50; Ex. 4:11; 1 Sam. 2:2-7; Dan. 4:34-35; Prov. 16:9; Ps. 60:3; Isa. 45:7; Lam. 3:28; Amos 3:6; Acts 4:27-28; Eph. 1:11).
2. The Bible clearly says that God is good. It is faulty thinking to say that a truly good God would never allow a person to suffer, or that if God really loved you, he wouldn’t let X happen to you. The Bible declares that an infinitely good God is in the middle, of our painful experiences
   (Ps 25:7-8; 34:8-10; 33:5; 100:5; 136; 145:4-9).
3. The Bible clearly says that God has a purpose for our suffering. The Bible doesn’t present suffering as a hindrance to our redemption, but as a tool God uses to work his redemptive purpose in us. (Rom, 8:17; 2 Cor, 1:3-6; Phil 2:5-9; James 1:2-8; 5:10-11; 1 Peter).
4. Bible explains the ultimate reasons why we suffer

• We suffer because we live in a fallen world plagued by disease, natural disasters, dangerous animals, broken machinery, etc.
• We suffer because of our flesh. Much of our suffering is at our own hands. We make choices that make our own lives painful and difficult.
• We suffer because others sin against us. From subtle prejudice to personal attacks, we all suffer at the hands of others.
• We suffer because of the Devil. There really is an enemy in our world, a trickster and a liar who divides, destroys, and devours. He tempts us with things that promise to give life but actually destroy it.
• We suffer because of God’s good purpose. God calls his children to suffer for his glory and for their redemptive good.

1. Bible is clear that God’s sovereignty over suffering never:

• Means the suffering isn’t real (2 Cor. 1:3-9; 4:1-16).
• Excuses the evildoer (Habakkuk; Acts 2:22-24; 3:14-23).

This list came from Instruments In the Redeemer’s Hands(p. 143-144) with a slight modification to the first one.

Change by Loving

As we have noted before, real change can only come through a relationship with God. However the beginnings of change can and do come through Christ in you as you interact with the counselee. As you build a godly relationship with her, the love of God will begin to work its way into her heart and change will begin to happen. This is because love is efficacious. It changes things; it changes people.

This change comes as the counselee begins to trust you; that you love her, that you are interested in her and her life, that you are giving yourself to her to help her, and that you will not leave her. It also comes as your conversation about God begins to work its godly magic in her heart and begins drawing her to Christ. This all comes together as you get to know her, as she gets to know you, as she does her homework, and as God works in her heart through her relationship with you and with him. Love changes things.

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Introduction

Before we get too far in this process we need to say a bit about the larger world of theology and the Bible. Many people shudder when they encounter theological terminology and viewpoints they aren’t used to. In this talk I would like to take you through some of the major passages of Scripture that talk about various phases and parts of Biblical Counseling. I will do it from the standpoint of theological constructs and try to help demystify theology and theological terminology for you.

Theology Proper

It is important to remember that the goal of theological study is to find out what God is telling us through his word. As with most things, however, there are ditches on both sides of the road. On one side are those who love to study theology, but not the primary reason for the theology. They have left God and are simply studying the Bible, or worse, not even the Bible, but simply theology. These people tend to be very smart, ridged, pale, narrow minded, and prune faced. They love debating, quoting other really smart people, and being right. The only friends they have are others like them. The ditch on the other side is filled with people who love Jesus, but have abandoned his word in the hopes of finding him within themselves. They hate theology and everything related to theology and run like scared rabbits whenever anyone tries to take a conversation down a larger than proof texting road. They know their bible very sparingly and only in dribs and drabs. They have no idea what context is and don’t really care. They are usually fun to be with for short periods. Because their theology is so shallow, they also sin easily. They often have lots of friends, but no close friends.

Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical Theology

There are four main areas of theological study: Biblical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical. In the simplest terms Biblical Theology is the study of the bible in its particular contexts.  A Biblical theologian might ask, “What is Paul trying to get at in Ephesians?” This theologian might spend years studying every aspect of Ephesians to try to know as deeply as possible what Paul was trying to say. His focus will be primarily on Ephesians and only go to other places in the Bible or history as it touches on the letter to the Ephesians.

