Well, thank you for the opportunity. It's good to be here with you. And you may look at your outline and you see some squigglies wherever there's supposed to be an F. So you can use your psychological skills and try and figure out why I did that. And I ask you at the end of our meeting tonight. Well, Biblical counseling is probably not well understood in perhaps some Christian circles. But we understand the idea of counseling, I think, and therapy. That's been around for a while. Also, secular kinds of counseling. Just to give you a snapshot into the kind of cases that I have dealt with. So if I look back over the last month, dealing with a couple where the man had committed adultery, was on church discipline, recently caught by his wife smoking marijuana. A young man who's on the autism spectrum, struggling with his own assurance of faith and some anger, bitterness issues. Person who's struggling with eating disorder, a couple, who the woman had been abused by a former minister. And you begin to see, this is just a snapshot of a few of the people my wife and I deal with. But in the church, we aren't exempt from the problems that our community is dealing with as well. Alcohol, drug addictions, pornography, anxiety, worry, depression, all of these kinds of things, marital difficulties, parents and children. And I wanna give you my definition to start so we can get a platform to begin moving into what is biblical counseling really anyway. So if you look at your outlines, I put it on there for you. And I wanna unpack it a little as well, because each part of the outline of the definition is important. So biblical counseling, is reaching the heart of people. This is central to what biblical counseling is about. It's heart issues. It's dealing with the heart because out of the heart are the issues of life. So the things that we do and say and even that we think are related to our core of who we are as a person. So biblical counseling is reaching the heart of people as they suffer. I'll touch on this later, but much of J. Adams, who was one of the first to bring the church back to consider biblical counseling instead of using secular psychology and psychiatry, he was saying we need to recognize sin is related to many of the issues that people struggle with. And I think this is one of the areas where Jay Adams was focused in on, like a laser beam was, you need to change the sin things in your life. Now, biblical counseling has grown to a large degree over the past number of decades. And we recognize, and I suppose Jay Adams would agree, that there is suffering in this world that we need to face, and that causes often these challenges that bring people forward to receive counsel. How do we work through these difficulties? So it's reaching the heart of people as they suffer. That can be through sin, ignorance, or just suffering in general. We do this through the word. Biblical counseling, in contrast to all the other counseling, is bringing the word of God. What does the word of God have to say to this particular person in their particular problem at this particular time? And in biblical counseling, we are saying and we believe that the word of God is sufficient to address all of these needs. through the word with the Spirit's blessing. Without, of course, the Spirit blessing the word that we bring and the counsel that we give, there's real no hope for change or progress or relief from sometimes the distressing circumstances people find themselves in. I teach in the class and this, I believe, comes from Jay Adams as well. If there's a counselor and a counselee in a room, there's always a third person. the Holy Spirit. And without His presence enlightening the counselor, helping him understand another person who is struggling with various things, the Word is not going to have an effect if it's not brought according to the meaning of the Spirit with the Spirit's blessing to transform that person. So we bring this through the Word to evangelize or disciple. A lot of biblical counseling today is done in Christian churches, evangelical churches, who very easily accept whoever is coming to them must want Christian counseling so they are Christian. That's sort of a presumption that's made. We give a personal data inventory form for the person to fill out, what your problem is, what your background is. What's your character and the character of your parents? They fill that all out. And then several of the boxes are, are you Christian? How often do you go to church? Do you read your Bible? And on the basis of this, if they check, yes, I'm a Christian, not much more, it seems to me, is dealt with in most biblical counseling programs and counselors. At Puritan, this is sort of a distinction that we would have. One of the things I teach is without actually knowing that this person are believing and have grounds to believe it, that they're a Christian, there can be no real biblical change. No real progress in progressive sanctification, which is what biblical counseling is really about. And so we're either gonna be evangelizing or we're gonna be talking about growth in the walk of the Christian life or discipleship. And so we want to evangelize them or disciple them in the walk of sanctification, progressive sanctification, by the way of conversation. When you think of a council, you're probably thinking of someone who has a conversation with you over maybe a period of an hour or so. And he's listening or she's listening to you, digesting, gathering data, and then giving you feedback from the word of God. This is the conversation we're talking about, encouragement and admonition, whatever the word of God would have to say in that particular circumstance. Now there's no way in a talk like tonight I can get to all the different kinds of cases and issues that are dealt with in biblical counseling. I'm gonna be taking a broad view of what is biblical counseling to help us understand why this is needful today, what it looks like just in a brief general way, and then I'll try to answer any questions you have this evening as well. If you look at this definition that I gave you, perhaps some of you would Say, I already do this. And you're not even a counselor. In some respects, all of us are counselors. I sort of tongue-in-cheek say to the class sometimes, you go to your barber and you sit there and have a half hour, usually it's not that long if you're just getting a haircut like mine, my wife does it. But if you go to a barber, it's probably very short. But usually, the person who's giving you a haircut is talkative and asking you all kinds of questions, telling you about everything she heard from the last three people. Now, there is certain counsel that's given. When you have two people at work sitting down together talking about struggles that they have, someone may give a piece of advice or a word of wisdom, worldly wisdom, perhaps. So we're all giving counsel to some degree or other. When the elders go on house visitation, playing the role, if you will, of counsel in many respects. After church, when you're talking to other people and they're sharing a little bit about their own life or struggles, and you're giving them some advice, you are, in a certain sense, counseling. So simply put, the two words here help us understand biblical counseling. Biblical, it's based on the word of God. And, not our thinking, but God's thinking. And then secondly, it is counsel, it's giving advice, it's giving direction on making choices and decisions, understanding the word of God better and how we're called to live, how we're to understand God in my own Christian walk. We are dependent on counsel. We were created that