All right, we want to pick up where we left off in our last class period, and that has to do with the goals of Christian marriage and the family counseling. What should those goals be? Now it's amazing to me how many pastors and just general Christian people don't understand the importance of goals in the scripture.

I want to take just a little bit of time and kind of highlight some of that. Why is it that we must have goals? That's not a secular idea, that's a godly idea. Goals are nothing but ideas about how we want to achieve something that we're going about to achieve.

What are our goals? Sometimes we'll have intermediate goals, and sometimes we'll have long-term goals, but what should they be, and is it proper for us as pastors or as counselors to have goals in marriage and family counseling? The answer is absolutely yes. Let me explain to you why. If you have your Bible, grab it, and let's go over to Proverbs chapter 14, and we're interested in verse 8, Proverbs 14 and verse 8.

Solomon here says, "The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to his ways." The word for prudent there in the Hebrew can also be translated sensible. The wisdom of the sensible is to give thought to his ways, and in fact, it actually, the root idea behind that word sensible or prudent is literally the Hebrew idea of naked.

A person who was prudent was naked, in a sense fully exposed, but also sensible. The wisdom of the naked is to give understanding or thought to his way, but the foolishness of fools is deceit. A fool will not give thought to his ways, but a truly sensible person who's not covering over for any pretense will give thought to their ways, in other words, they'll set goals.

Go over to Proverbs chapter 16 and verse 9, "The mind of the man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps." Now God is not chiding people who plan their ways. He's not saying it's wrong to do that, but he is saying that God is sovereign over all that man does, and you can plan your ways, and you can set your goals, but God's going to redirect your paths.

When you carefully prepare for your next counseling session with somebody, you may have an idea of where you want to go in scripture, but they may come to the counseling session with something that's happened, maybe a crisis event or something that's occurred in the family, and it may totally redirect your entire course of your counsel, and you've got to be flexible enough to follow that.

But the bottom line here is that God is going to be sovereign, and he's going to overrule what we plan. That's okay. As long as you anticipate that, you're fine, nothing wrong. But it's also not wrong to plan your way either. You've got to do that so you know where you're going.

More often than not, when you do that, usually the way that you've planned to go is the way that that'll end up going. You've heard that old saying, "If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail," and that's true. That's just a little proverb or a contemporary proverb that illustrates the fact that people who do not like to plan or set goals in their life are really setting themselves up ultimately for failure.

But God says it's the prudent man who gives thought to his ways. You can plan your ways, but God can overrule them. Then if you go to chapter 16 of Proverbs in verse 1, you can see this there as well. Proverbs 16 in verse 1, he says, "To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the Lord comes the reply of the tongue." I can plan certain things, I can intend certain things in this sense, but ultimately the Lord directs what's really going to happen again.

Or there's Proverbs 10 in verse 5, "He who gathers crops in the summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son." So the idea is you've got to plan to gather your crops in the summertime. If you're lazy and you're not diligent, and there are some people who do counseling who are very lazy, they're not diligent at making good plans, then you're not going to eat, is the implication of this proverb, you're not going to be successful.

God says that kind of a son is a disgraceful son because he's sleeping, he's not diligent, he's lazy, he's a sluggard in that sense. Then go over to Proverbs 13 in verse 16, here Solomon says, "Every prudent man acts with knowledge, but a fool displays his folly." So when you act, you act from the standpoint of knowledge, that implies planning as well.

You've got to plan your ways. Or Proverbs 20 in verse 18, "Make plans by seeking advice, if you wage war, obtain guidance." If you wage war, obtain guidance. So you've got to plan ahead again, is the idea behind this. Or there's Proverbs 24 in verse 27, here Solomon says, "Prepare your work outside, make it ready for yourself in the field afterwards, then build your house." Now what's implied by that proverb is you've got to plan ahead, that is work outside, make it ready for yourself in your field, in other words, prepare your fields first, then build your house.

Because you can build your house any time of the year, but you can only plant a certain time of the year. So what are you going to prioritize? I've got to prioritize planting my field first, then I'm going to build my house. Sleep outside until you get those fields planted, then let the fields grow while you're building your house.

But prioritize planting your fields. You've got to prioritize certain things in counseling as well. Or then again, there's Romans chapter 1, verses 9 through 13. So this brings us into the New Testament, and here Paul is dealing with the Roman church. Verse 9 he says, "For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of his Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you, always in my prayers making requests, if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you.

For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you that you may be established. That is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to become unaware, brethren, but often I have planned to come to you and have been prevented so far so that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even among the rest of the Gentiles." So Paul talks about his ministry to them as a Roman church and his repeated plans.

He set goals to come and see them, but God prevented that from happening. So again, God overrules those plans sometimes in life. He's done that probably several times in your life. He's overruled some of the plans, the expectations that you've had and you thought you were going one way and God sent you on another direction.

Back several months ago, my wife and I were planning the fall and I had certain speaking activities that I had planned for and certain churches that wanted me to come in and do a conference or to speak and so we were planning those and setting all that up and setting the airline arrangements and et cetera.

In some cases, they had my wife coming with me. One of the recent ones, in fact, one where I was supposed to go to Iowa, my wife got a notice three days before we were supposed to leave that she was responsible to go to jury duty. She thought, "Well, maybe I'll go to jury duty and they'll kick me off and I won't have to go." Well, no, they didn't.

They kept her on for two or three days and so she ended up missing the entire weekend. She was supposed to speak to a group of women, so that left me speaking to them. So we can plan our ways and it's not bad that we do, but then we realize that God can redirect our steps.

By the way, after that weekend was over with, on Monday, finally, she was dismissed from the jury. She didn't have to serve. That's wonderful because we had other plans weekends after that. If she would have been placed on that jury, it was such a serious case that probably she would have been on it for several weeks and we would have missed several different airline tickets and all of that money would have been spent for nothing.

So Paul said, "I plan to come to see you as Roman Christians, but I was prevented from doing so," but that didn't stop him from planning. That's my point. He set a goal and he planned to do it and it didn't stop him. Let's go over to Colossians 1 and verse 28.

This is a great verse, especially for people who do counseling because you notice how counseling was so central to the ministry of Paul. He describes his goal in counseling. What does he strive to do? He says, "We proclaim him," speaking of Christ, "Christ with the center of his counsel and his teaching, admonishing every man," and that word admonish is our Greek term, "nouthateo," "admonishing every man, teaching every man with all wisdom that we may present every man complete in Christ." There's his goal.

