There's one more slide that we have to deal with when it comes to dealing with the goals of counseling, and it's a slide that really helps us to set things up for the next part of our class, which deals with the process of dynamics of marriage and family counseling.

And this particular slide really has to deal with the overall eight I's. Now this is just something that was developed to help us to remember key areas of the counseling process, and it has to do with really the issue that Ephesians 4 talks about, beginning in verse 22, putting off and putting on, the counseling process, in a sense, is dedicated to that.

And our purpose here is, in the early part of counseling, to get at the root issues of people's hearts, address these with what the Bible says is going on, diagnose them properly when there's been a problem between a husband and a wife, and then help them, obviously, to change, because all counseling has that in common.

We want to change so that people will bear good fruit. Well, the first aspect of that, putting off, requires involvement with the family. That is, creating that type of relationship where they know, in the depths of their heart, that we have their long-term interests, first and foremost, in mind.

We've gained involvement when that has happened. When they know that we have their long-term interest in mind, we can't just assume that. These may be people that have been a part of our church for many years, and we can't just assume that they believe that we are their good friends.

They may not assume that. They may not think that we have their long-term interest in mind in relationship to what is godly and what is righteous and what is Christlike. So we have to gain involvement with them. That's vitally important. Secondly, has to do with inspiration. We have to give them hope.

Most people who have been struggling with marital problems or family problems have lost a lot of hope. They're discouraged. They're unhappy. And they've tried to resolve their problems in the past, and there hasn't been a whole lot of success in resolving them. So they've lost a lot of hope.

So you spend a good deal of time ministering hope, biblical hope to them. Help them to understand that God intends only good to come out of this. It's kind of that same thing that Joseph said to his brothers in Genesis 50-20. You intended this for evil, but God intended it for good, the saving of many lives.

So people and circumstances may be evil in our lives, but God ends up taking that evil and turning it around to that which is best for us, for you and me. And so in counseling, it's vitally important that we communicate that kind of hope. One of the best verses to do that is 1 Corinthians 10-13.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus." Oh, I'm actually quoting Romans 8-1. "No temptation has taken you except for what is common to man, and God is faithful. He will not allow us to be tempted above what we're able." So 1 Corinthians 10-13 communicates a lot of hope.

In other words, there's nothing that we're facing in life that's absolutely unique. Other people have faced it, and they've been able to face it successfully, and they've been able to handle these type of problems successfully with God's help. Romans 8-28-29 is another couple of verses that are oriented towards hope.

Or Romans 15-4, "The scriptures were given to us so that through our study of them and through perseverance, we might have hope." So there's no reason that we shouldn't have hope. I don't care what the problem would be as long as God is behind the problem. Sometimes I say to counselees in this inspiration phase of counseling, so to speak, I say, "Your problem looks like a gigantic mountain in front of you, right?" Oh, yeah.

This is huge. This is huge in my life. But I want you to be able to lift your eyes above and behind that mountain and see God standing. He's bigger than this mountain. This problem looks like a gigantic mountain, but I want you to see God standing behind that mountain.

He's bigger than this mountain in your life. And that's when they begin to have hope, when they lift their eyes above their problems and look at God in the picture. So that's when inspiration actually takes over. Then if we really truly are concerned about resolving their problem, then that brings us to the third area here, which has to do with inventory.

Inventory is where we do a lot of data gathering. Proverbs 13:15 talks about the fact that a man who speaks before he hears is a fool. And we don't want to be foolish in our counseling. We want to listen carefully to where people are coming from. We want to listen carefully to their problems.

I had a young lady earlier in one of our college classes today ask me the question about the fact, what do you do if you have a friend or somebody that comes to you and they share with you some information about someone else and you attempt to help them from the word of God deal with this problem?

And remember that from a biblical perspective, it's not gossip if you're a part of the problem or you're a part of the solution of the problem. It's not gossip. But if you're just listening to bad things about other people, that's gossip. And this gal moved right in and wanted to help her friend.

Well, the other person in the party also came along and started talking with her. And she was asking me the question, how do you keep from being prejudiced in those kind of situations? And my answer to her was Proverbs chapter 18 and verse 17, where it says, "The first to plead his case seems right until another comes and examines him." So when you're data gathering, especially in a family counseling situation, you've got to listen to all sides of the story.

And boy, that's especially true in marital conflicts. I've had husband or a wife come to me and start describing what's going on in their marriage. And when they got done, I thought that their spouse was the worst person to walk the planet. All right, then later on, I had a chance to talk with their spouse.

And all of a sudden, that changed the whole picture. Now I understood this a little bit better. I got a different perspective on what was going on between them. But just looking at one side of the story seemed to distort the whole thing. So you've got to do proper data gathering.

I had said earlier that that other passage was Proverbs 13, 15. It's actually Proverbs 18, 13, "He who gives an answer before he hears, it is a fall and a shame to him." That's the importance of good data gathering and counseling. We don't want our counselees to have fools for counselors.

And how's that going to happen? Well, we're going to ask a lot of questions. We're going to collect a lot of information. We're going to make sure we get all sides of the story. We won't jump to conclusions, or we won't allow ourselves to become biased or prejudiced in one way or another.

