At these conferences, they always have all these carbohydrates, right? So it's after lunch that you start going, oh, man. I know how that goes. I just came off of a week at ACBC there in Memphis, Tennessee. We were at Bellevue Baptist Church with our conference. And then the week after that was the Truth Matters conference there at Grace Community Church there in Los Angeles. So, and they always have all these carbohydrates all over the place. I just have to avoid that stuff like a plague. Otherwise, I just would sleep through all the afternoon sessions by eating that stuff. Yet it's so good, and yet it's so good. All right. Now, in our first session, I just kind of want to introduce you to biblical counseling, especially what it's not. In this session, I want to talk, head in the direction of talking about how training should happen within the church, We've got to also define what biblical counseling is first, so let me see if we can pick up in doing that. What is biblical counseling in this sense? Oh, by the way, I turned off my mic here. Should I turn it back on? If you want to walk, otherwise you're at the podium. Yeah, all right, there we go. I've got it back on now. All right, so in this session we want to talk about what biblical counseling is, in this case, and what happened during the I can get this thing going. I think my projector, or whatever it is, took a break, too. There we go. Now we got it running again. What is biblical counseling? Let me highlight a few things here that I think are really important. Biblical counseling really discerns desires, thinking, and behavior that God wants to change. In other words, The Bible is the chief diagnostic tool in order to define what's really going on in a person and with their particular problem. Now, I agree with you that I cannot see people's hearts, and you can't see people's hearts. We can't see those things. But the Bible says that if you grab your Bible just for a moment, let's go over to Proverbs chapter 20. In verse 5, Solomon says it like this, a plan in the heart of a man is like deep water, but a man of understanding draws it out. A plan in the heart of man is like deep water. In other words, it's hidden. You can't see it. And the word for plan, the Hebrew term for plan here, could also be translated to purpose, a desire. It could be translated desire in the heart of a man is like deep water. But a man of understanding draws it out. In other words, a man who uses good biblical wisdom and good biblical understanding can draw out the chief features of what's going on in a person's heart. A person can do that. The wiser you are at using scripture skillfully in the lives of other people, and this is something that is not so much Learned straight out of reading like a biblical counseling book But it's something that's learned as you practice using the Word of God with real people problems It's a skill and an insight that you gain as you really do that Rather than running away from them. That was one of the big fearful things about me I was afraid that I'd run into problems that I couldn't really deal with and so I avoided them But I realized I have to dive in there and start learning how to deal with those problems. And sometimes I had to say to people, especially early on, and I still do to this day, you know, I may not know what the answer to this problem is or what the Bible says about this, but I'm willing to work with you on this particular problem in order to find that out. All right. And of course, as the years go by, then God builds within you that kind of understanding to bring those things out of a person's heart. You can't see them, but nevertheless, they are there. You can't see my heart, I can't see your heart, and yet they're there, and there are ways that you can bring these to the surface. It is the truth of the Word of God that is the chief diagnostic tool for determining these things. Now, I mentioned this yesterday, even at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and their chapel. I said, I've almost gotten to the point where I hate the term biblical counseling, because So many people now use the term who are not true biblical counselors. I'll never forget back about probably seven or eight years ago, Dr. Stewart Scott and myself went to Southwestern Theological Seminary. At that particular time, other than Southern, that was the largest seminary in the world. Southwestern had about 3,000 seminary students there and so did Southern. They asked us to come in and do a lectureship series on biblical counseling, so we came in and did a lectureship series on biblical counseling. And I was assigned the first address of the series, and they assigned my topic to be, How Has Psychology Failed the Church? All right? So just before I get up to speak, the guy that's going to announce me, he says, by the way, don't look back now, but if you look back five rows on the left-hand side as you're facing the audience, there are two rows of all of our psychologists at the seminary here. I said, well, this is going to be fun. All right? So I got up and dove into it and spent an hour just hammering away how psychology has miserably failed the church. Just one thing after another. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And at the end of it, then there was another guy, another speaker that came on, Dr. Scott, I think, came on, and he spoke, and then came lunch. And I saw all these same psychologists all sitting around eating lunch together, and there was an empty chair, so I decided, I'm gonna go plop down in the middle. So I went and plopped right down in the middle and said, hi, I'm John Street, oh, we know who you are. And they said, And then I started eating lunch, just talking, chatting with them and stuff. And so they, without me asking them, started to go around and explain to me why they do biblical counseling, all right? Why they do biblical counseling. And so I just ate my sandwich and my potato chips and carefully listened to what they had to say. They were going from one person to another because they sensed that the wind had changed. They're at the seminary, were away from psychology and was going in a biblical counseling route. And they were scared to death they were gonna lose their job. I wasn't there to threaten their job, but I prefer to convert them into biblical counseling is what I prefer to do. And so, after he got down and went around the