Category Archives: Biblical Counseling

A Biblical Counseling Ministry in a Local Church: A Core Function

16 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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(These are notes for the final session of a Biblical Counseling conference which will be held in August in Chile. The previous posts for this conference are found here and here).

At this point, I you want to think more broadly about a biblical counseling ministry. Up until this point, we have been discussing biblical counseling as a response to a crisis. The person who comes to biblical counseling is someone who is suffering a significant trouble; whether a significant circumstance like a difficult marriage; or a significant sin which has led to trouble. This leads us to think that biblical counseling is unique in life of the church; it is somehow detached from the normal functioning of the church.

All that we have done so far and all that we will do next week may seem to support that idea: here you are going through serious sustained training on some very difficult subjects. I just spent a session telling you to be very careful whom you choose to be a counselor in your church.

At this point I want to adjust your thinking slightly. Biblical counseling is specialized, and it is part of the core function of a church.

Matthew 28 records the resurrection of our Lord. That chapter ends with the Lord’s instruction to the Church:

Matthew 28:18–20 (NASB95)

18        And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

19        “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

20        teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

 

The main verb in that sentence is to “make disciples”. We will do this as we go out into the world. We will baptize them and teach them to observe all that Christ has commanded. That is the job of the church. We are given no other commission, beyond making disciples of Christ.

So let’s turn the question around: We need to ask if Biblical Counseling fits into that job description for the Church. Is Biblical Counseling the work of making disciples? If the answer is “no”, then it has no place in the church. Yes, it might be a good work, like caring for the poor or bringing blankets to the cold.

On the other hand, if biblical counseling is included within the scope of making disciples, then it is a necessary function of the church.

So let’s consider what it means to give Biblical counsel. It simply means to tell someone what the Bible says about their circumstance. It means to teach someone what Christ has said. Moreover, as Jay Adams noted it includes giving instruction. Biblical Counseling is precisely the act of teaching one to obey all that Christ has said.

When the street evangelist speaks to someone on the corner about Christ tells them of sin and repentance, they are giving counsel from the Bible. When parent tells a child the importance of not lying or working diligently as onto the Lord, the parent is giving biblical counsel. When a pastor opens the Bible on Sunday morning and explains the text and applies the text, the pastor is giving biblical counsel.

In an essay in from Scripture and Counseling, Kevin DeYoung and Pat Quinn write:

The ministry of the preacher and the ministry of the counselor are not different kinds of ministry but rather the same ministry given in different settings.

When a pastor sits with dear saint who is on her death bed, and the pastor sets her gaze upon Christ; the pastor is giving biblical counsel.

What you need to understand is that front to back, beginning to end, the duty of the Church is to give biblical counsel. That counsel starts with evangelism, leads them to baptism, to the Lord’s Supper, to knowledge of how to renounce ungodliness, to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present evil age and to live in earnest expectation of the Lord’s return. That is all biblical counsel.

 Baptizing Them.

We fit the counsel to the person and the circumstance. The street evangelist does not debate the details of difficult doctrine involving last things or the order of the decrees of God. His message is fit to the circumstance: sin and repentance. We do not teach four-year-olds like we teach college students.

Some questions are very difficult. We refer tricky theology questions to the pastor. We send young mothers to older mothers to learn from their experience.

Already in all of your churches, you have made some divisions in the way in which discipleship instruction is taking place.

When we bring in biblical counseling to the congregation, we are doing nothing new. Rather, we are doing what we should always be doing: teaching people to observe all that Christ has commanded.

We are merely saying that we have too often restricted Christ’s counsel. We have said that Scripture has something to say about repentance, but nothing to say about depression, anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, shame, conflict, laborious work, fear. We are saying that Scripture has nothing to say about all the troubles which came into the world with sin; well, nothing other than you need to leave the world.

When we restrict the scope of the Scripture’s counsel, the people in our congregation are going to get counsel. However, they are going to get it from someone other than the Lord.

I want you to imagine that your congregation has many well-trained counselors who know how to speak of difficult marriage problems. They can speak with sympathy and wisdom from the Scripture and give hope to trouble marriages.

I want you to imagine that your church once a week gives free marriage counseling to people in your area: unbelievers who are desperate for something that will work. Your counselor sits down with this frightened desperate couple and explains that their troubles with communication and selfishness and anger all have a cause: human beings don’t work correctly because we are estranged from the source of the one who speaks with perfect clarity, the God who loves and gives from an endless fountain of grace, that the love of the perfect God drives out fear and calls us in as children.

I want you to imagine that you have unbelievers who come to your church to hear the hope of the Gospel because the pain of sin has become too great to bear. When unbelievers hear sin, they often think you simply don’t like them. But when their pain is great and you explain that sin is not your dislike of them, but rather the cause of their sorrow; that sin is irrationality that ruins human life; and that there is an answer to that sin: an answer which will relieve of us the guilt and power of sin and that we can learn to live differently; when you can say that in a way that the one who is now lost can understand: you are putting the Gospel to work.

As Dr. Baker said, If unbeliever think you can help them with their marriage, they will line up to hear the Gospel.

And so these people who had “without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12), are brought into the Church. They are baptized. They entered into membership; and now comes the task of teaching them to observe all that Christ as commanded.

Teach them to Observe

Imagine a brand-new Christian who comes to your church. While this person is in true faith, they are far from mature. They need to be taught and admonished so that they may be presented complete in Christ. Col. 1:28. Certainly the normal work of the Church, preaching, teaching, singing, praying, receiving the Lord’s Supper in the assembly of believers will have a real and profound affect of people.

But two hours on Sunday when weighed against the entire pressure of the world for all of the other hours of the day and week will hamper our growth. Moreover, it is a truncated understanding of Christianity. There is an entire aspect of the life of a Christian which goes beyond Sunday.

Please do not hear that I am in any manner making light of Sunday worship: it is the apex of our week. But if try to box our Christian life into just that time, we fail to honor the life of the Church:

Colossians 3:16 (NASB95)

  16      Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms andhymns andspiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

The work of teaching and admonishing is a work of everyone to everyone. The Christian life is public worship but is also life together. In Acts 2 it describes the life of the very earliest Church:

 

Acts 2:42–47 (NASB95)

            42        They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

            43       Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.

            44        And all those who had believed were together and had all things in common;

            45        and they beganselling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.

            46        Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,

            47        praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Without going through the elements of that passage, you can see that there was substantial life together.

Now let’s think again about discipleship: to be discipled is to be trained to a manner of life. Everything in your life and everyone with whom you interact is busy discipling you. You are discipling others.

There is a meaning which takes place when you try to limit one’s Christian life to merely Sunday morning. That Sunday-only Christianity means something different than a Christianity which entails one’s entire life.

One of the reasons that we have so much “crisis counseling” in the Christian church is due to the fact that we are not doing a better job discipling the people within the church.

Here is an example: When a couple comes in for marriage counseling, you will work them through what the Scripture teaches about marriage. A faithful pastor in the pulpit who is working through the Scripture will preach through the Gospel of Mark and have maybe a sermon or two which even touches on marriage.

The failure there is not because the pastor has failed, it is because the congregation has failed:

Titus 2:3–5 (NASB95)

            3          Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good,

            4          so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,

            5          to besensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

Did you hear that? The Holy Spirit has delegated to the older women in the congregation the task of teaching the younger women the work of being a wife and mother. How many marriages would be in better shape today in our churches if the older women were continuously teaching the younger women godliness in marriage and motherhood?

But instead, we wait until there is a crisis and the wreck of a marriage shows up in need of help.

Imagine a young husband who comes to you because he has hurt his wife by not loving and caring for her? What if there had been a man in your congregation who had been weekly meeting with this man, asking him questions about his marriage (and other things)? What if the questions had revealed two years ago that the marriage was suffering? How much easier would it have been to help this family two years ago, when the problems were less, when the pain was less, when the bad habits were not so firmly put into place?

What I want you to see is that giving counsel from the Bible is something which needs to be built into the fabric of our church, so that the work of discipleship is done.

Where then is the pastor in this process?

Ephesians 4:11–16 (NASB95)

  11      And He gave some asapostles, and some asprophets, and some asevangelists, and some aspastors and teachers,

  12      for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

  13      until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

  14      As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;

  15      but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspectsinto Him who is the head, evenChrist,

  16      from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Look at verse 12: the head teachers in the church have the job of equipping others for ministry. Those who have the most knowledge are to pass on that knowledge to others in the church.

Those others, under the direction of their pastors, are busy equipping still others: the work of the ministry is spread out through the church.