And that's another thing, by the way, oftentimes you have to say to a husband or a wife, "Listen, I'm not on your side, Tom. And Terry, I'm not on your side either. I'm on God's side. I want God to win out here." It's not important whether or not Tom wins out or Terry wins out.

What's really important here is whether or not God wins out. That's the side that I'm on. So you've got to collect a lot of good information. Well, after you've collected it, then what are you going to do with it? Which brings us to number four. Then you have to take that information and you have to spend a little bit of time thinking through it.

That's part of interpretation. How are you going to interpret what's going on in that marriage? What are the core problems? And then you have to prioritize those core problems. What are the things that I need to address first and what do I need to put off and address later?

Sometimes expediency rules and you have to address some external issues before you can really get down to the hard issues that are important issues. Just to sort of get those things out of the way, so to speak, so that they don't cause any more additional damage. You can't always just go into counseling and go right after a hard issue.

So that's the interpretational phrase. And once you get to that, then you have a pretty good idea what's going on at the root of this marital conflict or this problem at the root. What is going on in the heart? Then you need to address this and putting on the good fruit through instruction.

That is bringing the word of God to bear upon it. Not only does the word of God help us to diagnose the problem, but it also gives us the remedy or the cure for the problem. So our instruction, our teaching at this point, helps them to understand what they need to do in this issue.

Then number six has to do with inducement. And then that means it's not enough to just merely teach them the word of God. We have to encourage them, persuade them to follow the word of God. The apostle Paul was fond of using the word "urge." "I urge you." And when he uses that word "urge," he's trying to be persuasive.

He's turning up the emotional pressure on them. He's saying, "You need to follow this. I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice. I urge you." Why is he doing that? That's inducement. It's not enough to just teach factual things about the Bible and expect your counselees to naturally respond.

You've got to encourage them, persuade them, induce them, urge them. You have to be persuasive. Just the way you would put together a sermon to be persuasive to your congregation, you have to put together the data for your counseling to be persuasive to people. So it's not just enough to just teach the Bible.

You've got to be persuasive with the Bible. Now there's a difference between being persuasive and being manipulative. You know that you're becoming manipulative when you're issuing threats, especially personal threats. No, you're not being, you're not supposed to be manipulative. As counselors, we don't do that. We're supposed to be persuasive.

This has got to make sense to them because this is going to be hard for them to do to make these changes. So inducement is number six, implementation is number seven. Then you need to show them and teach them how they can take these biblical truths and really implement them for life change in their life.

Now you're getting to some very practical things, very practical suggestions. How can I implement this so that my life will really change? What is it do I need to, what do I need to change on a motivational level? What do I need to change on a thinking level? What do I need to change on a behavioral level?

How am I going to go about that particular change? So you need to help them to implement those changes. And then last of all, number eight is integration. That is, this is sort of a Galatians chapter six and verse one process where you're trying to restore them back to good functioning as a husband and a wife, as a family, back into the church.

This particular sin has paralyzed them and it's broken them down. They're no longer functioning well and now you've showed them what they need to do to change and they've begun the process of change and the restoration has come around. Now what do you do? Now you need to integrate them right back into the body life of the church, back into normal functioning, only probably for the first time ever in their marital life or in their family are they really responding and interacting with each other in a biblical way.

So you need to spend time integrating them back into the body life of the church, back into normal life again where they're ministering and serving God and serving other people in such a way that people are blessed. People actually are benefited from their service. Now they have ceased being a liability in your church and now they've become an asset to your church because you have taken them through that restoration process.

So that's what we mean by the eight I's. Those eight things are key for putting off the old way of life, putting on the new way of life and bringing about lasting biblical change. Now that helps to set us up to talk about the process dynamics in counseling and we're going to take these eight I's and sort of break them down for marriage and family purposes into a little acrostic CAPT, I talked about that in our last class period.

The first one C actually stands for what is the context, A has to do with assessment, P has to do with how to make those things permanent and T has to do with when do I know that it's a good time to terminate counseling and graduate them from counseling.

So let's deal with C first of all. What about context? This is where you're trying to nurture a conducive atmosphere in which a relationship may grow. You cultivate rapport, hope, involvement and inspiration of the eight I's is what you're interested in here with a marriage and a family couple.

Well how do you do that? Number one, you have to build the session tasks, build the session tasks. That involves establish a definite time and a place to meet. That time should be a time where they can be alert, they're not tired, it's not something that's late at night where they're ready to go to bed and they're really sleepy.

They can be alert, they can interact with each other well, it needs to be a time like that. And then they need to have the right kind of place and this is usually a place without distractions. No phone calls or cell phones or children interrupting them. Sometimes it's helpful just within an American or European culture to get them to come to an office at the church.

Because if a person has to leave their home and go to an office, it's just much more, they're in much more of a mood to do business, to really get down and work on things. If they're in the comfort of their own home, they have a tendency to be a little bit more lazy, slothful and follow through.