way. Even from the beginning, pre-fall, God came and spoke with our first parents, giving them advice or counsel. Post fall, we are in more desperate need of counsel from God and his word than anything else. And all the advice we get and all the counsel we get, we could lump under two general categories. It's either godly counsel and wisdom or it's earthly devilish counsel. And if you look at James 2, 14 to 18, you'll see this. Eve listened to the counsel of the devil and she sinned. There are many today who are going for advice or counsel to secular people, sometimes even non-Christian, and they're getting worldly advice about their problems. And many times the advice that's given may help them in their circumstances and may change their suffering to some degree, but many times because it's not rooted in the scriptures and getting to the heart of the issues, the problems may seem to disappear and the person goes on in life, and I usually say in response to that, they've just been made better sinners. And the reason I say that is because often God allows difficulties and trials to come into our life so that we would turn to Him, that we would submit ourselves to Him. And if we can get along without him and without his wisdom and without his changing us internally to respond appropriately to difficulties and trials, he's ruled out of the picture. And we're relying on other means to help us cope with life. And so the consequence of sin, of course, is brought with it brokenness. our guilt, our pain, our sorrow, our separation. All these are reasons why people come to get advice and counsel. They feel the pain, the suffering in relationships and within their own internal struggles. I'm reminded of people going to secular authorities and secular counselors. I'm reminded of what Paul says to the Corinthians. He was reprimanding them as a church, because you know what they were doing. They couldn't get along about certain things. They were fighting. And instead of looking within themselves for someone to give them godly advice and counsel, they were going outside of the church. And sadly, the history of the church in regard to counsel over the past decades has often been just that. When churches encounter difficulties and problems, mental issues, beyond what anybody could explain, what do we do? We call the professional who's supposed to be trained in science and being able to give medical advice in regard to these things. And I think Paul's rebuke is applicable to us today. Why don't you look at the gifts God has given within the church? So if you turn to Romans 15. Romans 15. Verse 13 and 14. Paul says, now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost. And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. This is one of the verses we use to show that Paul's understanding of those within the church were capable of admonishing one another. And the word used here, admonished, is really where Jay Adams, who's one of the founders, you could say, of biblical counseling movement in the last 100 years or so. This is the very word he used to formulate his idea and theory about biblical, newthetic counseling. It's an admonishment, it's an encouragement, it's a speaking the word of God to one another. That's really what counseling is. And this is what Paul is saying to the church, God, I'm persuaded that you are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and able to admonish one another. And so yes, pastors are to be equipped in this calling. They're especially trained in the truths and doctrines of the word. They should be doing a part of the role of counseling within the church, elders too. But don't forget what Paul says about the women. Let the elder women teach the younger women. This is part of the counseling one another that is to be done within the church. If we apply this principle of the gospel, the word of God, directly to the problems of life, we believe that God addresses the issues that you and I struggle with in his word. The gospel is central to biblical counseling. So we can say that biblical counseling is a relationship then of one or more people who working together, one of them discipling the other. That's another idea of what biblical counseling is, intense discipleship. And I think in our circles, we aren't too familiar with the idea of discipleship, of walking alongside, discipling someone else. Biblical counseling is really an intensive period when you walk with someone else, you hear what's their struggles, you hear what's their thinking, you hear what they're working with internally and with God and in their relationships, and you then give advice from the Word of God to direct them, to help them in their problems. But I think when we think of therapy and counseling, What most of the time comes to mind is someone who sits in an office, who has regular business hours, and he has a one-hour appointment that usually lasts 50 minutes, and a 10-minute break, and you have someone scheduling his appointments, and people come in and go out and come in and go out, and they just give some feedback as to what might be helpful. I wanna read you this definition here of David Polissen, who kind of lays that out. He says, many people would think of this as counseling is controlled by enculturated habits of the modern mental health system. A designated professional comes with credentials, an advanced degree in state licensure. This professional claims to offer expertise in supposedly objective, non-religious ideas and techniques, the substance of modern psychologies or psychiatries. A designated and diagnosed patient suffers from a syndrome with a medical-sounding label who is seeking help. The two parties enter into a formal consultative relationship. Together, they explore the world of the patient, experiences, thoughts, feelings, behaviors, motives, relationships. In some fashion, the professional mediates interpretations and solutions that claim the authority of science and or medicine. And this fee-for-service exchange occurs in a time out from real life social relationships. There is a fundamental asymmetry between the doctor and the patient, the expert and the client, the healthy and the sick. If you take some time and think about that definition this week sometime, there's all kinds of things about it that don't line up with the scriptures. So, for example, As advanced degree and state licensure, does our state, who licensed people to do therapy and counseling, have any regard for the scriptures or Christ? Actually, it's prohibitive in many respects to even mention the name of Christ in those that are certified by state licensure. This last sentence, there's a fundamental asymmetry between doctor, patient, expert, client, healthy, sick. When you think of a biblical counselor and someone who they're trying to help, who's sick? Biblically, they both are, and they both need Christ, and they both need the gospel. But in the other secular situation, it's the professional who's sitting on this side of the desk who has all the answers and the so-called training and professional insight into your problem of how you're supposed to deal with life. There's no relationship. And when you talk about biblical counseling, it's a relationship that is to be developed. It is to be one in which trust is developed, in which the word of God is central and prayer is central to that kind of meeting. So how is biblical counseling different from other counseling therapies? Well, Some make the claim that professional counseling is better because it follows science and theories that are accepted in the medical professional community. The challenge and problem is when we try to draw