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Chapters
0:0
3:38 Announcements
8:49 How Did You Meet Your Girlfriend
13:10 Ending Your First Sermon
18:21 What Is the Greatest Commandment
27:17 Corinthians Chapter 11
35:48 How Would You Describe the Relationship between Psychology and Biblical Counseling
37:11 Schizophrenia
43:13 A Difference between Hard Science and Soft Science
47:55 The Professionalization of Counseling
49:48 Is My Repentance Genuine
50:29 Life-Dominating Sins
50:53 Categories of Sin
52:46 High-Handed Sin or Traitorous Sin
55:34 When Is a Liar No Longer a Liar
55:41 When Is the Thief No Longer a Thief
56:40 Sexual Sin
00:00:04.600 |
In terms of the questions, thank you for sending them in. 00:00:08.380 |
Because of the sheer number, I'm going to be selecting 00:00:13.560 |
So some people have asked, is there open mic? 00:00:20.080 |
Again, for those of you guys who are in the back, 00:00:22.860 |
start taking your seats, and in a minute, we'll begin. 00:03:13.220 |
We are gonna begin at this time, so if you're in the back, please take your seat now. 00:03:20.220 |
And then let's all quiet down and settle in for our Q&A time. 00:03:24.220 |
We're gonna just go for one hour and cap it there, okay? 00:03:28.220 |
So thank you, whoever was trying over there to get everybody's attention. 00:03:35.220 |
Well, I wanna begin with just a couple quick announcements wise. 00:03:40.220 |
So I do have the winners of our free books, okay? 00:03:45.220 |
Thanks to you for everybody who sent in a question. 00:03:47.220 |
We actually had tons of questions come in and I can't get to every single one. 00:03:51.220 |
But the first person to text me today was Tiffany Yu. 00:03:57.220 |
Now, I'm not gonna call you up here for the sake of time. 00:04:01.220 |
But because we surprisingly actually have now three Tiffany Yus who registered, 00:04:09.220 |
That's you, so congratulations on being the first winner. 00:04:14.220 |
Also, the winner of the Men Discipling Men one is our brother Patrick Choi. 00:04:23.220 |
And the final winner of the third book is Huber Kim. 00:04:29.220 |
All right, just for the sake of time, we're not gonna have you guys come up. 00:04:33.220 |
But please see me after and we'll give those books to you. 00:04:36.220 |
Also, we passed out to you this info literature about the Master's University program. 00:04:43.220 |
I wanted to give you an opportunity just to share with a little bit about the program. 00:04:49.220 |
In fact, that's one of the reasons why Master's lets me go on the road once in a while, 00:04:53.220 |
is to be able to kind of represent the program. 00:04:55.220 |
Now, you may not be interested in it, but maybe you know somebody that is. 00:04:59.220 |
So I'd recommend you save that and give it to them. 00:05:07.220 |
So we have a long track history, a really good one. 00:05:13.220 |
Most of the people that teach in our program are all ACBC certified, 00:05:19.220 |
and they're actively involved in their local churches as well. 00:05:22.220 |
And very, very well known, all of them are published authors in the Biblical Counseling Movement as well. 00:05:28.220 |
So if you're interested at all in the--it's a two-year program, graduate program, 00:05:34.220 |
that consists of 34 graduate hours in the MABC, which is the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling. 00:05:42.220 |
There was a woman who joined our program, and she told me the story. 00:05:49.220 |
She had two Master's degrees and a doctorate degree, 00:05:54.220 |
and she was teaching at a major university, med students. 00:06:02.220 |
And she and her husband were having serious marital problems. 00:06:06.220 |
They went to their pastor for help, and he helped them so much. 00:06:11.220 |
Here's all of her training in psychology, and they didn't get any help, none whatsoever. 00:06:18.220 |
And the pastor helped them, and she said to the pastor, "Well, where did you get this?" 00:06:24.220 |
He says, "Well, I learned this out at the Master's University 00:06:28.220 |
in the graduate teaching program out there in Biblical Counseling." 00:06:34.220 |
And she said, "Well, do you suppose they let me in?" 00:06:42.220 |
and now she is actively involved now in Biblical Counseling 00:06:48.220 |
and actually traveling around the world doing Biblical Counseling right now. 00:06:53.220 |
She sent me an email after she graduated from the program saying how much she had learned. 00:06:58.220 |
