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Methods of Biblical Change2006 WORKBOOK
PAUL DAVID TRIPP
M E T H O D S O F B I B L I C A L C H A N G E L E C T U R E
1.1CCEF © 1990-2007 Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation
1
Lecture 1
I. Opening Prayer
II. Introductory Remarks
III. What in the world is biblical counseling? (What are the critical elements that
defi ne personal biblical ministry? the essential ingredients?)
A. There is an abiding confusion about what biblical counseling is.
1. Is it a biblical commitment to help people solve their problems where
we are God’s problem mechanics?
2. Is it a ministry of encouragement to make sure that people feel better?
3. Is it an extended ecclesiastical friendship?
B. Biblical counseling is radically different from all of the above.
1. The culture of care that is part of Western culture is different from
the culture of care that is laid out in the Bible.
2. Excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s Subversive Spirituality1
a) What in the world is biblical care or counseling?
b) Your process and skills are developed from how you answer that
question.
(1) Defi ning “care”
(2) Defi ning “cure”
(3) Professional forms of care
(4) We need to realize our poverty in knowing how to care.
(5) “Caring is initiated by a condition that twists it into
something ugly and destructive – need.”
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(6) Effects of sin: We, as human beings, learn how to use the
conditions of need as leverage in getting our own willful way.
We shrink our lives to the size of our lives.
(7) Caring does not actually cure. Much of our caring nourishes
sin.
3. Paul’s illustration: 5-year-old learning to ride a bike who cries only
when someone is looking in order to get the desired result
4. Continued reading from Subversive Spirituality2
a) This “wound of self” that calls for help is an opening for which
we can listen to and answer God. The wound is an access to God
and to others, a listening post.
b) Do not cover up the wound too quickly.
5. Biblical counseling has to take root at a deeper level than a person’s
situational and relational needs or their experiential neediness.
6. What is it that we are after? What is it that we are seeking to
accomplish? You need knowledge of the gospel to set your goals for
biblical counseling.
C. Biblical counseling is a ministry of the gospel.
1. What is wrong with us is more than what we experience. It is what
we do with what we experience.
2. It is not just that we suffer, but also that we do not know how to
handle our blessings.
3. We believe in a message of radical lasting change. There is divine
power for that. We believe that change can take place.
4. Biblical counseling is a ministry of change that no one wants because
we want our way.
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5. We need to minister at a deeper level than experience, otherwise all
the care in the world will not lead to cure.
IV. Confusion about how we do biblical counseling
A. Context
1. What is the best place for this ministry to fl ourish?
2. Example of ice skating
B. Process
1. How do we get from where we are to where we need to be?
2. What are the steps?
3. What are the skills that move us along?
C. The issue of context
1. The context of biblical counseling is a robust, personal, Christ-
centered community. Your life and walk with God are a community
project.
2. Western Christianity is shaped by the surrounding culture.
a) We think of our Christianity in shockingly individualistic terms.
The ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ has been weakened
by a “Jesus-and-me” perspective on Christianity.
b) The archetype of Western culture is the self-made person,
“pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” You can not help but be
infl uenced by that ideology.
c) We have a high value on privacy. We prize boundaries.
3. Biblical counseling should not be an aspect of the ministry of the
local church but an expression of what it is. Church is meant to be
an organic, ministering community.
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D. 2 Peter 1:3-9
1. This passage has an inverted logic:
a) (v.8) Peter’s diagnosis of the church is that there are people who
know the Lord but whose lives are unproductive and ineffective.
b) Who are these people? Peter’s diagnosis includes all of us.
c) Peter’s logic: When the things listed in verses 5-7 rule my heart
in the situations of everyday life, I will respond in a way that is
effective and productive.
2. Why is this happening? (v.9) The issue is identity.
a) Identity amnesia is epidemic in the body of Christ.
b) You are always saying things to you about you all the time.
c) Identity amnesia always results in identity replacement (e.g.,
achievements, a job, a relationship, a problem).
3. There are two pillars of Christian identity that are the foundation of
the Christian life:
a) You are a sinner. You have forgotten that you have been cleansed
of your past sins. (v.9)
(1) We minimize the fact that sin is not just what you do but
who you are. We think our greatest problem is outside of us
not inside of us.
(2) You no longer are a consumer of change. You will erect a
system of self-justifi cation that will make sin acceptable to
your conscience. We are masters of self-atonement.
(cf. 2 Corinthians 10:5) Pretenses are plausible lies. Human
beings tell themselves plausible lies saying, “I am not the
problem here. The deepest problems of life live outside of
me, not inside of me. ”
(3) (v. 5) “Make every effort to add….” I look at myself, and I
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see that there are things that I lack. I say, “There is
something wrong inside of me, and I need to change.”
(4) We live in a fallen world, but my problem is not just
environmental. It is internal. There is something that I bring
to my diffi culties where I bring trouble to my troubles: sin.
(b) The glory of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ means our
identity is in Christ. (v.3)
(1) There is incredible provision that has been made for me in
Christ.
(2) We tend to have a clear picture of salvation past and future,
but we tend to have an unclear picture of salvation in the
“here and now.” Peter is talking about the present.
(3) Godliness is a God-honoring life between the time I come to
Christ and the time I go home to be with Him.
(4) There is a grace that reaches into the deepest, present
experiences of the human being. It is a grace that is up to
the task of our fallenness and that of the world around us.
(5) Example of marriage: Marriage is a fl awed person married to
a fl awed person with a faithful God. What is the hope of
marriage? There is a gift of awesome grace to help us.
(6) (v. 4) The condition of cultural corruption is there because
we are [corrupt].
(7) We need to hold the drama of our sinfulness in our hands
along with how profound God’s grace is. This will make us
zealous for change and willing to work. It is diffi cult to do
this. Example of a child pointing outside of himself to
explain why he hit another child.
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E. Hebrews 10: 19-31
1. (v.19-23) The call: Have your living based on the gospel.
2. (v.26-31) A signifi cant call to be serious about sin
3. (v. 24-25) The writer is proposing that if you are ever going to hold
on to the courage and hope of the gospel and the gravity of your
need as a sinner, then you need to be living in intimate, living
community with people. I need daily intervention.
V. Structure of the Class
A. Epicenter of the “Methods of Biblical Change” is not the lecture. You
can not lecture people into skill.
1. The text: Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands is the means by
which you will get the model.3 The content will not be repeated in
lecture. It will be expanded and taken further in the lecture.
2. The community groups are a signifi cant part of the development
that will happen to you in the course. Learning is a community
process. You will experience what we will be talking about in the
course.
3. 30 minute wrap-up is an opportunity to think outside of the box.
Q&A time.
B. Response papers: an opportunity to interact (not summarize) with the
readings in two pages.
C. Every community group will have a secretary who will write a summary
of the weekly discussion and will protect confi dentiality. You are to read
3 to 4 postings of the other community groups.
VI. Syllabus
A. Response papers are responses to the readings. Turn in a reading record.
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B. The date on the syllabus is the date the assignment is due.
1 Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1997) 154-159.2 Ibid., 160.3 Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2002)
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Lecture 2
I. Opening Prayer
II. Principle: Your methodology always comes from your anthropology.
A. The great message of the kingdom of God is change.
1. “Repent and believe for the kingdom of God is near.”
2. Repentance (i.e., radical change of heart leading to a radical change
in lifestyle) is good news.
3. Why is this good news? Because the king is here, change is possible.
This is the message Christ commissions his disciples to take to the
world.
B. In order to understand people, you have to understand these three vistas
of the redemptive story:
1. Who are people in relation to creation?
2. Who are people as a result of the fall?
3. Who are people as a consequence of redemption?
C. Every piece of your ministry is rooted in your theology. Doctrine is short-
hand for the redemptive story.
D. Juxtaposition of the creation and the fall
1. We tend to seriously underestimate the ravages of sin on us and in
our culture.
a) Therefore, a lot of what the Bible has to say about what is wrong
with you is counterintuitive.
b) The category of what is wrong has been constricted to items of
wrong behavior.
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E. Excerpt from Cornelius Plantiga’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be1
III. Juxtaposition of the creation and the fall
A. At creation, after Adam and Eve are created, God immediately talks to
them. Men and women are unique in creation in three ways:
1. Human beings were wired by God to be revelation receivers.
a) God invested Adam and Eve with distinct communicative
abilities. They are not just to have meaningful relationships
with each other. They are primarily to know God, hear his word,
and understand him. God gave them the capacity to receive his
revelation in order to make sense out of life.
b) We were never meant to fi gure out life autonomously or
independently. We were created to be dependent.
2. Human beings by their very nature are oriented toward wisdom.
a) A child who constantly ask questions
b) A child forming language
c) Every human being thinks that he or she is wise. They argue for
the logic of their wisdom system.
d) Everyone is thinking theologically and is attempting to answer
the major questions of life.
e) When you counsel someone, you never start at zero (i.e., someone
who is entirely open). You counsel someone who is constantly
making wisdom investments. Most people who ask for counsel do
not really want it because you are threatening their wisdom
investments.
3. Human beings function by thought and desire.
a) Thought and desire always precede and shape our activity.
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b) We do not function just by physiological instinct or anatomical
function.
c) Luke 6: There is a huge root system underneath what is seen.
B. The fall: the effects of sin
1. Sin causes this created quest for wisdom to become an autonomous
quest for meaning. This has several implications:
a) Additional excerpt from Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be2
b) My perspective about “what is” takes precedence over God’s
revelation.
c) It causes me to rely upon my interpretations instead of relying on
God to state “what is.”
d) It causes me to believe that even though I have a limited
perspective, I am able to draw signifi cant conclusions about life.
e) As we back away from God’s revelation, we begin to abandon
the themes of his revelation that are supposed to explain life to
us. (Sin, sovereignty, eternity, and grace are themes that exegete
life.) Doctrine is given that we may understand God, life, and
ourselves.
f) I become a wisdom consumer. I will not be content to live
wisdom-less. I will be open, vulnerable, and susceptible to things
that make sense.
2. Genesis 3:1-6
a) Verse 6: “…desirable for gaining wisdom”
b) The hook or temptation was, “You could be the source of your
wisdom.”
3. I Corinthians 1:18-25
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a) Passage is critiquing two wisdom systems:
(1) Jews represent empiricism
(2) Greeks represent human philosophy
b) Paul asserts that wisdom comes by means of relationship.
c) Many people are on a wisdom quest of futility.
(1) They are not supposed to fi gure it out on their own.
Wisdom is a dependency function.
(2) People do not talk to you so that you can mess with their
foundations. But, if you do not mess with their foundations,
you can not help them.
C. At creation human beings are created to be incessant interpreters. You
are always in conversation with you.
1. People do not live life based on the facts of their experience. They
live life based on their interpretation of the facts.
a) Illustrations: Paul and his wife’s interpretation of the same
movie; Darney’s interpretation of his dad’s title of “Dr.”
b) People take apart the moment to make sense out of it, so they
can react and respond appropriately. Everything will be attached
to the framework of what I think is going on.
c) The greatest thing you can do in ministry is to intrude upon
people’s conversation with themselves. You will provide another
voice. You will become part of the conversation.
d) We have the amazing God-given ability at that level of
functioning: to take a wisdom statement and apply it to specifi c
situations in our lives.
2. Effects of the fall
a) Sin deteriorates the ability to apply wisdom to life into self-
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swindling and self-delusion. I am my own personal Judas.
b) Additional excerpt from Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be3: The
heart wants what it wants. I will defend myself against anything
that challenges it. I will excuse myself and shift the blame.
c) Every human being works to present himself more righteous
than he actually is, to make the world tougher than it actually is,
to make other people more evil than they really are. I need life
to be a justifi cation for what I do.
d) I set up various systems of self-atonement. (e.g., “If you lived
with this woman, you would understand why I committed
adultery.”)
e) What this interpretation degenerates into is that now I look
outside of myself as the cause for the things that I do. The
impact this has on personal ministry is that people think their
biggest problem is their environment.
f) No, your biggest problem is inside of you. What you face does
not determine what you do because you have an active heart
that is interacting with what is going on.
g) Effect this has on marriage counseling: Each spouse blames the
other for the problem. The reason that they are in counseling is
to get the other fi xed.
D. Human beings are created to be worshippers (i.e., purpose-driven and
value-oriented). Worship is not fi rst an activity. It is fi rst an identity.
1. At creation, human beings were created to live toward something, to
be in pursuit of something. Human beings have treasure, value, and
goals.
a) We have the ability to dream, to envision what could be. Dream
is imagination coupled with desire and projected into the future.
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b) We are always after something. Your words and behavior are your
attempt in every situation to get what is valuable there.
2. More effects of the fall
a) Illustration of Johnny at the toy store: Johnny wants to be God.
If you stand in his way, there will be hell to pay.
b) Illustration of an infant who stiffens up his body when he does
not get what he wants.
c) It degenerates into a daily system of self-worship.
(1) The most attractive idol is the idol of self. If I no longer
worship God, I will worship me.
(2) I will shrink my world to the size of what I am experiencing,
desire, and what I need.
(3) My approach to relationships will be to co-op you into the
service of my self-worship. I will get angry at you if you stand
in the way of what I want.
(4) People will want to talk about their pain and suffering, but
you cannot talk about those things without talking about
their worship.
E. Impact on Personal Ministry
1. You never get people who are holding these things in their untainted,
creational form. Everyone is experiencing these things in their sin-
degraded form.
2. So, wisdom has degenerated into autonomous systems of foolishness.
3. Interpretation has degenerated into self-swindling.
4. Worship has degenerated into systems of self-worship.
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5. There is a level where no one wants what he really needs or wants
what you offer. They want to feel better. They want their problems
solved. You can not give them those things without touching who
they are as human beings.
IV. Community Groups
V. Wrap-up: Three pieces of our humanity
A. Hebrews 3:12-13
1. A passage written to believers, addressed to “Brothers”
2. It is a progressive warning.
3. How could it ever be that a believer would come to this form of
hardening?
a) Spiritual blindness: not only are people seeking alternative
systems of wisdom; not only are they involved in interpretive
self-swindling; not only are they in active pursuit of God-
replacements; they are blind to it all.
b) Sin is the world’s worst masquerade party. Sin presents itself as
something other than what it is.
c) My problem is that I am blind to sin. I do not get that that is
what is wrong with me.
d) I am blind to my blindness.
(1) Paul’s friend, who is physically blind, knows he is blind and
has decided to live.
4. (v.13) “Encourage one another daily.” Personal spiritual insight of
those internal dynamics is a product of community.
a) You do not get it by yourself because sin blinds, and it blinds me
fi rst. You need help.