Now can you counsel people in their homes? Yes, you can. And certainly according to Acts chapter 20 and verse 20, that's what Paul did, he went from house to house. So you can do that, it's not a bad thing to do it. It's just that within our culture, sometimes people view the home as a place of relaxation, escape from the pressures and stresses of the world.

It's a place where I really don't do anything real, real serious. But if they have to get out and leave the home and go to somewhere like a church, a church building and sit down in an office across from a person at a desk, then they're much more alert, much more active, much more engaged in the counseling when they have to do that.

Sometimes I found that that's actually a preferable atmosphere. I would tell people, you know, I'll spend a session or so with you in your home, but eventually I want to move over to my office. Because one of the big things is, I have at my fingertips all the books I need, if I want to pull off books and I want them to study something, they're right there.

I have homework all set up in my drawers for them so I can pull that homework out and give it to them. And then sending it home, send them home with that homework to finish. So I have a lot more at my fingertips. If I'm in my office setting and I've got my Bible there and all my teaching tools there and a whiteboard there and I can use that, that's going to be very helpful.

So establish a definite time and place. Yeah. >> Kind of a practical question. How do you keep yourself above reproach if there's a woman, you know, and say it's a small church, you know, and your office is, you know, upstairs in the church or something? >> No, that's a very practical question.

How do you keep yourself above reproach if you're a pastor and there's a woman that needs counseling in your congregation? Can a pastor, there's a fundamental question that's kind of behind that. Can a pastor counsel a woman? And I want to say absolutely yes. If you don't, then you're cutting off half of your congregation from the person who's supposed to be theologically trained.

And that's not good. That doesn't mean that there can't be other people within the congregation who can eventually, if you train them right in the Word of God, counsel them. But you're cutting them off from the theological expert and that theological expert is the person who should know how to counsel their problem well.

So the answer is yes, but you're exactly right because even though your intentions may be absolutely 100% pure, you want to avoid the appearance of evil of anything that happens. So it's always been a policy and it even is here at the Master College and Seminary in my offices that, in fact, we have a policy hanging on the wall that says a male faculty member cannot counsel a female without another person present, especially another female present whether it be an admin assistant or someone has to be there in order for that to take place.

And when that happens, then the window on their door has to be opened, all right. In other words, there's nothing covering the window so people walking by can see everything that's going on in that office. If you come to my office, there's a big window there and you can see what's going on and if there's a gal in there, then that window is always open.

People can always see what's happening there. And that you always station yourself on one side of a desk and she's on the other side of the desk. Now I know that there are some pastors who say, "I don't counsel women because too many pastors have fallen that way." And that's true.

A lot of pastors have fallen that way, but a lot of pastors also have fallen with secretaries too. So are we going to rule out secretaries? I know of pastors who have fallen in the ministry by going house to house evangelism. So are we going to stop evangelism too based upon that same rationale?

No, I don't think so. I don't think we're going to do that. All of this is dealing with the personal lives of people. No, but you have to set it up in such a way where there is no temptation or there's no hint of temptation that's going on there.

So I don't want to cut off half the congregation from the person who's supposed to be theologically trained. Those women need answers. Now, later on, when you get into a church and you train up a group of women in your church who are just as competent as you are dealing and handling the Word of God, then you don't have to counsel women anymore.

It's great, man. You've got them all trained up. Some of the women in my congregation were actually better counselors than I were. And I would have a tendency to deal real gently with some of these women. I mean, my goodness, they would go after the juggler vein. They'd really go after him.

They wouldn't cut him any slack at all. And they were really good at it. They didn't let him slide by on their excuses. So sometimes it may take you a while to train those kind of people up that will really take on that kind of administering, and until you do, you've still got to be able to minister to people.

Let me show this to you. Go over to Colossians 128. Colossians 128, Paul talks about the fact of his own personal ministry. And actually, Colossians 128 is about his counseling ministry primarily. He says, "We proclaim him admonishing," there's our word, "nuthateo," admonishing, warn, instructing, counseling every man, teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ.

Now mankind here is used generically, so he's talking about both men and women. That's what he would do. He would admonish men and women in his congregation. He would teach men and women in the congregation so that he might present every man or woman complete in Christ. So that was Paul's desire, that's what he wanted.

So I don't think it's wrong that a guy can counsel a woman in a congregation, but you do have to set up safeguards so no failure occurs. And that your congregation understands those safeguards. If you have secretaries in the church, they understand all the procedures. You have other staff members in the church, they also understand the procedures.

And again, your motivation may be absolutely 100% pure. Let me give you another example. Back several years ago, I know of a situation where a pastor, his wife had been sick for a long period of time, and the entire congregation was praying for her. So this was common knowledge among the congregation.

She was at home in bed for many weeks. And this pastor one night got a call from a woman in the congregation saying, "Pastor, I need your help and I need it now. I'm in terrible trouble and I need for you to come over and help me." So the pastor said, "Okay, I'll be over." And as soon as he hung up, he called up one of the elders in his church and got him out of bed.