There are people in the church who are masters at caring physically for others. Those people must know how needs help and how to give that help. Some are especially gifted at hospitality. Others at teaching. Some at preaching. Some are more proficient at evangelism. Some people are quite good at answering questions. There are mothers and fathers to help give wisdom. There are employers who can help employees learn how to work well; and employees who can help employers learn to be not abusive or unfairly demanding.

And now I want to return to our question of training counselors. Not every person in the congregation needs to be a preacher; not every person needs to be fully trained to handle depression and severe anxiety. Some people need to know how to ask questions, give encouragement, and provide basic instruction about the daily life of a Christian.

Think of the entire church as all having a role in the work of discipleship. You can think of the training you give in giving biblical counsel as something which moves from the most general and basic to the most particular and difficult.

If you have small groups, you train the small group leaders in a level of counseling so that they can give accurate instruction on daily life, know how ask questions and also know when they come across a marriage which needs substantial help.

When I oversaw a counseling ministry in a church, I learned that there were people who were especially fit for various tasks. Some people needed a great deal of intense structure. Some young men needed very direct rebuke and unquestioning follow-through. Others were discouraged and needed help and encouragement and support. I had people in the congregation who were fit for all sorts of tasks.

Think of your congregation as an army and the battle being, the World, the Flesh and Devil. The Holy Spirit has given you many, many weapons in this fight: all of the people in your congregation. And now think of how few weapons we use. Do we really deploy our congregations to serve in building up the body of Christ?

In most congregations, very few people do most of the work. And since the needs are great, we do not always use people to the best of their gifts. Imagine you have a tremendous evangelist whom you are using to keep the church clean. There is nothing wrong with cleaning the church; it must be done. The way we use the misuse the people in our church is sort of like using a racecar to pull a plow across a field. It might work, but it is not the best way to use the racecar.

Counseling training is more than just training a counselor who looks exactly like you. Your congregation has been called to be a counseling center: a place where people are taught to observe all that Christ has commanded.

And when the entire congregation is busy in this work, it frees up those who have been fully trained to be able to help unbelievers and believers at other churches. You create capacity for everyone to work at their full potential.

This model also takes enormous burdens off of the church leaders so that they can do their work. Too often we expect the pastors to do all of the visiting and preaching and counseling and caring and evangelism. When we do this, we crush our pastors under enormous burdens.

Now this is only introducing you to this idea: it is not a full-fledged plan with all of the details.

 

[ask for questions]

 

A Biblical Counseling Ministry in a Local Church: Whom to Train

09 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Ministry, Uncategorized

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(More notes for an upcoming conference on establishing a biblical counseling ministry in a local church; all notes subject to revision):

Whom Should you Choose to Train

The Church is an organic unity from the time of the Apostles until the present. We are here today because others passed along the faith. We learn how to minister from those who have ministered. We have learned preaching from those who preached.

Counseling is learned from those who counsel.  This is the nature of discipleship: teaching someone else what we know.

As you know, counseling is something which cannot be learned in an afternoon. Not only must one be taught formally – such as we are doing here – one must also learn from experience. It is one thing to know biblical principles, such as all things work together for good. Rom. 8:28 It is quite another to realize that the good described in 8:29 is to be conformed to the image of Christ, who was also known as a “man of sorrow and acquainted with grief”. Is. 53:3. It takes born of experience to know when to “Alegrense on los que estan alegres, lloren con los que lloran” Rom. 12:15. It takes experience to know when to rebuke, encourage, support. 1 Thes. 5:14.

The only way such wisdom can be gained is from experience. And such experience can only be gained in the counseling relationship.

This means that as soon as you begin to counsel is good to have other whom you are beginning to train. The sooner someone is learning to counsel; the sooner they will be able to counsel without your help.

Before I go on, I know at one of you is thinking: I don’t know enough to be able to train anyone else to counsel.

Let’s think about that: First, you at least know more than the one who is being trained. Second, there is no better way to come to understand a topic than to teach it.  The act of restating what you have learned will cause you to learn that subject better than you could have ever known it on your own.

Third, it is true you that very few if any of you have had thousands of hours of pastoral counseling experience. That can only come with time. Another person in the counseling room will be a benefit to you and to the fellow Christian you are trying to help.

You’ll make mistakes: you will misunderstand statements, you will speak when you should have been silent, and will be silent when you needed to speak. You will miss important details, and will misapply a biblical principle. You will make mistakes; that is unavoidable. Another person in the counseling room will be able to see situations and mistakes which you will miss.

Another person counseling with you will help you.  None of us will ever come to the point that we will never error. We can always do better.

Therefore, bringing someone else into training with you to counsel should begin as soon as possible. The question is not when should you start training someone else: the question is who should you train, and how much training do they need?

Again: there are two separate questions: Whom should you train? How much training does this other person need?  There are actually levels of counseling and levels of training. You here are aiming for the highest levels of training: the work which is done by pastors and elders, and the most highly trained women in the church. Not everyone in your congregation needs to know how to respond to threats of suicide or how to show care to someone who has suffered serious abuse.  We will talk about the level of training question in the end.

For right now, our question is Whom should you train?

Greg Cook and Jack Delk (Launching a Biblical Counseling Ministry) explain

A biblical counseling ministry is not a “y’all come” [that is an American expression which means all of you come over, it is a very friendly and informal phrase] ministry. There should be a careful selection and screening process for bringing in potential new counselors…A lay-led counseling ministry tends to attract people with mixed motive and agendas as well as wolves in sheep’s clothing (1 Tim. 5:3; Thess. 3:11). [220]

It is actually easier to train the right, willing person than it is to select the right person.

 

Someone who is willing:

In 1 Timothy 3:1, Paul gives qualifications for an overseer. He begins with the statement that if someone desires the work of an overseer. The translators render this verb in various ways, but the word at heart means to strive for something, to want something.

And while a counselor is not necessarily an elder or overseer, the principle remains the same. It is a great deal of work to become and be a counselor. There are many hours of training and then experience, and then training. And all of the work is for purpose of doing work. Hard, often painful, work.

If someone does not desire the work, they will never complete the work.

 

But not everyone one who is willing

And here is where the difficult part comes: selectivity. You must choose one person and not another. You must only choose people are who are willing, who desire the work. But you must not choose everyone who desires the work. And unfortunately, counseling seems to attract many people who should not be in the position as counselor.

Often these are people who think they personally have a great deal of wisdom. They know very much how other people should order their lives. They like telling people what to do, and they are quite certain of their rightness in doing so. Often, these people do not think they need training.

I know that I just said not to choose someone unless they are willing; but I also say, there is a kind of eagerness which is dangerous. You could say, these are people are too willing.

 

What to look for

The New Testament gives us various lists of what to look for those who lead in a church. Counseling is a kind of leadership position: I am not saying that a counselor is the pastor or an overseer. But by providing very direct teaching to people in the congregation, you are engaged in an aspect of spiritual leadership.

The qualities we look for in a church leader should be present in the counselor.

 

  1. Don’t Choose Someone Abuses Leadership

Throughout the New Testament, there are various sections of instruction given on the quality of Church leaders. But there is only quality which is repeated by Jesus, Paul, Peter and John: do not use a position of leadership to control or abuse others. The image is of a shepherd leading and protecting a flock of sheep, not a butcher driving cattle into a slaughterhouse.

I know a man who grew up in Greece as a shepherd. His father and uncle were shepherds. He said, I like what I could get from the sheep. But by father and his brother loved the sheep. Many people get into leadership because of what they want to get from the sheep.

Jesus in Mark 11:41-45 says that the leader must be the servant of all. Don’t be like the “rulers of the Gentiles” who “lord it over” others. Paul says an overseer must not be pugnacious, a fighter; but gentle and peaceable. 1 Tim. 3:3. In Titus 1:7, Paul says the overseer must not be “self-willed or quick tempered.” In 1 Peter 5:3 Peter says an elder must not  lord it over the flock. In 3 John, John condemns Diotrephes who “loves to be first” and who will not take instruction from John.

A counseling relationship has great potential for abuse. A counselor is giving instructions to another person in a position of trust; often a person who is quite vulnerable. The potential for abuse is high.

If you permit someone who has a tendency to lord it over others to become a counselor, you endanger your congregation.

  1. Above Reproach

The counseling relationship is difficult and dangerous for the counselor. Counselee’s can make accusations. People outside the relationship can gossip.

Let us say you have someone who gained a reputation for being sexually immoral; say a man who has committed adultery in the past. This man may have repented and may have come to a very different life. If you put this man into a counseling role, you are exposing both him and the people he counsels to accusation – even if it is false accusation.

Am I saying that no one can every outlive their past? No. But it will take wisdom here.

If the reputation is a current reputation, then such a person should not become a counselor.

