Thursday, April 23, 2020

Biblical Counseling 101

Though biblical counseling as a subject and practice is both complex and broad, Jeremy Pierre and Deepak Reju, in their book The Pastor and Counseling, do us a great service by helping us grasp some of the basics of biblical counseling. It’s most necessary elements can be boiled down to moving from listening to considering to speaking:
  • You listen to the problem – to understand the context of the person’s life and troubles (Prov. 18:2, 13; James 1:19).
  • You consider heart responses – how the person’s heart is responding to God, to self, to others, and to circumstances (Prov. 20:5).
  • You speak truth in love – in order to teach, comfort, warn, encourage, advise, and admonish as appropriate (2 Cor. 2; Col. 3:16; 1 Thess. 5:14).
These three actions – listening, considering, speaking – are key:
1. Listen to the problem. You want to know what is going on, but people often share their troubles haphazardly, piling up details in an unorganized lump. You can sort things into smaller piles and help a person organize what he is saying. Here are some diagnostic questions:
  • Circumstances. First, what is going on? What circumstances seem most important to the person?
  • Other people. Who are the most prominent people in their story? How are they treating him? How is he treating them?
  • Self. What is his posture toward his troubles? Does he see himself as a victim, perpetrator, inferior, superior, ignorant, insightful, confused, clear-headed, guilty, innocent?
  • God. How is the person factoring (or not factoring) God into his troubles? What is his perspective of the Lord’s involvement with his predicament?
2. Consider heart responses. After you’ve found out the basics of what’s going on, you want to consider how the person’s heart is responding in each of these areas. His responses will be characterized either by faith or by a number of other things – fear, anger, discouragement, lust, indulgence, escape, ignorance, sadness, disappointment, discontentment, suspicion.
  • Circumstances. Does the person recognize the difference between his circumstances and his response to his circumstances? Is his response characterized by faith or by something else?
  • Other people. Is this person loving others? Is he being influenced by others in unbiblical ways?
  • Self. What is this person’s functional identity – the beliefs or values about himself that shape his conduct? How does this identity align with what God says about him in the gospel?
  • God. Does this person trust God to be who he says he is and to do what he says he will do? Or is there some preferred version of God he’s quietly holding?
3. Speak the truth in love. Speaking accurately to the need of the heart comes only after listening and considering. The goal is to call people to faith in a way that specifically addresses their heart responses, since faith alone is the means by which a person responds rightly (Heb. 11:6, 13-16; 12:1-2). And faith comes through hearing the word of Christ (Rom. 10:17). This is why counseling must be biblical. Here are some appropriate ways you can speak to a person’s need:
  • Circumstances. We are to give biblical guidance appropriate to the situation. Fro those grieving, we comfort them by pointing to the hope found in God (Rom. 8:18-25). For the abused, we protect them from the abuser with the law (Rom. 13:1-4) and call them to forgive (Luke 6:27-36). For the anxious, we help them understand that fear reveals desires that must be actively entrusted to a loving God (Phil. 4:4-13).
  • Other people. Active faith means loving others instead of fearing or using them (Rom. 13:8-10). You help people see what it means to believe the best about others while being realistic about their faults and sins (Rom. 12:17-21). You help them know how to lay down personal interests for the sake of others (Phil. 2:1-8).
  • Self. We are to call people out of rival identities and into Christ as the source of identity. These identities are where people try to find life – as a successful businessman, a capable mother – so finding confidence in these is a direct competitor to confidence in Christ alone (Phil. 3:3-16).
  • God. Most importantly, we are to help people have a more accurate view of God from his Word. You help them to know and trust God as the only way for human life to be meaningful and to yield lasting change in the soul (Jer. 9:23-24; Col. 1:9-10).