circle and got to the final tie, I didn't even ask him to do that. They just did it on their own. I just carefully listened and made note of what they were saying, and I realized that what they were saying at that particular point, they were saying, well, we're a biblical counseling because we use the Bible when we counsel. We're a biblical counselor because we pray when we counsel. We do biblical counseling because we have the spiritual welfare of the person, or we share the gospel with the person when we counsel them. So when it got done, the whole thing, I said, listen, okay, I hear what you guys are saying, but almost everything that you told me that you do Cults do. Cults use the Bible. Cults pray. Cults will often refer to the gospel. So how are you different than a cult? And you know what? None of them could answer that question. They didn't have, they had no, no, how are you different than a cult? We're not talking about just because you use the Bible, you're doing biblical counsel. We're not talking about that at all. We're talking about understanding how the Bible views problems. We're looking at a person through a biblical, anthropological lens, not from a secular lens, all right? For example, in Christian psychology today, one of the cornerstones of Christian psychology today is really, was developed theoretically by Alfred Adler. Adler's a secular psychologist. Adler was the one who advocated so strongly in self-love and self-esteem. Adler was the one who basically said from the time that a person is born until the time that they're six years old, everybody is bigger, stronger, and smarter than that child that's born. And so children have indelibly printed on their psyches an inferiority complex, and they spend the rest of their life compensating for that inferiority complex. and seeking what Adler called, in his early writings, seeking superiority, but that became too pejorative, and later on he changed it to self-realization or self-actualization. Seeking self-realization or self-actualization. Well, that was bought wholesale into Christianity. I mean, the cornerstone of James Dobson's teaching was self-love and self-esteem. And yet, there's not a single shred of eminence in the Bible about that. It doesn't exist. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that man has a low view of himself, or needs to love himself more. It doesn't say that anywhere. And some of the proof texts that are used, like Matthew 22, that talks about love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, they use it as a proof text for self-love. When you begin to look at it carefully, that's not what Jesus is saying at all. He's not saying, they turn it into three commands. You need to love God, love other people, and love yourself. In fact, you can't love God and love other people until you first love yourself. I have in my library shelves of Christian psychology books. I've read them all. And I see this repeated over and over again, this lie repeated over and over again. You can't really love God and you can't really love other people until you first love yourself. Really? Where do you get that? In Matthew 22, verse 40, it's very, very clear. Jesus says, upon these two commands, the entire law hangs, not three. All right, on these two commands, what command? Loving God and loving others. Well, what's he saying when he says love others, as yourself. He actually assumes we love ourselves a lot. And if we love God as much as we love ourselves, and we loved other people as much as we love ourselves, we'd have great relationships. By the way, we talk about this in training counselors. We say, listen, every counseling problem you ever face goes back to the entire law hangs on these two pegs. How much people love God and how much people love other people. Everything, every problem goes back to that. Every problem, no matter what problem you ever face in life, goes back to that. We're talking about viewing human problems from a biblical perspective. All right? That's what we're talking about. Back a couple years ago, I'm sitting in my office, grading papers, which, by the way, is the bane of every professor. All right? Always in behind the grading, you know? I feel like the grading truck is going to run over me someday. So I'm always trying to catch up on grading. So I'm grading papers. And one of undergraduate senior students there at the university came to my door. My door was cracked open. She knocked on my door. She stuck her head in. Dr. Street, got a moment? I looked at all my work, and I looked at her, and I looked at my work, and it went. Sure, come on in. I know these things never take a moment. And she came in and plopped down in a chair. I said, I'm gonna change your name. Carol, what's wrong? She says, I hate myself. I said, you do? I hate myself. Well, are you depressed? Now, if you ever have somebody come to you like that, and makes that kind of statement, I know better than to ask this question, but I do it anyhow. Why do you hate yourself? Because if you ask that question, be prepared for a lengthy answer. And she started in on all the reasons why she hated herself. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It goes something like this. I'm too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny. I've got big ears, crooked nose, wrong kind of complexion. I'm not athletic enough. I'm not academic enough. You know, nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Think I'll go eat worms. Okay, kind of philosophy. That's the whole thing. 