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b) You need counseling because you are human, not because you
are in the middle of the problem.
c) We all need counseling because all of those glorious things have
degraded all of us. There is a “leveling of the playing fi eld.”
d) God is able to use people who are struggling with their own
blindness to help those who are blind. How amazing is God’s
grace!
e) All of these matters go on unabated because they go on unseen.
f) Before you can give that counselee sight, you have to convince
them that they are blind. No one is going to come to you saying
that they are blind.
g) The war that takes place at the level of situations and
relationships happens because of the deeper war of these internal
dynamics.
h) There is a real way of counseling that results in lasting personal
change, which is almost always conducted at a deeper level than
the presenting problem.
B. We ought to sit here with a deep heartfelt gratitude for the word of God.
God unfolds what is really going on to us in his word.
1 Cornelius Plantiga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1995) ix-x.2 Ibid., 6.3 Ibid.
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Lecture 3
I. Introduction
A. The fi rst four lectures will lay a context for the methodology that we are
going to be looking at.
B. Your methodology has its roots in your theology.
C. Review of previous lectures:
1. Cruciform community1: a community that forms itself to
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christological change is a
community project.
2. We are looking at human beings and how they function from a
creation-fall-redemption perspective.
D. Why we are going to look at a biblical theology of the heart:
1. It is one of Scripture’s most dominant themes developed throughout
the whole redemptive story. It is signifi cant, important, and
foundational.
2. Given the culture we are in, it is counterintuitive to us.
a) It does not embrace the kind of anthropology that has the heart
as the central part of who human beings are and how they
operate.
b) Result is a combination of an environmental and biological
determinism.
3. You are powerfully infl uenced by the philosophical oxygen of your
culture.
4. If what we are after is lasting change and the heart is the epicenter of
human functioning, then lasting personal change has to happen at
the level of the heart.
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II. Opening prayer
III. What the heart does
A. The Bible’s structural anthropology divides you into two parts that
interplay.
1. Your outer person (your physical self)
2. Your inner person (your spiritual self)
B. There is a whole catalog of terminologies for the inner man collected
into the term “heart.”
1. “Heart” is the summary term and shorthand term for all the other
terms of the inner man.
2. “Heart” is the core of your causality as a human being and the
central, motivational you.
C. The heart directs and shapes your behavior and words. Luke 6: From out
of the overfl ow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
1. We try to back away from the direct connection between our words
and our heart.
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2. Example of Paul Tripp’s family reunions
D. The bright promise of the new covenant is a new heart. If the work of
Christ is to change you, then he has to change you at that level. Even
with all of the radical foolishness, selfi shness and arrogance of your heart,
God embraces you with his grace and changes you at your causal core.
E. Mark 7:1-23
1. Jesus Christ was the “master of the segue.” Christ uses an event that
takes place with himself and the disciples as a metaphor of these very
issues.
2. Christ is indicting the Pharisees. He is saying, “At the level of your
heart, you are not interested in following me at all. You could not
care less about actually serving me from the heart. What you have
erected is a series of alternative regulations that give a pseudo-
defi nition of morality and essentially is a system of self-atonement
that protects you from seeing the reality of your rebellion.”
3. (v. 20) All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.
This passage decimates biological and environmental determinism.
We are not saying that these things are not infl uential. We are saying
they are not deterministic. What determines your behavior is your
heart. Your big problem is inside of you.
4. Example of sexual immorality: It must fi rst reside in your heart
before it becomes an item of your behavior (cf. Sermon on the
Mount).
5. Example of slander: Before slander ever gets verbalized, it is actually a
condition of the heart.
F. The Church does not have a heart-rooted defi nition of sin. Sin is
profoundly deeper than behavior. It is your deepest thoughts, behaviors,
motivations, cravings, etc.
1. Examples of various sins that are unseen but present
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2. We have a signifi cantly unbiblical defi nition of sin where sin is
defi ned as breaking God’s set of rules. That defi nition will miss 98
percent of what sin is about. It hurts us.
3. As a result [of an unbiblical defi nition of sin] people can be
Christians, counsel others, and fail to think that sin has anything
to do with how they care for other people. They do not understand
that sin is a motivational category.
4. More examples of sin.
[Note: In the audio, when Paul says “this,” he is pointing to his heart]
G. People need to be won to this understanding of sin.
1. Consider marriage counseling. What you have in relationships is an
intersection and collision of these two hearts (and their desires).
a) You do not give relational principles without addressing the heart.
b) Why? Whatever you teach will be shaped and distorted by what
that heart is after.
2. Illustration of lost watches in a kindergarten class and Jimmy.
H. The process
1. Part of what it means to know another person is to know the heart.
a) When someone is a friend, and you say, “I am getting to know
another person,” what kind of “knowing” are you talking about?
(1) You mean you are getting to know aspects of that inner
person.
(2) You are getting to know the inner person as it gets expressed
in predictable outer words and behaviors.
b) We want to be used of God to know a person (and have them
know themselves) at the level of the heart.
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2. We want to shine the light of Scripture on what has been exposed.
What does the Bible have to say about that?
3. We want to place the Lord Jesus Christ next to that struggle. What is
offered by Christ to someone who is struggling in this way?
I. What are we really going after when we talk about the “heart?”
1. Romans 1:18-ff
a) God in the goodness of his grace has created the physical world
in such a way that it pictures his qualities. I am confronted with
God and the implications of that confrontation upon me.
b) That revelation of God gets at two human tendencies:
1) Autonomy: God’s revelation highlights that we are his. If
you create something, you own it.
2) Self-suffi ciency: I want to believe that I have everything in
myself to be what I am supposed to be and do what I am
supposed to do. God’s revelation highlights our dependency.
3) Illustration of farm ministry
c) Romans 1:25 is the operational core of this passage
1) “[T]ruth exchanged for a lie,” is a reference to the Garden of
Eden.
(a) The lie of the Garden is that life can be found somewhere
outside of the creator, that you can have that autonomous
self-suffi cient existence.
(b) The lie is, therefore, that you can be like God.
2) Human beings are always serving something. We were meant
to have our life shaped by one motivational desire: the glory
of God.
3) There is a migration away from worship and service of the
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creator to worship and service of some aspect of the creation.
4) The spiritual is replaced by the physical.
5) The passage is meant to be practical because worship is a
practical, functional human category.
6) Cf. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, where verse 3 is
about the danger of idolatry. I am apt to wander away.
d) End of the Scripture passage, “fi lled with every kind of
wickedness….” What kind of sins are these?
1) Sins of relationship, involving other people
2) When my heart quits worshipping the creator and begins
worshipping the creation, the result wreaks havoc in my
horizontal relationships.
2. Exodus 32:1-24
a) As God is giving the moral framework to Moses, this is what is
happening on the ground.
b) (v.1) There is some connection between impatience and idolatry.
Waiting is spiritually diffi cult for us. It is a war of worship.
c) (v. 2-4) We tend to use the things that God has given us to build
our own golden calves.
d) (v. 4) We tend to credit idols with only what God can do.
e) (v. 22-24) We tend to blame our idolatry on others.
f) We tend to back away from our complicity and guilt in idolatry.
3. Psalm 24
a) “…[W]ho does not lift up his soul to an idol,” is the best
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possible defi nition of a pure heart. A pure heart is about worship.
4. Jeremiah 10
a) You will give your heart and soul to something you had made.
That thing will claim your worship. You will leave the mighty,
creating God to fi nd your soul, hope and joy in a scarecrow in a
melon patch. What an indictment of us!
5. I Corinthians 10
a) The common temptation of man is idolatry.
b) The punch line of the passage is, “Therefore brothers fl ee
idolatry.” God is with you in the struggle because he has claimed
your heart and will not push you beyond what you can bear. He
will give you a way of escape. Therefore go where he is going, do
everything you can do to fl ee idolatry.
c) If your heart is gripped by a craving for a certain thing in
creation, then that will tend to be the place where you will
doubt the faithfulness of God. It will tend to be the place where
you will doubt his goodness. It will tend to be the place where
you will doubt whether he has given you more than you can
actually bear.
6. John Calvin
a) “The heart of sinful man is an idol factory.” There is nothing we
are not able to turn into an idol.
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7. Representative list of idolatries2
8. The idols that are easy to see are those which are overt and physical.
The vast majority of idolatries that grab the human heart are unseen.
a) The power and position of religiosity
b) Family
c) Work
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J. Excerpt from Vinoth Ramachandra’s Gods that Fail3
When the Bible talks about heart, it is getting at everything you are and
everything you do. It is talking about the causal core of your personhood.
Lasting change will always take place through the pathway of the heart.
IV. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental section of syllabus under Lecture 3.
V. Wrap-up
A. Ministry implications
1. Additional excerpt from Gods that Fail4
a) The radical implications of worship
b) Idolatry vs. biblical faith
2. Sometimes what people want is not your help to remove their idols.
What they want is for you to help them get their idols to work.
3. The most deceitful idols are those which are most Christianized.
a) My desire may not be wrong, but it must not rule me.
b) What God promises me is himself.
(1) Christ often becomes the vehicle to get what I am after,
rather than the object of what I am after.
(2) Example: I am not promised security. I am promised Christ
who is my security.
4. The big danger of idolatries in biblical counseling is that the ends
become the means. We are asking for something creation was not
meant to offer.
5. The people who come to you will not know the danger of what they
are seeking.
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a) You must be clear.
b) You must be part of a gracious subversion.
c) You have to hold out something better.
6. You have got to realize how easy it is for the gospel to get co-opted, and
when it does we are offering people counseling that falsely says, “The
gospel will meet your needs.” You end up strengthening the very thing
that it was meant to break down.
1 Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001).2 Rev. Timothy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York City).3 Vinod Ramachandra, Gods that Fail (Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1996) 107-108.4 Ibid., 40-42.
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Lecture 4
I. Review foundational pieces of Biblical Counseling model
A. Cruciform community as an essential context
B. Human beings from Creation, Fall, Redemption
C. Theology of the heart
D. Biblical counseling and the use of Scripture
II. Opening Prayer
III. Biblical Counseling and the use of Scripture
A. Counseling tends to be topical. There is a temptation to have a topical
approach to Scripture.
B. What is the proper use of the Bible in personal ministry? What am I
seeking to accomplish as I use God’s word in personal ministry? What
are the dangers to avoid as I use the Bible in counseling?
1. Experience of the person
a) “Lost in Manhattan” – What do I need?
(1) Directions? What if I get lost following the directions?
(2) I need more than a set of directions. I need what the man
who can give me directions has. He has the “helicopter view.”
(3) Descriptions of people lost in the “Manhattan” of their
marriage, their emotions, their parenting, their job, their
own depression, etc.
b) Hermeneutic disorientation: Even with all that I have, I am still
not able to make sense out of my life, my own story.
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c) Spiritual claustrophobia: the size of my life and world shrinks to
the size of my “lost-ness,” to the size of my felt need.
(1) This is an extremely dangerous place for a person to live.
We were made to live transcendent lives, to live for big,
expansive things.
(2) I begin to collect other problems. I make a mess out of my
relationships. I pick up bad habits, etc.
d) Spiritual blindness: I do not see well. I do not see me. I lose an
accurate sense of myself in the midst of my circumstances.
e) Your job is bigger than solving the presenting problem or giving a
three-step set of directions.
(1) The experience of the person belies a bigger issue. There are
reasons they are lost. The presenting problem is the fruit of
something bigger.
(2) We will have agenda confl icts with those who come and talk
to us.
(3) You are not disinterested in the presenting problem. You
better be compassionate, as your Lord will be. That is where
people live.
2. Mistakes we make in counseling
a) We reduce the Bible to a set of directions.
b) Examples: “Here are seven ways not to have a troubled mar-
riage;” “Here are six steps to raising kids who get high SAT
scores;” “Here are the three keys to conquering fear.”
c) You do utter violence to what the Bible is about. You do not help
people in a lasting way. There is a lot of care that does not result
in cure. We are trying to do something with the Bible that it was
not meant to do, and therefore, we are missing what it was
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meant to do in people’s lives.
C. The nature of the Word of God
1. The Bible is not:
a) A systematic theology
b) A topical dictionary
c) An encyclopedia of human problems and divine solutions
d) A principal-driven, topic-oriented approach to Scripture misses
its heart- and life-transforming nature. This will tend to allow
self to remain at the center.
e) Spiritual consumerism, felt need, hunger-driven
f) The book is meant to tell you what you need, but you do not
know what you need. That is why you are lost.
(1) We cannot be accomplices with counselees in that process.
(2) It omits Christ.
g) Results (the reduction of Christianity to theology and rules): Tell
me what to know and what to do, and I will be OK.
(1) There is no redemption.
(2) leads to a “right here-right now” mentality, rather than “an
already but not yet” mentality
(3) I will solve my problems horizontally.
(4) Formalism: My walk with God gets reduced to the scheduled
meetings and appointments of my church.
(5) Legalism: My Christianity gets reduced to keeping a set of
rules.
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(6) Mysticism: a series of emotional, spiritual experiences with
highs and valleys in between that denigrates the mundane
moments of my life where God works.
(7) Activism: reduced to participation in causes
(8) Biblicism: reduced to mastering biblical-theological content
(9) Psychologism: reduced to healing of felt needs
(10) “Socialism”: reduced to a pursuit of network relationships
where the means become the end
(11) The results are attractive because they are rooted in some
truth, but none of them is robust enough to lead me to an
understanding of what it means to be a child of God in a
fallen world.
2. Excerpt from David Henderson’s Culture Shift1
a) The epicenter of the agenda of every confl ict is self-denial.
(1) Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:15: Jesus came to break our addiction to us.
(2) I want my way, and I want you to want my way.
b) The Bible is more like a novel. It is one story.
c) “Biblical” redefi ned
d) Misuses of Scripture
e) Scripture’s purpose is to point the person to Christ.
f) Problem: All of the diagnostic work and goals happen before the
Bible is ever opened.
(1) The Bible does not become very good aspirin for self-diag
nosed diseases.
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(2) The Bible has to defi ne the need.
(3) The Bible has to be more than a set of directions. It has to
be a helicopter view of Manhattan.
3. Additional excerpt from Culture Shift2
a) The Bible is a door that brings self-absorbed humanity face to
face with the self-giving God.
b) seeing the wound of another as access to God and access to
something bigger and better than what this person has been
living for
4. Additional excerpt from Culture Shift3
a) God is not primarily in the business of meeting needs. He is in
the business of being God.
b) God’s agenda is to display His glory.
c) Invite men and women out of the hollow pursuit of living for
themselves and to be consumed by him. It is to make his follow-
ers men and women of deep trust and character, the kind of
Christ-like individuals with whom God is pleased to spend
eternity.