The emphasis is not preaching to congregations in this verse, the emphasis is upon the ministry of the word of God to individual people. Every man, every man, every man, that's repeated here. Verse 29, he says, "For this purpose also I labor, striving according to his power which so mightily works within me." So it's God's power who is at work.

So God, it was very appropriate for the apostle Paul to plan and set goals for his personal ministry of the word of God. Ephesians 1, verse 17, here we see this in Paul's life again, Ephesians 1, verse 17. He says that, "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him." And then, in other words, you can see that that is part of his prayer, that's what he desired for them, that's the goal that he had for them.

Then you go over to chapter 3 and verse 14, he says, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth derives his name, that he would grant you according to his riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit in the inner man.

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you may, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses the knowledge that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God." This was his goal for them, that's what he desired, he set that as this goal.

The purpose of his ministry was that this would happen in their lives, that was a goal that he set. All right, we can see this also if you go back to the Gospels in Luke chapter 19 and verse 10. Jesus says, "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Jesus had a goal, he wanted to seek and save that which is lost.

You can see the same thing in the Gospel of John in verse 17 and verse 4. Jesus is speaking again, he says, "I glorified you on the earth having accomplished the work which you have given me to do." God gave Christ his goals, his purposes for coming to the earth and Christ accomplished everything that God gave him to do.

Now you're beginning to get a sense at this particular point and we could go on and on and on and use many other references but the point is this, planning and setting goals for what you do in order to accomplish things for God is very important and it's no less important in counseling.

In counseling you've got to set goals, where am I going to go this next counseling session? Sometimes when I supervise counselees who are in training or counselors who are in training, I ask them the question, "What are your goals for the next session? What do you want to do in this next session?

Where do you want to go? Where do you want to take them? What do you want to do with them?" Now why? What are some of the benefits and usefulness of goals for marriage and family counseling? Well, when you have good goals and good planning, it's useful for planning what to do and not to do.

It's useful for planning what to do, not to do and what to look for, we would say. I remember a woman that came in for counseling. She had been diagnosed by a psychiatrist with manic depression, sometimes referred to as bipolar disorder, and she wanted to know from me whether or not she should be on medication for her problem.

Well, I told her, "Listen, I'm not a physician, but there are two things I do know. The Bible teaches us that some depression can be caused by organic disorders. There are actually legitimate illnesses that can cause depression-like symptoms. So you need to be checked out physiologically to make sure that you don't have a legitimate organic disorder.

In some cases, if you have a tumor and the tumor is pressing on the wrong portion of the brain, it can cause depression-like symptoms. That's a tumor. That's a legitimate organic problem. But I also know, the Bible tells us, that some depression can be caused by wrong or inaccurate thinking or living along with our emotional reactions to that thinking or living, which causes us to be depressed.

Now that, at that particular point, ceases to be a physiological problem and now becomes a spiritual problem, and that is something that I can help you with. Even if it is an organic problem, I can help you with the spiritual dimension of dealing with it. If you do have a tumor, we can talk about how does the Word of God talk about dealing with physical illnesses, but if it's not a physiological problem, then the issue becomes what is the root of this, what in your thinking and in your desiring and in your cravings in life brought about this particular depression.

I can help you look at the latter and compare these with what God says you can do and what He expects from you. I can help you to do that. So if you have certain goals in counseling, you know what to do and what not to do, and you know what to look for in people's lives.

Secondly, these goals also are useful for evaluating progress. Are we moving along? That's important for the counselee to have a sense of moving somewhere. Are we going somewhere in the counseling? If your counselee doesn't have a sense that you're moving in a direction, they'll lose hope. They'll become discouraged.

Thirdly, they're also useful for a sense of confidence and confidence in the counselee as he or she is growing. There's a girl that came for counseling, in this case for depression. After receiving the counseling, eventually she graduated out from the counseling, went back into her normal life, started implementing what the Bible had to say about it.

Several months went by and then I got another call from this particular gal and she came for further help for the same depression. When she came back, I said to her, "Listen, I'm not going to talk with you about this depression anymore because you know what to do." Remember all those notes I had you take during the time that you went through counseling?

She said, "Yeah." "Do you still have those notes?" "Yes, I do." "Where are they?" "Well, they're in a box. I put them away." "Why?" "Because you now, and you saw relief, you saw help that the Word of God had for you, you now need to go back to those notes and re-implement until it becomes habituated in your life the same things that we talked about.

I don't need to counsel you anymore. You have the capacity and all the information you need to counsel yourself. You can do this. You don't have to rely upon me any longer." So if you have good goals in counseling, that'll help to build some confidence and confidence in your counselee as they are growing too.

So she was able to look back and say, "Yeah, you know, you're right. I shouldn't have to come back to you every time I have this experience in my life. What I should be able to do is open the Word of God and diagnose my own problem. What am I thinking that's wrong?

And then deal with that. Repent of it. And then head in the right direction. Do what God wants me to do." Fourth, good goals also are useful for sustaining momentum. In other words, success breeds success. Sustaining momentum. When you and your counselee realize, "Hey, you're making progress. Things have changed.

They're not the same person that they were when they first came to counseling. They're better. They know how to resolve problems better. They may be... They're not out of the woods, but you can sure see the edge of the woods." A lot better now. It's useful for sustaining momentum in counseling.

Have good goals. What kind of goals do you have for your counselee? Number nine, or number five, I should say. Number five. They're also useful for keeping you on track as weeks progress and turn into months. This is so you don't get lost in the details yourself. That is, sometimes you feel like you're putting out fires on a week-to-week basis.

Like the firemen here in Southern California. When all those big fires rush through the Angeles National Forest with all that chaparral and brush that burns up and the smoke, well, weeks after those fires are supposedly put out, they still have these hot spots that could easily reignite again. You find yourself running all over the place putting these hot spots out.

Very similar thing can happen in counseling. One day I described it. I was sitting down with a group of pastors and we were talking about this various thing. I said, "Counseling sometimes it's like you're sitting in front of a great big board. Have you ever seen one of those sound boards with all the knobs on them?" Only these are the kind of knobs that pop up.

One of them pops up over here and you push it down. Another one pops up over here and you push that one down. Another one pops up in the middle and you push that one down. You feel like all you're doing is just putting out fires on a week-to-week basis in counseling.

That's because you're allowing the counselee and the individual little things that happen on a week-to-week basis to run your counseling. You're not allowing your goals to run your counseling. If you're setting broader goals, it doesn't mean you ignore those fires. You address them, but you quickly get right back on path to the overall progress you're trying to make.