  1. Prudent

There needs to wisdom in the counselor on how to conduct himself. He will need prudence in the way he deals with others whom he counsels, but also in his own life. Paul says an overseer must be able to manage his own household well. If a man lacks all practical wisdom in conducting his own life, he should not be seeking to give other people sustained counsel.

  1. Careful with the tongue

The Bible says a great deal about the tongue. There is much which should be said, but we will have to settle for 1 Peter 2:1, “Therefore, putting away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.”

One must not only be careful in how we speak to some-one, we must be careful how we speak about some-one.

Someone will come to the counselor and will divulge very private information about their own heart, about their home, their family. You will learn details about others finances about their sexual relations and their children. This is very dangerous information.

I have seen people publicly attack others by using private information gained because they were in a position of pastoral confidence. I have seen pastors gossip to their wives about private information.

I know others who were attacked publicly and did not respond by disclosing private information gained because they were a pastor. I have seen people lie about what they supposedly knew so as to hurt others.

Our Lord was falsely accused. Paul was slandered. Revelation says all liars will be in the lake of fire. Rev. 21:8. The famous missionary St. Patrick of Ireland wrote his confession because someone had betrayed a very private confidence in an effort to discredit Patrick’s work.

In the life of the church, there is very little which is more destructive than gossip and slander. Counseling makes such sins especially possible.

Here is something from the great English Preacher Charles Spurgeon:

There are some brethren with whom it is ill for us to associate, lest they do us hurt, and it is ill for them that we associate with them, lest we seem to assist them in their evil deeds. Especially is this so in the case of brethren of the class that he is about to describe—mischief makers, troublers, people that can always tell you the gossip of a congregation, that can tear a neighbour’s character to pieces, that are able to perceive spots on the sun; people who delight in parading the faults of God’s own children, and are never so happy as when they are making others unhappy by what they have to retail. These are the kind of people to whom you should give a wide berth.

 

  1. H. Spurgeon, “A Challenge and War-Charge,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 51 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1905), 167. If you should stay away from gossips generally, it applies triple for counselors.

You must never trust a gossip to be a counselor. There is perhaps nothing as dangerous and disqualifying for a counselor as having a gossiping, slanderous tongue. If you catch a counselor gossiping, fire them on the spot.

  1. Able to Teach

Paul gives this as a qualification for an overseer in both Timothy and Titus. This is a critical characteristic. If you cannot teach, you cannot counsel. Maybe you are not a good public speaker; that is a particular skill. But you must be able to understand and then explain the Scripture clearly and usefully when you are counseling. If you cannot teach, you cannot counsel. Dr. John Street calls biblical counseling expositional counseling. A counselor exposits the Scripture like a good preacher exposits the scripture. You open the Bible and make it plain and powerful.

It is not a moral fault or a character fault to be unable to teach. But it is a fatal fault in a counselor to be unable to teach. In the end, counseling is teaching. If you can’t teach, you can’t teach. That merely means that God has work for you elsewhere in the church.

Ron Allchin and Tim Allchin in their essay, Equipping Biblical Counselors for Your Church give the follow lists of whom you should choose and whom you should avoid when it comes to counselors. They use the text of Colossians 3:12-17 as the basis for their list:

  1. A potential counselor sees people as a priority.
  2. Experiences peace with God through the Gospel
  3. Have a passion for the Word of God.
  4. They demonstrate practical wisdom
  5. They live out a passionate praise for God.

On this last people I just want to say that one way to understand sin is as a worship defect (I owe this observation to Dr. Ernie Baker). That means that the counselor is a worship leader, of sorts.

The Allchins then give a list of whom to avoid. Those who

  1. Lack a proper balance of grace and truth. They are neither legalists nor do they indulge sin.
  2. Have more zeal than knowledge. These people will find you. They may really want to help; but if their zeal exceeds their knowledge, they will do far more harm than good.
  3. They manipulate and control others.
  4. They are people pleasers. They change to make other people like them.
  5. They rely on their personal experience, their common sense rather than the Word of God.

Conclusion

At this point, you may think: Okay, no one is qualified in my congregation. I’m probably not qualified.

Paul writes to the Corinthian church:

2 Corinthians 3:5 (NASB95)

5          Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as comingfrom ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,

That realization that I am not able to do this work is perfect. God uses imperfect instruments, us, to do his work. The sufficiency of our counsel is not in us, but in the Word of God. If we had confidence in ourselves, then would not leave room for God’s work.

Forming a Biblical Counseling Ministry in a Local Church

30 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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(I have been preparing to give a conference on how to start a biblical counseling ministry at a local church. So I’ve spent the last week writing this. Here is the first draft of one section of that conference):

DEVELOPING A BIBLICAL COUNSELING MINISTRY

Our plan will begin with you as an individual member of your local church. And since there is only one of you, it makes little sense to start our instruction with the ways to organize a fifty-member team at a 10,000-person church (although I know someone who is doing that now). We will move from you as an individual and go to describe a counseling ministry which will involve many members of your local church, no matter the size of your congregation. A ministry which will permit you to not only respond to crisis, but develop Christians who are deeply involved in one-another’s life. I want to give you a vision of what a church can be; and what a church should be. I am not going to ask you to change your doctrines, or reorganize your leadership structure. No one is going to take authority away from the pastors in your congregation.
I want you to understand how to utilize the resources you already have inside your own churches.
Imagine you had some money in your pocket. But also imagine that you have a box of rocks at home; rocks you picked up here and there when you were out hiking. You’re having a hard time paying your bills; you are careful with you money; you work hard at your job; but money is always tight. And then one day a friend comes by and you show him your rocks. Your friend, you has different training from you explains that it is not a box of rocks, but it is a box of gem stones: you have sapphires and rubies. You didn’t realize it, but you had great wealth.
That is how I hope to bring you to understand your congregation.

Two Objections

When the question of counseling does come-up, there are two basic deflections or objections to the proposal of a counseling ministry. First, there is the argument of psychological professionalism. Second, there is an argument of preaching.
Psychological professionalism: This argument says that counseling issues, beyond simple issues of be nice to your wife, or “spiritual” issues, about the doctrine of repentance, are simply not properly matters for the Church. I will not deny that there is a great deal of bad and even harmful counsel that comes from well-meaning Christians. Training is a must. Moreover, the question of “psychology” and psychiatry involve a great many things. A full answer to this objection lies well-beyond the scope of this seminar.
The training over the next week will respond to much of this criticism. However, there are some additional issues concerning psychology which I have dealt with a pair of journal articles which we have made available to you.
Preaching: A second argument is that the only counseling which a church needs comes from the pulpit. Some pastors think a counseling ministry is either unnecessary or an attack upon their pulpit. A good example of this is found in J.C. Ryle’s book on Christian leaders in 18th Century England. There was a fine and useful preacher name William Romaine. Of this man, Ryle writes, ““It was not uncommon for him to tell those who came to him with Cases of conscience [a counseling issue] and questions of spiritual concern, that he said all he had to say in the pulpit.” And while Romaine may have eventually said something which answered to that particular person’s concern, I can’t say that Romaine’s decision was correct.
The Apostle Paul in Acts 20 explains that he taught publicly and from house to house. Paul wrote letters of personal encouragement to Philemon, Titus, and Timothy. Paul answered specific questions of the Corinthian church. James 5:16 instructs us to confess our sins to one-another. Colossians 3:16 says that we are to admonish one-another.
It has been the considered counsel of the best pastors to engage in private counsel. Richard Baxter in his work on pastoral ministry, The Reformed Pastor writes:

“We must be ready to give advice to inquirers, who come to us with cases of conscience; especially the great case which the Jews put to Peter, and the gaoler to Paul and Silas, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ A minister is not to be merely a public preacher, but to be known as a counsellor for their souls, as the physician is for their bodies, and the lawyer for their estates: so that each man who is in doubts and straits, may bring his case to him for resolution; as Nicodemus came to Christ, and as it was usual with the people of old to go to the priest, ‘whose lips must keep knowledge, and at whose mouth they must ask the law, because he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.’ But as the people have become unacquainted with this office of the ministry, and with their own duty and necessity in this respect, it belongeth to us to acquaint them with it, and publicly to press them to come to us for advice about the great concerns of their souls. We must not only be willing to take the trouble, but should draw[…]”

I could say far more, but at this point leave it with: private counsel is a necessary element of ministry. There is an element of ministry which cannot be met by means of public preaching –as essential as preaching is. But private and public go together. I have learned that the better the preaching, the greater the need for private counsel. The best preaching cuts the heart, stirs the conscience, creates desire for a knowledge of God and a greater knowledge of God. The Word of God rightly preached stirs up the questions which need answer.
1. Know the Bible
Some counseling will be merely Bible Questions, such as why does God permit Satan to trouble Job. And at this point I give you my first instruction: Know the Bible. I will have a list of instructions below, but this is a point which cannot be overstated: Know the Bible.
The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to create and form the People of God. If you want a brief defense of Biblical Counseling, here it is:
Galatians 5:22–23 (NASB95)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

And the argument is as follows: I want you to imagine any counseling trouble. I then want you to image the outflowing of the Fruit of the Spirit in one’s life. What trouble is left?