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5. The Bible is a theologically annotated story
a) About the story
(1) It is the everything (comprehensive) story
(2) The story has a plotline
(word-drama-creation-fall-redemption-destiny).
(3) It answers fundamental questions of meaning. Meaning is
rooted in the work of God and the story of God’s work.
(4) The story contains mysteries.
(5) We are inside the story (as broken sinners in need of
redemption).
(a) Sin causes us to want to write our own story
(b) Competing stories = war of worship
(c) The between the stories in each situation/relationship
(6) All the mini-dramas are part of the maxi-drama.
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(Bible is not a collection of stories.)
b) There are constant story summaries. You can lose sight of the big
plot. Those story summaries come before the directions.
(1) Example of 1 Peter 1:3-9: These verses are a plot summary of
the whole story of redemption to provide you with new birth
in Christ.
(a) “Then” of the past
(b) “Then” of the future: No one can take away all of the
things in life that are truly worth living for.
(c) “Then” of the now: “grief,” “suffer,” and “trial” are allu-
sions to metallurgy. When you come to Christ you are an
ore-ifi c Christian (with imperfections). God does not
leave you in this state. In his redemptive love, God will
boil you.
(d) That is the story people need to hear from you and will
make sense out of their own existence.
i) People want to be sovereign over their own story.
ii) If you misuse Scripture, you will be an accomplice
to the very thing that the Redeemer is trying to
break down. You will be teaching people how to
make their idolatries work (and they will like you).
c) 1 Peter 1:13: set of directives
(1) Those directives only make sense if you understand the plot.
They are seven reminders of how to live in the plot that was
just summarized. They need the story in order to make sense.
(2) Example of Proverbs: We need to live in the way the plot is
going, and there is blessing in that. Using the Bible in a topi-
cal way will result in people losing confi dence in the Bible.
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(3) Example of relationship with George
7. Goal in ministry
a) Embed this person’s story in the larger story of redemption.
b) Teach people how to live within the plot (Proverbs).
c) Give story-rooted hope, not hope in theological abstractions but
in the work of Christ. Purpose of systematic theology is to
provide shorthand for the story. Theological terms are shorthand
for the story, not replacements of the story.
Versus
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(d) Roots of identity, ethics, mission in the story
(e) What does the story give us for everyday living (jazz vs. sheet
music)?
(1) I do not have an exact script from God. The Bible gives me
a key signature and a time signature, and I am invited to
play jazz. As long as we stay within that key signature and
time signature, we will play harmonious music.
(2) What we do not like about the Christian life is that God
gives us one big “improv” experience so that we would rely
on him.
(3) Key story questions:
(a) Who are we?
(b) Where are we?
(c) What is wrong?
(d) What is the solution?
8. Two Operations:
a) Understanding what you see
b) Understanding what you do not see: People’s problems are not
just what they do see, but the hugely signifi cant things that they
do not see.
c) Excerpt from Subversive Spirituality4
d) Imagination: It is not to conjure up what is unreal. Rather, it is
seeing what is real but is unseen.
(1) When your imagination is atrophied, all you see is your
problem and what your track record is so far.
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(2) When you see your reality in whole and in context, you
respond in totally different ways.
(3) You get reality not just by explanation. You also get it by
imagination.
(4) You cannot see God’s kingdom, but we know it as real as
anything you can see, touch, smell, etc.
(5) Story of Elijah
e) Continued excerpt from Subversive Spirituality5
(1) If my imagination is stunted or inactive, I will only see what
I can use or something that is in my way.
(2) Imagination and explanation are meant to be used in
tandem.
f) People’s diffi culty is not just confusion with what they see. It is
the huge, signifi cant realities that they do not see. As a result,
they do not live with the faith, hope, love, and courage that they
would if they saw those things.
IV. Prayer
V. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 4.
VI. Wrap-up
A. Comments on Community Groups
1. There were a myriad of applications.
2. Experienced the discomfort of the process.
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3. Sweet moments of honest self-disclosure.
B. Astounding beauty: We are people who get lost easily, are so self-
centered, are hurtful, do not see God, etc.; and God moves toward us,
loves us, and pursues us in order to radically change us. His response
is awesome in love, in grace, in patience, and in faithfulness. You start
living in a very different way.
C. Excerpt from Subversive Spirituality6
1 David Henderson, Culture Shift (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 1998) 26-27.2 Ibid., 27-28.3 Ibid., 29-30.4 Peterson 131-132.5 Ibid., 133-134.6 Ibid., 163-165.
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Lecture 5
I. Introductory Remarks
A. Personal Inventory forms (found in Supplemental Section of Syllabus
under “Personal Inventory Forms”)
B. Community Group Case study (found in Supplemental Section of
Syllabus under “Case Studies”)
II. Opening prayer
III. Methods of Change
A. Love: Building a relationship with a person in which the work of God
can thrive. This is an intentional relationship.
B. Know: Gathering the information that is necessary to discover where
change is needed in this person’s life.
C. Speak: Functioning as an instrument of “seeing” and an agent of
repentance.
D. Do: Applying change with specifi city to the relationships and situations
of everyday life. What does change look like?
E. The above is found prominently in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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IV. Process of being Ambassadors
A. Love, Know, Speak and Do are a discreet list of skills. You should think
of these four areas as containers.
1. Love: Everything I would do to build a godly relationship
(e.g., the way you greet a person).
2. Know: All the things that you do so that you come to know this
person at the level of the heart, helping him or her to get to know
him or herself. This is the ministry of asking rich biblical questions.
3. Speak: All the things that I would do to help a person develop two
things.
a) Biblical self-knowledge
b) A sense of gospel calling: What does it mean now to participate
in the work of change that Christ is seeking to do in me?
4. Do: All the things you would do to assist this person as they now try
to live out change in the specifi city of their daily situation or experi-
ence. Insight is not change; it is a step of change. Change is not
change until it is change.
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B. Although there is an order of process with the above, you should not
think of these four elements as phases of a personal ministry relation-
ship. There is a sense that you are doing all of these things at once.
C. 2 Corinthians 5:11-21
1. Ambassador only does one thing: He represents. He incarnates the
ruler that he represents. He is a fl esh and blood representation of
that ruler. When God places you next to another, you represent
Christ with your facial expressions, the tone of your voice, etc.
2. (v. 20) “We implore you….” “You” refers to Corinthian believers.
What is this further work of reconciliation? Legally, believers are
reconciled to God. If you have the legal standing, then you want to
have the actual experience of being reconciled to God lived out in
your everyday experiences.
3. What is the appeal? “Be reconciled to God.” Verse 15 clarifi es this
appeal, “… [T]hat those who live should no longer live for them-
selves.” Those areas where I am captured by my own desires, I need
to be further reconciled to God.
4. Reconciliation is both an event and a process. It is a legal event
where I am reconciled to God based on the work and salvation of
Christ. It is also a process called sanctifi cation where I will live for
him and him alone in my everyday life.
5. Illustration of Paul Tripp’s conversation with his wife.
V. Love
A. Redemptive activity always takes place in the context of relationship.
We have a covenantal view of change. God enters into relationship with
us and then begins this radical work of change in my life.
B. In lasting, personal heart change, relationship is not a luxury. It is an
essential ingredient.
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C. Four critical activities of love:
1. Love has to do with the willingness to enter into this person’s world.
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2. I want to incarnate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Biblical
ministry is not just a ministry of word. It is also a ministry of deed.
3. I want to identify with suffering. I want to take seriously life in a
fallen world. All of us face the brokenness of our world and are
sufferers.
4. I want to accept this person with agenda. It is not just this, “I’m OK
you are OK,” acceptance. It is acceptance unto change. God’s grace
is not just the grace of acceptance. It is the grace of change as well. I
never want to offer acceptance that compromises God’s work of
change.
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5. Re: arrows. These are cross-pollinating and mutually supporting
activities.
6. Although these do not summarize everything you would do, they are
critical aspects of love.
D. Example: Preaching is a craft of content and communication. It is the
same with personal ministry.
E. “Enter” skills:
1. Be natural, relaxed, and friendly. Do not leave your relationship
skills at the door.
2. Get the details of the situation. Be aware there is a great temptation
for you to fi ll in the details of a situation that you really do not know
about. This is because of the familiarity of the terms people will use.
3. Uncover how they are feeling about the situation. Not just emotions
but rather use emotions as a way to see how the person is reading or
interpreting and then responding to what is going on
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(e.g., physical illness).
4. Deal with the “right now” issues. Slow down and aim low. What
right now has this person in its grip? That is what you go after. You
touch that and the person will say, “Yes, this is a place of understand-
ing and help, and I want more.”
5. Connect the Bible to their struggle. This is not the time for huge
theological platitudes. Help them to see that the Bible speaks into
the real world in which they live, cf. Psalm 88:
a) Why is this in the Bible? This Psalm that has no hope is the
most hopeful Psalm in the Bible.
b) Written for the sons of Korah as they lead the procession to
worship. God is saying, “You come as you are.” There is not a
contradiction between worship and the deepest, darkest and
honest cries to the Lord.
c) It is great that this Psalm does not have a resolve. On this side of
heaven, there is some darkness that will not be resolved here.
d) The Bible is fi lled with fl awed people who are rescued by the
grace of God.
e) The grit of Scripture is its glory. Because into that grit came the
Lord Jesus Christ.
6. Show appropriate emotion. You ought to be touched by what you
hear. Something is wrong if you can sit there stoically and passively
and listen to the loves of others.
7. Instill realistic hope. Model hope. Do not just say hopeful things but
model that you can be right in the middle of the overwhelming things
of this person and not be overwhelmed. You have a confi dence in Christ
that is so huge and robust that he can do things even in the convoluted
life of this person. You want to be a person of infectious faith.
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F. “Incarnate” Skills:
1. Remember who you are (ambassadors in need of grace also). I am in
the process with this person and the “wonderful counselor” is work-
ing on us both. I want to keep my own need of grace before me.
2. Look for ways to model Christ’s love and grace. If you are with a
struggling person, there will be opportunities to model this. It is
called prepared spontaneity.
3. Do not correct every wrong you see. They will quit talking to you.
4. Ask, “What of the character of Christ does this person need to see?”
5. Be honest about where and how this person pushed your buttons.
When you are in a personal ministry relationship with another
person, their sin becomes your fi rst-hand experience.
a) Illustration of Paul Tripp counseling a very angry man.
b) Counseling is fraught with temptations. You will not always feel
loving toward the person you are ministering to.
c) I do not want to be in the way of what Christ is doing. I want to
ask, “How is this person affecting me?”
6. Be patient and forbearing. Change is a process. You will be able to
envision change long before change actually takes place. Forbear-
ance is patience under provocation. Example of Christ’s forbearance
with his disciples.
G. “Identify” Skills:
1. Help the person to “name the silences.” The personal, intimate
details that often involve prominent people in their lives are diffi -
cult to talk about, so people have decided to keep silent. I, as a
counselor, am not afraid of what gets put on the table. The gospel
can handle that. I am afraid of what does not get put on the table.
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2. Avoid platitudes. (You cannot fi x suffering with words.) Jesus was
willing to be rejected so that we would no longer be.
3. Be an advocate. You ought to be an agent of mercy. A person will
notice how you respond to the injustices in their life.
4. Be willing to tell your own story. You do not tell it so that you are the
painting that they look at. You want to be a window to the glory of
God.
5. Learn how to use your theology to comfort and console.
6. Help a person see how they can “trouble their trouble.” That can
give hope to people.
7. Point to a suffering Savior. Christ fully faced what it means to live in
this fallen world.
H. “Accept” Skills:
1. Do not ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. People
need to see that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.
2. Avoid both extremes of condemnation and/or compromise.
3. Remember mercy is both word and deed.
a) What does this person need to see in the grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ?
b) How do you need to act on their behalf?
4. Offer grace that promotes change.
5. Remember that acceptance (grace) is more than simply listening and
understanding.
6. Emphasize the purpose, presence, forgiveness and power of Christ for
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change according to Galatians 2:20.
a) “I have been crucifi ed with Christ.” This is a statement of
redemptive historical fact. The work of Christ on the cross is
effective for me.
b) “I no longer live but Christ lives in me.” Based on that historical
fact, I have an identity. The dominant life force is no longer me.
It is Christ.
c) “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me.” This is a statement of
personal commitment. I will now live on the basis of my identity
in Christ.
d) Everyone you will counsel will always be measuring their poten-
tial, usually in two ways:
(1) Potential = What is my track record?
(2) Potential = How big is the problem?
(3) The above are not illegitimate measures of potential, but
they are inadequate. I have been given a whole new
potential that has altered the nature of my identity. You then
begin to live life with expectancy and hope.
(4) Believers should look at diffi cult situations and see stunning
beauty, but people are not there yet. It is our job to help
them see it.
(5) You cannot give away what you do not have.
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VI. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 5.
VII. Wrap-up
A. We are seeking to develop a relationship that promotes the work of
personal change that God is intending to do in this person’s life. It is a
matter of activities and character.
B. Love: character qualities
1. The New Testament is clear about what these character qualities are.
a) Galatians 5, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, and 1 Corinthians 13
b) The above passages all have very precise character qualities
that harmonize well. If you want to be part of this work that
Christ is doing in the life of individuals around you, this is the
kind of way that you need to respond to people in your life.
2. Be humble. Humility is very important. It is working out of an
accurate sense of who you are.
3. Be patient.
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4. Bear with one another in love. That is not tolerance. It is forbear-
ance. I respond in loving ways even though you are struggling.
5. Be compassionate. What would it be like for you to take time to
place yourself in the middle of that person’s experience? (e.g., How
would you respond to someone whose husband left for a younger
woman?)
6. Be kind.
7. Be gentle. Gentleness means that you do not damage the thing that
you are working with in the process.
a) Illustration of Paul Tripp’s son bringing fl owers to mommy.
b) Not all ministry is gentle.
8. Forgive. Do you minister with a spirit of forgiveness because you
have embraced your own need of forgiveness?
9. Love. Do you look for ways to love this person in demonstrative ways
(e.g., sending a card, giving a card of encouraging verses, etc.)?
10. Be faithful. Are you willing to sign on for the duration? That may
not mean you. It may mean attaching this person to other resources.
11. Be self-controlled. There will be times when this is hard.
12. Be joyful. Are you a celebratory person? Do you minister with joy?
a) Illustration of seminary student who viewed people as projects in
the way of ministry.
b) Can I minister with joy in the face of diffi culty?
c) Do I minister with a sense of feeling privileged to be used in the
hands of the redeemer?
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13. Make peace. People want allies and ammo.
14. Be hopeful.
15. Do not boast. You are not there to promote your successes. You are
there to promote a picture of what Christ is able to do in a person’s
life.