That's what you're trying to do. You're getting back on path, sustaining some kind of progress, especially as the weeks progress and turn into months of counseling. You want to get back on path. Number six, good goals also are very useful for saving time. If you don't know where you're going in the counseling, you will waste a lot of precious time.

Your counselee will soon get the idea that we're really not going anywhere and that this is a futile activity. He'll come to the conclusion that the author of Ecclesiastes comes to. Have all havalim, futility of futilities. It's all futility. Meaningless, meaningless. It's all meaningless. Vanity, vanity. It's all vanity.

Soap bubbles, soap bubbles. It's also bubbles. This is useless. Absolutely useless. Have all havalim. This is meaningless. Meaningless of meaningless. So we don't want that to happen. If you have good goals, it will save you time. Number seven, it's also useful for securing cooperation and participation. What I mean by that is that if your counselees understand the overall goals that you have, then they're more motivated to do their homework and to do it well.

And also, they will not lose hope as quickly if they understand that you have a clear biblical goal in mind. It's very easy in their sinful depravity, in their struggle with this particular problem to lose hope. And you've got to realize that. And in order to help them hold on to the hope that you hopefully have yourself so diligently ministered to them, you've got to constantly remind them of the progress that they're making.

Constantly remind them of the goals that you've set. Keep their eyes on that goal. Because the homework you give them, from their perspective, may be difficult, may be hard. They may want to give up with that kind of homework, but you can't let them do that. Because you're not giving them that homework just to keep them busy.

That's not your purpose. You're giving them that homework in order to encourage change on a daily basis in their life. That's why you're giving them that homework. Courage change. To show them that counseling is not the magic hour of the week. There are some people who think that. I'm coming to counseling.

It's the magic hour. That's where all of a sudden God really works and really changes me. No, counseling is not the magic hour of the week. Counseling is where I get directions on how to deal with my problems the rest of the week. The magic hour is every other hour of the week.

The magic hour is where I take what I've learned in counseling and I put it into practice. Counseling is not the magic hour of the week. It's funny how many counselees think that. Because you have some training in counseling, I think they believe that God or maybe seminary equipped you with a bag of spiritual whiffle dust.

If they come into counseling with all these problems, all you have to do is reach down into your bag of spiritual whiffle dust, grab a whole handful, and throw it on them. All their problems go away. That's not the way that counseling works at all. They have to work at it.

They have to labor diligently in order for those problems to go away. They have to change their thinking and their behavior in order for their problems to go away. Well then, what are some of the characteristics of good goals then? If we're going to set good goals, then they've got to share some really solid characteristics, especially if they're going to be helpful and meaningful goals and they're not just going to be arbitrary ones or unrealistic or unreasonable goals.

Wait until you have children and your children are going through school and your children have certain teachers and the children come home and they're all frustrated over the fact that they believe their teacher has given them an assignment that is beyond their ability. Here the teacher has a goal for them, but that particular goal is way beyond their ability to be able to handle, or at least they think so.

Then they don't want to do the assignment. So we don't want to set goals that are unrealistic. We want to set goals that are very reasonable. What are some of the characteristics of these good goals? Well, number one, they have to be shared by the counseling and the counselor.

They have to be shared. It's not enough for you to understand the goals and for your counseling not to. In fact, I think it's very important they understand them and you're able to explain them to them. Let me make a couple of comments about this that I think is really key because most people will come to counseling to get relief.

That's their goal. Get me out of my problem. Now there's a Christian way that people say that and that is they'll say to you, why have you come to counseling? They'll say, "I've come to receive victory over my sin." Now as a pastor, my heart resonates with that. Okay, that's good.

You want to have victory over sin, but what they mean by that and what you're thinking about may be two different things. When they say I've come to have victory over my sins, what they mean by that is I want complete liberation from my sin. I want complete freedom from my sin.

I want to be completely relieved from this problem so that it's no longer a temptation ever anymore in my life. That may not be God's will. There's a wonderful example of that in 2 Corinthians 12 with the Apostle Paul and his thorn in the flesh. Paul prayed not once, but three times to have that thorn in the flesh removed.

What is it that God said? My grace is sufficient for you. Why does God allow this thing to persist in Paul's life even though it was a huge irritant and Paul saw it as a big obstacle to his ministry? The answer was because God was using that particular thorn in the flesh to keep Paul humble.

Sometimes you're going to have young men that will come in and they'll have terrible problems with their sexual desires, and maybe things like masturbation. That'll be a difficulty for them. And they'll come to you and they'll honestly say to you, I want victory over this and what they mean by this is I don't want to be tempted by this anymore.

Well, you could help them with that. You could help them have victory. You could just sit them down to the local hospital and the hospital can turn them into a eunuch and they won't have any troubles with that anymore. There's not going to be any more temptation left. That'll be it.

That'll be the whole thing. But is that what they really want? Maybe it is this weakness that's a part of their flesh that God is using to keep them trusting Him. It helps them to understand how weak they are. It keeps their hands clenched tightly in His hand. They can't see their way out of this by themselves.

They have to trust the Lord in this every day. So every day this becomes a temptation that they have to fight. And in the process of fighting that as Romans chapter 5 and verse 3 says, it's that fight that produces godly character. So why would you want to remove something that is actually producing godly character in your life?

Why would you want to do that? That's not good. If God's using that in a positive way to show you your weakness and ultimate helplessness in front of this particular sin, why would you want it removed? Now the issue is, you don't want to succumb to it, that's true.

I want to learn how to deal with it. But the temptation, you may not have victory over where it never tempts you ever again. This may be something that you struggle with for the rest of your life. Same thing is true if you end up counseling someone who is a genuine Christian but still has homosexual or lesbian tendencies.

This is something that they may not be able to totally rid themselves of. But it is that weakness that they sense in the flesh that keeps them dependent upon Christ. So your goal is not victory. It's not your goal. Your goal is faithfulness. The question is, how do you deal with a young man who has homosexual tendencies but yet nevertheless he professes to be a Christian, and as far as you know, he was a Christian.

He had a good testimony for Christ, but he still had these weaknesses and tendencies in his life. And then what's your question about him? He didn't want to be alone and single the rest of his life, and yet at the same time he couldn't embrace marrying a woman. Alright, now we're assuming this guy is a genuine believer at this particular point.

If he is, then there's going to be a natural responsiveness in his heart to the Word of God. Then a person like this has got to understand God's beautiful design in gender complementarianism. And you've got to help him to see that as a counselor. Because why is it that God created Adam uniquely male and Eve uniquely female?

Because it says Adam was alone, alright? Genesis 2.18. "It was not good for Adam to be alone. I will make hell for suitable him." The only way that he was going to ultimately have satisfaction, not be alone, is to understand the beauty of the heterosexual relationship that God intended from the very beginning.