this distinction between a medical view of people and the spiritual view of people, We're not recognizing who we are as whole individuals. And when you talk about those psychiatry or studying psychology and psych therapies, Their training has exclusively almost been in behaviorism and looking at man as a physical, material being. So everything is determined by how my brain functions and how certain things are happening in my body. And we can't talk about God because science doesn't deal with God. You can't prove the existence of God from science and from medicine. So he's left out of the equation. The only time you might meet someone, if you have your own medical doctor perhaps, who's a Christian, he may talk to you about how your symptoms you're experiencing are related to your whole person as a being. But in general, if you go to secular therapy and counseling, God isn't in the equation. It's your own self-help. It's your own changing of yourself and recognizing who you might be that these are the things that need to change. The Puritans dealt with issues too, such as hysteria and melancholy, and they recognized that some of these are physical, but they never minimized the spiritual aspects of these problems and these issues. Now the background to the Biblical counseling movement starts in the mid 1950s with Jay Adams. There wasn't much at that point in time, biblical counseling done by the churches. What had happened is after the world wars and after God is dead kind of philosophies coming into educational institutions, even seminaries. The men who were being trained for pastoral ministry were trained in the practical parts by psychologists, clinical psychologists who would come in and teach them the Freudian therapies and ideas, which were totally ungodly. And so these men who are being trained for ministry only have a couple of courses in the practical training of counseling. And most of the time it was, you need to send them to the professional. In my own family, my grandfather, on my mom's side, my grandmother was converted and then maybe in her 40s or so, and my grandfather came under great spiritual distress and was thinking about committing suicide. And in Iowa, they had a place called Pine, no it wasn't Pine Rest, it was in, Council Bluffs. And they took him there. And basically, what his counsel that he was given from the Freudian, at that time, Freudian therapist was, you need to not think about your guilt with God. You need to live life and be happy. This was the advice given to him. And the church had sent him there. They didn't know how to deal with someone who was thinking about committing suicide. Well, that's the kind of era that Jay Adams grew up in. And he had received his training also, likewise, from some clinical psychologists, and he had gone off to help someone at a psychiatric hospital, and the man's name was Maurer. And this man was originally a Christian, or said he was a Christian, had Christian beliefs, but eventually became unbelieving. He forsook his Christian background, But one thing that was picked up from was the concern this man had who was now in the forefront of the psychology movement was this. He said he was concerned that the psychology movement was removing and stripping from people their responsibility. People were no longer being held responsible for their actions and their behavior. And this was the kind of environment then that Jay Adams grew up in in his early years as a pastor. He saw this happening in the psychology movement. He saw churches sending people to the so-called professionals. And he realized this isn't the biblical answer to people and their problems. This isn't the right way to do counseling. I like in this a Dale Carnegie course that I've heard about, some people have attended. You can probably, example, a lot of business people have taken Dale Carnegie courses. Seems to be a somewhat quasi-Christian kind of thing. You go there, you learn how to talk to people, how to influence people, how to make money. But the underlying motive from what I've studied of the Dale Carnegie courses, which probably aren't in vogue anymore, was basically you make sure that you remember to write some things down so the next time you meet with him, you remember his wife's name, you remember his children's name, and you do all of this. And it wasn't to get to know him as a person, it was to make the sale the next time. It was an influential course. And I would liken this perhaps some ways to psychology and psychiatry. They may have some good things to contribute to help us in some of our problems, but they are fundamentally based upon atheistic ideas. Return back to the scriptures. The scriptures and a teaching from the scriptures alone give us a proper view of who we are, body, soul. And when we don't keep these two together and distinguish them and separate them into medical problems and mental problems and then spiritual problems, we end up in trouble. And biblical counseling recognizes we are a whole being. We counsel the whole person. So in biblical counseling, we're not afraid to say at some points in time, when there's an organic problem in the body that needs to be addressed, We need to send them to a medical doctor. But most of the time, even those physical problems are connected to spiritual issues, at least in this way. How am I responding to my physical problems spiritually? And you see that these two things cannot be separated, whereas in the secular therapy, we try to distinguish these. We put this in the mental category, and so this depends on how your brain is functioning and your physical body, but no attention is given to what's going on in my heart, where my thoughts originate. So this is the distinction then between biblical and other secular counseling. Well, the third thing I want to highlight here is that biblical counseling is based on the Word of God. This is our source. Source for how we do it, source for why we do it, the source for what kind of counsel we give. It's all found here in the Word of God. It's Christ-centered, Christ-driven, And the Bible is simply more than just a grid through which we look at life. So we kind of put in this verse or that verse that relates to some other kind of theory that some secular person invented. You heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Well, you can use verses, and some people have tried to do this, love your neighbor as yourself. And so they take this as being, well, we're to love ourselves too, so until I love myself rightly enough, then I can't really love my neighbor. It's secular theory, try to be baptized with some biblical text. Can you imagine a doctor who doesn't know much about disease or medicines and he always has to go to the book to find an answer for you? How comfortable would you be to go to him? You gotta go get shoulder surgery, and so he says, well, I gotta spend the weekend looking up how to do that again. I don't think you'd be going to that doctor to get surgery very quickly. So biblical counselors, this is why we have training also, and it can be done in the church with lay people to help other people. We need to understand ourselves what things we struggle with, how we grow spiritually, so we can help others in their problems, in their growth, in their struggles. We need the light of the word of God to guide our path. Otherwise, we're walking in the dark. And I put on here, I think, mud puddle analogy. You're walking down a street, and it's dark, and a car rides by, and you feel this splash. You reach down, feel your pants, it's wet. You think, oh, well, I got splashed with some dirty water or something, and you keep walking, and you