She said basically her other three graduate degrees didn't teach her as much as she learned in our program, 00:07:05.220 |
which is really, really significant when it comes to using the Word of God effectively in the lives of people. 00:07:12.220 |
So if you're interested in doing that, sign up. 00:07:15.220 |
In fact, there's a sign-up sheet in the back table back there somewhere. 00:07:23.220 |
After the Q&A, we're going to have some volunteers actually man that booth, 00:07:28.220 |
and they'll direct you to where you can sign up for that. 00:07:30.220 |
So just visit the table right out the exit on the left. 00:07:33.220 |
And we're really close to, in fact, probably this November, we'll get the final word for it. 00:07:40.220 |
launching a doctoral program fully accredited in Biblical Counseling as well. 00:07:44.220 |
So that's where our next step is, and we're looking forward to it. 00:07:49.220 |
And, in fact, on that sign-up sheet, you can mark whether or not you're interested in the graduate program 00:07:53.220 |
or the doctoral program, whichever one you would be interested in. 00:07:57.220 |
Our whole purpose here is to not--we don't want to train people to go out and hang up a shingle and do counseling. 00:08:04.220 |
We want them to go back underneath the authority of their local church 00:08:07.220 |
and work under the authority of their leadership and their elders in their church to do counseling in that context. 00:08:13.220 |
That's what we're after, all right, those kind of people that are interested in doing that. 00:08:19.220 |
I'll just say it would have been really nice if you guys set up that doctoral program. 00:08:23.220 |
Because I'm flying out to Kentucky right now. 00:08:26.220 |
It would have been nice if we could set that up. 00:08:34.220 |
So we're going to just start with some of the questions. 00:08:36.220 |
And, again, because you guys submitted the questions just today, we're just having him answer on the fly. 00:08:48.220 |
The easiest one is how did you meet your girlfriend? 00:08:59.220 |
Interesting the way it unfolded because she was a freshman that had come into college, and I was a junior at that particular time. 00:09:10.220 |
And she expressed to my sister that she needed a ride to a nearby town to catch a bus to go home for the weekend. 00:09:19.220 |
And, actually, she was going home to break up with her high school sweetheart. 00:09:25.220 |
And my sister said, "Oh, my brother's got a car. 00:09:31.220 |
So I was going through the cafeteria line one day, and she was working in the cafeteria. 00:09:35.220 |
And she introduced herself, and she says, "Would you be able to take me to Springfield, Ohio, to catch a bus to go home for the weekend?" 00:09:47.220 |
It was right on top of a big Greek class at that time. 00:09:55.220 |
He always came to class with a three-piece suit on and a tie and everything. 00:10:03.220 |
He made you stand with your Greek text and translate everything, parse every verb and every part of speech and the whole thing. 00:10:11.220 |
And you're standing there trembling while you're doing it. 00:10:13.220 |
He's looking at you like, all right, he's going to eat you or something. 00:10:43.220 |
I thought, man, I've got to figure out a way to ask this gal out. 00:10:47.220 |
We just see eye to eye on so many things, and it's just really interesting conversation. 00:10:53.220 |
So we get there, and I sit there with her waiting until the bus to show up. 00:11:02.220 |
I said to her, I'll send you a bill for this. 00:11:05.220 |
And she kind of looked surprised, and she said, okay. 00:11:10.220 |
And so that whole weekend I made out in hand calligraphy, do one date for John Street's taxi service to the next basketball game type of thing, 00:11:22.220 |
sent it to her in inter-campus mail, and then I got cold feet. 00:11:32.220 |
So I tried to get it back, and they treated inter-campus mail like it was the U.S. mail system. 00:11:43.220 |
So a couple days after she had returned, I get this envelope in the mail, and I open it, and it has a check in it for a million dollars worth of fund. 00:12:02.220 |
Funny thing about that is our second date we went with my roommate. 00:12:05.220 |
He was engaged to be married, he and his fiancee, and in those days didn't have to wear seat belts, so bench seats in cars. 00:12:13.220 |
His fiancee was sitting up real close to him as he's driving the car, and Janie and I are at either ends of the back seat, okay? 00:12:22.220 |
And his fiancee leans over to him and says, "I love you." 00:12:29.220 |