2. Work With Church Leadership
You will need the cooperation and support of the church leadership. If you are lay member of the congregation do not start a ministry within your church without the knowledge and support of the leadership. You need gain the understanding and confidence of the leadership. First, the counseling ministry exists to help with the overall work of the church. Second, we do not want anyone to think of biblical counseling as a scourge upon the Church. It must be a blessing and support.
But the support must be more than a shrug and go ahead and see what you can do. You will want the full-hearted support of the leadership when trouble arises. And, unfortunately, counseling ministry attract trouble.
Counseling concerns the people in the congregation who are suffering the greatest degree of trouble, of sorrow, and need. When you are dealing with people under enormous stress, with terrible problems, often with financial and legal complications, it is very difficult to avoid trouble. The counselees may respond, with threats, slander, legal action, personal destruction.
If there is any dissension between you and the leadership, you will be hurt when trouble comes. The damage you suffer can be far worse than you can imagine. The congregation may be torn apart. But if the leadership understands your work and has confidence in you and supports the work, you and the congregation can withstand the attacks.
I do know that other counselors are of the opinion that you can begin as long as you have the support of just the pastor (or the senior most pastor) and that you can bring the others along as they see you ministry.
There is no chapter and verse which answers this question: there is only wisdom. If you have authority to go ahead, but there is a conflict in the leadership, be prepared: you very well may find yourself in a very difficult place. I can tell you that conflict within the church can be sinful and nasty in ways that exceed conflict in secular situations. A conflict within a congregation can become like a conflict within a family.
This is not the place to go on about Church conflict. That is a topic to itself. But understand that anything which you can to avoid conflict must be considered.

3. Remain under the authority of your local church
Make sure your counseling ministry is under the authority of your local church. You are not stand-alone independent resources, like a paid clinical psychologist. If counseling is an integral ministry of the Church, then it must operate under the authority of the church.
Counseling, when do correctly, is expositional: it is like a sermon. You take the Word of God, explain the Word of God, apply the Word of God. It is similar to a sermon, only the audience size is smaller. You are seeking to create thought, affections and conduct which flows from and aligns with the Word of God. You are seeking to create Bible-shaped people.
Since this is a teaching ministry, you are delivering doctrine. A teaching ministry must be conducted in accordance with the teaching positions of your church. We have people from different backgrounds here: there are Presbyterians and Baptists here. While we will agree on the matters which we are addressing here as to counseling, there will be other issues which may arise in counseling over which we may differ.
For instance, Jay Adams was an Amillennialist; I am a Pre-millennialist. Adams makes a counseling argument on an issue about the Devil’s work based upon his millennial position. While I agree with much of his argument, I disagree with him on the manner in which he supports that argument. You need to understand these issues and teach in accordance with the doctrinal distinctives of your congregation. If you teach counter to your church’s doctrinal positions, you will at the least create confusion in your counselees.
In addition, the confidence your leadership will have in your work will depend upon your integrity and transparency in counseling.
Your leaders are given to watch over the congregation as a whole. Even though you are in a position to help with that oversight, you must not usurp that oversight.
Finally, you need the oversight. Even if you are the head pastor of your congregation, you need someone who knows what you are doing in your counseling session. While some privacy is necessary; absolutely privacy is dangerous.

4. Training, Mentors, Colleagues
Training: Conference training is good, but it is not enough. The minimal training for an ACBC certification is the bare minimum; but it is not nearly enough to make you proficient in all that you will be called upon to do.
Much of the most difficult counseling I have had to undertake has involved counseling someone who has received poor counseling from another well-meaning Christian. At times, the poor counseling has come from a pastor – who was trained to preach, but did not know how to counsel. The reason, I think, comes from preachers often not understanding how application works. When you counsel, you have to watch how your application works and whether it profits. So, being a counselor makes you a better preacher.
The degree of your training depends upon the nature of your ministry. If your counseling ministry will be you alone with mentors and colleagues. You will need one level of training. If you plain on becoming a counseling center which provides training and development of other counselors, you will need significantly more training. We will discuss that, below.
You will need a mentors and colleagues. There will always be counseling matters which exceed your knowledge and experience. I have often had to work through counseling matters with other men and women who have had more or different experience than me.
Many of you will find yourself as the sole counselor, or perhaps one of two, in your congregation. That means you are going to need to have relationships with counselors who attend other congregations. Take time to meet others; make relationships.

5. Have a Time-Management Plan
There are two time-management issues: (1) Creating a Triage Plan. (2) Creating a plan to limit the time you counsel.
Triage
If you have ever been around an emergency room, you know that the hospital staff have a plan on who treat. One comes in with a broken arm, another comes in with a fever, a third comes in with a bleeding wound. If the staff takes the broken arm before the heart attack, someone will die. This is called a triage plan.
While not as time sensitive as an emergency room, your time as a counselor is limited. You will more requests upon your time than you will have time to counsel.
Someone here may be thinking, we have no demand for counseling at all in our congregation. I can’t imagine that we will have more demands for counseling than we can fulfill. Here is my answer: you have an unending demand for counsel.
We human beings need and give counsel to one-another every day. Someone is providing counsel to the members of your congregation. They may very well not be providing and receiving counsel from the Bible or even consistent with the Bible.
Christians do want to live in accordance with the Word of God. Christians want to know God’s will for their lives. But often they do not know what God requires or where to find that will in the Word of God. If they are not told how to use the Bible correctly, they will seek it from problematic sources.
In addition, the Word of God creates a desire for the Word of God. When people in your congregation learn counsel is available, your time will be full.
So who gets your time? Members of your congregation or people from outside your church? Do you give time to from those outside your church if the problem is sufficiently serious? And know, that seeing people who attend other congregations has its own complications.

Time Limitations
You are finite being. You cannot do everything. God does not need your help. The Church survived the death of the Apostles. The Church survived the death of Athanasius and Augustine, Calvin and Luther; the Church will survive you not over-working yourself.
Create limitations on your time before you find someone seeking more time than you can give. You need to decide how much time you will spend a week on counseling.
While a Biblical Counseling session may entail an hour of actual meeting, that hour is not the whole of your counseling. Done properly, you will need to prepare for the counseling studying and praying. You will often have interaction outside of the particular counseling session.
There will also be time need after the counseling for prayer and reflection.
While professional psychological counseling depends upon a “clinical” distance, biblical counseling is very different. The commands which apply to one-another interactions within the church apply to you as a counselor.
You must prefer one-another in love, you must bear one-another’s burdens, contribute to the needs of the saints, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. You must love the people with whom you are meeting – not merely provide information.
This work is enormously taxing.
It is not merely the time spent in counseling, but the time to process the counseling.
Ten hours of intensively counseling over the course of the week can be enormously taxing; and at times emotionally draining, because you cannot keep a “clinical” distance from the person with whom you are counseling.
In the United States, I am a lawyer. When I give counsel as a lawyer, my involvement begins and ends with providing information. If my client accepts my counsel or does not accept my counsel is up to him. If he does something and suffers or it, I am not supposed to care. If I become emotionally involve, I lose the ability to be objective. You cannot be detached if you are a biblical counselor.
When you initially create rules for your time begin cautiously. Talk with other counselors; consult your experience as to what you can reasonably do (in light of your other time obligations and your ability to bear burdens without burn out).

6. Have an intake system.

Have a clear procedure for how someone in your congregation begins a counseling relationship. If there is a woman in your congregation who is severely depressed and wants to receive biblical counsel, what should she do? Where should she go? Does she come to you, directly? Does she call the office? If there three people at once who seek counsel, who decides who is counseled and who waits?
I know people who had a system and then ignored it for this one particular situation. Ignoring the system resulted in trouble.
You create procedures to protect and sustain the ministry. Ignoring the system results in trouble. Create a system and stick to the system.

7. Use Forms – Have Procedures

We have provided you with two forms and a written policy. The first form is a counseling intake form. There may be cultural aspects of this form which do not translate well into a Chilean context. You may need to adopt it. From what I have seen, Chile and California are not all that different. But there be subtle things about how a question is phrased or how people answer. Feel free to adjust the form as need be.
The purpose of this form is for you to understand the person who is coming in to see you.