And you need to paint a beautiful picture of that, alright? In fact, you know, in counseling homosexuals, sometimes that's the most effective counsel. It's not spending all your time describing all the different Bible passages that condemn homosexuality. Usually, people like that understand that the Bible condemns it. They're convicted in their own heart.

They have a conviction that's deep in their conscience. But if you paint a beautiful picture of what God intended for the male-female relationship from the very beginning, they begin to see how their life and their desires are so out of whack with God's original plan. And God's plan is beautiful.

That instills within them a real desire to get in line with God's plan, alright? Now, is it possible that he could get married to a wonderful Christian young lady and then later on still have those homosexual tendencies? Absolutely. Those things can still come back on him, which only should serve to remind him of his own weakness in his flesh and the fact that he has to absolutely 100% rely upon the grace of God every single day in his life.

He needs to preach the gospel of grace to himself every single day. And that's the only way that he's going to, in a sense, keep his hands clenched and tightly gripping the hands of Christ, totally trusting him. That has to happen. Alright, well, secondly, the characteristics of a good godly goal is to reflect biblical values and perspectives.

They have to reflect biblical values and perspectives. Sometimes you'll get counselees come in to you and they'll say to you, "Pastor, all I want, I just want to feel good real fast." Alright, they're just really honest with you. Well, you can help them do that. You can tell them, "Just go out and buy several six-packs and find a couple of girls and go to a resort for a weekend.

You'll feel real good." Alright, but that's not going to be any more godly. So they've got the wrong goals. That's not the right kind of goal. Their goal is not, "I want to feel good real fast." Their goal should be, "I want to understand how to be God's kind of man in the midst of this temptation." That should their goal be.

And then as they do that, eventually, as time goes along, they will feel better. But their goal can't be just simply to feel better any more than their goal can be to just have victory over homosexuality. No. As they practice biblical things and those biblical thoughts and desires and attitudes become more and more prevalent in their life, then the temptation will weaken as time goes on.

But it still may be a temptation that God uses to keep them trusting in Him. They understand their weakness. So they must reflect biblical values and priorities. Their goal for coming into counseling should be, "I want to be God's kind of woman. I want to be God's kind of man.

That's my goal. I want to glorify God. I want to become more Christ-like," whatever that means. So if they come in with the wrong agenda or the wrong goal, you're responsible for correcting that agenda or that goal. Let me give you a good illustration of this. Back several years ago, I had a young man who he and his wife had just started coming to our church.

They had a little baby. The baby probably was about six months old. He showed up in my office one day and said, "I need help." I said, "Sure. Come on in. Have a seat." We had prayer and I said, "What's the problem? What's going on?" And he said, "I need for you to help me get my wife back." I said, "Oh, really?

What happened?" "Well, she left. She took the baby, moved out. I didn't even know it had happened. Took off somewhere. I don't even know where she's at and I need you to help me get my wife back." And I knew at that particular point that that guy wanted genuine help that was certainly sincere in his heart, but I also knew something else really clearly, and that is that he came to me with all the wrong agenda.

And I said to him, "I don't think I can help you." And he was kind of surprised. "I thought you guys did counseling at this church." I said, "We do. But you told me you can't help me." I said, "Right. I don't know where your wife is and even if I did, I couldn't force her to come back.

So if your goal in coming to see me is to get your wife back, it's the wrong goal." That hit him like a ton of bricks. "Well, then why should I come and see you?" "I'm glad you asked that question. You should be coming in and sitting down and saying to me, 'Pastor, help me to be God's kind of man, God's kind of husband, God's kind of father, whether my wife comes back or not.'" "Okay.

That's what I want to do," he said to me. I said, "Good. Now I can help you." All right. So we dove right into it, that first counseling session. About three weeks go by. I've had three or four appointments with him by this time. He shows up in counseling.

He says, "Guess what happened?" I said, "I have no clue." "My wife showed up at the apartment." "Really?" "With the baby." "Why'd she show up?" "Well, she came back to get some stuff that she had left behind. She needed it." "I haven't seen her for about three weeks." "Well, what happened?" "Well," he said, "I was actually sitting at the dining room table and I was doing my homework that you had given me to do and I had my Bible open, was studying some things.

And she walked in and she saw the apartment and everything was straight and everything was neat and everything was in order and I was cooking supper and it smelled really good in there and she looked around and she didn't say anything to me except, 'Wow, I should have left a long time ago.'" And he had, by this time, enough sense to be able to turn around and say to his wife, "I didn't do this to get you to come back.

I did this because I realized this is what I should have been doing all along. I did this because that's what's honoring to God." And he told me her mouth dropped open. You could tell what she was thinking, "Okay, who are you and what did you do with my husband?" She was so impressed by that, to make a long story short, she moved back in.

She started coming to church with her husband again. Then she started coming to counseling sessions with her husband. She ended up coming to Christ through the whole process. But I'll tell you, I think I would have lost him and the opportunity to counsel both of them if I would have bought his agenda right at the beginning.

He came in and the first thing he says to me is, "I want you to help me to get my wife back." If I would have said, "Okay, sit down, let's talk about that," I would have lost that whole thing right there. The very fact that I challenged his agenda and got him focused on being a godly man, a godly husband, and a godly father immediately turned the whole counseling case in the right direction.

We set the goal. It had to reflect the biblical value and perspective if it was going to do anything that was worthwhile. It had to do that. Thirdly, if this goal is going to be a good goal, then it has to be two-factored in nature. Permanent change in the Christian life is always two-factored.

Ephesians 4, Colossians 3 talks about putting off, putting on the whole radical change process that needs to take place there. You haven't really changed if you've stopped your sin. But if you've stopped your sin and you have then replaced it with godly actions, attitudes, desires, then you've changed. And that really is the process of metanoeo, that's the Greek term for repentance, to change one's mind from sin to righteousness.

There's the two-fold effect, from sin to righteousness. That's why we say that permanent change in the Christian life is always two-factored. What does metanoeo mean? It's a change of mind. Meta is change. Reduce is mind, so to change one's mind. But within the context of the way in which the word is always used in the New Testament, it's a word that means a change of mind that is so complete that it leads to a change of life.

It's not just merely an intellectual change of mind. It's a change of mind that is so complete that it leads to a change of life. That's the kind of repentance we're talking about. So this person has got to be willing to put off and put on. This person has got to be willing to see the importance of repentance.