16. Do not be rude. Do not throwing out platitudes.
17. Do not be self-motivated. What do I want out of my ministry? Am I
after personal success? Is my ministry a stepping stone to other things?
18. Do not be easily irritated. People will do the exact opposite of what
you offered to them as being helpful.
19. Do not keep a record of wrongs. How can I collect the data that I
need and not hold onto it in that record-keeping way?
20. Do not delight in evil. It is very easy to delight in the dark side of
another person’s story. There is an inquisitiveness that is not healthy.
You know you have to walk through another person’s story but that
is costly to you. You wish you never had to hear stories like that.
Watch for sinful inquisitiveness.
21. Demonstrate an excitement with truth. Do you celebrate truth?
22. Always protect the person. It is a very signifi cant thing.
23. Decide to trust. From day one you want to trust the person. You trust
the person until they give you reason not to.
a) Example of a couple with fi nancial diffi culties
b) People will not talk to you if you have a questioning attitude.
24. Model hope. Literally help people to see hope living in you.
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25. Persevere.
C. You never stop working on your relationship with the person God has
called you to counsel. These character qualities will empower and con-
textualize the things you have to say. Things that are hard for a person
to hear are phenomenally easier to hear from a person who is sympathet-
ic, forbearing, gentle, and kind. All that relational capital empowers all
the hard things you have to say to that person.
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Lecture 6
I. Reminders 1
A. Midterm exam
B. War of Words reading
II. Opening prayer
III. Reminders 2
A. No lecture wrap-up
B. Personal inventory sheets
IV. Know
A. This component is a critically important aspect of the counseling
process. You can only minister to those who you know.
B. The process (see Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands)
1. Start with the situation.
2. Begin to understand how people respond to those situations
(i.e., behavior).
3. Understand the motives behind those behaviors.
V. Biblical Counseling’s two-sided hermeneutics: interpretation of the word and
interpretation of the person
A. Biblical counseling is itself a hermeneutic process.
1. Hermeneutics is the science and methodology of interpretation.
2. Biblical counseling has two critical pieces of interpretation.
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a) Both have to be healthy and robust.
b) Everyone will have a tendency to move toward one side or the
other.
B. Every counseling system gathers data
1. What makes us different is what we do with what we gather. The
epicenter of getting to know a person is not just gathering
information, but what you have done with what you have gathered.
2. The goal is to know the person biblically, looking at this person
through the lens of scripture.
C. Isaiah 55
1. You are counseling people all the time who are making life
investments in things that will never satisfy. They are asking creation
to do what only the Messiah can do.
2. Here is this free offer of grace. You have the opportunity to radically
alter this whole person’s existence.
3. (v.7) It is not just a call to the righteous for insight. It is a call to the
unrighteous as well to come to a merciful God.
4. As biblical counselors, we call people to relate to this surprising,
unexpected God. It is the surprise of grace.
5. (v.11) Am I using the word of God in the way that the Giver of the
word of God intended?
6. (v.13) A promise of radical change, of new fruit in the life of the
individual
D. Excerpt from Tremper Longman’s Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.1
1. We are all in the process of fi nding ourselves.
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2. We need to ask, “Who am I? Why am I here?”
3. The one thing you will fi nd when you counsel people is that they are
not paying attention.
E. Continued excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.2
1. The Bible is a mirror of our souls.
2. The Psalms are an anatomy of the soul (John Calvin).
F. Case study: Sam and Mary
1. The Psalmists became their own voice of fear and anger. It also
redirected their souls and gave them hope for the future.
2. The Bible is a mirror to our souls:
a) It helps us to understand ourselves in the midst of our confusion.
b) It gives us an architectural structure for our thinking.
c) It ministers to us by pointing us to God. We read the Scriptures
and see inside ourselves.
3. Paul Tripp’s concern:
a) The eager biblical counselor will miss the angst, confusion,
lost-ness, and blindness of Sam and Mary and skip right over to
issues of leaving and cleaving. The drama of the moment is at a
much deeper level than the issue of leaving and cleaving.
b) In an attempt to fi x the problem, you miss the person.
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G. Two great commands
1. For some, you will need to be much more biblically literate.
2. I do not want to take for granted the fact that because I know things
about this person, then I know this person.
3. In John Owens’ writing you see how a deep understanding of God’s
word and a deep understanding of people come together.
4. Theologically astute people will view ministry as mastering God’s word.
a) Knowing the word of God is a life-long process. You should
never have a spirit of “arrival.”
b) Think of ministry as a bridge between the shore of the truth of
the word of God and the shore of the truths about this person’s
reality. Your goal is to build a bridge between those two shores.
c) Theological study is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end.
It is meant to radically rearrange you and everything in your
existence, all to the glory of the One who deserves the glory.
5. The “people” people: Paul and Luella, his wife, as illustrations of
these two types of people
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H. The hermeneutic process is the same for both sides.
1. Context is important
a) God calls you to a person in a particular passage in their life. You
will be on-site for a limited period of time. You want to understand
this person in context.
b) Arriving at meaning always takes place before you give advice
(even if you do not realize it).
I. The biblical hermeneutic always rules the personal hermeneutic.
1. You push the data through the sieve of Scripture. Your counsel
results from looking at this person’s story through the lens of the
biblical story.
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2. Additional excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.3
J. You are always dealing with a “double narrative” context.
1. You look at this particular moment in the context of the story of this
person’s life. It will give some kind of meaning to what you are
hearing.
a) How will you understand a man who is avoiding relationships
and who previously lived with a man who was brutally abusive?
You will begin to make connections, but that is not enough.
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b) You need to understand the big narrative (the biblical story) in
order to understand the smaller narrative (this man’s story) so
you can help the person in this moment.
c) Embed this person’s personal story in the biblical story.
2. Data gathering involves two steps:
a) You are entering in to know this person in this moment.
b) You are working to know this person in light of their narrative.
We are not talking about historical determinism. We want to
understand this person’s shaping infl uences.
1. Take historical data of this person via survey questions.
2. Looking for things in that context that would be signifi cant
connectors to what is going on now.
3. My ultimate goal is to teach this person what it means to
live within the context of God’s story.
a) You will have an agenda confl ict with the person to
whom you are ministering. They do not come to learn
how to live within the plot of God’s story.
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b) Make sure you do not make them feel like you are doing
a “bait and switch” on them.
c) Remember God’s after something more than situational
and relational solutions. God is after the core of what
makes this person tick or what moves and motivates
them. He wants to rule that core, and He will use this
moment to get at that core.
d) Counseling often tends to settle on too little in that we
become situational and relational mechanics.
e) This moment is a moment of access to God.
K. Continued excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.4
1. Consider experiences that convey the transcendent.
2. Human beings were created for transcendence, for God and the
grandeur of His kingdom. The borders of our lives are meant to be
vast. Sin causes us to shrink our lives to the size of our lives. We pull
the borders in to nothing bigger than the shape of us.
a) Paul Tripp’s encounter with people in the church who do not
have time or make time to think about their lives from God’s
vantage point.
b) What are they communicating about their value system?
L. Case study: A man who was his own god
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VI. Know: The Process
A. How does the Bible explain, interpret and make sense of the data about
this person in this situation?
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B. Organize in clear biblical categories.
1. What is going on in this person’s life?
2. How does this person typically respond?
3. How does this person think about what is going on?
4. What does this person want from what is going on?
Note: This is not an alternative to the Three Trees model. It is an
organizational tool. There is emotional material on all of the above.
5. Ongoing process of organization and interpretation
a) You are seeking to biblically organize and interpret what you
hear from the person.
b) This will lead to more clarity in direction. Your understanding
will deepen, their insight will deepen, and the agenda for change
will become clearer.
c) Progressive sanctifi cation model: piece by piece, step by step;
things that I can say that will be helpful; I will have more
questions to ask so that my understanding will deepen.
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C. Know involves gathering (i.e. all the things you seek to do in order to
know this person) and interpreting (i.e. discover where change is
needed).
D. What should happen?
1. Change will begin to happen before you even begin to make
statements.
2. The person will begin to grow as you ask them the right questions.
Insightful people are not those with the right answers. Insightful
people are those with the right questions that lead to the right
answers.
3. We need people to help us know ourselves.
4. We never seek to stop knowing the person more deeply, more
accurately, more in context, and more biblically.
E. The Know function extends through the whole process. I am always
open to the fact that there may be further connections made that
will change how I view things and how I biblically interpret it. You are
always gathering and interpreting data.
VII. Q& A
A. Question: What are the “borders” that you were referring to earlier?
Answer: The transcendent purposes of God’s kingdom, His glory,
purposes for His creation. I tend not to care about that. I tend to care
about my own life—that it works, that it is comfortable, and that it is
happy by my defi nition.
B. Question: What did you mean by “transcendence”?
Answer: It means I was created to live for something bigger than the
details of my life. I am literally connected to something that spans
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from origin to destiny. I am part of something that is bigger than my
defi nition of happiness, the easy schedule and a good job, etc. These
things must be viewed as small pieces of a huge whole. Example: What
is a family communicating who takes their kid out of church early to
attend a baseball game? What happens if an injury causes him to quit
playing sports? Paul Tripp’s story.
C. Question: How do you apply these things to friends or unbelievers who
are not in a formal counseling relationship with you?
Answer: Respectfully, delicately. You can engender those types of
friendships where you can press below the casual. The Bible does not
reduce ministry to formal, scheduled moments.
VIII. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 6.
1 Tremper Longman, Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1997) 28.2 Ibid., 28-31.3 Ibid., 13-33.4 Ibid., 33-34.
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Lecture 7
I. Reminders
A. Midterm exam
B. War of Words reading
II. Opening prayer
III. Speak
A. We are not talking about phases of a counseling relationship. Instead,
think of these categories as coexisting functions in being an instrument
of change, and think of these functions as containers.
B. Speak is functioning as:
1. An instrument of seeing
2. An agent of repentance
C. Personal spiritual insight is a result of community.
D. Sin blinds and deceives.
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1. Guess who it blinds and deceives fi rst? You.
2. We have a natural and instinctive ability to recast what we do in a
way that is acceptable to our conscience.
E. I need the help of the body in order to have an accurate sense of myself
(cf. Hebrews 12:12-13). I need daily intervention.
F. People will be heartened by your understanding and helped by your good
questions, but they will need you to help them see with biblical accuracy.
G. Commitment to a new way of living comes from a new way of seeing.
1. If you understand that confrontation has as its goal being an instru-
ment of seeing, then you know a lot about the process.
2. If I am working to help a person see and not just making a pro-
nouncement of judgments, then I am doing a different thing.
a) Having seen, they will want to confess, commit to a new way of
living, and commit to change.
b) You need to ask, “What is the work that I need to do to help this
particular person in this particular situation see the things that
God wants them to see?”
c) Confrontation is more of a participatory process than it is an
event. It is more of a dialogue than a pronouncement event.
d) It is a process.
(1) Instead of one big moment of confrontation, it is many mini-
moments of confrontation.
(2) It has a progressive sanctifi cation fl ow to it: more moments
of insight, leading to more moments of insight, leading to
more moments of insight, etc.
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H. Excerpt from The Peacemaker1
I. You cannot possibly have relationships in life that have nothing to do
with confrontation. If you are a friend, spouse, or co-worker, you have
been involved someway in confrontation.
J. Begin with, “What is my style of confrontation?” “How much does my
ministry feel like the gospel?”
IV. Consideration, Confession, Commitment, and Change
A. The model is a process, and these four words together form a practical,
concrete, process-oriented defi nition of repentance.
B. Repentance is a radical change of heart that leads to a radical change
in the direction of your life. Consideration and confession look back at
what has been done. Commitment and change look forward to what will be.
C. Consideration
1. It is not just the wrong things in behavior but the thoughts and heart
as well.
2. We are not just talking about the heart either. They need to see the
grandeur of God’s grace, a God who is for them in His grace. We
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want the truths of God’s grace to invite them out of hiding, to be
dissatisfi ed with “spiritual plastic surgery.” They can come honest
before Him and be drop-dead unafraid.
3. It is not just seeing myself. It is seeing myself in the shadow of a large
and glorious Christ. This is how biblical counseling is radically differ-
ent from all that the world has to offer.
4. For all the calls of secular counseling to honesty, secular counsel-
ing does not have Christ. The bedrock of personal honesty is not
the law. It is the gospel. It is the goodness of God that leads to
repentance.
5. Ted Tripp’s story of a boy who took money from the offering plate.
(Imagine a father who drags his son to the pastor.)
a) Can you imagine that the human heart in the face of being
caught would cut a deal with the Messiah?
b) We want people to understand that the Messiah died so that
there would be no need for any more deals.
c) Pronouncements are encouraging the heart to hide, to cut a
deal. Note: We are not saying to compromise the truth of what
needs to be said.
d) Tedd knew the child was not yet a confessor. He had been
caught, but there was no turn in his heart. Tedd wanted to
encourage a turn in the child’s heart.
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6. Getting a person to:
a) Slow down: settle down and step outside of himself or herself
and begin to look.
b) Look: inviting a person to self-examination.
(1) Help them to step out from themselves and take a look at
who they are.
(2) Example of Christ’s use of the parables
(3) It is hard to look at yourself. We often get defensive and get
into modes of self-explanation.
c) Listen: to be willing to hear things that are hard to hear, that
challenge my typical assumptions about myself.
d) In order to do (a) to (c) you have to be relaxed, patient, kind,
joyful, and pleasing in your character as you are with the person.
(1) To portray that is not an act of judgment, but this is an act
of love. You are physically incarnating the gospel, the love
of Christ.
(2) You are there not because God is turning his face away from
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this person, but because he is turning his face toward this
person in love, mercy and grace.
(3) Example of the prophets in the Old Testament as evidence
of God’s grace and love
e) Think: inviting a person to think through their motives, their
desires, and to be involved in the process of exegeting
themselves.
(1) Metaphor of unpacking a suitcase to see all the clothes laid
out on the fl oor
(2) What makes you think that decades of blindness will calm
down in 30 minutes? Consider the disciples who were with
the Messiah for three years and still did not get it. Jesus
response, “There are many more things I want to share with
you.”
f) Evaluate: inviting a person to step back, make connections, and
draw conclusions
(1) I make an evaluation.
(2) Ask: “What is God showing you?” “What are you
concluding?”
(3) I am not doing that for them. I am making them evaluate for
themselves, which leads to a confession where they own up
to things for themselves.
g) The above is a dialogue process, a conversation, a journey two
people are taking together. It is a journey of insight.
(1) Example of the prophets doing ridiculous things
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7. What consideration is not:
a) If, by virtue of the force of my presentation, you acquiesce to
something, your heart has not moved. You acquiesce to get out
from under this uncomfortable moment.
b) They set up a false confession and a false repentance.
c) You can actually encourage a bogus confession and repentance,
a hypocritical turning.