This was like two or three o'clock in the morning, and said, "Hey, Joe, you need to go with me. This woman in our congregation has got problems and we need to go over and help her." She was a single woman. And so, this is a true story. They showed up at her apartment complex.

She lived on the second floor, and they went up to the second floor and knocked on her door. And as soon as they knocked, she threw the door open and she was standing there in a negligee, and she wrapped her arms around the pastor and had a person standing behind her to take a picture.

And right in the middle of that picture was the elder, smiling. If that pastor had not taken that elder, she was out to frame him. That would have totally ruined his entire ministry. She was out to destroy his ministry because there was something in the church that she didn't like.

And he was just there, genuinely, to help this woman. So you may have an absolutely pure motive in helping, but you have to set it up so that those things don't happen. You can easily lose your entire ministry if somebody sets you up for that. So that's the reason those policies are not just to protect you against your own flesh or that other woman against her own flesh and its desires, but that policy there is to protect you from the wrong intentions of other people and the wrongdoings of other people.

So that needs to be there. So you asked a good question. Any other questions about that? All right, well, so you have to have the right kind of time, you have to have the right kind of place, and it needs to be a place that's not filled with distractions.

I was working with a person back a few years ago who was trying to get their certification in counseling, and in the process of getting their certification, they set up a counseling appointment in a restaurant. That's one of the worst places in the world to do counseling, and every five minutes the waitress is coming up asking, "Hey, do you need anything more to drink?

Can I help you anymore?" You can't do that. You can't do that in counseling. You're constantly interrupted. There are a thousand things that are going on, friends walking by the table, people you don't expect to be there, all kinds of... That's a terrible environment. You need an environment, hopefully, that where you can meet with your counselee, there's some chairs there, and you can pull yourselves up to a table, and you can lay your Bibles on the table, you can lay your notebooks on the table, and you can really work on problems.

Let me mention one other thing about time. Most counseling appointments should not exceed an hour. Now, there's nothing in the Bible that says that. It's just within our culture, people start to tune out after that. Maybe an hour and a half at the longest, but from that point on, after you've gone 90 minutes, you get decreasing returns on your counseling.

People get tired. You've been focusing and concentrating on issues, and working on change, and showing them what the Word of God has to say. And our temptation is to give them the entire boatload of everything that they should know from the Bible about their problem in one session. That's our temptation.

That's mine. Maybe it's not yours, but it's mine. And so, I'm just going on, and I'm going, "Let's go to this passage. Let me explain to you this. Let me go to this passage. Let me explain to you this. And we'll go over here and answer all your problems and explain to you this." And all of a sudden, that time just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

You know what's going to happen? Even though you can be incredibly helpful to that counselee during that time, and you give them amazing insights into the Word of God to help them with their problem, they're going to be reluctant to come back. You know why? Because they remember, "That was a long session.

That was long." They're going to be really reluctant. So an hour, an hour and a half at the longest, then cut it off. Say, "Hey, we'll pick up there next time." Let them go home and digest what you've given them. Don't give them too much. I don't care how intelligent they are.

Don't overload them. Just like a baby. You feed a child too much, and guess what that child's going to do? They're going to spit it back at you, okay? And that's what these counselees are going to do, too. You overload them during one session with too much, and they can't handle it.

They'll lose it. You can't do that. Jesus understood that. I mean, you remember how the disciples used to press him about who he was and the aspects of his kingdom? And he kept saying to them, "It's not the right time. It's not for you to know now, but later." In other words, what is he doing?

At the right time, he timed the revelation of himself and his will out even while he walked the earth. He didn't give it to them all in one session. It's not for you to know this at this particular time, he would say. We'll come back. We'll re-engage later. So be careful of the time in that sense.

It goes without saying, if you're really going to do good counseling, you've got to be friendly, and you've got to be compassionate. I like the biblical term for compassion there in Ephesians 4:32, because literally it means to be tender-bowled. That's compassion, tender-bowled. The bowels were the seat of the emotions.

So to be tender-bowled meant to be compassionate, to be emotionally compassionate with people. If we're going to be good counselors, we've got to show people emotionally that we really care for them. I think this is no better expressed than in Romans 12, if you want to grab your Bible and go over there for a moment, Romans chapter 12, and verse 15 where it says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." That's a person who demonstrates emotions.

It's not bad to show emotions. There are many, many times I've wept with my counselees, and there are many, many times that I have rejoiced with them. And you need to do the same thing. Emotional expressions that are appropriate, not artificial, not fake, but appropriate emotions is the right way to be.

You've got to be friendly. You've got to be compassionate. It's very easy, after you've been in the ministry for a little while and worked with real serious people problems, to view people as a problem with two legs. That's very easy to begin to view them that way. They're not a problem with two legs.

They are people. They are people created in the image of God. They have emotions like you have emotions. They have likes and dislikes the way you have likes and dislikes. In Matthew 6, Jesus talks about that, or actually in Matthew 7, we're supposed to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Why would he say that? Because we're really in touch with the way that we want people to treat us. We understand that real well. I want you to treat me nice. I want you to give me lots of leeway and lots of mercy and lots of grace because I know I need it.