If there's going to be real change in their life, all of that has got to be true. All right, let's pick up and talk about the characteristics of good goals. We've talked about they have to be shared by the counseling and counselor. They have to reflect biblical values and perspectives.

They have to be two-factored. Not only must they put off the old way of life, they've got to also put on the new way of life. Well, then number four, they also need to be realistic and specific. Good goals need to be very realistic and they need to be specific.

For example, when you're talking to counselees, you don't want to say to a counselee, "Okay, now George, you need to go home and love your wife more." He doesn't know what that means. George will have a tendency to think, "Okay, I need to go home and emote more good feelings towards my wife." "All right, now I love you more." "No, you've got to be specific about this.

George, I want you to go home this week and I want you to do some things that will communicate to your wife that you really love her. What do you suppose those would be?" "Well," he says, "I guess I could fix some things around the house. She's wanted me to do that for a long time." "Hey, that's good, George.

Let's fix some things around the house." "I guess I could wash dishes after supper at night." "Oh, yeah, that's good, George. That's really helpful." "I think I could help her out with the kids and let her run off and go shopping a little bit." "Yeah, that's good, George. I like that." Now you're being very, very specific.

You're getting George to be specific. The more concrete and specific you are, the more you're going to see change in your counselee. The more concrete and specific you are, the more you're going to see change. George, you need to stop interrupting your wife when she's talking and to look at her when she's speaking until she's finished.

So we're saying here that change really takes place in the specific and concrete, not in the abstract and vague. You have got to get out of Vaguesville, and then you can get your counselees out of Vaguesville. Or the other name for Vaguesville is Fuzzyland. You've got to get out of Fuzzyland, and then you get your counselees out of Fuzzyland.

Be concrete. Be specific. Let them know what you're talking about in terms of change. That's very realistic. They understand that. "George, this coming week, I want you to wash the dishes for your wife three times." Okay, and then the next week, you increase it to four, and the next week, five times.

She's a very busy woman, George. She's got a lot on her plate, and you can help her out. All right, number five. These good goals also should reflect the particular deficiencies and needs of the persons that are involved. For example, there are some people that just simply need to understand the gospel.

One of the worst things you can do is just assume that a person is a Christian. They may think they're a Christian, but you begin to probe what they mean by that. You find out that their trust is not in Christ alone. They're trusting in some kind of behavior, some kind of penance that they do.

They're trusting in something else, their church attendance, or their tithing. Something else that's not godly. So you need to help them to see the resources that they have in Christ alone and to trust him alone. Also, help your counselees use the resources that God provides, planning for some biblical self-talk.

That's not a bad thing. You're not mentally ill if you talk to yourself. You only become mentally ill if you answer yourself. But you're not mentally ill if you talk to yourself. And there's a lot of good biblical self-talk that you can use with people. Help your counselees talk to themselves about what is right, what they need to think that's right, what they need to desire that's right, what they need to do that's right.

"Oh, John, you did that very poorly. You need to do this and then do it." There's nothing wrong with that. Some biblical self-talk. When you fail, you say, "Wow, that was stupid. That was sinful. That's a wrong thing for me to do." Get them to talk to themselves and use biblical self-talk.

Help your counselees recognize situations of temptation when there's wrong or unwise thinking and behaving. What are the situations that are wrapped around it? And if you help them to identify that, oftentimes you can help them also to identify when they are actually leading up to a failure. They can see the circumstances before it actually happens, are already set in motion for them to fail.

They can identify it and cut it short. Help your counselee learn how to read and apply the Word of God on their own in a situation. Don't always spoon-feed a counselee. If you have a more mature counselee who's further along in their Christian walk, then take them to a passage of Scripture and begin to discuss it.

But don't feed them all the answers. Give them questions. Make them take a look at the Scripture and then look at their own life and help them to see how their life has to change in relationship with the Scripture. There needs to be increasing of a counselee's awareness of biblical guidelines and priorities and principles like the nature of love, the importance of forgiveness, how to deal with a guilty conscience, and how to get a conscience cleansed.

Also have a counselee have a sense of what God wants each to change from and to. Help them to understand that or help them to recognize and accept responsibility for his or her unbiblical thinking and behavior and get them to stop blame-shifting on their children or on their spouse or on their parents or whatever that they're responsible for their own attitudes and actions and even reactions to problems.

Help them to procure genuine forgiveness from each person that they have sinned against or offended. Help them secure commitment from each person making Christ and His purposes their standard for what they think and say and do. Are you willing to be the wife, mother, woman that God wants you to be?

Are you willing to be that way? Help each of them to commit to Christ-centered change regardless of the other person's behavior and help each of your counselees plan and implement personalized strategies. For example, a wife may say to you, "You don't understand my husband. When he gets home he's always irritated.

He brings all the frustrations of the office home with him." Well then you can help her plan for that particular time. To allow her husband to in a sense have some unwind time, to let him decompress so to speak from all the pressures of the day before she hits him up with all the things that she wants him to do.

So no deep discussions or deep questioning of why he does this or that when he first comes home from work. Give him a little bit of space. Allow him to adjust to the home environment and get away from the pressures of what he's had to experience during that day in the office.

Help your counselee to practice new patterns long enough for them to become comfortable with them and don't let up too soon because it's easy to want to move on to the next agenda item and it gives you a false sense of progress. You don't want that. You want the false sense of progress by moving from one agenda item to the other.

Make sure your counselee has really changed and the changes are complete there. And then help family members support each other in their changing and encouraging one another. If you're working with an entire family, that can be very, very critical. Help them to be supportive with one another. Now, so these good goals should reflect the particular deficiencies and needs of the person that's involved.

What are they? Then in addition to this, these goals need to be focused upon heart change as well. Heart change. It's not enough for them to just merely change their behavior or their words or their technique of communication. All of that is external changes. But if their heart is not in it, it'll never be permanent change in that home.

They've got to take a look at their heart, the desires, intentions, expectations, motivations that tend to rule what they say, tend to dominate their attitudes and behaviors towards one another. A wife who is bitter at her husband can change her communication technique towards him so that she doesn't sound as bitter anymore, but if her heart is still bitter, it's going to come out in some other way.

And eventually she'll go right back into the pattern of communicating in a bitter, resentful way towards him. So her heart must change. She's got to be able to see this. What is it that she is idolizing in her heart that's more important than God? What has become her functional God in her heart?

I want my husband to treat me well. I want my husband to get out of the job that he's in and he's not getting out of that job. I want him to get a better job where he can make more money for the family. And so she's bitter and resentful over that fact.