[At this point, walk through the form and make observations.]

A bit of practical advice: not everyone tells the whole story when they first enter into counseling. Sometimes the counselee is trying to hide information out of fear or shame. Sometimes the counselee simply does not know the truth.
For the counselee who deliberately keeps back some information, the best way to overcome the problem is to develop a relationship of trust and respect. Someone is giving you very painful, private information. They must know that you can be trusted to use that information to help not hurt. Be someone they can trust and someone they can respect.
The person who does not know the truth present a different problem. Here is an illustration from a friend which I think will help. I want you to imagine a house with a leaking roof. There is a small hole in the roof and the rain finds its way into the structure. But we usually have a structure beneath the roof which holds up the roof. Underneath that structure of crossing beams is a ceiling. So that we look up we see the ceiling and not the cross-beams or the roof to the outside.
When the water comes inside the house it hits the crossbeams and travels along until it seeps out through the ceiling. When you go to discover the hole in the roof, you cannot look straight up from the place you see the water on your ceiling. The water may have traveled several feet from the hole in the roof until it seeps out through the ceiling.
Counseling problems will often be like that. Someone will come for one issue and you will discover that their “real” problem is something else. Someone may come in because of a conflict with a family member and you’ll discover that they have another more fundamental problem which is leading to their conflict.
So use these a form to gain some initial information from you counselee, but do not think it tells the whole story.

Second, use a form to explain the counseling process to the counselee. Conflict happens when one’s expectation conflicts with reality. Let us say that tomorrow you go to a restaurant. The waiter brings you a piece of cake. There is nothing wrong with cake, you might often want to receive cake. But you didn’t order cake; you ordered eggs. You are unhappy because what you received contradicted what you ordered. You expected one thing and got another.
Someone comes into counseling. They are expecting you to be a psychologist who was trained in the manner of Rogers. Rogers would say that human beings are good and the counselor needs to bring that goodness out of the patient. But you start telling the counselee about sin and repentance. You read them from Romans that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You will have a conflict.
At the very outset we need to make plain what we do, what we will not do, and why we will do so. You need to explain that we are not priests who keep secrets no matter what. I do not know the law here, but in California if counselee tells you that they intend to hurt themselves or someone else, you must tell the authorities.

[walk through the counseling consent form – remove the section on waiver of jury trial, because it irrelevant. Keep the section on waiver of bringing legal action. Even if it is not enforceable in Chile, it is the proper way to resolve disputes according to the Scripture]

8. Have a policy on maintaining records

When you counsel with someone, you will keep some sort of record of your work. You will keep records of what you observed, what homework you gave, et cetera. These notes will often include very private information about someone else. The potential for misusing this information is great.
Because the information is so important, there may be others who want to use the information. I have been involved in situations where someone in a legal action, such as a divorce action, wanted to get copies of the counselor’s notes to use against the counselee.
I do not know how privacy laws work in Chile. In California, a pastor’s notes are not private. In Florida, a pastor’s notes are private. You will need to find out the answer to that question under Chilean law. Then you will need to have a policy about what you will do with notes.
When I oversaw a counseling ministry in a church, we kept the counseling consent form on file in the church office. The counselors kept their own notes. They were kept separate from the church records. I kept very few notes on a counselee and would not keep the notes after the counseling relationship was over, because I knew that I could not maintain privacy for the information if something came up in the future.
But there may be a reason to keep notes after the relationship is over.
So have a policy; make sure your policy is good for both the counselor and the counselee. In addition, make sure that you have exceptions to your general rule.
This a matter of wisdom; be prepared to change your rules as learn more.

9. Have a policy for dealing with allegations of physical and sexual abuse.

We have provided you with a draft of a policy I have worked on. It is based upon both biblical principles and seeks to comport with general law in the United States. You may need to make certain adjustments to this policy to comport with Chilean law.
There are two basic principles which must be in place. First, you must have policies which protect those who are being hurt from further injury. You cannot protect those who are hurting people in your church, because you want to protect a leader in the church or someone who is a friend. We cannot tolerate sin to continue. This is especially true when someone is hurting children.
You have seen the worldwide revulsion against the Roman Catholic church when it was discovered that bishops were protecting priests who were hurting children. It is certainly not confined to Roman Catholics. There was a major story about Baptists churches protecting abusers.
Second, you must have a policy in place to protect against false allegations. There are wildly varying estimates as to the percentage of false allegations. But whether it is 10 percent or 40 percent really does not matter. A false allegation can destroy someone’s life and will tear apart a church.
[walk through the plan]

10. Have a place to counsel
If need be you can be creative. But as a general rule, you should have a regular place to counsel which provides privacy for your counselees. The privacy will be what they have said. But you also want to provide privacy as to the counseling relationship.
Let us say that you are meeting with a married couple. They probably do not want everyone in the congregation knowing that they are coming in for marital counsel.
So you have two levels of privacy: the fact of the counseling relationship and the information conveyed in the counseling.
This means that you probably should not be counseling in a public place. Opening a Bible, discussing deeply personal matters, praying openly: these are things that are often not possible in a coffee shop.
Now if these were the only things to consider, you would pick some place absolutely private. But that can cause a problem.
You need accountability: both to protect you from sin, but also to protect you from accusations of sin.
Let me explain. Let us say a pastor is meeting with a woman in his congregation who is married to a cruel husband. The pastor is kind and understanding; he is everything she wished her husband would be. I know of more than one pastor who ended up in an adulterous relationship with someone in his congregation.
And even if the pastor does nothing wrong, there is the potential for gossip or false allegations. People become angry and lie. Someone learns of the counseling relationship and starts a rumor.
The best circumstance is to have the same sex counseling relationships: women counseling women; men counseling men. If a pastor simply does not have a woman counselor available, then have a woman with you when you counsel.
But same sex counseling relationship will not solve every problem. You have circumstances where you are counseling someone whose besetting sin is same sex relationships. You again need protection from gossip and sin.
And sexual problems are not the only forms of potential accusation or sin. There is the problem of using your authority to hurt someone; I don’t know what it is called here, but in the States people use the phrase “spiritual abuse”. They mean someone in ministry using their ministry position to hurt people.
This is a grave sin. You may be tempted to sin in this manner. You may be accused of sinning in this manner. And again, the best way to protect against this is to not have a perfect seal of privacy.
One of the very best ways to maintain privacy and accountability is to always have someone with you who is training to be a counselor. We will discuss training new counselors a bit later. But for now, now that training new counselors is a fine way to maintain privacy and accountability.

11. This is not everything
This is not a complete list of things you need to know practically to maintain a counseling ministry. But these are likely the most pressing matters you will face.

PART TWO

EXPANDING THE MINISTRY

We are going to look at two levels of counseling ministry expansion. First, we are going to look at the way in which you will add new counselors who will be doing the work you do: deliberate, intensive counseling. Second, we are going to look at expanding the concept of counseling as a matter of Christian discipleship and how the entire congregation has a role to play.
TRAINING NEW “FORMAL” COUNSELORS

Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, Device 1

28 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Thomas Brooks, Uncategorized

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The first device addressed by Brooks has two elements: presentation and concealment

Device (1). To present the bait and hide the hook; to present the golden cup, and hide the poison; to present the sweet, the pleasure, and the profit that may flow in upon the soul by yielding to sin, and by hiding from the soul the wrath and misery that will certainly follow the committing of sin.

There is the presentation of the bait & the concealment of the hook. Brooks places this device as having its original use in the Garden:

By this device he took our first parents: Gen. 3:4, 5, ‘And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods! Here is the bait, the sweet, the pleasure, the profit. Oh, but he hides the hook,—the shame, the wrath, and the loss that would certainly follow!

This device has sufficient biblical warrant. It lies in the basic structure temptation itself. In Proverbs 5, the adulterous woman is described in just this way:

Proverbs 5:3–6 (ESV)

3           For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey,

and her speech is smoother than oil,

4           but in the end she is bitter as wormwood,

sharp as a two-edged sword.

5           Her feet go down to death;

her steps follow the path to Sheol;

6           she does not ponder the path of life;

her ways wander, and she does not know it.

Look at the structure here: What is seen is all desirable: honey and oil. But what is not seen is the end: wormwood, sword, death, Sheol.  There is nothing in the presentation which is not desirable: that is the very point of temptation.  When fishing we use baits and lures fit to the fish and the fish’s palate. The fish is offered something which it desires:

James 1:14 (ESV)

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Our desire ensares us. When we are presented with a satisfaction to our desire, it is normal and appropriate – in many circumstances to fulfill that desire.