And I looked at Janie, and I said, "What did she say?" 00:12:40.220 |
So on the second date, she told me she loved me, and I -- 00:13:03.220 |
Well, actually a lot of people were dying to know. 00:13:09.220 |
Which was ending your first sermon, everybody felt like, wow, I've got so much sin in my heart, and then it ended at that. 00:13:18.220 |
So people were dying to know what is the difference between regeneration and rehabilitation. 00:13:24.220 |
You don't necessarily need to finish your sermon, but what's a little mini-rehabilitation? 00:13:32.220 |
Well, when we're talking about rehabilitation, we're talking about basically a view of the human heart that's radically different from what the Bible presents. 00:13:42.220 |
Because you'll see this a lot, especially in Christian psychology today, where the heart is passive, empty, wounded, needy. 00:13:52.220 |
You'll hear a lot of that terminology going through a lot of Christian psychology books. 00:13:58.220 |
And you'll hear that needs-based kind of theology bleeding through people who have been integrated into psychology more than integrated really into scripture. 00:14:10.220 |
And that's not at all the way in which the Bible pictures the human heart. 00:14:15.220 |
It's not empty, needed, wounded, needy, empty, wounded, needy, and I forget the passive. 00:14:29.220 |
And at its very core, the human heart is full. 00:14:39.220 |
Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that people love themselves too little. 00:14:45.220 |
The Bible constantly warns that people love themselves way too much. 00:14:55.220 |
But yet, that's a cornerstone to a lot of Christian psychology today, that people don't love themselves enough. 00:15:10.220 |
I remember I had a student come in to me a few years ago. 00:15:15.220 |
That's when I was still teaching a couple undergrad classes. 00:15:18.220 |
I don't do that anymore, but she was a senior. 00:15:25.220 |
And I was grading papers, which is the bane of every professor. 00:15:30.220 |
I'm grading papers in my office, and she comes and knocks on the door, sticks her head in. 00:15:37.220 |
I look at my papers, and I look at her, and I look at my papers, and I'm going, "Uh, sure. 00:15:43.220 |
I know these things don't just take a moment. 00:15:46.220 |
She came in, plopped down in a chair, looked at the floor. 00:16:13.220 |
Now, I know never to ask this question, but I do it anyhow. 00:16:18.220 |
Now, if you ask that question, be prepared for a long answer. 00:16:26.220 |
She started in, and it goes something like this. 00:16:29.220 |
I'm too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny. 00:16:44.220 |
40 minutes, she goes on and on, all the reasons why she hated herself. 00:16:50.220 |
And finally, she comes up for air at the end of 40 minutes. 00:16:55.220 |
And I look at her, and I said to her, "I'm really confused." 00:17:02.220 |
I said, "Well, I'm trying to put myself into your shoes." 00:17:09.220 |
Well, you said that you hated yourself, right?" 00:17:18.220 |
You said you were even experiencing serious depression, right?" 00:17:27.220 |
She said, "Well, why doesn't that make sense to you?" 00:17:31.220 |
I said, "Well, listen, if I hated me, I mean I really hate me, I hate me. 00:17:38.220 |
If I really hate me, and all these other things were wrong, I'm too tall, too short, too fat, 00:17:44.220 |
too skinny, I've got a crooked nose, I've got big ears, nobody likes me, everybody hates 00:17:55.220 |
So I'm trying to figure out why you're so miserable. 00:18:01.220 |
Nowhere in the Bible, there's not a single reference anywhere in the Bible that says 00:18:05.900 |
If that's the key to our well-being, then God left out a significant help to us. 00:18:12.980 |
The Bible is replete with the fact that we love ourselves too much. 00:18:18.460 |
That's what Jesus said when he was confronted by the Pharisees, right? 00:18:23.140 |
The greatest commandment is, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, 00:18:26.780 |
and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." 00:18:32.980 |
I mean, I've heard people say that turns what Jesus said into three commands. 00:18:38.780 |
I have to learn to love myself, then I can learn to love God and love other people properly. 00:18:45.740 |
But in the very next verse, this is Matthew 22, verse 40, Jesus says, "On these," wait 00:19:00.940 |
How much we love God and how much we love other people. 00:19:05.620 |