A Historical theologian will study various topics alluded to in the Bible as it has been studied by other theologians down through history. He may read something written by a biblical theologian about Ephesians and marriage might catch his eye. His job will be to study what other scholars and people have written about marriage through all of church history.

A Systematic theologian takes the work of both these other two disciplines and puts them together in a systematic way. He might take every instance of the topic of marriage in the Bible and referred to in history and write a systematic theology book on marriage. His job is to systematically arrange all the information on the various topics in a way that is helpful for Christians to study their Bibles with particular topics in mind.

The Practical theologian deals with putting the theology of these other folks into practical use. Theology that is only studied, but never put into practice is what produces the wonks of the world. As I said before, they get sidetracked by the glitz of the study and forget that it is all about living in front of the living God. There are four areas of practical theology: Homiletics, apologetics, evangelism, and counseling. Obviously, we are immediately concerned with the last three. But at the same time we must not neglect the other areas of theology because they inform us and help give us guidelines or boundaries within which we operate.

The Sheriff

The following story was presented to me to begin a discussion about God’s sovereignty: Once upon a time in an old Western town, little Suzy was skipping down the street singing happy songs. Sheriff John was sitting on the sidewalk outside his office with his feet up on the hitching rack, dozing in his chair, half aware of little Suzy coming toward him. All of a sudden from across the street, Bad Bart came stumbling out of the saloon, sees little Suzy, runs across the street and begins hitting her with his horse whip. Sheriff John sits there watching what is going on, but not doing anything.

My friend asked, What was going on? Was the Sheriff unable to help Suzy—impotent? Was he in it with Bad Bart—evil? Could have stopped it, but didn’t want to—again evil? Something else? Was the sheriff surprised and thus too confused to help? Did he care for Suzy?

This is really a parable. God is the Sheriff, Bad Bart is any evil man, Suzy is any innocent person against whom sin is carried out. Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

Here’s my answer: 1) God is not a man. He is the creator of men and everything else, including time (Num. 23:19; Rom. 1:25; Col. 1:17). 2) God is not inside our story. He is writing our story, not a character in our story (Gen. 1:1; Jn 1:1). 3) We are characters in his story. He is writing the story from outside of it (Acts. 17: 28). 4) God is good and cannot do evil, nor does he tempt anyone to do evil (Gen. 1:12; Ez. 8:22; Psa. 109:21; Jas. 1:13). 5) Because he is God and thus outside our story, he does things we don’t understand and he doesn’t need to explain himself to us (Deut. 29:29; Pro. 25:2). 6) He does not allowthings to happen, he causes things to happen. And he does all for his own glory (Gen. 50:20; Acts 4:27-28).

The overall answer is I don’t know why God wrote the story the way he did. I know that God loves all the characters in the story. I know that God will judge all the characters in the story. I know that apart from Christ the end of all the characters is the same. I know that if Bad Bart repents and submits to Christ, he will go to heaven and if cute Suzy doesn’t she will end up in Hell. God wrote the overall story, and he wrote the individual stories. God is God and we are not.

Choices

How does this work out with human free will? The idea of Free Will and Determinism assume a world that does not exist. We are Biblical Christians and this means that we need to interpret what we find around us in terms and concepts the Bible presents. This is because Jesus is Lord, not Cant, Hegel, Hume, or Sartre. The Bible says that God does what he does, and we do what we do. Both freely choose at the same time. Both interact with one another in real life in real time, and in real experience. God writes the story, we interact with one another and with the story we’ve been written into. We pray, God answers prayer, even though he’s already written it from before the foundations of the world (Eph. 1:4; 1 Tim. 1:9).