realize it's not drying. And you finally come to the street corner and there's a street light that begins to illuminate you and you've got bright yellow paint they used to do the markings on the road with. Suddenly, thinking you're wet and maybe dirty from a mud puddle has translated into, I've got paint splattered all over me. Two very different situations, maybe feel the same, but very different on how you're going to deal with it. And the same is true when we talk about biblical counseling. In many cases, I can, you can deal with pornography. There's similar characteristics about some of those things, but there's often underlying heart issues that may be different in different Until the light of the Word of God begins to shine, you begin to ask questions, you understand the heart of the individual, what they're struggling with, what they're going through, you won't be able to properly use the Word of God to shine light on their life so they can submit themselves to what God is saying to them. Now there's three things I think we need to keep in mind as we deal with issues regarding our spiritual condition. The first one is this statement that either God's word is sufficient or it's insufficient to deal with counseling issues. I don't think there's an in-between. We can clarify this into questions time, but When we talk about motivations and thoughts and emotions and behaviors, the Word of God is going to, in many respects, address it all. Or it doesn't address it. It's either one or the other. Sufficient or it's not sufficient. Number two, the consequence of human sin are to be understood as underlying all of our and affecting all areas, or the effects are not so serious after all. It's only one or the other. And I think it's clear that it affects every area of our life. By nature, man is in opposition to God. He's living in rebellion against God. He's suffering the consequence of sin in his life. And that's true also for a believer if they're not walking in the way of God's commandment. And then number three. Either we are completely dependent on God and his spirit or else we are dependent on something else. Either completely dependent on God and his spirit through his word or something else. A text here to keep in mind is Proverbs 4, 23. Keep your heart with all diligence. Out of it are the issues of life. The heart of the issue in biblical counseling is the issue of the heart. When people come to us for counsel, pastors or even any of you for some advice about something, the heart issues are what are involved. What do we think? How do we respond? What do we feel? What do we believe the word of God says to me in this circumstance? The heart is central. What does Jesus say in Matthew 15, 18 to 19? Let me read that. Matthew 15. 18 to 19. Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart. They defile the man. For out of the heart proceeds evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, theft, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things that defile a man. So the heart is central. In the Old Testament in particular, it talks about the heart. The heart is the core and center of who we are as a person. And it's from the heart then that's central to our whole being out of which arise our thoughts, our choices, our desires, our feelings, then our actions and our words are all arising from our heart. That's why I said earlier, we either need to evangelize because we need a new heart. So if we believe what the scriptures say about our corruption, the only thing that can come forth from an evil heart is evil things. evil fruit. According to your heart, you bear fruit. If having a changed heart now means that I've been given a new heart, I can choose to do different things, I can choose to think different things, I can choose to say different things, that's what the life of progressive sanctification is about. So Peter, he says in 1 Peter 1, verse 3, according as his divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness." God has given to us all things that pertain to our life. How we're called to live, not down to the details. So, if you think about it, does the Bible tell you what time you need to go to bed? No, it doesn't tell you what time you need to get up or how many hours of sleep you need to get. So science can give us some invaluable information about you should get between maybe six to eight hours of sleep and the time you get to sleep before 12 o'clock is better than afterwards and so on. We can learn some things from science, but does the scripture have anything to say about sleep? It certainly does. Not those kind of details, but how we use our bodies, And these kind of things, the scriptures, are clear. According to his divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17, all scripture is given by inspiration of God, profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. And so in counseling, we deal with issues that arise from the heart. And what we seek to do in counseling is get to the heart of the person. We're complex people. When we sin, it's originated in our heart and we've got certain desires and longings and aims to accomplish, and we use rationalizations to allow ourselves to do that, and then to carry out whatever action or thing we're going to do. But it originates in the heart. Now we don't always know how to trace that back from the action I just did. I got angry at my spouse or some worker or what's tempting me to lead me astray, to look at things I shouldn't look at. We can't always put together where did that source originate in my heart? We know it's wrong, we know it's corrupt, but how do we trace that back? How do we trace the motion of sin that James talks about? That's what we do in counseling. Help people understand this connection between how did I get here from here? And trace that back so we can deal with the issues of our heart and our relationship to God. People who come to us for counsel are often not aware of the real reason that's going on in their hearts that needs to change. And part of counseling is helping them understand what those real reasons might be because the counselor themselves has this experiential acquaintance with God dealing with them in their own sin, in their own heart issues. So I said the Old Testament is related to heart. Does anybody know what the New Testament uses as the term kind of describing who we are? Anyone? Mind. These two are more or less synonymous. And the idea of central who we are. So what does Paul say in Romans 12? We read that moment. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you make your bodies a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed in the renewing of your mind, your heart. Our minds, our hearts need to be transformed. Those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ have been born again. They're a new creature. They have a new heart, but they haven't arrived. None of us have. We are in this journey of progressively seeking to be conformed to Christ, to his righteousness, to his call and commands in our life. And so what we find is the mind is central in Paul's thinking as to who we are as a person. So this is where we come to the book of counseling then. We want to help believers walk in progressive sanctification. It's progressive. It's that it's moving. And it's not always moving in an upward direction. It's sometimes moving and backpedaling a little as we move along this trajectory. We'll see that in the chart in a moment. But all the way along the way, why did Luther call the life of the believer one of a continual repentance? Because for us who are in Christ and we have tasted of salvation and we know there needs to be a continual change and progressive putting off of the old man and putting on of the new, that's a continual life of repentance. And so Luther, when he nailed this thesis to the wall, he's talking about there is need for daily repentance. It's specific. It's an actual conscientious thinking about, how am I now to live? And as Christians, we need to be reminded of this again and again. What does this look like? So much of counseling is kind of an application of biblical counseling. Much of preaching is really an application of biblical counseling. So there's a call to repentance in faith, also in biblical counseling. Many times in counseling there is, your sheet here, there is a confusion in regard to a proper view of what it means to be a Christian. And if we think of our background, and we think of other churches that we have perhaps railed against, each one has a tendency to one extreme or the other. So if you look at this chart here, it's describing for us a Christianity without a continual growth of the gospel and of Christ and the cross being central. So at the time of conversion, if you move from left to right, conversion takes place and we begin growing upward in awareness of God's holiness and downward in awareness of my own sinfulness. The cross of Christ is the only solution to our awareness of our sinfulness, and it gives us greater clarity in regard to the awe of God's holiness. Now, if our understanding of the gospel and appreciation of the gospel doesn't grow as we continue to grow, you see the problems that can arise. If a person grows simply in awareness of their sinfulness, guilt, fear, shame, insecurity, despair can take hold upon them. If we grow in understanding of God's holiness, we can end up with pride, legalism, self-justification, moralism, just religion. So you see, Christ is the center of what is needed in this progressively growing and understanding of both myself and of the holiness of God. And biblical counseling is really understanding these truths, helping people understand these truths of how to live life, how to be filling our own hearts, if you will, of the gospel so that we don't succumb to fear, shame, guilt, and so on. Now the second chart here you'll see is entitled Sanctification. And this is a view of progressive sanctification. So the non-Christian is a slave to sin below the solid black line. At the point of conversion, where you see the cross there, There is, from that point forward, both a progressive nature in growing in grace and godliness, as well as you see a straight line going up at the point of conversion. That straight line is talking about what Paul says, we are sanctified. We are actually glorified, he says, in another place. So in principle, the straight line up is true, perfect holiness. We haven't arrived, but that's how we're seen by God. Now on the other white area where you see the squiggly lines going up and down, this is the Christian life. This is where people, you and I, and counselees, find ourselves. We're struggling in the Christian life. We're faltering, we're maybe, some kind of sin and don't know how to put it off and we're living in depths and valleys and hills. This is the progressive sanctification toward the goal of being like Christ until the point we die and then immediately we will be sanctified fully in Christ. Well, how do we actually do this counseling? As I said, this is just gonna be a cursory overlook of many ideas of what biblical counseling is about. A good book to lay your hands on is Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul Tripp. He goes through four basic themes that are central to working with a counselee or dealing with people we're counseling. I don't think I wrote these down, but you could. These four words are important. Love, know, speak, do. Any biblical counselor should be able to repeat those words to us. The first is love. You get to know the person who's come to you for help. Love them. Friendship. cup of coffee, listen to what their story is. Love? No. Second thing, no. We want to get to know the person. What are you struggling with? What are you thinking? Why did you do that? What were you thinking when you did this? How does God address this situation? Where was God in this picture? We want to know them intimately. Biblically. And the role of the counselor here is to take this data and information we're gathering to be able then with prayer and the Holy Spirit to come back and to teach, to speak, to be a teacher of, is God saying this to you? What does God mean when he says this in your circumstance? Is God sovereign over everything? So when this happened in your life and you faced trauma before, where was God? How did the psalmist respond to this trauma? When you feel you're in the depths and you can't get above the waves, what does the psalmist speak to these issues? We begin to teach. And the last is do. We want to encourage. We want to walk alongside of the counselees in their suffering, in their difficulties, so that we might help them grow into Christ-likeness. And so all the words that I've just given you could be unpacked into all these I's. Involvement is simply saying in a humble, brotherly or sisterly way, we want to be involved in the person's life. It's not like the professional, I'm here to solve your problem. We're not here to solve anybody's problem, we can't. We're here to bring you God's word. We don't want them to look to us to be their problem solver. We want the counselee to begin to look more and more to God and his word. We're not the savior. Many people go to secular counseling, that person's their savior. They can't live without their therapist. Second, investigate. This is gathering the data. We need to listen. We need to learn how to listen to people, what questions to ask to get at the root and hearts of their issues. Many times there are idols in our hearts that we're serving that we're unaware of. Do we have a control problem? We have to control everything? That's an idol problem. We confess with our mouth we believe God's in control of everything, but at the end of the day I need to do it or else I'm going to get upset. That's a sin problem. We said already that all this arises from the heart. Sometimes we take a bottle of water and I tilt it. What comes out? Why? Yes, most people maybe say because you tipped the bottle or something, and it's not why. It's because there's water in. So when anger comes out, what was in? Anger. And until we deal with the root of that issue, you can't respond angrily doesn't solve anything. We need to get to the heart. Why? What is this originating from? So we investigate. Second is inspiration, or third is inspiration. And the idea, one word you could put here behind the inspiration is hope. Most, if not many for sure, come to counsel because they've lost hope. They can't see their way in living. You wouldn't know it probably on their face. When you come to church on Sunday morning, you wouldn't know who's hopeless. But believe me, there's people sitting there who have come to the end of their ropes. They need here inspiration, hope from the word of God and the salvation found in Christ. Inventory, this is the gathering together of the investigation, trying with God's help as a counselor to understand this person, not judging this person, But who is she? Who is he? In light of God's word, what God's word says, how does that relate to this person? And what does the word of God have to say to this person? That's a precarious place in some respects to be. Imagine you're going to your doctor and you have a sore throat. You do the five-minute test for strep throat, comes back positive. Okay, you