Well, that's exactly the way we need to be with other people. We need to be friendly and compassionate with them. Furthermore, we need to answer questions about counseling. Why? What it is? How long is it going to take? What's the purpose of the counseling? Your counselees are going to ask you those questions.

Now, when a person asks me the question, "Why is counseling necessary?" I always give them the Galatians 6.1 answer. Counseling is necessary because you've been struggling with this thing for a long time and all your efforts have failed, so you need somebody to come alongside you and help you.

In your marriage, you've been struggling with this particular conflict for a long time and you haven't seen any resolution to this particular problem, then you need somebody to come along and help you. When they ask the question, "What is it? What is counseling?" Counseling is a process whereby we take the Word of God and use it as a diagnostic tool to understand a problem and find the remedy to that problem in the Word of God, and then we change our lives accordingly with the ultimate goal of honoring and glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ, becoming Christ-like.

That's counseling. How long will it take? Well, I don't know, but most problems, I tell them, usually do not exceed 40 days and 40 nights if you're really working on them. That's about six weeks. If you're really working on a serious problem and every week you're doing what needs to be done, most problems can be resolved in about six weeks.

I would say that that probably is 95% of all the problems that are out there. Takes about 40 days and 40 nights to resolve that problem. But there are some exceptions. There are some problems that come up that may take longer, and more often than not, when you start to deal with one particular problem in a person's life, five more show up, maybe even worse.

So you start to uncover and peel back what's going on in their life, then you find out underneath the surface there's a lot more going on here than what I first suspected. So then it's going to take a little bit longer. You take a particular issue that's happened in a marriage, a husband or wife, or in a family between parents and kids, your average problem takes about six weeks, 40 days and 40 nights to resolve.

Well furthermore, you need to prepare proper arrangements and materials as well. When you do a counseling session, it's important that you have at your disposal a Bible, a notepad whereby you can take notes for that counseling session. You need to have at your disposal some potential homework assignments. In this particular case, dealing with marital problems, then it would be homework assignments around marital problems, books that you can recommend that maybe they can read.

First and foremost, you want to get them into Scripture because that's where their real help and hope is going to come from. But then there is some, not all, most of the Christian material that's written about counseling that's out there in the Christian bookstore is horrible material. It's horrible material because it's written from a Christian psychological standpoint.

It's not written from a Biblical standpoint. But as years go by, there's more and more Biblically oriented material out there that's good, that will kind of supplement what the Bible says. That's not a good word. I don't like to use the word supplement. It's not going to supplement it.

It's going to help them see how to use the Word of God better, how the Word of God should change their life, how they should view their problem. So you've got to have the proper materials. Then you need to prepare your heart by prayer and meditation between your counseling sessions and before you have a counseling session.

Prepare your heart with prayer and meditation. Give directions to the meeting place. Make sure they know where to meet. It's amazing how sometimes this is left out. And then after the initial session and before each subsequent session, record your goals for each upcoming session. What are your goals? We talked about the importance of goal in the previous class.

Well, what are they? What do you really want to do? Where do you want to take your counselee from here? What issues in their life really needs to be addressed biblically? Try to enunciate those goals as clearly as possible and you actually end up prioritizing those goals in the process.

Okay, let's move on to our next section here where it talks about determining the session. Now remember, all of this is a part of setting the proper context for good counseling to occur. I'm not going to spend a long time on this. Some of this is common sense, but other parts of it are oftentimes parts that people neglect and it ends up hurting your counselee.

For example, starting on time. If you waste a lot of time and you don't start on time, then your counselees will learn. Just like I learned as a professor. If you don't start a class on time, your students automatically learn, "Hey, listen, I've got 10 minutes more," because he's really not going to get started until 10 after.

So they'll come drifting in later and so you're starting later and later and later and you lose good segments of your class. You've got to start on time. You've got to start your counseling on time. And greet your counselees warmly and enthusiastically. Tell them you're really glad they're here.

And that's not artificial. I'm not talking about putting on a fake smile. I'm not talking about being overly jovial. No, no, no. We're talking about letting them know that you believe that there is real hope in this session and you're really happy to see them there because you believe the Word of God is going to bring about change.

Then always begin and end your counseling sessions with prayer if it is appropriate. Now there are times where it is not appropriate. For example, if you have a very rebellious teenager in for counseling and they're not in any mood to pray, it's not appropriate to do. It would be very awkward and everybody's focus is not going to be upon the Lord.

It's going to be upon that kid and his rebellion. But your average counseling session should begin with prayer. It's the first thing I always do. People come in and have a seat and I say, "It's great to see you. I want to really get down and start getting into the Word of God with you.

Let's have prayer first." Okay, so we bow for prayer and then the very next thing after prayer is I take a look at homework. "Let's take a look at your homework." So they get into this habit that they know we're going to have prayer and then he's going to look at my homework and I've got to make sure my homework's done.

And then at the end of the session, I tell them, "Listen, let's bow for prayer. Let's commit this session to the Lord." So if it's appropriate, begin and end with prayer. Practice all your involvement skills. That means being kind, gentle with people, personable with them. Sometimes you have to adapt yourself to the personality and mood of your counselee.