For instance, I am hungry. I see food which is good to eat. I eat it, satisfying my hunger. There is nothing bad in that. I am cold and wear a coat. There is nothing bad in that.

Temptation uses that same mechanism. Often the desires are perfectly good – if met in the right way and the right place. A desire for material security is not bad; but if it turns to theft and coveting, it becomes sin.

The things which are sin to us are things which lead to our sorrow and hurt – and the hurt of others. God has not forbidden us any good thing. God has forbidden us things which are hurtful to us. The Devil baits the hook with forbidden solutions to desire:

There is an opening of the eyes of the mind to contemplation and joy, and there is an opening of the eyes of the body to shame and confusion. He promiseth them the former, but intends the latter, and so cheats them—giving them an apple in exchange for a paradise, as he deals by thousands now-a-days. Satan with ease puts fallacies upon us by his golden baits, and then he leads us and leaves us in a fool’s paradise. He promises the soul honour, pleasure, profit, &c., but pays the soul with the greatest contempt, shame, and loss that can be.

Notice something else in Brooks’ description: the contemplation. In its initial stage, the tempting object may be rejected because it is known to be wrong. But as the contemplation ensues, the strength of desire overcomes the objection with the resulting death. As we look at the desirable object, the result of the object fades from view. The contemplation creates a bondage of the will:

Take heed of the servitude and bondage which the flesh is wont to bring upon the soul where it reigneth. It maketh men very slaves; the heart groweth weak, and lust strong, Ezek. 16:30. They are not under the government of the Spirit, but under the tyranny of their fleshly lusts, doing whatever it commandeth, be it never so base, foolish, and hurtful. If anger provoke them to revenge, they must fight, kill, and slay, and hazard their worldly interest for anger’s sake, or at least cannot forgive injuries for God’s sake; if filthy lusts send them to the lewd woman, away they go like a fool to the correction of the stocks; and though they dishonour God, ruin their estates, stain their fame, hazard their lives, yet lust will have it so, and they must obey. If covetousness say they must be rich, however they get it; they rise early, go to bed late, eat the bread of sorrow, and pierce through themselves with many cares: yea, make no question of right or wrong, trample conscience under foot, cast the fear of God behind their backs, and all because their imperious mistress, ambition, urgeth them to it. If envy and malice bid Cain kill his brother, he will break all bonds of nature to do it; if ambition bid Absalom rebel against his father, and kill him too, it shall be done, or he shall want his will. If covetousness bid Achan take a wedge of gold, he will do it, though he know it to be a cursed thing; if it bid Judas betray his Lord and Master, though he knew if he should do it, it had been better he had never been born, yet he will do it. Thus they are not at their own command, to do what reason and conscience inclineth them to do. If, sensible of their bondage, they would think of God and the world to come, and the state of their souls, lust will not permit it; if to break off this sensual course, they are not able; they are servants of corruption. Some, God hangeth up in chains of darkness for a warning to the rest of the world of the power of drunkenness, gluttony, avarice and wretched worldliness; yea, of every carnal man it is true: (John 8:34,) ‘Whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin.’ Therefore if the slavery and imperious disease begin to grow upon you, the flesh hath prevailed very far, and you need more to look to it, and that betimes.

Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 12 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1873), 52–53. When this device works upon the heart, the poor soul is in grave danger. Mark these words of Manton: “Thus they are not at their own command, to do what reason and conscience inclineth them to do.”

There is a great power in this device, because it sails along with the course of desires and the natural of offer of this world:

By a golden bait he laboured to catch Christ, Mat. 4:8, 9. He shews him the beauty and the bravery of a bewitching world, which doubtless would have taken many a carnal heart; but here the devil’s fire fell upon wet tinder, and therefore took not. These tempting objects did not at all win upon his affections, nor dazzle his eyes, though many have eternally died of the wound of the eye, and fallen for ever by this vile strumpet the world, who, by laying forth her two fair breasts of profit and pleasure, hath wounded their souls, and cast them down into utter perdition. She hath, by the glistering of her pomp and preferment, slain millions; as the serpent Scytale, which, when she cannot overtake the fleeing passengers, doth, with her beautiful colours, astonish and amaze them, so that they have no power to pass away till she have stung them to death. Adversity hath slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.

Thomas Brooks, The Complete Works of Thomas Brooks, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 1 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; G. Herbert, 1866), 12–13.

 

For homework then:

 

Consider what sorts of sin you are prone to.  Then consider how the hook is baited: what is offered? Where is it offered? Consider the end. Use Proverbs 5 as a guide: immediately following the offer of the adulteress, there is a list of sorrow which will follow upon the sin.

Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices: Introduction

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Thomas Brooks, Uncategorized

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Brooks takes as his starting text, 2 Corinthians 2:11, “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.”

He then makes a series of observations about the text. The overall context is the restoration of a man who had been under church discipline. Although there is some debate as to the person of whom Paul writes, it is commonly taken (as is here by Brooks), that the man put out of the congregation had been the man in the mentioned in 1 Corinthians who been an illicit relationship with his father’s wife.

Sorrowing for the Sin of Others

Brooks begins with a reference to the effect of the sin of others upon a believer:

Gracious souls use to mourn for other men’s sins as well as their own, and for their souls and sins who make a mock of sin, and a jest of damning their own souls. Guilt or grief is all that gracious souls get by communion with vain souls, Ps. 119:136, 158.

This leads to a question: if this is true, and if I am not experiencing sorrow over sin of others, then I must be experiencing some guilt, some contagion. Brooks will use the image of sin as an infectious plague in reference to the first device, below. If sin is indeed an infectious disease, one transmitted from person to person with great ease; then the only defense to the infection is sorrow for the presence of sin in others.

There are four points to consider:

First, how should I sorrow for another’s sin:

Psalm 119:136 (ESV)

136        My eyes shed streams of tears,

because people do not keep your law.

The Psalmist has the honor of God as his primary reference: This person in unrepentant sin dishonors the Lord. This one who dishonors the Lord is a danger to me and an enemy to God.

Second, sorrow for the sins of others (particularly when they are seen as in rebellion against God) disarms the temptation which is inherent in being near sin.

Third, sorrow for the sin of others protects me from a haughty attitude toward others: we cannot feel sorrow and pride at once. Sorrow creates pity.

Fourth, how little I sorrow for the sin of others. This then implies that I am being infected with their sin. If sorrow is the antitode, then a lack of sorrow is a grave danger.

And fifth – Brooks will make another observation about the importance of sorrowing for another’s sin, below.

The Sorrow of Repentance

Having made general observations on the text, Brooks moves to the nature of sorrow for repentance:

It was a sweet saying of one, ‘Let a man grieve for his sin, and then joy for his grief.’ That sorrow for sin that keeps the soul from looking towards the mercy-seat, and that keeps Christ and the soul asunder, or that shall render the soul unfit for the communion of saints, is a sinful sorrow.

Sorrow should drive us to Christ.

Before I go along, we must note Brooks’ facility with language:

That sorrow for sin

that keeps the soul from looking towards the mercy-seat,

and that keeps Christ and the soul asunder,

or that shall render the soul unfit for the communion of saints,

is a sinful sorrow.

First, he makes good use of alliteration: there is a conflict between the hard “c/k” and the soft “s”.

Second, there is the repetition of the sorrow & sin at the beginning and end of the sentence: “sorrow for sin” becomes “sinful sorrow”, thus inverting both the words and the concept.

Third, there are three criteria given to define sinful sorrow. The clauses themselves are easily spoken and have the feel of a line of poetry.

Sorrowing for the Sin of Others

Brooks notes an interesting movement in Paul’s thought: We must be show sorrow and pity upon the repentant sinner. Why so? I would think the rationale would be the need for kindness to the broken man. But Paul draws a different relationship: our failure to show pity is a danger to us:

In the 11th verse, he lays down another reason to work them to shew pity and mercy to the penitent sinner, that was mourning and groaning under his sin and misery; i. e.lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.

The necessary sorrow for sin is to protect the others from a scheme of the Devil.

Satan’s Schemes

This leads to Brooks’ general theme: Satan has many devices to destroy Christians.

He begins with a general observation on the words. First, advantage:

Lest Satan should get an advantageof us; lest Satan over-reach us. The Greek word πλεονεχτηθῶμεν, signifieth to have more than belongs to one. The comparison is taken from the greedy merchant, that seeketh and taketh all opportunities to beguile and deceive others. Satan is that wily merchant, that devoureth, not widows houses, but most men’s souls.

We will not care about Satan’s efforts, if we are not convinced of Satan’s danger.