8. Goal of consideration
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a) To show them themselves without distortion
b) Helping a person establish a habit of looking into the mirror of
God’s word again and again (cf. James 1)
9. Consideration requires:
a) “Relational Capital” (I Thessalonians 2:1-12)
(1) Paul is reminding the Thessalonians of the quality of his
relationship with them, “You know how much we loved you.”
(2) He is doing that because he is about to say very hard things
to hear.
(3) Everything that you do to build a loving, godly relationship
with this person is contributing to your ability to confront
them.
(4) To the degree that this person knows that you are for them,
they are more apt to listen to you, to be self-disclosing to you
because they trust you.
(5) Every good relationship-building thing that you do is build-
ing toward that success of confrontation.
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b) Depends on good data gathering
(1) You cannot confront that which you do not know. You can
not give clarity if you do not have it.
(2) Every good question you ask is helping you to confront in a
way that is clear, concrete, precise, and helpful.
c) Biblical clarity
(1) If you are gong to invite a person to look into the mirror of
God, you will need to have already done that.
(2) Biblical clarity is essential and important.
(3) One of the prevalent errors in confrontation is that it is a
nasty mix of personal opinion and biblical truth. They do
not need personal opinion.
(4) You can never approach a person objectively.
(a) Their sin becomes part of your experience.
(b) Story of a man who chased his boss around with a forklift
d) The right heart (Colossians 3:12-13)
(1) You have to deal with your own heart.
(2) You cannot start with verse 15. You have to start with verse 12.
(3) Ministry is not an antiseptic. It is fraught with temptation.
People who need ministry are hard to minister to because
they are people who need ministry.
e) Commitment to the process
(1) You cannot get ahead of the game. You cannot do too much
too soon.
(2) You have to celebrate any moment where the person is
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seeing things. You cannot be so focused on the end goal that
you diminish the steps a person is taking in the process.
f) Prepared spontaneity
(1) You do not know where the Spirit will blow.
(2) You are ready and active, but you need to be fl exible.
D. Confession
1. What is it?
a) It is a two-part confession: to God and to the appropriate people.
b) Do not assume confession. Lead a person to specifi c moments
of concrete confession. Ask, “What is it at this moment that
God wants you to confess?”
c) Hosea 14:2, “Take words with you and return to the Lord…that
we may offer the fruit of our lips.” The most precious sacrifi ce
you can make to the Lord is a sacrifi ce of words, a sacrifi ce of
confession.
d) This confession is “heart-deep.”
2. Leading a person to confession
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a) Asking questions
(1) It is better to ask questions because it engages the person.
(2) You are asking questions not to get more information, rather
to get the person to fully understand and own what has
already been covered.
(3) Example of Jesus’ process of question and answer
b) Marshall insight by giving illustrations and stories.
(1) Draw pictures, tell stories.
(2) God designed his world to be metaphor of truth.
(3) Story of a controlling man
(4) If you pull a metaphor from that person’s life, it will continue
to confront them even when you are not there.
c) Think of appropriate self-disclosure
(1) Example of Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1
d) You are always moving a person towards this thing. Have a
person summarize what they are seeing.
(1) It will tell you how you are doing and what still needs to be
done.
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e) You must recognize that it is only the work of the Holy Spirit.
You must be praying for yourself and for them. You are only an
instrument.
E. Commitment
1. If the wrong way was the wrong way and the person has owned that
and confessed that, then there should be a natural commitment to
the right way. You do not want to assume that.
2. You can only counsel the person that God has placed with you.
Although there may be situations and people that need to be
changed, you can only be part of the change in the place that God
has placed you. Your focus is the person in front of you.
3. You are calling them to deal with what God has put on their plate.
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4. Big Question
a) Call a person to be committed to specifi c and concrete new ways
of living. It is not generic.
b) The cast of that love has to fi t the context of that relationship.
What will that look like in the details of this person’s life?
F. Change
1. The new commitments now need to be applied where I live everyday.
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2. Steps of change:
a) After the fact: a person looking back after something has happened
(1) Praise God that the person has seen that! It is failure (This
is what the person will see.) and insight. There is growth.
(2) The call is to confess and recommit.
b) During the fact:
(1) A person has insight in the middle of the moment that they
are doing it again. The person will see it as discouraging.
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(2) You have to point out that there is growth. The Bible says,
“Stop, fl ee, remember.”
c) Before the fact:
(1) Person looking forward, “Here is one of those situations that
is trouble for me.”
(2) The call of Scripture is to prepare.
d) Gone
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(1) You are not saying that you are incapable of falling in this
area. You are saying that this thing is not dominant in my
life like it once was
3. Process
a) Change happens this way:
V. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 7.
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VI. Facilitating Change
A. Clarify priorities: Person will be overwhelmed with the thought, “Where
do I start?”
1. You want to say, “Here is where you are to begin.”
2. Lay out the logic of the steps.
B. Laying out a plan for change:
1. Prioritize steps of change
2. Person will fi nd such comfort by the fact that you can think about
change in an orderly way.
C. Recognize the importance of little steps.
1. Any movement toward what God says is right should be celebrated.
You should not just be an end-goal person.
2. Celebrate those little moments because people live in those little
moments. We live in the utterly mundane. Change typically takes
place in mundane little moments.
D. Be ready to encourage.
1. Change is hard. It beats at the borders of your faith. When you
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change, you want everything else to change, and it does not.
2. Example of a wife who has changed and a husband who gets more
critical
3. People will need to be encouraged. According to Hebrews 6, God
will never forget the work that is done in his name. Encouragement
is never inappropriate on this side of heaven because we live in a
broken world with broken people.
E. Deal patiently with resistance.
1. Understand how deep the roots are and how resistant even followers
are. The disciples were followers. They had left their lives to follow
Christ, but they were incredibly resistant along the way. Consider
the patience of Christ. He continued to love, teach, was willing to
confront, but he was also patient with that resistance.
2. Unpack the resistance. It may be about confusion, the dissenting
counsel of others.
F. Be willing to readjust your plan.
1. Do not have your identity in your plan.
2. Hold your counsel with an open hand. Always be ready to have your
insight clarifi ed, try a different approach, etc. Be a counselor who is
ready to be counseled.
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VII. Romans 8:1-17
A. Confrontation is a ministry of the gospel.
B. The comfort of the gospel (Romans 8:1-11)
1. Removal of the sentence of condemnation which corresponds to the
sin
a) Calls me out of hiding, denying, excuse making, etc., to say,
“This is me, and this is what I’ve done”
2. Indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit
a) Corresponds to the inability of sin; sin leaves me lame, weak,
and unable to do what God has called me to do.
b) God has given me the power to do what he has called me to do.
c) As a counselor, you should be able to say, “You are not alone.
There is a new life force in you that gives you the ability to do
what is right.”
C. The call of the gospel (Romans 8:12-17)
1. A true son celebrates his identity as a son by trying to be like his
father.
2. The call is also to put to death the deeds of the fl esh and to live as a
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true son, committed to the likeness of the Father.
D. Tendencies
1. Antinomianism: lawless; emphasis of the comfort to the exclusion of
the call
a) Example of counseling the abused and the abuser
b) Temptation is to overemphasize the comfort over the call in my
counsel to the abused. That person needs the comfort as well as
the call of the gospel.
2. Legalism: emphasizing the call without the comfort
a) Example of counseling the abused and the abuser
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b) Temptation to hammer the abuser with the law
c) There is a whole underbelly that has not been discovered. If he
does not have the comfort of the gospel, he will not come out of
hiding and make deals with the Messiah.
E. Everybody needs the call and comfort.
1. There will be nuances of emphasis and different entry points, but
everyone needs a whole gospel.
2. You get in the way of what God is doing in that person’s life when
you emphasize one over the other.
3. It is hard to call a person who has been abused to confess the wrong
way they have dealt with the situation.
4. You will be afraid to offer the comfort of the gospel to an abuser for
fear that he will not take his sin seriously.
F. There needs to be a balanced gospel offered.
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VIII. Q&A
A. Question: How do you preach this (i.e., the comfort and call of the
gospel) and not put someone on a pendulum of comfort-call, comfort-
call?
Answer: It is never either-or. It is both-and. Scripture does not talk
about the two in opposition to the other. It is two pieces of a whole and
you have got to hold onto the whole.
1 Ken Sande, The Peacemaker (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004) 162-165.
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Lecture 8
I. The midterm exam
A. Timed exam: 3 hours
B. Question regarding 2 Corinthians 5 will be 20% of the exam.
C. Honor system exam: You can have your Bible and computer.
II. Opening Prayer
III. Do
A. Although there is some sense to the order, these are not chronological,
linear phases of ministry. They are coexisting functions.
B. Personal ministry is messy and unpredictable. You have to function with
prepared spontaneity and be fl exible.
C. There is a tendency to end ministry too soon.
1. There is a tendency to end it when there is real insight, confession,
and commitment to change.
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2. They end the relationship before applied change has happened.
3. What is sharp and clear in your counseling conversation becomes
less clear when they take it back to their everyday situations and
relationships.
4. They need encouragement and warning as they apply things that are
not intuitive to them.
D. You need a team perspective as to what you are doing.
1. You may need to marshal resources so that another person can walk
alongside this person as they begin to apply change.
2. Example: an older couple coming alongside
E. There are four things that are emphasized:
1. You need to set your ministry agenda.
a) Where are you going?
b) Do you need to change goals?
c) How is that going to take place?
2. You have to deal with the issue of responsibility. This is a critical
piece.
3. You want to provide accountability.
a) It is not being someone’s Holy Spirit. Accountability is for the
person who is already committed to change.
b) The person who makes accountability work is the person being
held accountable.
4. Continue to instill in people their identity in Christ.
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F. Embedding a person’s story in the larger story of redemption.
1. You are doing more than getting people to live out isolated,
biblical principles.
2. You are getting people to live in their particular piece of the world
that moves in the direction of God’s story. What is God up to?
G. Get people to see the plot of their lives in the plot of God’s story.
1. Marriage example
a) What in the world is God at work at in my marriage?
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What is God revealing?
b) What does it mean to love this person with the love of Christ?
2. Parenting example
a) The goal is not about getting the right response out of a child.
b) Better question: What is God after in the life of my child, and
how can I be part of what he is doing, even if that means things
stay messy longer than I want?
3. This is not what people think about their problems or what they
want from you.
4. What does God say about people, about life in a fallen world, about
grace?
5. This is something uniquely and qualitatively different than solving
problems. It is teaching people how to deal with their diffi culties and
that they are living within the plot of God’s story (i.e., why Christ
came).
H. Themes
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1. Sovereignty
a) There is someone who is in control of my existence who is the
defi nition of what is true, wise, and loving.
b) There is purpose to this sovereignty.
2. Fallen world
a) We minimize how signifi cant the damage is. Shalom has been
shattered, and that brokenness is everywhere.
b) People come to counseling with a surprise as the Bible describes
what life is like in a fallen world.
3. All of these are not just theology.
a) They are elements of the story.
b) They are lenses that I use to look at life.
c) They defi ne life for me.
d) They set an agenda for me.
I. What does change look like?
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1. It is when what I want at the street level of my life follows the map of
God’s purposes for me.
2. A person’s actions and words in a given situation or relationship are
that person’s attempt to get what is valuable to them.
3. If I am going to be part of what God is going to do then it starts with
my desires mapping onto God’s purposes for me. The bottom line
problem is that we have an agenda confl ict with our Lord. What we
want and crave is different than his purposes for us.
J. What should this desire set look like for this person in this life?
1. Parenting example
a) Examine typical motivations of a parent
b) The quandary for mom is not what she wants to do but what she
should do.
2. Example of Paul Tripp’s son lying to him about where he was going
and what he was doing
a) God was already about the work of rescue in the life of his son.
Paul was fi lled with a sense of God’s love which changed his
agenda towards his son.
b) Paul’s conversation with his son. It deals with the practicalities
of what you need to deal with (e.g., issues of disobedience and
lying to dad), but it goes at it in a radically different way. If God
has already begun a work of rescue, what does it mean for me to
be part of that rescue?
K. The bible is not a book of magic. It is a story.
1. Every principle has the whole story embedded in it.
2. Application is all about hermeneutics. If you cannot apply a principle
to a person’s life, it is not that you do not understand the principle,
you do not understand the story. The principle is tied to the story.
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3. Example of, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” It is not a mechanical
thing. It is about a movement to be part of where God is going.
L. Application is not about what you do after you understood a passage of
scripture. It is how you have understood a passage of scripture.
M. What will change look like? I want to be specifi c because people live in
utter specifi city.
1. How will the fundamental character of this relationship need to
change? How will this man need to talk to his wife?
2. Perhaps the whole living situation is a monument to obtaining
“heaven on earth.”
3. What are these people living for? Is this a mom who really believes
that she can turn her children into trophies? Or is she ready to live
with the messiness of having given birth to sinners in a fallen world?
4. How do these people defi ne what is important or what they need?
What are they calling essential, and what are they calling nonessential?
5. What role does relationship with God play in the scheme of things?
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6. How much of a role does money play?
7. Do they have a sense of the essential nature of the community of the
Body of Christ?
8. Are there things in their history that have never been opened up?
9. How do they make sense of life? How do they interpret what is
going on in their world?
N. Circles of responsibility and concern
1. Responsibility
a) It is my God-story job description.
b) The only proper response is to obey.
2. Concern
a) These are things that are not my responsibility but are important
to me. I am not able to do or produce them.
b) Example: Salvation of a loved one—the only proper response is
to trust God.
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3. There is massive confusion over this issue of responsibility. It will
come on the table as you begin to mobilize people toward change.
People need to know what their job description is. People need to
know those things that are important, but they must entrust these
important things to God.
4. Overly responsible (“Mini-Messiah”)
a) This person will know frustration, doubt and depression because
she is doing something that is not in her responsibility and not
within her realm of ability.
b) She is acting as if God does not exist.
c) It creates anger and fear in the people that this person will come
in contact with.
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5. Irresponsible (“God’s vacationers”)
a) This person will experience the same host of diffi culties as the
“Mini- Messiah”.
6. Confused
a) Fuzzy about where God’s responsibility ends and his begins.
7. You want to make this a conversation. It is helpful to have people
make their lists.
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a) What is God calling you to do? What is you job description?
b) What are the things you need to entrust to God?
c) People tend to get the lists mixed up.
8. It is a model. It is meant to be an instrument. People do have
tendencies. You do not want to use it in a way that stereotypes or
puts people in unhelpful categories.
O. Operational questions
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1. Think concretely.