If your counselee comes in really depressed and sad, then you don't want to be overly jovial. "How's it going?" No, no, that's just totally inappropriate. No. You have to match yourself and adapt yourself to your counselee's mood at that moment. If they come in and they look like they're down or they're depressed, you say to them, "Hey, Tom, it's good to see you.

I'm really happy you're here. I'm looking forward to getting in the Word of God with you. So have a seat. Let's talk about this." So even though they're depressed and sad, I'm not overly excited, I'm not overly... But I'm adapting myself, but I'm still optimistic. I'm not going to buy into their depression and I'm not going to be depressed, too.

If Tom's depressed, I'm not going to act, "Okay, Tom, it's really great to see you today." "Well, there's a lot of hope in that." No, you don't want to do that. So match yourself, however. Sometimes you have to mirror their body image or body language, I should say. Imitate their posture and their gestures and match their tone of voice and their rate.

If you can tell that they're having a slow day and they're having a hard time expressing themselves, and so they're talking very slowly, then match yourself to that, all right? You're not going to try to dump too much on them or talk really fast. I think you're exercising true biblical love when you're doing that because you're placing their concerns and what's going on in their life above the way you want it to be.

That's really a Christlike person. Now here's a biggie here. You've got to adapt yourself to their personality and moods, as I say, but also avoid power struggles, adversarial relationships. Again, this is not a time to say, or even to act like you're going to take sides in this issue.

They'll want you to, they'll try to draw you to their side or their perspective, but you're not going to take any sides except God's, all right? That's the only side that I'm on. I'm on God's side. I'm not on his side or her side or the kid's side or the parent's side.

I'm on God's side. Sometimes when you take that neutral point of view, most parents working with kids' situation always, by virtue of the fact that they are the parents, want me to take the parent's side. Well, the parents aren't always right. There's occasion where the kids are right, and I can't take the parent's side because that's not right.

It's not what the Bible says, but they want you to, but don't get into those power struggles. The bottom line is you're really not siding with the kids. You're not really siding with the parents. You're siding with what God says. That's the important thing. Pace your session rate, that is, to your counselor's ability to follow you fully or pace your session rate.

For example, let's say you have a 70-year-old man who's alert, but he's a little bit slow. He's not as quick as you're normally used to. He stumbles around and stutters here and there. Sometimes you have to, with a person like this, slow down, repeat yourself more often, review things and clarify things more often than you would do with an average counselee.

Why? Because that person's a little bit slower. How do you find that out? One of the best ways to find that out is ask them to read something. By the way, don't just assume that your counselee can read. I've embarrassed people like that. I've handed them the Bible and said, "Okay, I want you to read this verse out loud," and they eventually look up to me and they say, "I can't read." Really?

Okay. Well, let's have your spouse read this. You've got to pace your session to the counselee's ability to follow you fully. Furthermore, you have to pace your session to the amount of time that you have for counseling and giving appropriate homework in counseling. You can say to them, "Listen, I have an hour to spend with you, so I've got to have to be careful of my time, and every now and then, I'm going to have to slow you down or ask you to stop." In fact, you know what the greatest word in counseling is, don't you?

It's "whoa." That's the greatest word in counseling. Not "stop it," but "whoa." All right? You say, "Whoa." "Whoa" means halt, stop talking, so that...because, you know, there are some people who will talk and talk and talk and talk. My mother used to have that expression. They go around the barn, around the barn, and around the barn without going in the barn, okay?

And they just talk, and they review things the same way over and over and over again, and they get into this cyclical pattern, and some people's circles are wider than others, so it takes you a while to identify that they're circular in their thinking. Some people are very narrow little ones, and they keep rehearsing the same things a lot.

So at some particular point, you say, "Whoa, I've already heard this. You've reviewed this already; I understand what you're talking about there. Now, I've been listening to you all this time. You need to listen to what the Word of God says. It's time for you to listen." So you get your pen and your notebook out, and we're going to talk over some key passages here in regards to your problem.

So you have to pace yourself to the amount of time that you have for counseling and giving the appropriate kind of homework. Don't just use up your entire time just in instruction phase. You got to leave time to give them good homework and explain to them why you're giving them this homework, which says this.

Homework says that counseling is not magic hour of the week. There are a lot of people who think that counseling is magic hour. I'm going to go into counseling, and some magical things are going to happen. No. Change occurs not just in counseling, but change occurs every day of the week.

And homework brings that change into every day of their life. It teaches them to go to the Word of God to solve their problems every day of the week. So you give them homework to get them into the Bible every single day of the week. So change and growth occurs.

Furthermore, avoid at all costs partiality or taking sides. Avoid partiality or taking sides. Why? Well, it's just like that passage that I referred to earlier in our class period there in Proverbs chapter 18 and verse 17, "The first to plead his case seems right until another comes along and examines him." Rarely in any kind of home, family, or marriage problem is it one-sided.