Next the concept of a scheme or device:

‘We are not ignorant of Satan’s devices,’ or plots, or machinations, or stratagems, Νοήματα. He is but a titular Christian that hath not personal experience of Satan’s stratagems, his set and composed machinations, his artificially moulded methods, his plots, darts, depths, whereby he outwitted our first parents, and fits us a pennyworth still, as he sees reason.

This leads to the basic doctrine for the rest of the book:

Doct. That Satan hath his several devices to deceive, entangle, and undo the souls of men.

These devices are more dangerous than persecution.  “So doth Satan more hurt in his sheep’s skin than by roaring like a lion.”

He gives two examples to prove this point: 2 Timothy 2:26 & Revelation 2:24.

This again leads to some questions:

First, is it true that temptation is more dangerous than persecution?

What examples from Scripture can see?

What are examples from history?

 

Second, do we really see Satan as an active danger?

Do we think of Satan as an actual person, or as a figure of speech?

Do we think of Satan and his minions actually doing things?

Do we see this as a real danger to us?

 

Third, before we begin to read Brooks’ list: what devices do we see used to ensnare souls?

Brooks list is not exhaustive.

 

Fourth, why are we so unaware of Satan’s devices? Paul says “we are not unaware”, but is that true?

 

Fifth, to the extent we are unaware of Satan and his devices, why is this so?

 

Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices: Reading (How to turn information into transformation)

14 Friday Dec 2018

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A WORD TO THE READER

This section of the work contains Thomas Brooks Directions for Reading. He begins with the proposition drawn from the Proverbs, that one must obtain truth. Thus, Brooks is not speaking of all reading, but of reading that which is profitable.

DEAR FRIEND!—Solomon bids us buy the truth (Prov. 23:23), but doth not tell us what it must cost, because we must get it though it be never so dear.

The Puritans were quite careful to distinguish between buying truth and buying anything else. Christian, at Vanity Fair, was only there to be “buy truth”. And Bunyan in the Heavenly Footman advises:

Take heed that you have not an ear open to every one that calleth after you as you are in your journey. Men that run, you know, if any do call after them, saying, I would speak with you, or go not too fast, and you shall have my company with you, if they run for some great matter, they use to say, Alas, I cannot stay, I am in haste, pray talk not to me now; neither can I stay for you, I am running for a wager: if I win I am made, if I lose I am undone, and therefore hinder me not. Thus wise are men when they run for corruptible things, and thus should thou do, and thou hast more cause to do so than they, forasmuch as they run but for things that last not, but thou for an incorruptible glory. I give thee notice of this betimes, knowing that thou shalt have enough call after thee, even the devil, sin, this world, vain company, pleasures, profits, esteem among men, ease, pomp, pride, together with an innumerable company of such companions; one crying, Stay for me; the other saying, Do not leave me behind; a third saying, And take me along with you. What, will you go, saith the devil, without your sins, pleasures, and profits? Are you so hasty? Can you not stay and take these along with you? Will you leave your friends and companions behind you? Can you not do as your neighbours do, carry the world, sin, lust, pleasure, profit, esteem among men, along with you? Have a care thou do not let thine ear now be open to the tempting, enticing, alluring, and soul- entangling flatteries of such sink-soulsf13 as these are. ‘My son,’ saith Solomon, ‘if sinners entice thee, consent thou not’ (Pro. 1:10).

Brooks’ directions are to bring information into one’s heart so that it transforms both conduct and affections. Therefore, these directions for reading are not appropriate for all things which we read. As Paul Baynes writes in Brief Directions for a Godly Life, “That all filthy, lewd and wanton books, yea, needless and unprofitable books be avoided.”

A. Meditation

Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul.

Meditation is a constant element of Puritan spirituality. Thomas Watson writes,

It is better to meditate on one sermon than to hear five. If an angel were to come down from heaven and preach to men; yea, if Jesus himself were the preacher, none would profit without meditation. The bee sucks the flower, and then works it in the hive, and it becomes honey. We must not only suck the flower of the Word, but work it in the hive of the heart.

Thomas Watson, Puritan Gems; Or, Wise and Holy Sayings of the Rev. Thomas Watson, A.M., ed. John Adey, Second Thousand. (London: J. Snow, and Ward and Co.; Nisbet and Co.; E. F. Gooch, 1850), 96–97. And:

Meditate upon what you read. Psalm 119:15: “I will meditate in thy precepts.” The Hebrew word to meditate, signifies to be intense in the mind. In meditation there must be a fixing of the thoughts upon the object. Luke 2:19: “Mary pondered those things.” Meditation is the concoction of Scripture; reading brings a truth into our head, meditation brings it into our heart; reading and meditation, like Castor and Pollux, must appear together. Meditation without reading is erroneous; reading without meditation is barren. The bee sucks the flower, and then works it into the hive, and so turns it into honey; by reading we suck the flower of the word, by meditation we work it into the hive of our mind, and so it turns to profit. Meditation is the bellows of the affection. Psalm 39:3: “While I was musing the fire burned.” The reason we come away so cold from reading the word, is because we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.

Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in The Bible and the Closet: Or How We May Read the Scriptures with the Most Spiritual Profit; and Secret Prayer Successfully Managed, ed. John Overton Choules (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1842), 24–25.

In his sermon, A Discourse of the Right Way of Obtaining and Maintaining Communion with God, Matthew Barker writes:

We should, with David, “set the Lord always before” our face; (Psalm 16:8;) and not as he that he speaks of, of whom it is said, “God is not in all his thoughts.” (Psalm 10:4.) This is rather to live “without God in the world,” than to live in communion with him. And these thoughts of God should not be slight and transient, but fixed and serious; especially at some times, which we should more peculiarly devote to solemn meditation. Meditation brings the object nearer to the soul, and the soul nearer to it, though locally distant; unites the soul to it; mixeth itself with it; whereby it doth possess it, or is possessed of it.

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 4 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 48. Meditation is a deliberate focus and pondering of the proposition; it is the exact opposite of a transitory reading.

Brooks is not merely asking for one to read his book, but to wrestle with the book. A serious book which discloses the truth of God deserves our serious consideration. Much of our trouble comes from not considering what we read.

B. Application

The purpose of God’s truth is never for bare knowledge; this is an academic prize. I was once asked by a fellow Christian why I should take the time to know and understand, “After all”, he said, “when we’re heaven we’ll know it all any way.” But we are given truth for the end of godliness, faith working through love; never bare knowledge. Thus,

Thirdly, Know that it is not the knowing, nor the talking, nor the reading man, but the doing man, that at last will be found the happiest man.

As Thomas Watson wrote:

Learn to apply Scripture; take every word as spoken to yourselves. When the word thunders against sin, think thus: God means my sins; when it presseth any duty, God intends me in this. Many put off Scripture from themselves, as if it only concerned those who lived in the time when it was written; but if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves. A medicine will do no good unless it be applied. The saints of old took the word as if it had been spoken to them by name. When king Josiah heard the threatening which was written in the book of God, he applied it to himself; he “rent his clothes and humbled his soul before the Lord.” 2 Kings 22:11.

Thomas Watson, “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit,” in The Bible and the Closet: Or How We May Read the Scriptures with the Most Spiritual Profit; and Secret Prayer Successfully Managed, ed. John Overton Choules (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1842), 33–34. The application is to be complete:

We must be careful to apply that which we read wisely to ourselves; persuading ourselves that all duties are commanded us and all sins forbidden us all and all promises to be believed by us. Likewise, we must look that all exhortations and admonitions quicken us; all reprehensions check us; and all threats cause us to fear.

Paul Baynes, Brief Directions.

Christianity is not a matter of bare knowledge, it is a comprehensive manner of life. And, we cannot know as we ought when we refuse to live as we ought:

But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5:14 (ESV). There is a necessary preparation and transformation of the human heart which makes it fit to receive the truth.

Brooks drives this home with an illustration:

Reader, If it be not strong upon thy heart to practise what thou readest, to what end dost thou read? To increase thy own condemnation? If thy light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing man thou art, the more miserable man thou wilt be in the day of recompense; thy light and knowledge will more torment thee than all the devils in hell. Thy knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash thee, and that scorpion that will for ever bite thee, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw thee; therefore read, and labour to know, that thou mayest do, or else thou art undone for ever.

The fact that knowledge increases condemnation is taught in the Scripture:

20 Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. 21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”

Matthew 11:20–24 (ESV). They had seen and heard and rejected. The Word of God is a dangerous thing, it will either transform or harden. In Nehemiah 8, the returned exiles are taught the people the Law of God; and when they heard it, they wept. But Herod, who heard the condemnation of John the Baptist, put John in prison. To hear the word of God, and to not listen and comply with the reproof is to be destroyed:

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck,
will suddenly be broken beyond healing.