2. The purpose of the public ministry of the word is general application
to groups of people.
3. The genius of private ministry is that it can be done with utter
specifi city. If you do not get specifi c, you have turned private
ministry into public preaching.
P. Accountability
1. People need your wisdom, insight, guidance, correction, and
instruction as they seek to implement change.
2. People need encouragement. Change is hard. It takes longer than
you imagined. There are potholes, distractions, etc., along the way,
and people get discouraged. They get a vision of what could be, and
they get discouraged.
3. People need warning. It is tempting to want to go back to Egypt.
a) Numbers 11:4
(1) The problem is menu-boring food.
(2) The tendency is to think of another menu.
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(3) When you are discouraged, it is easy to fall into a revisionist,
romantic history.
(4) They are missing the awesome manifestation of God’s
covenant love. Manna is such an awesome picture of God’s
provision that Jesus takes manna as his name, “I am the
bread that comes down from heaven.”
b) These are people just like us. In the middle of a journey, it gets
hard. You are eating things you do not want to eat. You start
dreaming about “back there.” That is why people need warning.
Q. Identity: Helping people to properly measure their potential
R. Typical ways people measure their potential:
1. Track record and size of the problem I am facing
2. In contrast, from the vantage point of Christ’s presence, promises,
and provision:
a) It is a “both-and.” I need to be honest about my track record
and the size of the problem but also see with the lens of an
active and present redeemer.
b) That is not intuitive to people. You cannot remind people
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enough about their identity in Christ.
c) People forget who they are. Identity amnesia leads to identity
replacements.
IV. Q&A
A. Question: How do you do this when you do not have regular weekly
meetings with a person?
Answer: We have God ordained limits. This model is elastic and some
times it can give me tracks to run on. Other times it gives me lots of
detail that I can use.
B. Question: To what extent are you limited with someone who does not
know Christ or does not accept Christ?
Answer: It is a great evangelistic model. Most evangelism enters into
the middle of a person’s story. It is going to have some nuances that are
different.
C. Question: To what extent does prayer come into play? Frequency?
Answer: It is important. I always pray in the beginning when I am meet-
ing with someone. I need to remind myself. I pray “we” prayers because
God is at work in all of us. There are times where you pause and say,
“This is not working, let’s pray.” When a person is mad at you. It is
important for a person to hear you pray for them as a redemptive
advocate.
V. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 8.
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VI. Syllabus
VII. Plan for change
A. You have got to know how this person is experiencing what is going on.
That is where you get all the heart stuff, the thoughts, and emotions.
You have to sense their struggle within the struggle.
B. You have to have a rich base of specifi c data. Know the details. Build a
bridge between the shore of the biblical story and the shore of this
person’s story. Do not build halfway bridges.
C. Have a clear grasp of the biblical story. What is the redemptive intention?
[Note: In the audio, when Paul refers to “this top one,” he is referring to #1 in
the picture above. “Next one” is referring to #2 in the picture above. “The
third one” is referring to #3 in the picture above.]
D. Every part of the model needs every part of the model to work. Think
functions, not phases.
E. Three complimentary elements: You are developing knowledge of the
person which is different from knowledge of the problem. It is cross-
pollinating with what I know of the person’s world which is embedded
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in my knowledge of the biblical story. This tripartite way of knowing
gives me my sense of direction. People do not know themselves well
because of their spiritual blindness. People misinterpret their world.
They do not understand the movement of God.
VIII. Application: A Narrative Approach1
A. Biblical narrative
1. How does the biblical story unpack this person’s story?
2. How does the bible help me make sense of what is going on in this
person?
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B. Personal narrative
1. How have they responded to life? I am getting a window on what
makes this person tick or where they fi nd identity.
2. What am I learning about who this person is and how they deal with
life? I am in the story with them. I am watching this person with
their child, with their spouse, and as they make decisions.
3. What is this person after? What do they want? Interaction of the
personal story and the biblical story.
4. How are they making sense of their life so far? Where do they get
confused? Where do things not add up for them? Mirror of the
word of God should give me insight.
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5. What are those troublesome questions they have never been able
to answer? On what basis does this person make decisions?
Expediency? Fear of man? Financial resources?
6. If this person had the courage to put into words what he really wants,
what would he say he wants? You are answering these questions in a
parent-child relationship context. What is revealed by words and my
actions?
a) At this point, where you are making concrete applications of
change, it is easy to forget all that you have learned so far and
become a principle mechanic. You have sold your birthright.
b) Rather this is an awesome opportunity to connect this person in
a deeper and fuller way to the purposes of God.
c) This person can wake up with a deeper sense of God’s mission
and purpose.
d) I get engaged and excited when I am caught up in something
more captivating, more beautiful than what I want. God’s grace
is such a gorgeous thing.
e) It is not impractical and ethereal. It is very practical, but it is
bigger than “three steps” to solve this problem.
1 Longman 33-35.
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Lecture 9
I. Introductory Remarks
II. Opening Prayer
III. Love (remixed)
A. Excerpt from Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places1
1. Community is hard. It is not that we just do not love our enemies.
We do not love the people we say we love.
B. God calls us to love people who are not really loveable. You are going to
be stained by the struggle.
C. Excerpt from Peterson’s Eat This Book2
1. The ascendancy of wants, needs, and feelings.
2. There is the assumption that I have the ability to determine what I
need.
a) If that assessment (of wants, needs, and feelings) moves me
towards that ministry, I have already decided what I want from
that ministry.
b) I do not come as a counselee. I come as a consumer.
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D. These messy relationships are not an option.
1. God models that. God makes a relationship with us that become
the context in which change takes place. Justifi cation precedes
sanctifi cation.
2. This is the foundational function. Without this the other three func-
tions will not work.
3. Love is a skill. There are skillful things to do. But it is much more a
matter of character than skill.
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4. As you are doing counseling, you have to fi ght the self-righteousness
that can be part of ministry.
a) Be willing to humbly keep your heart open to the Wonderful
Counselor.
b) Be willing to start with your own heart.
c) If you do not deal with your own heart fi rst, all that has been
taught this semester can make you dangerous. It can degenerate
into power, control, manipulation, and other things that are
reprehensible to the gospel.
5. Colossians 3:12-16
a) (v. 15-16) One of the New Testament’s call to a world of
personal ministry.
b) The whole platform of the call to personal ministry is the call to
incarnate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. The call is meant to
dye everything you do in ministry.
E. What happens when that character is lacking?
1. Other motivations: success, anger, fear of man, self-righteousness
2. If you are not motivated by love, you hear a different rendition of
what is being said to you.
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a) I will not experience the other person’s pain. I am experiencing
my pain.
b) If angry, you will be thinking that this person has become a
square for you.
c) I do not hear the data accurately. Therefore, my responses are
not based on being touched by your experiences. Data has been
reprocessed.
3. Beginning counselors tend to forget to love the counselee.
a) They love themselves.
b) Example of a beginning counselor who was motivated by wanting
to do it all right, get everything covered.
4. Successful ministry is not about acquiring academic skills.
F. Love: Practical Considerations
1. Do not let your ministry devolve into being a problem mechanic. A
person will pick up the fact that you do not really care about them,
you just want to fi x it.
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2. Be natural.
a) Laughing can be a particular grace in a moment.
b) Walk with a person somewhere outside the formal counseling
offi ce.
c) Be patient. Small steps for you might be mountainous leaps for
the other person.
d) Work to be understanding: What is it like to live in that person’s
world?
3. Be willing to serve.
a) Pass a tissue with a word of comfort.
b) Make a phone call.
c) Write an encouraging card.
d) Never let displays of emotion pass. Comment on it.
4. Be aware of who you are talking to
a) If you are a child and you are talking to a professional, you have
two assumptions: I am sick or I am in trouble.
b) Each of those relationships has a particular caste. You do not
address an older person like a peer. You do not talk to a child like
an adult.
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5. Early data gathering is not to build a case. You may have the topic,
but you do not know how this person is living in the topic. You are
gathering data so that you can know this person.
a) You already have a catalog of skills in relationships.
b) Example of Paul’s son and Tedd’s daughter
6. Be aware of the setting you are in and its limits.
a) Love recognizes the limits. I want to help you be comfortable
with those limits and to live within them.
b) It is weird not to talk about those limits.
7. Do everything you can to guard this person’s reputation.
a) It starts with you. You should not now treat a person as if they
are a particular sin on two legs.
b) Issues of confi dentiality. You should never promise a person
blanket confi dentiality.
(1) There are instances where that is illegal.
(2) Instances where a person confesses a crime.
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(3) You might be called into cases of church discipline.
(4) Counsel with the principle of informed consent. Spell out
the exceptions.
8. You want them to be comfortable with the process.
9. Be aware of how a person affects you.
10. Be willing to be confronted by the person. Receive that confrontation
with grace.
11. Be willing to confess sin in the context of that relationship.
12. Pray “we” prayers. You do not counsel from above; you counsel
alongside.
13. Hold loosely to your agenda. You want to have a sense of direction
but you do not know what new things God will reveal or where the
Spirit blows.
G. Remember that the Wonderful Counselor is working on everyone in the
room.
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1. There is never a moment when you are counseling where you your-
self are not being counseled.
H. Remember to think in ministry categories.
1. Love has a lot of shades to it. Love is not a uniform thing. Love is
multifaceted.
a) Is this a person who primarily at this moment needs comfort?
b) Does the person need encouragement? Illustration of a woman
whose husband left with everything.
c) Does the person need to be rebuked?
d) Does the person need teaching?
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I. Mature love
1. “Thoughtful”: It thinks (not just reacts), evaluates, analyzes and
meditates. It exegetes the context and the purpose.
2. “Focused”: It is thinking, “At this moment, in this situation, at this
time, with this person, what does love look like?”
3. “Progressive”: What was appropriate yesterday may not be appropri-
ate today. Love morphs with the need of the moment.
4. “Productive activity”: It is doing this activity with the hope that the
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activity will minister productively.
J. Additional excerpt from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places3
1. Love is immediate.
2. Love is context specifi c.
K. Love means continuing to ask myself what it means to love this particular
person, who is in these relationships, in the middle of these situations.
1. How does our relationship and life-context help me to love this person?
2. Love is always contextualized
L. How do you love …
1. An angry person? Love will emphasize gentleness, patience, forbear-
ance, rest in God, fi rmness.
2. A discouraged person? Provide encouragement and show perseverance.
3. A suffering person? Show mercy, justice, hope, etc.
4. A fearful person? You want the person to have courage.
5. A manipulative person? Honesty, forthrightness. I do not want to
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get into a power struggle.
6. A confused person? Patience. Clarify.
M. It is multifaceted, chaotic, and messy. That is why you have to think
context: Who is this person? What is our relationship like? What are the
limits of my ministry? What does focused, thoughtful, progressive, and
productive love look like with this person?
N. Sharon case study (cf. Supplemental Section of syllabus under “Case
studies”)
1. How do you love Sharon?
2. You are called to love Sharon and Ed.
O. You will not be uniformly touched with everyone you meet. You will not
fi nd everyone loveable.
1. The call is still to love, to be an instrument in God’s work.
2. Illustration of Paul and parenting.
P. There is a call to humility and call to context for God’s work of change.
IV. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 9.
V. Jesus: the Wonderful Counselor
A. Excerpted reading from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places4
1. Same Jesus, same gospel, remarkably different approaches. Why?
Context. Nicodemus and the Samaritan women are from remarkably
different contexts.
2. The gospel does embrace every variation of the human race. It is like
water that fl ows into every crevice of the human experience.
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3. Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor. The work that needs to be done is
done by Him. The change that needs to happen is a work of His
grace. The center is Christ.
4. There is never a day where you will possibly love the person sitting
across from you more than Christ does.
5. The most important encounter in counseling a person will have is
their encounter with Christ. You are an agent of that encounter.
1 Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 2005) 250-251.2 Peterson, Eat this Book (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 2006) 31-34. 3 Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places 13-19. 4 Ibid., 327.
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Lecture 10
I. Opening Prayer
II. Know (remixed)
A. Data gathering is a way to build a relationship with a person. You want
to know this person. You do not want to make untoward assumptions.
1. If, in data gathering, you fi nd out that this person has a hard time
trusting people, that is going to affect how you are going to build a
relationship with that person.
2. If, in data gathering, you fi nd out this person has had a bad experi-
ence with counseling, that is going to affect how you are going to
build a relationship with that person.
B. Challenges to building relationships
1. We are used to living in causal relationships with people.
2. Particularly if you are in a formal counseling situation, it is awkward
to build a relationship in that setting.
C. Everything you do in counseling rests on that middle box (see graphic
above).
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1. Bad data gathering always results in bad counseling.
2. You have to be committed to becoming one who asks good questions.
D. Data gathering for helping the person to see biblically:
1. You are not just making pronouncements. You do not know if the
person has owned and understood what has been discussed unless
you ask questions.
2. Insightful people are those with the right questions, not primarily
people with the right answers. You do not get to the right answers
without the right questions.
E. Do not jump to conclusions. Keep an open mind.
1. Implications if you do not:
a) You will be counseling a person who is only in your mind and not
the person in front of you.
b) The person will feel manipulated.
2. Data gathering as a journey. It is like driving a car to a destination
you have never been to before.
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F. Skill of asking questions
1. It is not asking a barrage of questions.
2. It is not following your intuition.
3. It is not following your interests.
4. It is following a progressive line of questions. You will have to resist
rabbit trails.
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G. Characteristics of good data gathering:
1. Focused: Stay on topic.
a) Resist all the interesting things that you can talk about.
b) Get at the issues where change is needed, there is confusion, etc.
2. Flexible: You want to be prepared for small and dramatic changes
from what you expected this meeting to be like. Your real confi dence
is not in your control, but in God’s Spirit.
3. Attentive: This is hard focused work. Listening is not a passive
experience; it is an active skill. It is a holy calling.
a) A person will not always tell you something in the order of
importance.
b) A person will not tell you things in a chronological, historical
order.
c) When a person is emotional, they will communicate in bits and
pieces.
4. Patient: rather than ask one big question, ask fi ve questions to get
there (conceptual ramps).
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5. Thoughtful: Do not feel the pressure to respond to every statement.
Do not feel the need to get to the next question. Feel comfortable in
saying, “Let’s take a minute to think about what you just said here.”
6. Prepared: You must reach this tension between data gathering and
being prepared, and also being spontaneous. You should be thinking
ahead of what you need to ask this person and ways of asking that.
But you cannot prepare a line of questions. Ask yourself:
a) What do I not know about what I have already heard?
b) What is the best way to draw out that response? Think of some
questions.
7. Repetitive: Ask the person, “Tell me about that again.” There are
many vantage points to talking about a particular thing.