got to start chemotherapy tomorrow. I don't know that you would do that. It's a wrong treatment for this problem. It's the same in counseling. If you don't really know the person, you really aren't getting to the roots of what's going on in the person's heart, and you try and give some kind of treatment, even from the word of God, it could fail, it could miss, it's not hitting the mark, it's not addressing the core of the issue with that person. We need the Holy Spirit to lead us as counselors and to apply it to the heart of the consolee. So we inventory, we look at different pieces of the person's life and we try to begin to see a pattern. Um, maybe turn to Ephesians 4 a second. So this is a familiar passage of progressive sanctification of Paul does this in Colossians 2, Colossians also, put off these things and put on these things. So he says put off in verse 22 concerning the conversation. And the meaning of that is the former way you lived, the former way of life, which was corrupt according to deceitful lust. So Paul is saying the former way you live, these actions that you did in this way of life arose from deceitful lust of your heart. This must be killed. And, 23, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and you put on the new man, the new heart, the new creature, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This is what we're talking about when we talk about gathering this information. What is the former way of living this person is living in, the habits and the tendencies? And we interpret them then. basis of the Word of God. Then we give instruction. We use the Word of God to call out various behaviors or thinking and ask the counselee to consider, what is God saying to you in this verse or this passage? We deal with sin. We don't minimize it. At the same time, we need to have an understanding of suffering. Then inducement. We ought to, in our counseling, want the counselee to change. If they are true Christians, they will want to walk godly. And it's not just dealing with behaviors. Like I said before with anger, stop getting angry and using these words. It's changing from the root of our heart. Then the implementation. We won't change anyone, but they, by the Spirit of God, can make progress. And we give homework. We say, do this assignment. Look up these scriptural passages. Study this. Pray over this. It's in those periods of time that God working with the counselee that change happens, not in the hour in which we meet with them. And then integration, the last word here is incorporating them more fully into the fellowship of the church and the activity of the church. And what's encouraging as a counselor is when you've worked with someone for months, And then they begin to tell you, oh, I met with this friend of mine, and they were struggling with the same thing. And they go on to say exactly the same thing you've been teaching them the last three months. This is what the integration to be. All right, 841. How much time do I have? 10 minutes? Till midnight? No. I'll run out of steam by then. I want to cover this last thing then. And it's important simply because of this. As I said, J. Adams and biblical counseling has been maybe misrepresented because it's almost like we're on a sin hunt or we're on an idol hunt. Everything has to do with sin. Everybody's involved in sin and that has to be corrected. Now, in some sense that may be true. We're all sinners. Our response, even to trauma and things that have happened to us from other people sinning against us, our response needs to be dealt with. But at the same time, Adam seemed a little insensitive or not understanding this whole concept of suffering. So I want to touch on it here. Ultimately, Our suffering is a result of the fall, sin. Suffering will either lead us to repentance or hardening. If you take the Old Testament kings and you look when God sent suffering, whether it was through pestilence or foreign armies, there is basically two responses. They either humble themselves before God and they turn to him and he comes to help, or they try to seek help elsewhere in Egypt or in horses and chariots, or they rebel against God. Those are the two responses to suffering. Now, we all will experience suffering, but the question is, how are we responding to that suffering? Suffering is not present, pre-fall, but post-fall, we are affected by suffering in many ways. Our catechism and the baptism form talk about we're subject to miseries our whole life from the moment we are basically born. We face corruption and decay from the moment we enter this world. We're wasting away. It's a part of this process due to sin of suffering. And some people in life experience a greater degree of this suffering that's present in the world generally because of sin more than other people do. There's accidents that are no cause of our own, there's genetic diseases that are part of our fallenness, and we suffer through those things. And people need biblical counsel and advice to help them process and understand biblically why these things may be happening. We're dealing, I recently dealt with a case of a lady who had a child, it was born and only lived a few days, and now is expecting again, and is just really struggling with, what if something's wrong with this child? Where is God? Where was God the first time? I know he helped me through, but it was a very hard struggle, because I don't know where my child is. And we had to talk about the idea of who God is, what he deals with children of believing parents. And she had a hard time believing that could be possible for this child. And all these questions and counseling come up. And now how to face this new birth with trust. with faith. What if something does go wrong? How am I going to handle that? So there's suffering in this world that impacts how I respond to these difficulties, these challenges. We also experience suffering in our relationships, broken relationships, Tension in relationships causes suffering. Families, marriage, emotional pain and suffering. And most of the time these are due to our own sins within these relationships. It can be our own. It can be the sin of another against us. We also can be affected by our own sin that brings with it consequences. If you talk to someone who's been addicted to hard drugs for a period of time, their very capabilities of thinking in their physical brain is maybe impacted by their continual use of various drugs. This is suffering, but due to their own activities and their own sins. So we suffer because of sin, sin in the world out there, sin because others have sinned against me, or because of my own sin. And it's helpful to kind of distinguish between these ideas, I think, as we counsel with people. If you take someone who has been abused by someone else, they've been sinned against. They have to work through all different kinds of issues of why did God permit this to happen? How is he going to protect me going forward if they grow into years older? What if it's in a relationship they're in right now in marriage that the husband or whoever might be abusive? So we're subject to suffering and we need to recognize these different areas in which we can suffer due to sin. If I think of Job, it was early In the Scriptures, this example was given, I think for a reason. It was at the time of Abraham that Job lived. And you know the whole story of Job. Job needed counsel, so to speak. What counsel would you have given him? God wasn't pleased with the counsel several of his friends gave. Finally, God gives counsel. But does he ever tell Job the reason why this happened? Doesn't seem to. I mean, we know, looking back, well, Satan