I want him to do what I think should be done here. Now she could change. You can work on her communication skills with her husband so that she's not communicating bitterness. But if her heart hasn't changed, she's still going to go along and be bitter and it's going to come out in other ways.

So her heart's got to change. Furthermore, good goals should be properly motivated. And they have to be related to the wide scope of biblical motives for change. Without motives being touched in our goal statements in teaching, we could really become very moralistic in our counseling rather than biblical in our counseling.

Our purpose is to not set down a whole new law of right and wrongs that our New Testament laws. That's purpose, that's moralism, but it's certainly not biblical Christianity. So we have to speak to motives, especially heart motives. Now that's going to involve a theological motive, which is the primary overall motive.

Why should they be in counseling? Not to get their wife back, not to get their husband to treat them better, not to get the children to obey. Why should they be in counseling? Ultimately so that they can be more Christ-like and they can bring more glory to God. That's the ultimate theological motive.

That rules everything. I don't care what counseling circumstance it is, what marriage circumstance it is, it always has got to be that their theological motive is to please God and to be more Christ-like. How can I be God's kind of man, God's kind of woman, God's kind of husband, God's kind of wife, God's kind of father, God's kind of mother, God's kind of child?

How can I be that way? How can I set as my goal His glory no matter what happens in my family, no matter how my wife responds to me, or my husband responds to me, or my children respond to me, or my parents respond to me, or my siblings respond to me, how can I be a more godly person as a result of the circumstances that I'm going through?

That's the critical thing. The second one is an interpersonal motive, and that is, if you will, this kind of just runs right down through Matthew 22, verses 37 through 39. The Pharisees confront Jesus and say, "What is the greatest commandment?" And Jesus says to them, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Upon these two commands the whole law hangs." On those two pegs, loving God and loving others, everything else in life hangs. Every counseling problem, every family problem, goes back to how much that person loves God and how much that person loves other people, especially in their family. Loving your neighbor as yourself, and of course, the Bible is not saying there that we need to love ourselves more, and nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that.

We don't need to love ourselves more. The Bible assumes all the time, and is literally replete with commands, that we love ourselves too much. And in fact, that's the assumption that Jesus makes here. We need to love God and love others with the same degree of passion that we already love ourselves.

We need to love God and love others with the same degree of passion that we already love ourselves. Now that alone separates us from 95% of all the psychologies that are out there. Furthermore, there needs to be an ethical motive. Matthew chapter 6 and verse 33, "Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness, and all these other things will be added unto you.

Be ye holy even as I am holy." Be ye holy even as I am holy. So the desire here is to be more holy, more righteous before God in our walk with him. Fourth, there has to be ultimately an existential motive. That is, we want to promote biblical relationships.

We want to resolve specific problems in life, in their life. But our goal is not primarily to get rid of their problems. That's not our goal. Our goal primarily is to teach them to be God's kind of people in the midst of their problems. That's our goal. That's our purpose.

You may or may not be able to get rid of their problems. I was pretty successful to get rid of my counselee's problems, and then they came back to me later and God had thrown problems 10 times worse into their lives. Ah! So I began to realize, listen, I may actually, trying to get them out of their problems, may be working against God here.

Those problems are there for a purpose. So that's not my goal. My goal is to help them to be a godly man or woman in the midst of those problems. Now that I can help them do. But we don't take our eye off the fact that we want to help them be, solve problems.

I mean we can't forget John 8, 32 where it talks about the truth will set you free. In Philippians 4, 7, the peace of God will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. So God wants us to be at peace. He wants truth to set us free. He's not opposed to problems like that or being set free from problems.

It just may not be his immediate will for that to happen. So these good goals have to be properly motivated. Those are all the characteristics. There are at least seven of them that are characteristics of good goals for marriage and family counseling. Now if we can, we want to summarize these.

There's a summary here of the basic and/or general aims or goals of marriage and family counseling. The first summary is we want to make sure these goals for marriage and family counseling will secure heart commitment from all family members to Christ and to his word as the standard for all that is said and done.

That's what we want to do. We want to secure that kind of commitment for all that is said and done. Now what is that going to result in? All of that will manifest itself in a desire and a willingness to put off all that is unbiblical and thus dishonoring to God and destructive to the marriage and family relationships.

That goal will do that. It will manifest itself in a desire and a willingness to put off all that is unbiblical and dishonoring to God and that which is destructive to the marriage and family relationship. Secondly, it will also produce a desire and a willingness to put on all that is biblical and thus pleasing to God and good for marriage and family relationships.

That's where we say there's that "put off, put on" thing. Permanent change in Christian life is always two-factored. You've got to get rid of the old and replace it with the new. Furthermore, we have to foster and establish true companionship, the essence of marriage between family members. What is a true companionship there?

These goals will also facilitate, on every level, the resolution of the problem that initially brought them for counseling. Furthermore, these goals will lead to deep unity and intimacy within the family. They will also cause their marriage to be a powerful witness for Christ and a tremendous example for others as they exemplify in their family the relationship between Christ and His Church.

And they ultimately will help them to fulfill the purpose for which they and their families exist, namely, to bring honor and glory to God. If we were to summarize all those things that these goals are supposed to do, that's what it should do if you have a family that's willing and is ready to do things God's way.

Now how do we do this? This is the how-to part. How do you identify, determine, and prioritize the what, when, and how of goals that should be pursued in counseling sessions? All right, number one, I think the first thing that we have to do, and we're doing much more here than just merely giving lip service to this.

This is imperative. Prayer is really key here. James 1, 5, "If anyone lacks wisdom, he needs to ask of God who gives liberally." So, prayer is key here. When you set goals for marriage and family counseling, you need to pray over those goals and make sure that you're doing them as biblically as possible.

This is not based upon what you would like to see. This is what God says should be done. Secondly, listen for the express goals of your counselees. What are the express goals? Proverbs chapter 21 and verse 22 says, "The wise man attacks the city of the mighty and pulls down the stronghold in which they trust." What are their express goals?

Proverbs 25, 20, "Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day or like a vinegar poured on a soda is one who sings songs to a heavy heart." So we've got to be wise. You've got to start, in essence, where your counselee is, not where you would like him or her to be.

You've got to start where they are. Is the counselee focusing on what they can control or what they cannot control? Are they focusing on their feelings? Are they focusing on righteous behavior? In other words, a counselee should be coming to you and saying, "I need to know how to handle my husband's anger." What they're really asking is, "How am I going to respond when my husband gets angry?" That's what they should be asking.

But more often than not, what you get is something like this, "I want my husband to stop being angry with me and I need for you to help me to stop that." You may not be able to do that. The husband may not be a believer, and if he is a believer, he may not be willing to come into counseling.