8. Creative: Uncreative questions get empty, uncreative answers. Ask
questions that are like conceptual Velcro (i.e., a lot of things stick to it)
a) “Tell me about your marriage,” versus, “Tell me fi ve things you
love about your marriage;” or “Give me three ways, if you can
change your marriage, these are the three things you would
change.”
b) “Why did you do that?” versus “When you got angry in that
situation, what were you trying to get at or go after?”
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9. Biblical:
a) You want to ask rich, biblically informed questions.
(1) Unbiblical: Why is God not working in my life?
(2) Biblical: What is God doing in my life, and why am I not
seeing it?
b) You are asking the types of questions that the person is not able
to ask themselves.
10. Relaxed:
a) This cannot feel like an interrogation or a set-up.
b) You have got to be willing to slow down.
c) Realize even with a developed knowledge of this person, there
are vastly important things you do not know about this person’s
heart. You are limited. You have got to let the process do its
work.
d) You cannot have a few paid professionals doing all the work,
carrying the burden. You need a mobilized body of Christ to
do the work. We cannot allow ourselves to compromise the
process of ministry because there are too few people ministering.
11. Selective:
a) Be aware that you are sorting the information into categories all
the time.
b) You are sorting what is important and what is not. What is the
valuable critical information? What is the stuff you just do not
need to pay attention to or unpack further?
c) You are sorting what you need to unpack further.
12. Responsive:
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a) It is an interactive process. You are in the moment.
b) In the moment you are not thinking, “How am I going to help
this person? What Bible verses will I use?”
c) You are being responsive. You are allowing yourself to be touched
by what touches this person. That responsiveness is critical for
this process to be what it is meant to be.
III. Helpful Hints
A. Always take good notes.
1. Your mind is not good enough to retain the details.
2. Do not apologize for taking notes.
3. Give an apologetic for taking notes.
4. Reading over your notes helps you to see things that you normally
would not have. Helps you to make connections that you would not
have “on the fl y.”
B. Develop shorthand. You want to be interactive so you have to develop
your own shorthand.
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1. It is appropriate to say at times, “What you just said seems very
important. Say it again to me. I want to take it down so we can talk
about it further.”
2. If a person has a strong opinion, emotion or signifi cant quote, put
the phrase in quotes and bring it up to the person. It is important to
play back a person’s words to them and then say, “I want to unpack
what you just said.”
3. Use single words to unpack history statements, identity statements.
Do not try to take notes into those categories. (You will do that later.)
C. Keep eye contact. This person wants a relationship with you. Learn to
pay attention to the person.
D. Ask the person what they are learning. See what the person is doing
with the process.
IV. Other Data Gathering Methods
A. Examine your notes.
1. Look for themes.
2. Look for things you want to follow up on.
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B. Carefully observe the person: Be interactive and attentive.
C. Inventories can be helpful. (See Personal Inventory worksheets.)
1. Develop your own inventories. (See Wayne Mack’s inventories for
marriage counseling.1)
2. You can give that to them, and they can bring it back to you to get a
sense of how they are thinking.
D. Bringing in other people
1. You have to get permission to do this.
2. There may be a signifi cant person in their life who knows them well.
You can get very interesting information from a person who was
there in that moment when you were not able to be.
E. Journals
1. You will not get people who will write about their entire life.
2. Focused journals can be helpful.
a) Not asking a person to journal their entire week
b) Ask them to choose one or two “fl ash points” (e.g., a person at work
they have problems with) that they are going to journal about.
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c) Ask them to have something with which they can make a note
to themselves, “I need to journal later.”
d) At the end of the day they are going to journal around that
particular issue.
e) Give fi ve questions that they build the journal around:
1) What was going on? A brief description of the situation to
get me on board with what happened.
2) What were you thinking and feeling as it was happening?
Directing the camera to include this person in what is going on.
3) What did you do in response? Getting a person to think
biblically about the situation. There was a response out of
your heart.
4) Why did you do it? What were you seeking to accomplish?
This goes after motives. I have bracketed behavior with
the thoughts and motives of the heart (Hebrews 4: thoughts
and motives of the heart). This is getting a person to exam-
ine themselves in ways that people do not typically do.
5) What was the result? Goes after “harvest.” The seeds were
planted in (2) and (4).
f) Have them keep that journal for two or three weeks. They can
go through that journal and think through it.
g) When they bring it back, ask them if they learned anything from
their journal experience.
h) Take the journal and look at the journal for themes and patterns
which will get at heart issues for me. Highlight those patterns
with a highlighter.
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i) Give them back to the person while they are with you. “Tell me
what you think about what I highlighted.”
j) Example of an angry woman who did this exercise
k) You are getting a person’s own words and description to work with.
l) Helpful in getting a person to see as well as gathering information
F. Real-time data:
1. You have a relationship with this person. You experience how they
respond to you, to diffi culty in your relationship, to authorities in
their life.
2. How are they in their relationship with you?
G. Follow through with homework you assigned. Make sure you work
through the homework you assigned the last time you met. That will
become the basis for the questions you will ask, cover, and unpack
further in the current session.
H. Outside application: You will learn a lot about this person by the way
they follow through, by how committed they are to the process, and
what they say about the work that you have assigned to them.
V. The Five Big Questions of Interpretation:
A. What does the Bible say about what is going on in this person’s world?
1. Example of a husband and wife who are having marital problems and
who are in a particular fi nancial situation.
2. Illustration of a man who was so involved with his career that he did
not have time for godly parenting.
3. We are not ignoring the situation and rushing in for the heart. Often
that situation is a result of previous decisions made that have formed
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it so. Few people are as trapped as they think they are.
B. What does the Bible say about how this person is responding to their world?
1. You have an active person who is doing things.
2. What does the Bible say about how they are dealing with what is on
their plate?
C. What does the Bible say about what this person thinks about their world?
1. What have I learned about what this person is thinking and about
how they have made sense of their world?
2. Are they thinking biblically, from the vantage point of truth?
D. What does the Bible say about what this person wants out of their world?
1. Motives, goals, desires, demands, cravings, idols, etc.
2. What is ruling this person’s heart?
3. What does the Bible say about the values of this person and about
what this person is living for?
E. You are pushing every category through a biblical sieve.
F. Where does the Bible say that change is needed?
1. Given what I know about the situation, this person’s responses, their
thoughts, their motives, where is God calling this person to change?
2. What will that change look like?
3. That is your agenda.
G. The questions may tell you that you need to do more data gathering
because you may fi nd you do not know enough about this person’s situa-
tion, or how they are making sense of this particular issue, or what they
want here.
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1. Cycle back and unpack those things some more.
2. You should end up at a place where you have a clear sense of where
God is calling them to change. Where you can call them to clear,
specifi c, biblical commitments. You want them to see that and own that.
VI. The Four “Must Not” of Data Gathering
A. Human relationship of any kind depends on shared experience, of some
kind of identity of experience (i.e., shared experience of language). You
need that shared experience in order to communicate.
B. Very often, misunderstandings in relationships result from the assump-
tion of shared identity of experience.
C. Because I have an experience of “father”, and you said “father”, I assume
things about your experience of “father” that I should not. If I do not
ask questions about the concept of “father” you have mentioned, I am
getting my defi nition out of my own experience. This is deadly.
D. Ask what appear to be “dumb” questions. You have got to be sure.
E. If you are not sure, ask anyway. If you are sure, ask anyway, then you are
sure.
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F. There is a big temptation to “fi ll in the blanks” all the way.
G. Make sure your conclusions are the result of gathering of a good base of
data. Resist those early assumptions.
VII. Q&A
A. Question: What do you do with a person who resists the homework you
assigned, possibly because they did not understand what it means?
Answer: That becomes my counseling issue. That is what I am going to
talk about. That is everything. If I am talking to a person, and I am not
being accusatory, but they are getting angry, I am not going to pass that
up. There is something being communicated when a person on one hand
says, “I want to change, but I am unwilling to invest in the process of
change.” Hold those things up. “I do not want to judge you, but I am
confused about something.”
B. Question: What happens when you go through the process and you make
a statement of where change is needed, and you did not get it right
Answer: This process is a journey. You are going to take wrong turns. Tell
people, “This is a bit like a journey, and we are not sure all the turns we
are going to take, and I want you to say to me, ‘I think you are getting
it wrong.’ I want to be able to say to you, ‘I know you do not know
where I am going, but trust me for a moment. Do not resist me.” We
want to have that kind of relationship with one another. If you blow it,
confess that.
C. Question: If they do not tell you that you are wrong, how do you know?
Answer: If you get to this point and you kind of sell an agenda to this
person, and they are less than enthusiastic, then that is what you are
going to unpack. Maybe that is just them being resistant because they
are afraid of change. Then they need gospel encouragement. But it may
be that it does not fi t. I’ll say, “You seem to be less than enthusiastic
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here. Tell me what is going on. You can be honest with me because my
identity is not tied up in my conclusions. I want to be helpful to you. If
this is not helpful, then let’s talk about it.”
D. Question: Have you ever been in a situation where you had to let go of
someone? What are the circumstances that may cause that to happen
Answer: Sure. There comes a point where I am dependent on that
person’s willingness to be part of the process. I’ll say, “I do not have
anything else to give you. To the best of my ability, I am convinced that
this right. I am convinced that this is where God is calling you to. And
you are fi ghting me. I have got no more arguments to make. Here’s what
I want to do. I want to say to you that I am here for the duration, but I
am not willing for us to have verbal duels every time we get together, so
I am going to cut you loose. But I want you to be honest with yourself….
What is happening is that you have made it very clear that you do not
want what is being offered here. At least leave being honest with what is
going on here.”
E. Question: Are there times where a person may be more comfortable,
more responsive to a counselor of the same gender?
Answer: I think there are a whole host of wisdom issues here. I do not
think the Bible prohibits cross-gender counseling, but you need to be wise.
F. Question: Can you give an example of “repetition” in the process of data
gathering?
Answer: Let’s take the example of family. In the fi rst meeting with the
person, you might ask, “Tell me about your family,” and they will give
you a three minute summary. All you have is a summary. So you go back
after family again and you may hit that ten times before you get the
family story. To the person, it may seem like you are just repeating ques-
tions. That will not happen for very long because soon they will see that
there is a lot more on the table the second time around and even more
the third time around, and they will be more tuned into the process.
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G. Question: Given the skills like note taking, journaling, homework, etc.,
what does that look like in an informal counseling context?
Answer: Example of an informal dinner conversation turning into a
counseling moment. The model is fl exible. Love-Know-Speak-Do will
help me in a ten-minute conversation as much as it will help me in a six-
month relationship because it gives me ministry categories to work with.
VIII. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of syllabus under Lecture 10.
1 Wayne Mack, Preparing for Marriage God’s Way (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Hensley Publishing, 1995)
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Lecture 11
I. Opening Prayer
II. Speak (Remixed)
A. Speak has to do with embedding the story of a person into God’s larger
story of redemption. It is more than fi xing a person’s situational and
relational diffi culties.
B. Excerpt from Eat This Book1
1. Bible as a meta-story
2. Story invites our participation.
3. The Bible invites us in as participants in something larger than our
self-defi ned sense of need and ambition.
4. A person’s sense of need and ambition are not objective. They have
been informed by the surrounding culture as to what they need and
what their ambition should be. They experience that sense of need
because the culture’s defi nition has become their worldview.
a. Saying the Bible meets those needs and ambitions does violence
to the Bible.
b. The Bible offers a radically different defi nition of what a person
needs and a higher calling of ambition.
[Note: In the audio when Paul refers to “this,” he is referring to a
person’s sense of need]
c. Do not do a “bait and switch” on the person where they come
in to talk about their sense of need and you say you are willing
to, but you are not really because you want to talk about
something else. The person is going to feel used and manipulated,
and they will not participate.
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d. Example of a child at night who is scared because they think
there are monster spiders on the wall. The child’s experience of
fear is real, even if unfounded. Take seriously the thing they are
struggling with.
C. Continued excerpt from Eat This Book2
1. If it is just information, you take it into your hands, and you decide
what that information means.
2. Story invites you in, and it defi nes your location.
3. The Biblical themes are counter-intuitive to people, so you need to
be patient. It is a “third way.” People will struggle, doubt, fi dget, and
worry, so you will need to be patient.
III. Speak
A. Be an instrument of seeing. (How can I help this person see themselves
from the viewpoint of the Biblical narrative and be ____?)
B. Speak should not be reduced to making pronouncements, to get a
person to do something. You are working towards having a change
working through this person, so they will own responsibility and commit
to a new way.
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1. Speak is not an event. It is a process. That means each step is a
process.
2. Speak is an interaction.
a) If you are really after heart change, you have to be conversing
with the person, know they are on board.
b) There is a place when a person is stiff-necked and obstinate,
where it is right to make pronouncements and call a person to
respond, but that is not where you start.
3. The goal is that there would be real, concrete change of heart that
begins in the context of the situations and relationships where God
has placed them; that they would take up God’s plot in the place
where they live.
C. Always begin with the gospel.
1. You want to root everything you say in the work and person of Jesus
Christ.
2. You are giving them a different identity (cf. Galatians 2:20).
3. Confrontation is a ministry of the gospel (both the comfort and the
call).
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D. Speak is an interaction and process, messy and unpredictable.
1. There is need for prepared spontaneity.
2. Be open to the Spirit of God.
3. Be creative and fl exible.
E. You do not want to get into a power battle with people. People will push
you and fi ght for that turf.
1. Guard your heart and be humble.
2. You want to be candid and honest.
3. You do not want to be manipulative.
4. You want to have a clear distinction between your opinion and the
mirror of God’s word.
F. You have to be committed to listening and being patient.
1. Are you taking good notes?
2. Are you coming in prepared?
3. Are you prepared to advance the conversation (through thinking,
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praying, talking to other people)?
G. Ask clarifying questions that help the person face the implication of
what they said:
1. “Are you saying that…?”
2. “Is there an example you could give me?”
3. “I am confused. Do you mean…?”
4. “Would I be correct in concluding…?”
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5. “You said_____. Tell me more about that.”
6. “What do you see as your God-given ability in that situation?”
7. Above are heart-revealing questions of thoughts and motives.
H. Occasionally summarize and paraphrase what a person is saying as you
are helping them to see. Summarize so that those can be the next steps
for this person to change.
I. Look for places to encourage and agree.
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J. You do not want to be adversarial, but you must be willing to disagree.
1. Say, “No, that’s not it,” in a loving way (not with an attitude, but
with clarity and fi rmness).
2. Give the sense of a person not standing above, but alongside.
3. You need to do this whenever it is necessary. That clarity helps the
person to trust you more.
K. Confrontation is not about listing out charges but helping the person to
see God.