Rarely is that ever the case. You may need to say in an especially tense situation, "Listen, I'm not on Barbara's side and I'm not on Bill's side. I'm seeking to be on the Lord's side and my goal is to help the two of you to be what God wants you to be or to have the marriage that God wants you to have or to have the family and home that God wants you to have.

That's what I'm after." So you've got to avoid at all costs partiality and taking sides. If you are a partial counselor, then people are not going to trust you and they certainly are not going to share the most intimate parts of their lives with you in order to solve any problems because they'll consider you to be very, very biased.

So avoid partiality. Furthermore, you need to manifest confidence and competence. Now this is not in yourself. That's what Alfred Adler would say out in the secular counseling world. You need to have self-confidence. You need to have self-competence. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about manifesting confidence first in the Scriptures.

Confidence and competence in the Scriptures, that the Scriptures has the answers to this problem. I trust the Scriptures. In fact, sometimes I'll say to my counselees, "I don't trust me. If I gave you what John Street had to say about a problem, you're really in trouble. But if I'm giving you what God says about this problem, now that means you've got hope." And you can have assurance that God brings about real change as a result of that.

Furthermore, you need confidence in their ability to change. That you don't care how deeply ingrained this problem is. You don't care how old they are. They can still change. You know, the old man comes in to you for counseling and sits down. And you start talking with him about the changes that he needs to make in his life.

He says to you, "Well, you can't teach an old dog new tricks." You need to say to him, "You know what? You're right, but you're not a dog. You're made in the likeness and image of Jesus Christ. That means that you have the capacity to change." But he thinks, because of his old age and the fact that this has been a pattern for such a long time, he thinks that he can't change.

And he can. Furthermore, because God is in control of these things, you have to manifest confidence and competence in the hope for the future because God stands behind this process. I trust what God is doing. Proverbs 4, verse 18, Solomon here describes, if there ever is an Old Testament verse that deals with progressive sanctification, it's got to be this verse.

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. That is a great verse on progressive sanctification. The path of the righteous, this is where God is leading the righteous, is like the light of dawn, like the sun coming up over the horizon that just gets brighter and brighter and brighter as it rises.

That's the way the righteous are. While we're still in the Old Testament, we can go back to Psalm 119. In verse 73, "Your hands made me," the psalmist said, "and fashioned me." Give me understanding that I may learn your commands. Your hands made me, that's in the Hebrew past tense, but the word fashion is the imperfect.

In other words, your hand continues to fashion me. God continues to fashion me. There's the hope in the future. You're manifesting confidence and competence in the hope in the future. God is the one who's continuing to work on me. Here's another great progressive sanctification verse in the Old Testament.

Let's go over to one other verse in the New Testament. Let's go to 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18. Paul expresses this well when he says, "But we all, with unveiled faiths, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit." So there's the process of progressive sanctification.

There's a good description of it. So that's the reason why we have faith in the future, or at least in what God is doing in the future, or we have hope that God's going to bring about a good result here. Now next, you also need to be thorough in data gathering.

We're going to talk about more of this a little bit later, but you need to be doing this all the time. And of course, prayer is vitally important here. And we already mentioned Proverbs 18, verse 13, "If a man speaks before he hears, he's a fool." We don't want to do that.

We want to listen carefully and gather all the data that we can. One of the ways you can do this is by using good data gathering homework assignments. You don't necessarily have to gather all the data during a counseling session. If you give good data gathering homework assignments, then that will actually leave you more time for instruction within the counseling session.

So don't spend all your time just data gathering in a session. Furthermore, communicate a deep trust in the Lord and the thorough and practical knowledge of His Word. You need to always have your Bible up in front of you. It needs to be open. You need to read it regularly in counseling.

You need to have the counselees look up things in their Bible and have them read it in counseling so that they get the idea that the source of your advice and counsel is not your own ideas. This comes from God. It's God's ideas. To the degree that you rightly represent what the Bible is saying is the degree at which you have divine power behind your counseling.

That power is the very power of God changing people's lives. So use the Bible, have your counselees read the Bible. That's what needs to happen. Then furthermore, you need to demonstrate good analytic and instructive skills. Analytic skills are how perceptive you are during the counseling process with all that data that's coming at you in guiding that process to an efficient and effective end.

You don't just let it drift and wander. In the process, you show good analytic skills when you don't allow generalities. There are some counselees who will say to you, "Well, I don't always treat my wife well." You know how that is. You know. I usually say to them, "No, I don't know.

Tell me about that. What do you mean by that?" "Well, you know, I don't love her enough." "Well, what does that mean when you say you don't love her enough?" "That's a big, warm, fuzzy. For me, not loving her enough? Does that mean you don't emote enough emotionality towards her?" "I love you now." "All right.

Is that what you're saying?" "Well, no." "Well, then what are you saying?" "I don't do things for her." "Do what? Do what?" "I don't help her out around the house very much." "Oh, you mean like picking up after yourself and after other people?" "Oh, yeah. I don't do that." "Not helping her with the dishes?" "Oh, yeah.

I don't do that either." "With all those little projects that she wants you to do and you just totally ignore them?" "Oh, yeah. Yeah." All right. Now, that's getting down to specifics. Don't allow them to exist in generalities. The more concrete you are, the quicker you're going to see change in your counselee.