40 minutes later, after I ask the question, she comes up for air. All right, 40 minutes of describing for me why she hated herself. And I said to her, Carol, listen, I'm really confused. She said, why are you confused? I said, well, I'm trying to put myself into your shoes and saying, all right, if all of these things that you just described for me over the last 40 minutes, all these things are going on in your particular life, I'm trying to figure out why you're so miserable and depressed. She says, well, why are you so confused about that? I said, well, listen, if, listen, if I really hated me, if that were the case, I really hate me and all of these things were wrong in my life, then I'd say, huh, this is what I deserve. All right, I just kind of accept it as it. So I'm trying to figure out why you're so miserable. And then I began to describe to her, nowhere in the Bible, I've read the Bible through numerous times in my life, studying it through, nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that man ever loves himself too little. It doesn't exist in the Bible. It always says that man loves himself an awful lot. And man loves himself so much that when he sees life come in down here, it's the disparity between it. This is what he believes he deserves, but life is really coming in way down here. It's the disparity between the two that makes him so miserable and depressed. And she was a really, she's a very A student, 4.0 student. She got it. The tears started to roll down her face. She says, nobody has ever told me this before. Nobody's ever told me. So we talked for a while. I had prayer with her. An hour later, I saw her in the cafeteria there at the university. And she was across the cafeteria going through the salad line, and she came to this great big bowl of red cherry tomatoes, and I'm watching her. All right, I'm watching Carol. Big bowl of red cherry tomatoes. She picks up the toms, picks up one little red cherry tomato, looks at it for a little bit, puts it back in the bowl, picks another one, looks at it a little bit, puts it back in the bowl, picks up a third one, looks at it, inspects it, and then puts it on her salad. I'm going, what is she doing? I know. She hates herself. So she's looking for the worst cherry tomato in the bunch because that's what she fundamentally thinks she deserves. Not. What is she looking for? The best one because that's our default nature. That's always our default nature. If we're really thinking like a Christian, we'd find the best one in the red cherry tomato bowl and put it on the salad of the person behind us. That's what we really do. We're thinking like a Christian. All right? No. What is she looking for? She's looking for, she is looking for the best one in the bunch. That's our default nature. That always, always is our default nature. This is why we say, listen, when it comes to counseling, we have to have a biblical view of the person, not a secular, psychological view of the person. It has to be driven by a biblical anthropology. We are so inundated with an ungodly, worldly view of man, we believe that that is its truth, when in reality it's not. It's against everything the Bible says. All right? I'm gonna go from preaching to meddling at this point. Okay? Let's see how well this works with you. There is, according to the Bible, no such thing as mental illness. See how that sinks in just a little bit here. There's no such thing as mental illness. There never has been in the history of mankind. It does not exist. Nowhere. How can you say that? Have you ever been to an insane asylum? Yeah, I've been to those places where padded cells. Yeah, I've been there. There's no mental illness there. Doesn't exist. Why? It's impossible. It's impossible for mental illness to exist. It's impossible. Why? Because the mind cannot get ill. Only the brain can get ill. There are brain illnesses, but there is no such thing as mental illness. Freud actually developed the term mental illness. When you read Freud's biography, he coined the term mental illness because he wanted to wed psychology with medicine. Because that's where, the only place that psychology is going to get its credibility is from medicine. And there still is a ritualistic endeavor today for modern psychology which, by the way, is not based upon hard science. Hard science is based upon direct causation. Psychology is based upon co-variation. Causation is cause and effect. Co-variation is causes that seem to be related to effect. There's a difference between the two. That's the reason why psychology, oftentimes in many universities, is under the social sciences, not under the hard sciences. It is at best a very soft science. There is no such thing as mental illness because the mind can't get ill. The brain can get ill. There are brain illnesses. The brain can have a stroke. The brain can have tumors on it. The brain can have aneurysms. The brain can have all kinds of things can happen to the brain. But that's different than mental illness. That's different. or a mental disease. Typhoid is a disease. It's a... you can see it. The typhoid fever is a disease. Beaver fever is not a disease. Okay? There's a difference between the two. Typhoid fever is a disease. Mental illness is an oxymoron. It's like jumbo shrimp. Military intelligence. It doesn't go together. All right? It doesn't go together. It never has. All right? And yet we throw it around and we use it all the time. Now, are there brain diseases that have symptomologies of mental illness? Yes. Absolutely. Of brain illness, I should say. I'm using it wrong. Right? We have to think clearly the way scripture tells us to think about these particular problems. We live in a world that has caused us to think about problems in their means, not in scriptural means, not in scriptural ways. And that's why we say that biblical counseling discerns desires, thinking, and behavior that God wants to change. That's key. There's a second thing I want you to see. Biblical counseling also uses God's Word by the Holy Spirit to change those desires, the thinking, and the behavior. So not only is the Word of God the chief diagnostic tool, if you will, the Word of God is the fMRI, the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Program of the heart, the metaphorical heart, but it is also the remedy. It is the remedy. It is the Word of God that is used by the Holy Spirit in order to change people fundamentally. You and I cannot change anybody. We can't change anybody. We can do our best. We're supposed to faithfully minister the Word of God, but it's up to the Spirit of God to change people's hearts. I've always been fascinated throughout my ministry of the ministry of Jeremiah. Jeremiah preaches for 40 years in Jerusalem. throughout Israel and doesn't have one single convert. By modern measures, he was a total failure. Not a single convert. Jeremiah preaches for 40 years. Imagine that. How discouraging that would be. Preaching for 40 years without a single convert. Nobody believed his message. Yet he stayed faithful at it. Our job is to remain faithful to the Word of God and then allow God to do his work. Because we cannot change people. There's no set of technique or methodology that's ever going to change anybody. We are totally dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's