went up to heaven, talked to God about, consider my servant Job. But we're not told that Job was ever given a reason why this happened. But when he was confronted with the wisdom of God and the questions of God, what happened to Job? Like he melted before God. humbled himself before God. Because I think the question here is not why was this happening to Job, but what was Job's response and what was going to be his heart transformed through this suffering? And that's a key question we want to ask as we approach suffering is what is God accomplishing? in my consulee's life, in my own life, through our suffering. How are we going to respond to whatever suffering we face? It doesn't mean, there's all kinds of questions and tangents here. You don't go and say, well, stay in your abusive relationship so you can learn more about the suffering and trust in God. No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if we're suffering or have suffered, what can we learn through that biblically How have I been transformed by my suffering into the likeness of Christ? Recognize that the resurrection of Christ, which we just commemorated, we just had a chapel on, I'd encourage you to listen to it by Tiago, but he was talking about, it's in remembrance of Jesus' resurrection, his power and his life, that we then have this capability basically to live lives of transformation, dying to ourselves daily. that he begins to live in us more and more and shine the light that he's called us to shine to be the salt of the earth that we're called to be. And God does this through suffering. Give you four quick purposes of suffering. God is sovereign and all suffering is under his hand and we must learn to trust him And of course, Christ has suffered in our place, so we will never endure the suffering we deserve. But God is sovereign. We can rest, and this is in his hand. He will not give us above. We are able to endure by his grace, and Christ suffered in our behalf. Number two, God's purpose for Christ to suffer is so that he might be our merciful and faithful high priest. And being our faithful high priest, he is calling his children to a path that follows him. And that path will include suffering. Number three, God sanctifies his people through suffering. It's through this process, it's through this way of our suffering that we die, that the old man dies, that I die and Christ then lives through me by his spirit. We take up our cross and follow him. And number four, God has given suffering as a consequence of our personal sin, and as a reality that we live in a fallen world. And we need to consider what our heart response to suffering is. Ultimately, the battle that we are talking about in biblical counseling is not with flesh and blood. It's a spiritual battle. And the purpose of biblical counseling is to bring the Word of God to bear on those with whom we are privileged to minister to and speak with, that they may be transformed by the power of the Spirit and the Word into the likeness of Christ. That's just the touching your toe in what biblical counseling is about. So, hopefully that was not too disjointed, but Are there questions? You can either write them on a piece of paper, but we're small enough. I think you all know each other. You can ask a question. It doesn't necessarily mean you're asking for yourself. The what? Fs. Oh, yeah. Why are there Fs on there? Did you do any psychoanalysis? Yeah? We can analyze it all day long, I suppose, but I went to the printing machine and I picked it up and put the paper clip on and I said, what is this? I have no idea. So sometimes when you get into counseling and you go, I don't know what's going on here. So, yeah. So questions, anything you think of in regard to biblical counseling, question of what I have said, presented to you, yes. We can't prescribe medication, so that is part of the medical field. So a general doctor can prescribe medication, or a psychiatrist can, even psychologists can't. So you need special training to be able to do that. So in biblical counseling, we're not opposed to those who would use medication. There are places where it's necessary. Sometimes a person is, we've had occasions where a person just can't even get up in the morning, can't even think clearly. And they need some sort of help to get them through a very low period and to be able to talk and respond to counsel that would be given. But that's a personal decision and something that we can't say. Certainly, it's not sin to take medications. That's not the point. If there's someone who is going for medication, there needs to be, I think, at the same time, what's happening in my life. How am I responding to this suffering and this infirmity in the body? So can I use your example? My wife has a lot of suffering. So we can go to get help for all of that. But at the end of the day, often the question is, What is God saying to me? What is God doing through this? How am I responding to this suffering? And that's true whether we take medication or not. Yeah? That's a great question. You didn't become counselors listening to an hour of rambling. So, I think what Paul says is true. Whatever level or aspect we're talking about, you, a grown man with some experience of life can come along a side, maybe a 16-year-old who's struggling with something you've struggled with, and walk with them in that path. That I would call is biblical counseling. Now there's more intensive times that you designate for someone who has more training. There's more people who are trained better in certain areas that maybe can get referred to. The counseling movement is growing. So there's more training for people who are dealing with abuse, more training of people dealing with addictions, and so on. So they may be specialized in certain areas. And there may be cases that are more difficult. There's ongoing for years or difficulties, which I think are a place where a counseling center like you're starting, people can go to to get help. But there's, all of us struggle with various problems and there may be someone in the congregation we can share our heart with and get godly advice from. That's discipling. Oh yeah, there's tons of books, more than You know, when we first started having children, there was maybe three books, Spock, I heard about, I don't even know what that was about, on child training that people in the congregation I served read, and I'm going, well, I don't think Spock has anything to do with Christian child training, so we'll turn to a couple other books. Now there's a plethora of books. And the same is true about biblical counseling. 