Sanctification/Change

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. (Jn. 17:17)

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Rom 8:28-30)

Sanctify means to “make holy” or to “set apart.” The angels proclaim that God is holy (Rev. 4:8). This means that God is wholly other than his creation. He is set apart from us; he is not one of us. When God made a relationship with us—called covenant—in order for us to be close to him, he needed to make us holy as well. This holiness comes to us through the sacrifice of another on our behalf. In the old Covenant it was the bulls and goats, in the New it is the death of Jesus. When the Bible calls us holy, or sanctified, it is primarily talking about our position in Christ. We have been set apart, apart from the world, made holy, because we are in Christ, in Christ’s family, members of God’s people (1 Cor. 6:11). In another sense, we are being set apart, being made holy, as we learn to more consistently walk with God and one another (Heb. 10:14). We are also going to be set apart, or made holy at the last day (1 Jn. 3:2; 1 Thess. 5:23; Phil. 3:12; Rom. 8:30; Heb. 12:22-23).

Progressive Sanctification

Progressive Sanctification simply means that sanctification, or changing into Christ’s likeness is a process. This change takes you from where you are now to where you will be. God knows what or where we will be. At the same time, knows our frame and knows what we’ve been through and thus he takes us from where we are and won’t let us go. He makes crooked lines straight. He takes dirty brains and makes them clean.

Spiritual growth only happens as we act on our beliefs. If we submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus we grow in grace and the knowledge of the Son of God (2 Pet. 3:18). If we are in rebellion against him, we are not growing spiritually at all. Spiritual growth means we are becoming more like Jesus. It does not mean we are more spiritual in the sense the pagans mean it.

Confession of Sin

We’ll say much more about this in a subsequent lecture, but suffice it to say that confession means to say the same thing. In the context of, say, 1 John 1:9 it means to say the same thing about the thought, motive, behavior, emotion, etc. that God says about it. When you say to your wife, I’m sorry for being such a lunk-head.” You have not confessed sin. In order to receive full forgiveness, you need to actually say what it was about your life that made others think you were a lunk-head. “I sinned against you by being insensitive, by becoming angry, by yelling at you and kicking the dog. I sinned. I’ll never do it again. Please forgive me.”

Repentance

The word we translate “repent” from is the word in Greek which literally means “to change your mind.” The Biblical use of the word means to change your mind from doing wrong, unhelpful, sinful things, do doing things that bring honor and glory to God. But as with everything else we can’t isolate the mind from the rest of our being. The greatest commandment, for example tells us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mk 12:30). This does not mean that we can love God with only one of these at a time. It means that we cannot distinguish between them and that our whole being is involved in loving God.

You’ll notice that the verse used the word heart. The heart is the center of our being. It is the source for where our thoughts, emotions, words, and behavior comes from. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Mt. 12:34). This means that if we are going to repent, if we are going to turn away from sin entirely, we need to get to the heart of the matter. Sin is not simply the things we think, do and say, they come from somewhere else and this somewhere needs to be purged, mortified, killed, if we are to truly be changed—sanctified (Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer. 4:4, Rom. 2:29). Biblical Counseling spends a lot of time and effort working with people to understand all the sin they are involved in in their lives. This discussion talks about habit, sin, idolatry, slavery, bondage, and selfishness. It involves fear, worship, love, goals, and allegiance.

Repentance is not only about turning away from sin. That is only half the problem of counseling. The other half is that when you are turning away from something, you are also turning to or toward something else. In the Christian life, this turning is from sin to Christ, or Christ likeness. It is similar to paddling in a fast moving stream headed toward a waterfall. To stop paddling is not the only thing needed, you also need to paddle in a new direction. Repentance is completed when a person turns from their sin and to Christ—developing habits and actions, thoughts and emotions that are submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

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Text

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. (Gal 6:1-3)

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. (1Th 5:11)

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, (Eph 4:11-13)

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. (Eph 4:29)

…who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Cor. 1:4)

So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. (1 Thes. 2:8)

Introduction

When Ken Steele was just fourteen years old, he began hearing voices telling him to kill himself. For the next three decades he was in and out of mental institutions, taking a myriad of medications, being beaten up, raped, abused, used, and ignored. Ken lived a plethora of nightmares with homosexuals, drug addicts, political wolves, and medical practitioners who were more interested in protecting their careers than in helping those entrusted to their care.

Now fifty years old, Ken sits in your office asking for help to deal with the voices.