As much as we love ourselves, Jesus actually assumes in that, that we love ourselves too 00:19:12.180 |
much and if we loved God and loved other people to the degree that we already love ourselves, 00:19:23.140 |
On those two commands, on those two pegs, the entire law hangs. 00:19:31.060 |
Every counseling situation that our students will ever face will go back to how much a 00:19:35.340 |
person loves God and how much they love other people. 00:19:38.360 |
Everything goes back to those two, everything hangs on those two pegs in life, everything. 00:19:46.040 |
So it's interesting, but by the time I was finished, she was in tears. 00:19:53.180 |
She said, "Nobody's ever told this to me before." 00:19:55.220 |
I went to several passages and showed her about it. 00:19:59.520 |
So about an hour later, I saw her in the cafeteria there at the university. 00:20:03.940 |
She's going through the salad line and she comes up to this big bowl of red cherry tomatoes 00:20:10.280 |
and I'm watching her from across the cafeteria, all right? 00:20:14.980 |
And she had a pair of thongs, tongs, excuse me, tongs, not thongs. 00:20:29.060 |
And she was picking up each red cherry tomato, looking at it, putting it back in, picking 00:20:35.980 |
up another one, looking at it, putting it back in the bowl, picking up one. 00:20:49.860 |
So she's looking for the worst cherry tomato in the bunch because that's what she thinks 00:21:10.980 |
Now if we're really thinking like a Christian, we'd find the best red cherry tomato in the 00:21:15.940 |
We'd find it and go, "Oh, there it is," and put it on the salad of the person behind us. 00:21:20.780 |
Now we're thinking like a Christian type of thing. 00:21:24.620 |
No, but our default nature is to always look out for self. 00:21:33.540 |
I don't know what the question was, but I'm getting like a sermon right in my face. 00:21:46.780 |
I mean, that just segues into a common question that came up, which is we're thinking about 00:21:47.780 |
the heart and we just all realize that we're not thinking about the heart. 00:21:48.780 |
And I think for a lot of people in here, we have so many young working professionals, 00:21:55.780 |
young families who are trying to establish themselves. 00:22:00.780 |
And so they have to care about things like their careers, their next job, and their future. 00:22:11.780 |
And then the next thing you know, you consume their thoughts and their question is, "I 00:22:18.780 |
have to do it because it's my responsibility. 00:22:23.780 |
How do I know it's too much and inappropriate? 00:22:29.780 |
Are there some benchmarks for us to test our hearts that it's not too big?" 00:22:34.780 |
You know, the way that you asked that particular question is really important because oftentimes 00:22:39.460 |
our benchmarks are humanly derived and they're not biblically derived benchmarks. 00:22:46.460 |
And that's where we get ourselves into trouble. 00:22:48.260 |
I have to, you know, I met a bunch of guys in counseling before who, they had it in their 00:22:54.980 |
head, "I want to be a millionaire by the age of 35," type of thing. 00:22:59.140 |
In other words, I'm like a bulldozer and I'm going to run over everybody and everything 00:23:10.300 |
It's almost as bad as a gambler because, you know, I've met people who were gamblers and 00:23:17.220 |
they, you know, especially before they were a Christian, they gambled hundreds of thousands 00:23:23.740 |
And then when they become a Christian, they know that gambling is all wrong, so they stop 00:23:27.660 |
gambling, but they carry the same heart pattern right into their Christianity. 00:23:32.060 |
They go right into really risky business ventures. 00:23:38.080 |
They're trying to get past one central command in Scripture. 00:23:46.300 |
You know, I want to get to a place when I'm young where I don't have to work anymore. 00:23:51.320 |
When God has commanded, "Six days you need to work." 00:23:55.900 |
God doesn't say, "By the age of 40, you need to be a millionaire." 00:24:01.700 |
He says, "You need to learn to work and that's going to be your life and you need to be happy 00:24:14.020 |
But if you have this alternative, in a sense, ungodly goal of reaching some kind of status 00:24:21.780 |
or something like that, it's one thing to want to strive. 00:24:30.640 |
It's another thing to set that as an idolatrous desire that commands all of your thoughts 00:24:36.120 |
and your thinking so much that you sacrifice your marriage, you sacrifice your relationship 00:24:41.560 |