Or you could say, a mother says, "I want my child to open up to me. Help me to get my child to open up." Well, I can't do that, but I can teach you how to be a godly mother when your child doesn't open up. I can help you to understand that.

"I want you to help me to get my daughter to trust my judgment," a mother says. Well, I can't do that, but I can sure help you in front of your child be a better, more godly mother so it will be easier for your child to trust you. That doesn't mean your child is going to trust you.

I can do that. Or somebody says to you, "I want to feel more worthwhile in life." Well, even though all of us to some degree or another would like to feel that way, you may or may not be able to conjure that up in that counselee's life, but you can sure show them how to be a godly person in life.

And when they're a godly person, then I believe the right feelings of being worthwhile and significant to other people will come. So you begin to see here, you've got to listen for your counselee's express goals. What are they? What is it that they really want? Like the young lady who came in, she's 19 years old and she says to me, "Dr.

Street, I really need your help." I said, "How do you want me to help you?" "I need you to help me to get my parents off my back." Well, I have no control over her parents. I don't know what her parents are going to do, but as I can say to her with all confidence, "I can't do that.

I can't get your parents off your back, but I can sure teach you how to respond in a godly fashion when your parents are on your back. I can help you with that." Oh, what are your counselee's expressed goals? And then, obviously, this brings us to the second one, and that is what are your counselee's unexpressed goals and intentions?

What are their unexpressed goals? For example, you have passages like Proverbs chapter 18 and verse 15. In fact, grab your Bible just for a moment. That's a good passage to go back to. Proverbs 18, 15, "The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seek knowledge." So a person who's going to be a good counselor has got to ask yourself, "What are my counselee's goals that they're not expressing?" For example, you get a man who comes in to counseling with his wife, and he acknowledges in the counseling session that he's having an affair, and he's unwilling to abandon the affair.

And so your natural conclusion is, "Why in the world does this person come for counseling?" If he came in unwilling to abandon his affair, why has he come to counseling? His goal certainly isn't to be God's kind of man. If that were true, he'd abandon his affair. Why does he come to counseling?

Well, more often than not, a person like that will come to counseling, they'll use some kind of excuse, and they'll say, "Well, I knew that my wife was going to need some help when she found out that this affair was going on, so I came in for her sake," as if he really loves her.

"Hello?" I don't buy that a minute. There's usually something else behind that. That's his express purpose for coming in. "I'm coming in to help my wife because this is going to be hard on her." Yeah, I believe that. What is it? Well, most guys will come into counseling because they want to look good in the eyes of their family.

That's why. They want to look good. They want to be able to go home to mom and dad and say, "You know what? I tried. I went to counseling with her, and it didn't work." You know why it didn't work? Because long before he ever came to counseling, he determined in his mind, "I don't care what they say.

I'm not going to follow this. I'm having too much fun having this affair." They've already determined that. That's the unexpressed goal. So they want to look good. They want to be able to say to their relatives long after the divorce, "You know, I tried. I did. I tried to make it work.

I went to counseling with her." Boy, how deceptive the wicked human heart is, isn't it? How clever it is. By the way, I didn't know that as a young pastor. I got fooled a couple of times on that one, but I began to pick up on this. I'm a slow learner, but eventually I began to see what was going on here.

I know why you're coming to counseling. I get the full picture. You want to be able to go home to mom and dad later on and say, "You know, I really tried to make this work, but this was all her fault." So I don't let them get away with that at all.

What do you do? You say, "I think that your real reason for coming to counseling is because you want to look good in the eyes of your parents. You already have an agenda. You're already mentally out of this marriage. You're just going through, jumping through the hoops right now in the processes in order to make it look good to everybody.

Well, you know what? I'm not going to play those games. I'm not going to play those games. Either you come to the realization that this is a wicked sin before God and you repent now, or I'm not interested in seeing you for counseling. I'll work with your wife, but I'm not going to work with you.

You've got to come to that point." So or there's Proverbs chapter 27. As a counselor, you need to remember this in verse 19, "As in water, face reflects face, so the heart of a man reflects a man." What's going on in the heart of your counselee? What's going on in the heart?

We could also go back to Proverbs chapter 16 in verse 2, twice in Proverbs, this is said by the way, "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives." If you go over to Proverbs 21 in verse 2, very similar statement there, "Every man's way is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the motives." Both of those particular passages, by the way, reflect the fact that man already has a very self-favoring view of himself.

And that's the reason why he's so quick at self-justification. Because of that self-favoring view, he's very quick to justify himself. You're not in counseling very long before you pick that one up because sometimes when you're talking to a person about what's happened in their past, they wax eloquent about how other people have misused them, abused them, mistreated them.

They'll paint it for you in living color, a huge picture of how other people have mistreated them and wronged them. And then when you ask them in the counseling session, "What is it that maybe you have done wrong or said wrong as part of your past?" They'll all of a sudden get this glazed look in their eyes, "Well, I know I didn't always do right, but let me tell you what that other person did." And then they circle right back around.

Now why do they do that? Well, because that's what Proverbs 16, 2 and Proverbs 21, 2 says they will do. They already have a very self-favoring view of themselves, but the Lord ultimately is the one who weighs the motives behind it. Or here's another good passage. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 4 and verse 4, 1 Corinthians 4, 4.

Paul here says, "For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted, but the one who examines me is the Lord." So he says, "I can examine my own conscience. My conscience can be clear, but ultimately that's not the thing that really lets me off the hook.

It's only when the Lord does it." And you know what? You're going to get counselees that will say that to you. You know that, don't you? They'll come in and say to you, "My conscience is clear." And I say to them, "That's too bad." "What do you mean it's too bad?" Because that means nothing.

That doesn't mean you're guiltless. That just means that you have a poorly trained conscience. The point is, does God clear your conscience? Would God look at your conscience and say, "It's clear"? That's what Paul says. He says, "In his own conscience, I'm conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted." I'm not acquitted because of this, but the one who examines me is the Lord.

He's the one who acquits me, then I'm really not guilty. So you've got to listen for the unexpressed goals and intentions of your counselee because there are an awful lot of counselees who will make this statement. "I have a clear conscience in the way that I've treated my wife." "I have a clear conscience in the way I've treated my husband," they'll say.

Well, you know what? That's not the standard for whether or not your conscience should be clear or not. The standard is whether or not the Lord acquits you. That's the standard. It's not whether or not your conscience is clear. So listen to the unexpressed goals. Back several years ago, there was a 20-year-old single mom that moved in with her single divorce older mother, and she complained after living with her for a while, this younger mother.