We’re All In This Together

The Church is a collection of baptized people who profess Christ as their Lord and Savior. It is a collection of individuals who are in the process of becoming like Christ. It is also a body of Christ with lumps and bumps and all kinds of blemishes. There is no one who can claim that they have arrived or who don’t need to work on anything anymore. There have been various churches and denominations who have claimed to have been completed, or who don’t sin anymore, but poke one of these people in the eye and watch what they do. We’re all in this process together: individually and corporately.

Our Goal and Calling

The Apostle Paul tells his various readers to work with one another in a sacrificial way to help one another become more Christ-like in all areas of life (Gal. 6:1). He tells us to encourage one another and build one another up to Christ likeness (1 Thess. 5:11). We have already seen that we are to imitate him in striving to present every man mature in Christ (Col. 1:28). Notice this is a one another kind of thing, not a minister/special person kind of thing. We have all been given various gifts which we are to use to help one another walk with Christ. Does this mean that everyone should be a lay or peer counselor? In one sense, yes. In another sense, not at all.

How To Know

The most obvious way to know if God can use you as an encourager is to ask yourself if you are still breathing. If you are, then you are called, no commanded to lift others up to Christ. If not breathing, well…. The next thing to ask yourself is how you are doing with the Lord yourself. If you are struggling with no answers in your own life, then you should probably wait to try to help others (Mt. 15:14). But because everyone is struggling with various things, you can still help others with what you do know. Galatians 6:1 tells us that those who are spiritual should help others who are trapped in sin. What does spiritual mean? Basically it means to wait until you are walking with God as a normal part of your life. By walking with God, I mean, keeping short accounts with God. This means, not that you don’t sin, but that when you do sin, you take care of making things right with God and with others very quickly. This does a couple of things: first, it keeps you in a position to learn from God as you walk with him. We don’t grow in our faith unless we are in a right relationship with God. When we are in sin, all we learn is that we are in sin. But the fear of the Lord (right relationship), is the beginning of knowledge (Pro. 1:7). Second, walking with God means that you aren’t committing hugely rebellious sins any longer. Your sins are mostly inside your head and with more maturity comes smaller sins. This doesn’t mean that you feel any less hatred for your sin, in fact, you will feel even stronger against sin as you mature, but that your sins are not as obvious to others.

1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 give a list of qualifications for church leadership. The lay/peer counselor is not necessarily going to be an elder or deacon in their church, but they should be pursuing the character that church leaders are required to possess.

Nuts and Bolts

Beyond spiritual qualities, there should be some giftedness. The quest for testing the gifts is always desire. Do you desire to help others in a systematic and purposeful way? If you do, you might have the gifts required to become a good counselor. Are you discerning? Can you read people and hear what they are telling you beyond what they are saying? Can you put life together with hearing a story? Do you have a little bit of suspicion in you? A good counselor needs to know people and how people work, think, live, and relate to one another. You need to be able to diagnose a problem and see roots and anticipate desires. Another question to ask is, Are you a good teacher in general? Do others learn easily from you? When you taught that swim class, did the students learn to swim better than before they came to the class? What about that sewing course you taught? In the church realm, do people get a lot out of your lessons in Bible study? Are your students learning and growing in the Lord as a result of your ministry?

Biblical counselors do teach, but they do it in a very different way than preachers or other kinds of teachers. Teachers usually take texts or topics and expound, or explain them to the students. If there is any application, for example in preaching, it comes from the text rather than from life. In counseling, people with problems come for counsel and encouragement with their own particular and specific problem. The counselor needs to be able to listen to a counselee’s story and very quickly translate the story into Biblical terms and be able to point the person to Biblical solutions to their life’s problems. Not only this, but as we will see, the counselor is not simply finding verses that say, “don’t do this” or “don’t do that” we are looking for passages that address philosophies of life, or mixed up theology, or principles of life. Biblical counselors go much deeper than simply proof texts for life problems. In contrast to the normal teacher, Biblical counselors come to the text through the person’s life situation rather than to the situation from the text.

For Further Reading

Jay Adams, The Christian Counselors Manual

David Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes

Paul Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands

John MacArthur & Wayne Mack, Biblical Counseling

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