with your children, you sacrifice your commitment to Christ and your involvement in your church. 00:24:47.940 |
When you see these things starting to suffer, you know something is seriously wrong in your 00:24:53.280 |
It may start off very imperceptibly, but then it grows as time goes by. 00:24:58.520 |
And all of a sudden, now this person is middle-aged and they have all this regret. 00:25:03.680 |
Their kids are growing up, angry, hateful, mean kids. 00:25:17.720 |
At that particular point, he's making terrible decisions now, putting those things above 00:25:28.640 |
Your first relationship has got to be to God himself. 00:25:31.960 |
Your second relationship is going to be to your spouse. 00:25:37.800 |
And you've got to make decisions based upon that. 00:25:39.640 |
And then your fifth is to your job and your responsibility in your job. 00:25:44.280 |
So now I could go into a lot of detail on that, but that's decision-making. 00:25:54.960 |
I think as you were talking, just reflecting on my own thoughts, just as a young man, I 00:26:11.480 |
have thoughts of certain wishes for my own family and things like that. 00:26:12.480 |
But when you talked about having a specific vision that's so specific, it starts to garner 00:26:14.480 |
And therefore, you're no longer thankful for what God has allotted you and given you, but 00:26:16.480 |
And then you know, "Oh, my desire, my intention is going to really understand." 00:26:23.040 |
So that were just some of the questions in follow-up to the first session that we had. 00:26:30.400 |
I want to move now to a second question that's more general and something that you alluded 00:26:39.080 |
to is, in the goal of reconciliation, is there always a way to reconcile with all the people 00:26:45.040 |
you have conflicts with or are there just times it just won't work? 00:26:49.240 |
And what do you do if, let's say, you may intend to reconcile with somebody, that person, 00:26:58.760 |
I think it's vitally important that that should always be our goal, but that doesn't mean 00:27:12.600 |
I may touch on this tomorrow in our last session, but if I don't have time, I might as well 00:27:17.840 |
1 Corinthians 11, and here the Apostle Paul is describing the church of Jesus Christ, 00:27:29.760 |
and he says, verse 19, he says, "For there must also be factions among you so that those 00:27:44.920 |
In other words, sometimes in the church, it's a necessity that there's division, all right? 00:27:52.640 |
Because it is that division that proves that some are approved of God and others are not. 00:28:00.720 |
And there's nothing you can do about that because you're taking a stand on truth, you're 00:28:05.160 |
trying to be as loving to the opposing party as you can be, you're still open to have a 00:28:10.400 |
reconciled relationship with them, but they are just adamantly opposed to the truth. 00:28:17.000 |
That's the reason why Paul says sometimes there has to be factions, there has to be 00:28:22.200 |
divisions to see who's approved of God and who's not approved of God. 00:28:29.920 |
And then if you go over to Romans 12 there, and I highlighted this verse or I just mentioned 00:28:35.920 |
it once earlier, he says in verse 18, "If possible," sometimes it's not, "so far as 00:28:43.200 |
it depends upon you, be at peace with all men." 00:28:47.160 |
In other words, you've done everything you can in order to be at peace with that other 00:28:50.680 |
person, and yet it's not possible, you can't do it. 00:28:56.520 |
Then you have to conclude that God is not at a point where He has really changed that 00:29:03.160 |
other person's heart or their life, and if God hasn't changed their life at that point, 00:29:08.360 |
then you need to pray for them that God will change them and work in their life so as to 00:29:22.380 |
We would like to punch button A, B, C, and get a response, right? 00:29:41.000 |
That's not happen, doesn't happen in the dynamic growth life of the church. 00:29:46.920 |
Sometimes it's hard, it takes a while to rebuild a relationship. 00:29:54.880 |
Sometimes it takes years to do so, to rebuild a relationship. 00:30:00.240 |
But you've got to remain committed to do that. 00:30:04.480 |
Even if the other person is close to do it at this particular time, that doesn't mean 00:30:08.960 |
You need to pray for them that God will open up their heart so that they will be willing 00:30:12.480 |
to do that, so that you have a better relationship than what you had prior to that conflict. 00:30:22.080 |