50 years ago, there weren't hardly any. J. Adams wrote one of the first, actually. And so there's been a plethora since, and dealing with all kinds of issues. Blogs, and many other sources we can turn to. Yeah. Yes. When people are begging, God is small. Ed Welch. Instruments in the Redeemer's hands. Paul Tripp. Timothy Lane and Tripp did a book on change, biblical change, something in the title of biblical change. Depends on what issue, right? If you're dealing with anger, Paulus wrote a book on good and angry. If you're dealing with abuse, Darby Strickland. Addictions, A Banquet with Death in the Grave by Ed Welch. We have five or so with a couple specialized ones. Oh, Jerry Bridges, Knowing God. So many times when we begin counseling, what we find is that people are struggling with a problem. but they have a messed up view of God. So we generally assign, either read the gospel of John and come back the next meetings, this is your homework assignment, start reading John and give me, as you read this gospel, write down what you see as the character of Jesus and of God. And we talk about that the next time. We had one instance where a young girl who had a child out of wedlock and she was working and she was struggling with, didn't even know she was saved, didn't think she was, she probably wasn't saved actually, and she was just struggling with things in life. And my wife worked with her, told her to read the Gospel of John, and after about three meetings, her whole life had transformed and changed. And by her own testimony, it was, she began to see God in a whole new light than she ever did her whole childhood and growing up. And it just transformed her thinking and understanding. We've dealt with suicide cases too, and they're not pleasant, but it's very difficult. And so part of discipleship is, we had phone calls at one o'clock in the morning. So you don't call your secular counselor at one o'clock in the morning and say, I'm struggling. That just doesn't happen. This is a community. The counselor is to be like Christ to the person. Just like as parents, we should be resembling and showing Christ to the children he's given us, the counselor ought to be showing Christ to whoever they're talking to. Henry. He didn't have to experience those things to know what man was, but yet he did. Yeah. Yeah. So there's times in counseling where I, my wife or other counselors will, the person is struggling with something that either they're struggling with a sin or they're struggling with other people who sinned against them. And you're able by your own experience to talk about something you've dealt with, which can be helpful. And part of biblical counseling is not just giving Bible text. Take these three texts like a pill and aspirin and go home and come back next week and you should be better. That's not biblical counseling. Be anxious for nothing, but everything. Give thanks to God. And if you're an anxious person, just memorize this text. No, it's getting to what's causing this anxiety to start and foment in your heart and getting you to do all these things. Where's that coming from? And we use the stories of the Bible, not just the particular passages that teach, but the stories. If you think of Joseph, think of how much suffering he did at the hands of his brothers. How did he cope with that? You can relate that to your counselee who suffered maybe at the hands of other people. How are they to respond to that? Other questions? Yep. Yeah, so we do have Dr. Hammersma and Aaron Platner. They do one course, they split up one credit. One's a psychologist, one's a general practitioner who bring out what kind of cases they deal with and can give help with and to recognize some of those things. So, yeah, I think we also teach, we need to be careful, I think, in categorizing things as mental health issues, because that can put it in a medical domain. So then it becomes simply the, we don't want people to begin to think, The reason I'm behaving this way or sinning this way is because I have a mental health issue. I know there's mental health issues that are genetic, that are related to various reasons, but I think the lack of responsibility in regard to mental health issues is where we would get to and say, if people are excusing their behavior because they call it mental health, they're not confronting where their heart is at. And you need to keep those two together. So even if there are mental health issues as we define them today in much of medical field, there should be counseling right alongside of it. And so I teach the students, you should work together with a parishioner in your congregation who's seeing a psychiatrist. You need to be there with them. You need to walk this path with them and give biblical perspective to this. Yeah, so I'll leave it at that. Anyone else? All right. Yeah, one more question. Yeah. Yeah. It's very important that the counselor have a good grasp of theological issues. That's why all of our counselors take all of the systematic courses and they need to have a good grounding in the theology, the understanding of salvation primarily too. So give you an example. We of course counsel various different denominations and we had a couple come to us from a conservative, hyper-Calvinistic background, and he was an alcoholic. Neither one of them professed to know the Lord. In our first meeting with them, we basically said to them, we can try to help you and try to help you stop your addiction because it's affecting your relationship. But ultimately, if you don't come to know the Lord, both of you, we're putting a Band-Aid on the problem of all of this. And so you need to turn to the Lord not only to overcome your alcohol, but you need to turn to the Lord as a couple to have him central of your marriage and point it out. What does it mean to believe? What does it mean to repent? And so that's one aspect. You have other aspects of people who come and I have some men I've worked with and they're continuing to fall into pornography month after month after month after month. And I have to begin asking the serious question. You say that you know Christ. Do you realize what this means every time you fall into this sin? And it's not necessarily different than any other sin, but every sin that you're committing, you're demonstrating to some degree that obviously something maybe is not changed within you. Either you're not walking with the Lord or you don't know the Lord. I can't answer that question for you. And you begin to probe that question with them. I think your question also could relate to having a right understanding of this sanctification that I talked about. If we don't understand that being born again means I now am the new creature in Christ Jesus, I am a child of God and that comes with measure of assurance and so on, but what does that actually mean? What does it mean to live out that life now as a new creature in Christ Jesus? What does it mean to now live progressive sanctification, dependent on Christ, growing in more knowledge of my own sinfulness and depending on Christ? Many times it's like, who am I anyway? Am I the old man or the new man? And Paul talks about that in Romans 7, but he's clear about who the believer is. You're the new creature in Christ Jesus. You are seated in heavenly places. You are sanctified. You are All of these things, and many people who have had also hyper-Calvinistic teaching don't grasp or understand that. And that's why preaching is so essential and central to counseling. When you counsel someone, if they don't go to church, it's not a good situation. It's one of the requirements to do counseling, basically, is you need to have a church you go to, lively preaching of the word. All right, anything else? Everybody's ready for a break, I mean a coffee. Sure, let's pray. Our merciful and gracious God, we come this evening needy, dependent, and we need thee for ourselves and for enablement to be able to be help to others. That's our desire. If we know the life that is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ, we want to help others and comfort others with the comfort and help that we have received from thee. So give us all wisdom, help us to seek, if we are desirous to help others more, to seek better training and more understanding and to be able to walk alongside of others, even our own children in this world. calling. Bless this congregation, bless the new counseling center that soon hopes to begin, that it would be a ministry to not only churches in the area, but even others in an evangelistic way to reach out to the lost to find hope that is found in the Lord Jesus and the gospel. Go with us tonight, protect and keep us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.