Proverbs 29:1 (ESV)

Application of this to Counseling:

These directions for reading are likely the most common reason that Biblical Counseling fails. The Counselor conveys information and permits to be bare information. The counselee hears something, consents, even admits to its importance. But, after leaving the counseling time, the poor Christian proceeds into the world with more information but the information is inert.

Even the homework given typically does little good because it most often information conveyance. While information is insufficient: Information is a necessary but a sufficient cause for change: the information must drive down into the heart and transform affections and conduct.

Brooks is here underlying the primary elements of turning information into transformation: Meditation – which transforms the thought and affections; and obedience. Conduct and sustained thought do much to drive knowledge into the bones and blood.

An Essay on Common Grace, Biblical Counseling and Psychology

25 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Theology of Biblical Counseling, Uncategorized

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I have attached a rough draft copy of an essay on common grace, biblical counseling and psychology  here. If anyone is interested and willing, I would appreciate the comments, critiques, et cetera.  It is 11,457 words, with 42 footnotes, so it is not a breezy read. In its final version, it will be in the Journal of Biblical Soul Care

Again, this is far from finished: any and everything in it is subject to revision.  It (probably) has typos, incomplete citations, and gaps in the argument. But fortunately I have a couple of months before publication.

A Proposed Mechanism for Relating “Psychology” and “Biblical Counseling”

20 Friday Apr 2018

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(The following is a draft of a tool for analyzing the common grace elements of psychology. It will be for the second half of an article on the usefulness and limitations of common grace for counseling in a manner which is consistent with the claims of Scripture).

As will be set forth at length below, I propose the following rubric for utilizing the results of “common grace” in social sciences, particularly psychology as an academic discipline; and a means for rejecting certain other ideas as incompatible with a consistently biblical position for soul care. This position is begins with both a scriptural understanding of common grace, and an understanding of the biblical of the nature and end of human beings before God. This position recognizes both the extent to which common grace can provide insight into the natural world; and the fundamental limitations of common grace when it comes to human problems.

A fundamental problem which takes place concerns what is meant by the word “psychology”. The range of meaning assigned to this word has exacerbated the disagreements between Biblical Counselors and those who hold one of the various positions commonly labeled as “integrationist” (and yes, there are a variety of labels which are utilized here; and often there is a rejection of label by Christian counselors, but the word will work well-enough for present uses).

I propose three categories of information which move from information most accessible to common grace to information which cannot be known by common grace.

 

Common Grace Special Revelation
Category One:  Observations The physical environment; including the human body. This includes study of the nervous system, functioning of the senses, et cetera.

Information from this level is often leveraged as an attack upon the Biblical Counseling position as unscientific for “refusing” information learned here.

 

  

 

 

 

 
Common Grace is most effective here.

Common grace does permit one to see the environment, the understanding is limited by the failure to take God’s creation and providence into account. However, due to the ability of unbelievers to ‘borrow’ from Christian presuppositions, reasonably accurate observations.

 

Thus, human physiology can be observed and reported. This area of “psychology” (neuropsychology, the operation of senses, et cetera) can be utilized with the normal sort of skepticism necessary for review of any scientific work

 

 Special Revelation: Informs us of the fundamental nature and existence of the physical environment, but does not provide much detail. We know that it is the creation of God and maintained by providence, but the mechanics of the operation are not treated in detail. This is the place where Special Revelation offers the least information and common grace the most.

 

 

 

 

 
Category two:

Social science observations. With a markedly lesser degree of reliability, social scientists can make observations of patterns in human behavior and internal psychological states. Thus, we can see that people under certain circumstances, and/or with certain physiological conditions, will have a tendency to display certain behaviors and/or expressions.

 

  
Common grace makes it possible to make observations patterns.  However, there are serious limitations on the usefulness of such information.

These observations are fundamentally limited by (1) the inability to observe the internal workings of the human heart (observations of neurology and one’s self reported subjected experience are of some value, but cannot correlate to the depth of the human heart); (2) these observations are fundamentally limited that they cannot include the effects of the Godward relationship of the human being (observations which are commonly accounted as “the psychology of religion” are limited to objective observations and cannot provide information about the working of God); (3) these observations cannot take into account the effects of the “flesh” and the Spirit (this is related but not perfectly coextensive with point (2)).

 

 

 

  

Special revelation is critical at this stage, particularly in any attempt to “make sense” of social science observations. Understanding the deceitfulness of sin, for instance, may help to make an observation understandable.

The biblical counselor can use such observations as data points: for example, a study may suggest a line of inquiry; knowing that there is not a determinative relationship between one environmental circumstance and a future manner of life — even if there is a positive tendency toward a certain outcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Category 3

This category consists of what most people mean when they say “psychology”. Here we find theories which concern the matters are both (1) inaccessible to common grace and (2) are explicitly theological anthropology, teleology and methodology for change (ATM). These are the aspects of human life which are most directly affected by the breach between God and man.

While this category may make reference to elements of category 1 & 2, it goes further and assigns values. This aspect specifically concerns “spiritual” concerns:  matters of sin and sanctification, the action of God (and even evil spirits) upon human beings: these are precisely the matters which the Scripture claims as for its authority.

When biblical counselors reject “psychology”, they are referring primarily to information from this category.

 

  
Common grace is least valuable at this stage. Common grace  was not given to heal this aspect of the Fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Special Revalation is needed for work here

First, this concerns anthropology: What constitutes a human being: this is beyond observations concerning the human body and human behavior. It is consists of the “manishness of man” to use Francis Schaeffer’s phrase. This concerns the human heart: the spiritual aspects of humanity and in particular human interaction with God.

 

Second, this category concerns teleology: what is the purpose of being human. For instance when a psychologist speaks of what is “healthy” for human sexuality, the psychologist is speaking to what is the purpose of a human being. The purpose of a human being cannot be known by observations, since, as Jay Adams notes: we are living in an abnormal environment under abnormal conditions (being on this side of the Fall).

 

Third, this concerns methodology: those things which are necessary to change the direction of the human heart.

 

 

Toward and Exegetical Practical Theology, Joshua Clutterham

13 Friday Apr 2018

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Joshua Clutterham’s article in this edition of the Journal of Biblical Soul Care develops a point which is crucial to any effective pastoral work (and by that, I limit pastoral work to work which takes Scripture seriously). The Bible is not merely a book of facts and propositions (although it does contain such). The words are there not merely be read and recognized. The information does not exist merely so we can pass some hypothetical Bible knowledge trivia test. The words of the Bible are given to do something to us; to change us.

The Bible must not be merely thought of as a basis for systematic theology. Even preaching must not terminate in what the Scripture means as a proposition, but what that proposition does.  The Bible is given to not merely inform, but also to change people. This changing people is a matter of practical theology.

This matter of application is admitted by most preachers (indeed, many very bad sermons are merely a string of applications: Cheer – up! You’ll do great if you try!). There is another group who deliver an enormous volume of information, but with no point. Great, I can answer questions about the economy of Egypt, but I’m not sure why that matters.

The point of Bible’s information is to transform human beings in conduct, knowledge and affection: to make people different than they were before they read.

This matter of using the Bible to change people is also the purpose of counseling. And thus we should merely think of counseling as private exegetical practical theology. Preaching largely differs in the number of persons present.

What Joshua further proposes is that we take care to notice the rhetorical structure of the Scripture’s application: When we apply the text, we should note how the text functions and rely upon that rhetorical structure to help deliver the application. As Joshua writes, “We [must] consider the method of delivery of Scripture along with its meaning.”

The article itself is quite detailed. He develops and explains the rhetorical structure of the Scripture’s application — giving many examples and helps.  The article contains a number of proposals for future development, and explains the relationship between preaching and counseling.  This brief bit merely provides the slightest introduction to his work.

You can get your free subscription to the journal here:

http://www.masters.edu/jbsc

Christ Transforms our Thinking

04 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Church History

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Ambrose to Felix, Bishop of Comum, 380 AD:

Aaron indeed once stood in the midst,* interposing himself to prevent death passing over to the hosts of the living from the carcases of the dead. But He, as the Word, ever stands within each of us, although we see Him not, and separates the faculties of our reason from the carcase of our deadly passions and pestilential thoughts

This quote is interesting because it gets to an element of biblical counseling – or soul care: all clinical psychology is trying to change how a person thinks, desires, acts from some undesired state to what is perceived as a better state. Here Ambrose states two things: (1) Christ does change our thinking; (2) our reason has been corrupted by “deadly passions”.

What I cannot tell is whether he holds to an idea that human reason is uncorrupted and it is merely desire which corrupts. Does he hold that all desire or merely “deadly passions” are the culprit.