heart and life. We have to leave that up to the Holy Spirit to do His perfect work. That's what we have to do. So biblical counseling uses the Word of God in order to do this. You can see this. In fact, I talked about this yesterday, too. Go over to 2 Peter 1, in verse 3, where it says, talks about the sufficiency and the superiority of the word of God here, seeing that his divine power is granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. So the Word of God claims to be sufficient. We have everything we need for life and godliness. We can see the same thing in 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16. You know this. All scripture is inspired by God and is promptable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for not some, But every good work that speaks to the sufficiency of the Word of God to address serious problems, or every good work, you begin to realize that. And now we minister the Word of God faithfully, we have to minister it accurately, based upon the authorial intent of Scripture. That's what needs to be done, but then we have to leave the work up to the Holy Spirit. This is why, ultimately, you cannot counsel unbelievers. Let me say it again. You cannot counsel unbelievers. All counseling is pre-counseling until that person comes to Christ. All counseling is pre-counseling until that person comes to Christ. Now why do we say that? From a biblical standpoint, now are we supposed to help unbelievers and do good to them? Yes, yes. We're supposed to do good to all men. So if a guy's beating his wife and they're unbelievers, I'm gonna get her into a place where it's safe and that kind of thing. We're gonna do good to all men. But ultimately, counseling only works when the Holy Spirit is at work in the heart of that person. You can get unbelievers to obey the Bible externally. Okay, I know that I'm not supposed to curse at my wife. All right, I'm not gonna curse at my wife anymore. You can get the unbelievers to obey the word of God externally, but in the final analysis, what have you got at the end of that process? a really good Pharisee, because they're not doing it from the heart, right? They're not doing it from the heart. So that means that all counseling of unbelievers is pre-counseling. It's gospel-centered counseling. So will I work with unbelievers for five or six sessions? Absolutely, I will. But I'm going to always bring it around to the gospel and always going to bring around the gospel. I'll say to a husband and wife, They're unbelievers. Listen, I know right now the biggest problem in your life is the conflict you have between the two of you. I know that. But I want you to know that there's a bigger problem. There's an elephant in the room and they're looking at me like, what is that? And that has to do with your relationship to God. That's the bigger problem. Your problem, your conflict between you and your wife, you and your husband, your conflict is a symptom of this bigger issue. It's a symptom. According to Genesis 3.16, the Bible predicts there's going to be conflict between a husband and wife. So biblical counseling uses the Word of God by the Holy Spirit to change desires, thinking, and behavior. As pastors, it's our responsibility to train up a host of people in our congregation to do that. I realized that as a pastor years ago. I realized that it was not enough for me to just do counseling. I needed to train up a whole bunch of people in my congregation to do it. I had to do it. So I never did counseling without at least two of my elders or somebody who was in a training program, sitting in, observing counseling with me. That's the way I learned counseling. So I was always counseling and training, counseling and training, counseling and training, all at the same time. I wanted to maximize my time with people. And we would counsel for about an hour, then we'd have prayer, release the people, let them go home, work on their homework, and then we'd have a half an hour where we would debrief on those counseling sessions. So I was constantly, as a pastor, training and counseling, training and counseling, in a sense, discipling people in my congregation to do that. Now, fasten your seatbelts and put your crash helmets on. Are you ready? Here we go. Number three. Biblical counseling seeks the sanctification of the Christian into Christlikeness for the glory of God. Now that is radical. You know why? Because every other counseling system in the world, and I teach all the systems in our graduate studies, I teach all the major counseling systems, every single one of them, counsels people with the goal of having a person function better or feel better. It's a very anthrocentric goal. Biblical counseling is focused on Christ-likeness. Our goal in biblical counseling is not to get people out of their problems. Do you hear me? It's not to get people out of their problems. Our goal in biblical counseling is to teach people how to be God's kind of man and God's kind of woman in the midst of their problems. There's a difference between the two. Our goal is to not get people out of their problems. Our goal is to help them to produce godly fruit in the midst of their problems. I used to think, years ago, that my goal was to get people out of their problems. So a woman would come to me, and she'd talk about how terrible her life was at her home. The dishes are stacked to the ceiling, and they have a leaky roof, and her kids misbehave, and her husband comes home a grouch and all this. So I'd do a few things to help improve her situation. And you know what? She'd come back with 10 more reasons why she was upset and unhappy. And I realized, it's not my job. to change your situation. God has her in that situation for a purpose. What is it? This is the way that he has chosen to get at her heart. And I'm missing it. I'm going to teach her how to be a godly kind of woman, wife, and mother with stacks of dishes and disobedient kids and a grouchy husband. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go back and teach her how to be a missionary to everybody in her home. I'm gonna teach her how to live out Christ's likeness in her home. I'm gonna teach her what sanctification is all about in her home. So the goal of true biblical counseling is theocentric, not anthrocentric. It has to do with God. It has to do with bringing him glory. Ephesians 2.10, we are created for good works, Romans 8, 28, 29. Our good texts just show the purpose that all biblical counseling is ultimately to glorify God. Good works doesn't produce salvation, but it is a subsequent result of God's work in the lives of believers, prepared beforehand that we might walk in them. So God will perform these good works as we walk by faith. The path of good works, then, is discussed by Paul in Ephesians 4-6. Those are all the imperatives. Ephesians 1-3 are all the indicatives. And sanctification, like salvation and good works, had been ordained before time began, Romans 8 says. So the goal of God's predestined purpose for His own is that all believers would be made like Jesus Christ. My pastor calls, John MacArthur calls, the prize of the upward call. The prize of the upward call. That's what it is. The prize of the upward call. That's what we're trying to do. The goal of biblical counseling is to help people be Christ-like in whatever circumstances they find themselves and bring glory to God in whatever circumstance they find themselves. And to me, it's almost amazing the way that God, even though he doesn't take away the difficulties and the circumstances that they're in, how their whole attitude towards those circumstances changes when they grow in Christ-likeness that way. I mean, we can see this in Psalm 1. Go back to Psalm 1. I've always believed that Psalm 1 is the key to the rest of the Psalms. If you don't understand Psalm 1, you're not going to understand the rest of the Psalms. He says in verse 1, he says, How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked. That's secular counseling. Nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. Then in verse 3 he says, he will be like, here's an analogy, a tree firmly planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither, and with whatever he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, they are like the chaff that the wind drives away. Now notice this, God does not say, that the righteous will be immune from problems and storms and winds. He doesn't say that. He says the righteous, those are the difficulties and the hardships of life, those winds and storms that come along. He says the difference is that the righteous tree produces fruit in the midst of those storms. There's the difference. The righteous tree produces fruit in the midst of those storms. The wicked are not so, they are like the chaff, which the wind drives away, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked will perish." The implication is that even in the midst of difficulty and hardship, the righteous life produces godly fruit. Even in the midst of it, the righteous life produces godly fruit. It's not that the righteous life is somehow removed from those difficult circumstances, or taken out of them at all. It produces godly fruit. Now, people that come to you for counseling are going to come with one of two broad issues. One is that they are suffering at the hands of the sinful conditions of what other people have done. And you've got to be willing to help them, encourage them, and build them up to deal with the suffering that they're going through. That's really critical. That's a vital part of biblical counseling. The other part of biblical counseling is there are going to be people who come to you and one of the reasons why they're having a hardship in life is because they're responding to life in a non-biblical way. That involves sin. It's either sin or suffering. boils down into those two categories. And even sometimes when we're suffering, and it's not our fault that we're suffering what we're going through, we can still develop sinful habit patterns of the heart in response to that suffering. And this is the reason why it's not the only word, but it's one of the chief words in Scripture that deals with this, is nuthetel. This is why we sometimes refer to it as nuthetic counseling. But we're in a noose of tattoo is basically the noun noose, which means mine, and the verb tithami, which means to place or put. So the idea behind it is to place or to put sense into the mind. To place or to put sense into the mind. That's what counseling does. That's what we want to do. We want to place biblical sense into the mind. of a person. Tiffany. And there are numerous ways in which that particular word is translated. Warn, admonish, instruct. But it can also be translated to counsel. Counsel. Putting sense into the mind. In this way, We are helping a person make biblical sense of what is going on in their life, to look at it from God's point of view, to understand it from God's point of view, rather than from their limited human perspective. We want them to think God's thoughts after him. We want them to desire what God desires after him. We want them to will what God wills after Him. That's what we want. So, this is what we mean by placing or putting sense into the mind. There's a lot that goes on in biblical counseling out there in the broader biblical counseling world. And one of the reasons why I said that I don't like the term biblical counseling is because There are a lot of people who are actually using the term biblical counselor, who are not really biblical counselors. They're using secular psychology, or they're using the Bible illegitimately. If I were to express what we're really supposed to do in counseling, it would be something like, what we are supposed to do is expository counseling. That's different. What do I mean by that? That is, as you go to appropriate scriptures to address a person's problems, You are reasoning with them through the scriptures, aligning their thoughts with God's thoughts in this process, expositorily preaching through that text so that they think the way God thinks about those problems. We're not just using the Bible as a series of proof texts. This is one of the reasons why I teach a hermeneutics course in our counseling program. We teach hermeneutics, and then we teach advanced hermeneutics. And I get all my hermeneutics, all our counseling students to memorize the little axiom that says, a text without a context is a pretext for a proof text. Because we don't want them to use the Bible as proof texting. We don't want them to do that. It's very easy to do that in counseling, and a lot of Christian psychology does that. It uses the Bible as a proof text. They have a theory out there of how to approach a particular problem, and they run around the Bible looking