L. Incarnate God’s grace through the processes “Love” and “Know”. Go
through the whole process of “Speak”.
M. Keep an eye on your own heart. Be willing to be confronted by them and
be willing to make your own confession.
N. Make sure your judgments are tempered with compassion, mercy and
love. Minister with a sense of priority. Every form of ministry has limits
attached to it.
O. Make sure your confrontation is from alongside and not from above.
1. Example of parent confronting a child
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2. The person who confronts is also a person in need of change.
Confronter and the person being confronted share identity.
P. Always invite people to look at underlying heart issues, not just
behavioral and situational change. You want to root change in the heart.
Q. You have to be prepared.
1. You cannot be a guide through this messy process unless you are
prepared with wonderful perspectives from the Word of God
a) Illustrations
b) Metaphors
c) Self-disclosing stories
d) Good questions
2. You do not know when you are going to use them, but you prepare
for the moment God will give you.
R. Give confrontation the time and place it needs to be successful.
S. Make sure you are resisting giving a monologue.
1. Break up what you are saying with questions.
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a) “What are you hearing?”
b) “Are there places where you are struggling with what I am saying?”
2. Get the person active and interacting with you.
T. Use the Bible with care and skill. What does it look like for this person
to engage life with a God-story mentality?
U. Get to the level of concrete practicality. Confrontation has to go to the
details of everyday life. Otherwise, it has not done its job.
1. What would change look like in the context of this relationship?
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2. In this family?
3. In this moment in time?
4. What is God calling this person to?
5. What would this person say?
V. Keep affi rming your limits. You change no one. You must depend on the
Spirit of God.
W. Always end each time you meet with clear and persuasive gospel hope.
1. Does this person understand their identity in Christ?
2. Do they grasp the implications of the abiding presence of the Lord?
3. Do they get the grandeur and the practicality of the provisions that
have been made for them in the person and work of Jesus Christ?
4. The process is bracketed by the gospel (i.e., the beginning and end)
and dyed with the gospel throughout.
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X. Give plenty of time for feedback.
1. Have those feedback moments small and often.
a) Is the person on board?
b) Are they committed to change?
2. What are the evidences of those things that you can see in that person?
Y. Follow up with the person.
IV. Diagnostic
A. Consideration: How well are we doing in terms of “sightedness”? Do
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they see themselves with clear Biblical sightedness or do they see them-
selves with distortion?
B. Confession: Is the person still minimizing? Rationalizing? Self- atoning?
1. For the believer, the heart of stone has been taken out, and he or she
has been given a heart of fl esh, so the believer will have a sensitive
conscience.
a) In the face of a guilty conscience, he will either confess his
wrong and place himself under the justifying mercy of Christ to
receive His forgiveness.
b) Or, he will erect some system of self-justifi cation that makes that
wrong acceptable to his conscience.
(1) He has relieved his conscience with self-atonement.
(2) He is insulting the grace of Christ and will not be motivated
to change and move in a new way, because he is OK with
the old way.
2. Do not assume confession. Have them confess right then and there
a) Are they bargaining with God? Keep your standards high.
b) Confession is different from self-atonement, minimizing, and
rationalizing.
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c) It is not loving to allow a person to be okay with something that
God says is not OK.
C. Commitment: Do they see clearly and specifi cally where new living is
needed?
1. Example of a man from Montana
D. Change: Does this person give concrete evidence of acting and follow-
ing through with the commitments? There should be enthusiasm,
reports, etc., as they are now doing things that God has made clear to
them through the consideration, confession, commitment process.
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E. Remember that the above are not events. They are part of a process.
1. Have many mini-moments of change. You do not try and operate
with “Love” and “Know” to build a case against someone so you can
have one explosive moment of confrontation.
2. The Bible has progressive sanctifi cation in view. There are hundreds
of moments of personal change.
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V. Excerpt from Eat This Book3
A. We enter this text to meet God as he reveals himself, not for principles
B. We mistakenly try to fi t Scripture to fi t our experiences.
1. We often come with a hermeneutic of suspicion, take nothing at face
value.
2. Example: The Jeffersonian bible where Jefferson cut and paste what
he thought valid and true
VI. Q&A
A. Question: Can you give an example of how you would embed a person’s
story into God’s big story?
Answer: The Bible is not a collection of stories. It is one story. You are
not embedding a person into a particular story of scripture. You are
embedding a person’s story in the story of scripture. Example of a
husband and wife in confl ict
B. Question: Regarding an informal counseling context, how do you
prioritize what you hear?
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Answer: Asking the question: “What right now has this person in its
grip?” is the one that helps me.
C. Question: Regarding an informal counseling context, how do you decide
which people to move towards?
Answer: There really is not a way. I guess you could say, “This circum-
stance is more dramatic than others,” but you have to realize that you
are not the only tool in God’s toolbox. You always have limits. You say,
“God, I have an opportunity with this person. I have opportunities with
these twelve. I cannot do these twelve. I commend these people to your
sovereign care, and I am going to jump in here.” No one knows your
limits more than the Creator who set them for you. Other considerations
are that you might have a platform of relationship with this person. The
person might be in crisis. This person might be available in this moment
in a way that others might not be.
VII. The Peace of Christ
A. If that same rest in God’s story is not controlling your heart, you are
going to be an anxious, fretful, fearful minister.
B. You do not experience people’s pain. You do not get their story because
as it comes to you, it gets reprocessed as, “Oh no, what am I going to
do?” You actually experience your anxiety, not their diffi culty.
C. You are not really loving that person. You do not realize that you are
only an instrument. I am going to encounter people that I cannot help at
this time of my life. I can rest in God’s work.
D. It is a powerful experience when someone gets your story.
VIII. Community Groups
A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 11.
1 Peterson, Eat This Book 40-41. 2 Ibid., 63-66. 3 Ibid., 67-69.
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Lecture 12
I. Opening Prayer
II. Review of the semester
A. Often counseling ends too soon. Insight is wonderful, but it is not
change. Change has not taken place until change has taken place.
B. People need us to hang in there with them through the process of
change.
C. Presented with a model that is fl exible for both brief, informal moments
to extensive, formal contexts. Love-Know-Speak-Do guides my
interaction with people:
1. Love would say to me, “Do I genuinely care? Have I somehow said
to them, ‘I care’ because I am an ambassador, and I represent Christ?
If I can communicate that care then I remind them that Christ is
with them. Christ is near. Christ is involved.”
2. Know: What do I need to know in this brief moment so that I can
provide help for this person, so I can understand what is going on?
What questions should I ask that will help guide my ministry?
3. Speak: What does this person need to know even in this brief
moment? What can I help them see that they are not seeing in this
moment? Where are there places I can encourage them to turn from
doing one thing to something that is better?
4. Do: How can I help this person bear the burden of God’s call?
Where does this thing get concrete? How can I help them with
those issues?
D. The model can help you diagnose the relationships God has placed you
in. God determines the length and kind of relationship you have with
others.
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E. It is not, “This is what you always do with this person in this particular
situation.” People are not mechanical. You need to have a prepared
spontaneity.
F. You and I are never ever anything more than an instrument in God’s
redemptive hands. You are not a messiah. You can focus on what God
has called you to do. You do not have to focus on God’s job.
G. Questions to ask yourself:
1. What does it mean to build a relationship in which the work of God
can thrive? How am I doing at that?
2. Do I really get to know people, or do I allow myself to be trapped in
these terminally casual relationships that are full of assumptions that
I should not be making? Do I fail to ask good questions because I
assume I know a lot more about people than I actually do?
3. How am I doing at helping people see the things they do not see?
How well do I hold that mirror in front of people so they see
themselves as they actually are? Do I tend to confuse my opinion
with God’s perspective?
4. Am I good at laying out God’s way of repentance, helping people to
see radical changes of heart that will lead to radical changes in the
direction of their life?
5. Do I avoid confrontation? Am I really good at establishing
relationships with people, but I never say tough things?
6. Am I just a theological sledgehammer? People should never be
crushed by the way you use God’s word. They should be crushed by
God’s word.
7. How do I get people to get moving and make application in their
life? Am I able to be specifi c? The Bible is a street book. It lives in
everyday, real life. I want to use the word of God in a strikingly
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practical way. People do not need ideology. They need transformation.
H. We believe change is possible because Almighty God through the man
Christ Jesus had feet that touched earth, and He said, “The time has
come. Repent and believe the good news. Change is possible.” In Mark
1:14, Jesus tells His disciples to proclaim, “Change is possible.”
I. If a joyful, humble heart is not motivation for you, the skills you learned
will make you dangerous.
J. It is not just hope for other people. It is hope for us.
K. This way of reading the Bible is not intuitive for people. People will
come with different expectations
1. Excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind1
a) A treasure chest
b) A grab bag of promises and comfort
c) A compilation of riddles and secrets
d) A talisman of magical power
2. As your goal is to embed the particular story of the person into the
larger story of redemption, realize you are doing something with
people that they are not prepared for. Be patient with them, and be
careful as you lead them in that way.
III. Do (remixed)
A. You need to have a set of directions: You cannot guide another person
unless you know where you are going.
1. What is your method/strategy?
2. Ponder those questions outside of the time you are spending with the
person.
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B. Bi-level goals:
1. We are interested in heart/character change.
2. We are interested in situation/relational change.
C. James 4
1. The topic is human confl ict
2. There is a dynamic of heart and hands:
a) Anything that controls your heart gets expressed in your hands.
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b) When he calls for change, he says hands and heart.
(1) It has to be this bi-factorial agenda: hands and heart. Every
heart change has implications for change of hands.
(2) We have to work on both levels.
(3) Some may be good “heart” people. Others are better “hands”
people. You need to work at both levels because that is the
call.
3. “Hands”: James’ summary for behavioral change.
a) What are the things that they need to stop doing?
b) What are the things they must do?
c) How are we going to get from where we are to where we need
to be?
4. “Heart”:
a) What needs to change in this person’s thinking?
b) What’s their view of God, self, other people, meaning and
purpose of life, life in a fallen world, change, etc.?
c) What is this person living for? (motives)
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D. Issue of responsibility and concern
E. Help person prioritize his or her lists
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F. Help person live with his or her circles in a proper biblical balance.
G. Accountability: length of time between my contact with the person
and growth to continue
H. Remember people are always measuring their potential.
I. Remember people tend to forget who they are. If you forget who you are
in Christ, you will quit pursuing what belongs to you in Christ.
J. Identity amnesia always leads to identity replacement.
1. Replacements: What gives me identity enslaves me.
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K. The way a person assesses their potential is its connection to their
identity.
L. 2 Peter 1:3-9
1. (v.8) If those character qualities are ruling your heart, you will be
productive
2. When I remember my awesome potential as God’s child, I am not
satisfi ed with occasional love, a little bit of kindness, spotty
perseverance. We often live short of the destination, and we make it
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work. Identity is powerfully motivating.
M. Galatians 2:20: Identity in Christ
1. Historical redemptive fact: Every piece of your identity in Christ is
rooted in His actual work on earth. At the cross, he did not purchase
the possibility of save-ability. Christ took names to the cross.
2. Present Redemptive Reality. The life force that energizes this man is
not me, but it is Christ. I have been re-powered by Christ. My
potential is Christ.
a) Personal lifestyle commitment: I am going to live in my
situations and relationships in a way that refl ects that I actually
believe that Christ has risen and lives in me.
b) Biblical counseling is not offering a system of redemption. We
offer people a Redeemer. The Redeemer is our hope.
IV. Elaine case study (See Supplemental Section of syllabus under “Case studies”.)
A. Facts of Elaine’s situation (anything outside of the heart)
1. Loss of job
2. Single
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3. Family background: controlling father; mother, a woman of few
words and little affection
4. Life in the big city
5. Her body
6. Betrayal of Sam
7. Your response:
a) You can begin to predict her responses as you get to know her
situation.
b) You ought to respond to whatever realities of the fall that is on
this woman’s plate with compassion, mercy and grace.
c) You are learning how to better minister to this person by
clarifying things, incarnating the love of Christ, beginning to
predict the places where she will be tempted, etc.
B. Elaine’s responses (i.e., behavior, actions, reactions, responses [not
emotions])
1. Does not go to church, small group or choir
2. Willing to talk with you again
3. Sleeping
4. Does not perform at work
5. Seeking food for comfort
6. Working at a plain job
7. Pulls back from her activities at church
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8. Pleads with God.
9. Your response:
a) What themes jump out?
(1) Withdrawal
(2) Despair/no hope: not that of an atheist. She is pleading with
God. She is willing to talk. This is the messy life of a person
with faith.
b) As you look at her responses, you ought to recognize you. You
are not going to help Elaine if you view her as fundamentally
different from you. Our cries get mirrored in the Psalms.
C. Elaine’s thoughts (i.e. interpretation that energizes her responses)
1. She feels she is angry, frustrated, and depressed.
Note: Every thought is connected to a feeling.
2. God is sovereign.
3. Life is hell.
4. There is nothing anyone can do. I just have to ride it out.
5. I could die and no one would care.
6. Your response:
a) If that view of life is right, reading the Bible, going to small group
is futility.
b) You can understand the choices she is making. You
understand her logic.
c) You want to help that person. They are in this cul-de-sac of their
own concepts. As long as they hold onto that way of thinking,
there is no way out.
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D. Elaine’s motives (i.e., What does she want, crave, desire?)
1. “I am not asking for much. Just someone who loves me and reason to
get up in the morning.”
2. Does not want to live alone
3. Tired of a work life that does very little except to pay her bills
4. Wants a wedding that includes her
5. What are the themes?
a) Strong desire for relationship
(1) Is this bad? No, this woman was made for meaningful
communion with God and people. At the level of desire, it is
not a horrible desire.
(2) But it has been put in the identity, purpose, and meaning
container. That will not work.
(3) At that level, she is doing it to her. Holding those things in
that way is not about the situation. It is about what she is
doing with her situation. She has allowed these things to be
in a place in her life where they should not be.
E. It is more than a way to organize data.
1. Helps you identify with this person
2. Helps you know where you do not know enough
3. Begins to predict where change needs to take place and
gives you a sense of agenda
4. It ought to give you a tender heart. This will affect the way you deal
with this woman. You will see yourself in all four categories.
a) I am not dealing with these spontaneous fragments that come up
in her story. I am ministering to her entire story, and I am
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viewing her as a person just like me.
b) You want to embed her story in the story of redemption because
the hope for her story is found there.
5. It is never just about the other person. There is never an answer I
would give that I do not need myself.
6. Every one of these tools is not just for ministering to another person.
They are tools for you to know where hope is found. The Wonderful
Counselor is committed to the work of change, to the completion of
all his people.
1 Longman 53-56.
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