And then, of course, later on in verse 12, he says this. 00:30:26.000 |
He says in verse 20, Romans 12, he says, "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if 00:30:35.320 |
For in doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. 00:30:38.260 |
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." 00:30:40.880 |
Now, when he's talking about heaping burning coals, that's just ancient warfare terminology. 00:30:45.360 |
He's not talking about heaping guilt on people. 00:30:50.560 |
Our goal is to heap good on them, all right, to heap good on them. 00:31:00.560 |
All right, let me tell you a story real quick. 00:31:06.920 |
Several years ago, our oldest daughter, Krista, was going to school. 00:31:20.560 |
And she would get on the bus to go to school, and there was a girl that was a year or two 00:31:26.740 |
older than her that, for some reason, I don't know why, decided to take it upon herself 00:31:39.760 |
She would, you know, before she had a chance to turn it in, then she'd have all this messed 00:31:51.080 |
So one day, I'm at home, and Krista came home from school, got off the bus, walked 00:31:59.560 |
And she said, "Well, Rachel's been bothering me again and doing some bad things and saying 00:32:09.840 |
Now as a human father, this is as a human father, Krista was always tall and big for 00:32:16.680 |
I wanted to say to her, "Krista, just turn around and pop Rachel once real good. 00:32:28.880 |
And my wife steps in, and she says, "Well, let's practice Romans 12." 00:32:38.760 |
Yeah, and she says, "Well, you know, we've got this chocolate chip cookie recipe." 00:32:45.440 |
And my wife does have a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe. 00:32:48.760 |
It's the reason why I'm in the condition that I'm in. 00:32:59.320 |
And so that night, they made piles of chocolate chip cookies, put them on a big plate, covered 00:33:05.880 |
them with aluminum foil, and Krista and I walked them two blocks up the street to Rachel's 00:33:11.440 |
And I stayed on the sidewalk, and Krista walked up to the door and knocked on Rachel's door. 00:33:16.120 |
And of all people in the household, Rachel came to the door, and she was shocked to see 00:33:20.040 |
Krista said, "You know, my family and I were making cookies tonight and thought you and 00:33:26.440 |
And Rachel's looking at these cookies like it's a bomb." 00:33:28.920 |
You know, I'm watching out of the corner what's going on. 00:33:37.640 |
And she took them in the house, and Krista walked back. 00:33:42.280 |
And on the way back, we're walking, and I said, "You know, nothing may come of this, 00:33:46.240 |
Krista, but God is super pleased with what you did today. 00:33:49.480 |
Even if Rachel just continues this way, God is really pleased." 00:33:53.760 |
So heaping on good means heaping on really good chocolate chip cookies. 00:33:58.480 |
Do you know that Rachel became a really good friend of Krista's? 00:34:05.160 |
And her whole family started coming to church and became believers. 00:34:11.720 |
And when her family left, her father got a job in Wisconsin and moved. 00:34:21.760 |
She wrote a long letter to Krista and signed it, "Your best friend, Rachel." 00:34:31.760 |
Now I'm not saying that heaping on good will always end up that way. 00:34:41.440 |
When people do us evil, we overcome that evil with goodness. 00:34:49.040 |
We overcome that, especially another brother and sister in Christ, especially that. 00:34:55.320 |
Now Rachel and her family were not believers, but especially that should be a brother and 00:35:00.480 |
sister in Christ overcome evil with goodness. 00:35:06.600 |
So I want to get to a more generic question in relation to the biblical counseling world 00:35:14.600 |
Now I know in terms of on an academic level, it could take a long time to answer. 00:35:15.600 |
What's the relationship between the two at that end? 00:35:16.600 |
But as you know, Dr. Street, in the experience of counseling, there are many people within 00:35:17.600 |
the church where perhaps they were struggling with the idea of counseling. 00:35:18.600 |
And they were searching for help in any place. 00:36:03.440 |
And I think that's why there's so much confusion with the relationship between the 00:36:06.440 |
But I think in terms of the general, it's more so not on the lines of academia, but 00:36:07.440 |
within the church, how would you describe the relationship between psychology and biblical 00:36:08.440 |
counseling, if there's any role at all for psychology within the church?