for a verse that appears to go with that theory, rather than allowing the Bible to speak to that problem directly itself. That's different. That's radically different. That's why we call it, in this sense, expository counseling. Expository counseling. When we're talking about counseling, this is basically what we're talking about. Now, I know that what I've probably talked about up to this point has brought up a lot of questions, so I know we're gonna have a Q&A, is that a little bit later, right? After lunch, but if you wanna do that now, just repeat the question in the mic, because we are recording this. Okay, how much time do I have? 10 minutes. Got 10 minutes? All right, I can probably entertain some questions now for about 10 minutes. you have questions right now but we're gonna do some a little bit after lunch oh yes all right so I was talking about mental illness and they want to know how I would define the mind in a person I want you to grab your Bible let's let the Bible do this for us let's go over to 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 Verse nine, we can actually start in verse eight. He says, Paul says, we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be present at home with the Lord. Therefore, we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to him. Now you understand here, Paul makes the distinction between being in the body and, in a sense, out of the body and present with the Lord. And Paul says, in either state, I still have intentionality. Okay? That means that whether I have a body, or not, I still intend. When I'm talking about the mind, I'm talking about the process that goes beyond how the brain functions. As long as the soul is a part of the body, then the mind uses the brain to process things. So that if you are in a serious car accident and you have severe brain damage, it's going to affect the way you process things or communicate in this life, as long as those two are united together. In other words, the mind is subject to the weaknesses of the body and the frailty of the body. But if you separate the mind from the body, the mind is a part of that soul that still has thought, purpose, intentionality. Paul says, I make it my goal, whether I'm in the body or out of the body, to please Him. This is that dynamic between the soul and the body type experiences. Okay? And, of course, this is something where a lot of discussion has gone into this. by philosophers, theologians over the years. What is that dynamic between body and soul that goes on? Even the world, who doesn't believe in any kind of soul independent of the body, talks about this cognitive psychology, talks about top-down influences as bottom-up influences. For example, top-down influences are the way you think about problems, and then bottom-up influences are the way that you sometimes take antidepressants in order to deal with problems, that kind of thing. Because even psychology is learning today that top therapies have the capacity to be able to change people on a cellular level in the brain. effectively as any kind of antidepressant or even a placebo. One of the most infamous studies done, and pharmaceutical organizations hate this study because they make most of their money in selling SSRIs, Selected Serotonin Reactive Inhibitors, or antidepressants. And that is the St. John Wart study that was done several years ago and reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Because the St. John Wart study took over 300 severely depressed people, as measured by the Hamilton Depression Scale, which is a common scale used, and divided them into three groups. One group, and it was a double-blind study, neither the doctors nor the patients knew what they were getting. One group, they gave St. John's wort, which is an herbal medication, to a depressed group. A second group, they gave a placebo to. And a third group, they gave Zoloft, which is a very common antidepressant. And then they studied them over a period of eight weeks. And they discovered that, statistically, all three groups improved on an equal level. The St. John Ward group, the placebo group, which is nothing but a pill with inert ingredients in it, and the Zoloft group all improved the same way. So what was the conclusion of study? There it is, you can look it up, you can look it up online in the Journal of American Medical Association, was that placebos are just as effective as antidepressants in dealing with depression. Why? Because people think they're gonna get help. In other words, the antidepressants are hope in pill form. They think they are. This is why a study done by Harvard University in Haiti on witch doctors. Why is it that witch doctors can put hexes on people and they really die? Is there something behind that? Well, the conclusion of the study was the reason why the people die is because the only people who die, by the way, are the ones who believe in witch doctors. Witch doctors who put hexes on people that don't believe on them don't die. All right? So the power of belief changes on a cellular level. So the soul has the capacity to be able to change the biology of the body, and the body has the capacity to affect the function of the soul when the two of them are together. Does that help you to understand that? Sometimes I like to illustrate it like this. There in California, I have, there are several different species of orange trees, and so I specifically bought a very sweet orange tree And I'll tell you, I love those oranges. When they're ripe, which they're going to be ripe probably in December here, and when they're ripe, you pull them off the tree and you start feeling that back, and you can smell that, and you take those little pieces of orange and pop it in your mouth. Oh my goodness. They are just wonderful. That is just heaven on earth. Now, I don't have an orange here. You can't smell an orange, but all of you are beginning to salivate. I've changed you on a cellular level just by suggesting that. That's that top-down influence. I can change you on a cellular level just by suggesting things to you. We know that. CAT scans, PET scans, positron electron tomography, PET scans, which are our lab CT scans, can see the changes in people's brains just through talk therapy. In other words, counsel that's given. When you're preaching and you're counseling people, you're changing them on a cellular level. There's actual changes. And those changes