She says, "My mother treats me like her little child. She has ideas about my little Joanna, my two-year-old, about when I should be in the house, et cetera, as though I was still some kind of a teenager." Now, when you listen to her explanation of what went on, it sounds like all of her problems stems from whom?

Her mom. All of her problems stem from her mom. "If you can just help me to get my mother off my back, I'll be okay." She wants the conflict to disappear. She wants a good relationship with her mother. She wants to not feel the rejection from her abandoning father and now her husband that abandoned her.

Each one of those goals goes just a little bit deeper into the water than the first expressed exasperation. She had been abandoned as a little girl by her father. Now she had been abandoned by her husband. These were part of the deep hurts and problems of the past that were flavoring her relationship with her mother and that she felt that her mother wasn't treating her well.

Now, when counselees come like this, their intentions may seem quite acceptable and even godly to them. They may not be intentionally deceitful or blaming, and yet in the final analysis, they're really handling their situation in a sinful or wrong way. That's where that Proverbs 16.2 says, "All a man's ways seem innocent in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives." There's another woman who came in for counseling where she said, "I need to know how to handle my husband's insensitivity and incommunicableness." And so I asked if her husband would start joining us for counseling, and he started coming into counseling.

And I began to immediately see in the counseling situation that her reactions to her husband's decisions of thinking were totally shutting him down. Any time her husband would say something that she didn't like, which was frequent, she would look over to him and say, "Well, that's kind of dumb," "Well, that's stupid," "We really don't think that," she'd say.

So she was constantly demeaning him. Now she comes to me with the presentation problem that her husband isn't communicating with her. But the real issue was, every time he attempted to communicate something, he was challenged. Why do we want to do that? We shouldn't want to do it that way.

And when he would ask her opinion, she'd say, "It's no use talking to you, you've already made up your mind." Now you'll hear people do that, they'll do that right in front of you. Now what was the problem? The problem was that her husband did want to communicate with her, but every time he attempted to communicate, she was chopping him off at the knees.

What you say is stupid, you're a dummy, you can't think, you have nothing worthwhile to communicate and if you want to communicate something, then you've really already made up your mind so it's worthless for me to say anything. Unexpressed goals. Listen to those unexpressed goals. Listen past the most obvious problems, sins, and complaints.

Listen past them. Proverbs 18, verse 2, "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in airing his own opinions." Proverbs 25, verses 7 and 8, "What you have seen with your own eyes, do not bring hastily to court, for what will you do in the end if your neighbor puts you to shame?" Proverbs 18, verse 13 talks about, "He who is first to present his case seems just until another comes along and questions him." So you've got to listen past the most obvious problems, sins, and complaints.

What's really going on here? Now this is something that I had to train myself to do because maybe as a man I'm not trained to do this. My wife is much better than this. She's really good at reading between the lines. I just take what people say at face value.

They say this to me, "Okay, that's good, that works." But my wife's reading between the lines. You know what they really meant by that? No, what? So I have to train myself to think about this. I guess I'm just way too gullible. I want to take what people say straight up.

Some people talk like that, but not everybody. There's a counseling case several years ago where husband and wife were seen together but they had been separated for about a month. He was unfaithful and left her, deciding he didn't want to be married anymore. He had had several affairs in their brief four year marriage and the joy obviously had gone out of their marriage.

They can't talk without getting into an argument. Now he has come in sorrow saying that he believes divorce is wrong and he wants to make it work, but she isn't sure that she can trust him. So what are you going to do with this? He wants to reconcile the relationship.

He was wrong. He says he repents. He's violated the marriage on a repeated basis. So the question as a counselor is, is your primary goal in your counseling to get them to live together as quickly as possible? Should you as a counselor to work first to unite them? What's the question?

What's really going on here? I want to suggest to you that that's not your primary goal. Why? When you have a man who has repeatedly committed adultery, you probably have a what? An unbeliever. Your goal here then is what? The gospel. Your goal is the gospel. Your goal is not to primarily get them back together again as quickly as I can.

I've got to get them back together again. No. Now that they're separated, that could be one of the worst things because she cannot remarry a man who is an unbeliever. She can't do that. So you can't get them together again, get them remarried and living together again because she would be in sin.

But yet his express goal is what? The former husband's express goal is, "I want to get married." Well, you have to, in a sense, listen past the most obvious things, problems and sins and complaints, and get at the core things. What's really important here? What do we want to prioritize?

Okay. Now there's just a couple more that we're going to do here and then we will take a break. Number five, take the expressed and unexpressed goals of the counselees and reframe them in Biblical terms and along the lines of God's priorities. We can see this in John chapter 8 verses 3 through 11.

That's the woman who's caught in adultery and Jesus says, "Where are your accusers? Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." Does the Lord show at this particular point sensitivity to her guilt, to her culpability? Her goal in all this was to avoid the temporal punishment of being stoned and minimize the shame through the secrecy and probably through escape, but she got caught.

But what does Jesus do? He reframes the whole thing to direct her to avoid eternal punishment, not temporal punishment. Avoid eternal punishment and shame along with the temporal consequences. How do you do that? Well, the answer was through repentance. Proverbs 25, 20, "Like one who takes a coat on a cold day, sings songs to a heavy heart." So we need to show how righteousness addresses the real needs and is determined by God's purposes versus their felt needs.

How does righteousness do that? Proverbs 25, 20, Jeremiah 6, 14, it says, "The priests of ancient Israel would dress the wounds of my people as though they were not serious," God says. We don't want to be like those priests. We don't want to dress the wounds as if they're not serious.

Be sure to affirm God's motives for change, not pragmatic feelings, likely outcomes as though a technique were a manipulative strategy for helping people to get what they want from God. No, that's not our goal. 6. Then explain the process dynamics of biblical counseling for marriage and the family. Sometimes this involves talking about an interpretive hermeneutical bridge or what we sometimes refer to as the eight eyes in counseling.

In our next session, we're going to talk about those at the beginning of it. What are those eight eyes? They're just a way to think about the entire counseling process. They involve involvement, inspiration, inventory, interpretation, instruction, inducement, implementation, integration. Those are the eight eyes. Now, I'll explain those later on.

And then as a way to sort of remember them, this is a little acrostic, put CAPT and the eight eyes into practice. What are we talking about? Well, C has to do with context. What is the context of your marital and family counseling? What is it? Assessment and analyze is A.

Promote and permanentize is P. And T is where do I find the final or at what particular point do I finally terminate the counseling? That's T. That's what we're talking about there. All right. Thank you. 1