are on the same par as if a person believes in an SSRI. It pops an SSRI because they believe in that. There are cellular changes. So there is a dynamic that's occurring between the mind and the body. while the two are still together. Now when the body dies, now no longer is the soul or the mind subject to the body. It's not subject to diseases, it's not subject to aneurysms, or strokes, or whatever. It's not subject to those anymore. It's not subject to limitations. Let me show you what this says just from a scriptural standpoint. We'll go back to Proverbs just for a moment. Proverbs chapter 14 and verse 30. Look what Solomon says here. He says, a tranquil heart is life to the body. That is, he's talking about a tranquil heart, he's talking about the condition of a person's soul. It's life to the body. But passion, by the Hebrew word for passion, has to do with deep agitation, is rottenness to the bone. Deep agitation, a person is constantly anxious, is rottenness to the bone. It's interesting that he says bones because the bones now of the human body, produce red corpuscles, and that help to defeat disease. And so when a person is overly anxious for a long period of time, they're going to be subject to more bodily aches and pains and diseases and so on. The Bible's very clear about that. Go over to chapter 15 in verse 30. Bright eyes, gladden the heart, good news put down on the bones. In other words, the Bible's talking about that top-down influence. You receive good news, that ministers health to your body. And by the way, fat on the bones is never considered a bad thing in the Bible. All right? Praise the Lord. When I'm working with anorexics, one of the assignments I give them, I want you to go home and show me every verse in the Bible where fat is bad. And they come back with an empty thing. Only in a productive, abundant, Agricultural society like we have today is fat bad, but back in ancient times, fat was a blessing from God. It was a blessing. You look at medieval pictures of women, the really sexy women were the fat ones. All right, they were the fat ones because everybody else was really skinny, scrounging around every day just for a meal. The abundant food that we have in our culture and society today, I'm way off on this subject. way off, that's a whole other sermon. So anyhow, and there are numerous passages that illustrate this, on how that, what cognitive psychology calls the top-down influence, how we think about our life determines how we fare in life, the way you think about a particular problem releases certain hormones in their body, and you feel it, you know, an anxious person is like that, And that dynamic between the two is really key. So sometimes giving antidepressants to people who are really depressed, you're dealing with the symptoms, but you're not dealing with the real problem. Now, I'm not opposed to all antidepressants. I'm not opposed to those. Don't get that idea. In fact, I'm thankful for antidepressants. You realize that there are a lot of crazy people out there in the world. All right? And we don't have enough padded cells to put those people in. So antidepressants are chemical handcuffs to keep them from doing terrible things to themselves and other people. So they are a godly restraint. But for Christians who have no biological etiology to their problems, you're treating symptoms, not core issues of the soul. You follow me, Dave? Does that help you? That's my short answer to your question. All right, so are we supposed to break at this time? It's lunchtime, these guys look hungry, so we probably better go. All right, Ernie, it's yours. I'm the only thing standing between you and lunch. I know, that's why the lots were cast before the thing today, and the lot fell to me to do pre-lunch things and highlight some of the books in the bag that we were all given, but now I sense there's an ulterior motive in there. You've been thrown into the wolves. If I hadn't met you, my name is Ernie. I work as an ambassador here. My claim to fame, actually, is I work with Jim Newcomer. I didn't realize that that was a thing until I came here. He didn't get ready for this seminar today. I'd tell a guy about it, you know, we're having this counseling seminar. for pastoral counseling. He's like, I don't know, man, October's like really busy for me. Like, you really should come. I mean, John Street from Master Seminary's gonna be there. Masters, that's cool. Isn't that where, like, I think MacArthur used to go there, right? I don't know who John Street is. I mean, I'll look at it. I'm like, okay, okay, but you gotta tell me, because Jim says we gotta have reservations in by whatever time. Like, who's Jim? I'm like, oh, Jim's our pastor. Jim Newcomb. Jim! Oh man, come on Jim, yeah, we'll be there, okay. He's shaking his head, everybody knows Jim. Did you know Jim wrote a book? In your bag is a book Jim Newcomer wrote called Help, I Can't Forgive. And when we were talking, we finally got to the point where we could put a bag of books together. He says to me, man, you gotta put your book in the bag and give it to the guys. I said, I don't know man. He says, no, you gotta do it, you gotta do it. I said, okay, as long as I can put your book in the bag. And he goes, No, I don't think I want to do that. So I just waited until he left, and then I went and bought a bunch of them. And I was going to give them to the secretary and put them in the bag, and she says, he's going to get mad. I'm OK. It'll be all right. I said, he literally wrote the book on forgiveness. So in all seriousness, this is a great book. It's part of the larger series on counseling resources, Lifeline mini books. If you're not familiar with them, get familiar with them. Short enough to give as homework in counseling that people actually do, and affordable enough to give away. So there's that. You already heard about John's book, Passions of the Heart. Give you my two cents on this. I wrote a little review after I read the book. I'll just read it. Passions of the Heart by John Street, I said, is biblical counsel for stubborn sexual sin. That's the subtitle. If you're the type of person who likes their sin, you probably shouldn't read this book. Street is relentless in demolishing the paper justifications for sin that we allow ourselves to subconsciously construct. If you do read the book, you will be reading along nodding your head as he points out the destructive nature of slavery to sexual sin. That will be easy to do, because most of us, although depraved, are not hiring prostitutes or descending into pedophilia. Except then you'll turn the page and find that he has those same theological guns pointed right at your own subtle self-rationalizations. And you'll have a choice. Will I repent, or will I allow my heart to become further enslaved? I give the book four stars out of five. I could have given it five stars out of five, except that my flesh is still a little bit irritated with John for being so darn convicted about the whole thing. So thanks for that. Seriously, great book if you haven't read it. This is from Paul Sager, Senders. Your church can identify, train, and deploy missionaries. You've been in vocational ministry longer than 18 months. You know that something is probably at least misguided, if not broken, about the way you've seen missionaries found, trained, and sent. I believe if you read this, you'll find that Mr. Sager is articulating the things that you have felt but not been able to give voice to. Excellent resource for missions. And then the last book, and there is a book that I wrote, and honestly, I can tell you that this is the one book in the bag that I'm really not concerned if you ever read. That's not a statement of false humility on my part. That is an admission that I didn't write this book for you. When the publisher asked me, who's your target audience? I said, Christians under the age of 40. Young people. This book is a book about tribal missions. And it is designed and published in order to capture the imaginations of young people, Christians under the age of 40, and sow the seeds of interest of tribal missions to unreached people groups. It's a novel. It's fiction. But the hope is that it will do that. I tucked a little piece of paper into the cover of each one that says, what I hope you'll do with my book. And I'll spoil the end of the article. It says, I hope you give it away. Most of you Most of us are not young Christians anymore, but we know young Christians. So whether or not, I mean, it's kind of like giving you this book is kind of like preaching a Mother's Day sermon. Like you're welcome and we hope you listen. I hope you enjoy it, but you're not really an intended audience. So take it and give it away to somebody at your church and say, hey, I think you'd be great at this. And then give them that book. That's a little bit about the books in your bag that we were each given as we came in. And now the only thing we have to do is eat lunch. My instructions for lunch are that we go down both sides of the table and don't leave anything left. So let's pray, let's thank God for our food and time together and ask him for his help in enjoying these things and putting them to work in our lives. Our God, this afternoon we sit here grateful for a day of life that you've given us, a day in which we have work to do that is both productive and enjoyable and that a whole lot of us are currently putting off until tomorrow. As we do that, to sit here and learn from John, I pray that you would help us to learn with one part of our mind tuned to how we can take this and make it work in your work in our churches, but the other in how our own lives and our own hearts need to be changed and our own ideas on counseling and sanctification and discipleship amended so that they line up more with your heart and your ideas. I thank you for the opportunity to do that here today in the company of these men. I thank you for the food that we're going to enjoy, and I pray as it gives us energy for the tasks of today that we would then go and accomplish those that you would be pleased with how we do so. We have been putting off sermons and things for Sunday. I pray that you would help these men to recover that time and to minister your word effectively in a couple of days. Does the master's watch. or at least partly, I'm sorry. Sure. Is that good? I'm not synonymous with the brain, but... I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what I'm trying to say. I don't think that's what Hey, is that too loud? I don't know what this is. I got money. I got money. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love this game. All right. oh Okay. So, uh, thank you. so Those bodies haven't fully matured yet. I don't know what you're talking about. so yeah Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's still serving, though. in the history, and still, he has said, if you don't deserve us, well, we will continue to challenge you. when i drove down i drove down This is crazy. Well, it's either that I need to check for security. I'm secure. Ha ha ha. So, I don't know. Yeah, it's all in the sensor. It's a big structure. It's a lesson. It's a lesson. It's a lesson. I do some canvassing and stuff in preparation for it. Yeah. So, We're sorry. I'm here. Do you have a bite for them? It's got to work. Yes, it does. I'm out there, my man. Oh, great. Great. Do you want to know generally about it, or how it's going to work? on a Sunday of April 14th. Those of us who don't eat for Sunday are going to get sick faster than Sunday. And on May 27th, August 7th, there's not a lot of food, and the crowd goes crazy. I start with the training. The rest of the week, I'm going to be hearing all the different agencies, getting my horse ready for the aquarium. I'm going to be asking questions. I'm going to spend a lot of time in the operation room. So earlier, And then they spend a week to get a job, and they love it. It's based on a vision. So they'll have those who have the resources, and they'll travel, and it's very good. Often it's an outreach project, so they'll help facilitate some of the trust that they've been talking about. I'm sure three times a week, it's pretty good. Dave. Dave, can I ask you a question? I'm sorry. Last meal of the year, Sunday night. It's one location at a time. It's one location at a time. Did you mention Penn State? Right now, we're in the right spot. So we have other members of the community. We just want to see if they probably have the same issues as we do. Exactly. And we want to see if they can help us. So we're going to start right here. So I'm going to give you my name here. This last year was one day of peace. It's the truth, I think. It's the truth. It's the truth. My brother did it the last time. so have a little bit in the future. Yeah. Yeah. was it uh Okay.