Don't let them... Our old associate pastor, his name is Rick Wilson. Rick Wilson used to say, "Get them out of Vegsville and Fuzzy Land." That's a good way to describe them. Get them out of Vegsville and Fuzzy Land. Don't let them exist in Vegsville and Fuzzy Land. Don't allow them to use generalities.

My wife's not submissive. What do you mean your wife's not submissive? What is that? That's a big fuzzy for me. What does that mean? Force him to describe that. My husband doesn't love me enough. What does that mean? Well, he yells at me all the time. Well, what does he say?

My one daughter, I remember she came home from third grade with her third grade teacher saying that her teacher was really, really mean. And what she meant by that was, "My third grade teacher disagrees with me." Sometimes when a wife will say to you in counseling, "My husband yells at me." When you truly try to pin it down, here's a rather, you know, it's not as if this guy's perfect.

He's not. But he's a pretty calm guy. He doesn't look like a reactive type. And if you pin it down, what she really means is, "He disagrees with me." So anytime you disagree with me, you're yelling at me. No, he's not yelling at her. She spends money like it's going out of style, he'll say.

What does that mean? Well, look at all those groceries. Well, do you eat them? Yeah. Well, what are you going to eat if she doesn't buy them? It's almost as if he expects her to manufacture her own money to buy these groceries. He loves the groceries, but he doesn't want her to spend money.

So what does he want her to do, steal them? She spends money like it's going out of style. She's got to buy groceries for you and the family. Or she don't allow generalities. Furthermore, be humble enough to ask for confirmation. That shows good analytical skills. Every now and then, I'll stop a counseling product, you know, all the data that's coming at me, and I'll stop and I'll say, "Listen, let me see if I can summarize what you've been saying up to this particular point, and you correct me where I'm wrong.

Here's what I hear you saying," and I'll just boil down maybe an hour's worth of information that's come at me. I'll boil it down in one or two statements. You're saying da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, right? "Well, yeah, but I changed this a little bit." Okay, okay, good. So we're on the same page here.

We got it. So don't be afraid to ask for confirmation on your own conclusions, and don't jump to conclusion with people. Furthermore, be sure to invite your counselee's corrections. You're not a mind reader. Just because you have a degree in theology after you get out of seminary doesn't mean that you can read minds.

You can't. Grab your Bible just for a moment. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 11. Paul talks about mind readers there. 1 Corinthians 2, 11, he says, "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except for the spirit of man which is in him?" The obvious answer to that is no one does.

Now, there are some women who want to give you the impression that because by virtue of the fact that they're female, they have a special ESP, extra-sensory perception. They don't, all right. I just let the cat out of the bag. They don't. They don't have extra-sensory perception because the Bible says, "No man among men knows the thoughts of a man except for the spirit of man that is in him." God knows those thoughts.

Nobody does. Now, you can use the Bible as a diagnostic tool to say, "I'll bet you thought this because of what you know about what's happening in a problem." And that person will say, "Yeah." Well, it's not because you actually know what's going on in their thoughts. It's because you know what the Bible says about people who think similarly.

That's different. But no man knows the thoughts of a man. So you don't know that with your counseling. So you need to invite their correction. Say, you know, I say to them, "I could be wrong, but this is what I think is really going on here in your head.

If I'm wrong, you tell me I'm wrong." This is where I believe, by the way, that I think counseling actually makes you into a much better preacher. You know why? Because you're working with people problems and that starts affecting the way you're putting your sermons together. And you know how you're really hitting your congregation is when you're done preaching, people will come up to you and will say to you, "Pastor, did you have a camera in our house this week?

Were you listening to what we said at our house? Were you eavesdropping?" "No." "Well, your whole sermon reflected like you knew what was going on in our house this week." You know why? Because you work so much with people problems. You know how people respond to issues. You know how they deal with issues.

And you've crafted your sermon in such a way that you're speaking to those things. "Whoa, that's incredible. That's where I live," they're saying. Too many guys think that they can kind of prepare their sermons totally detached from their congregation. No, no, no. That's not a pastor. That's a lecturer.

That's not a pastor. He's not pastoring from the pulpit. He's lecturing from the pulpit. Furthermore, be sure to invite your counselees... Oh, wait a minute. Where am I at here? Be careful about interpreting the influence of the past. Be careful about interpreting the influence of the past. In other words, we don't want to become behaviorists where, God bless B.F.

Skinner and all of his behaviorism on how the environment really ultimately determines a person and the influences of the past and the way that people have been brought up now is determined to the way that they are. We don't want to become that way. And one of the ways that we can avoid that is by letting the counselee confirm our impressions of what is occurring.

They can confirm that. So be careful about interpreting the influence of the past. We don't want the past to override everything in the present and act as if because you've had this past and maybe it's been horrible that that gives you an excuse to act or react the way you are.

No, no, no. That's not the case. I mean, I don't care what their past has been. They have choices here and now that they need to make. They're not determined by their past. They can be influenced by it, but they're not determined by it. So those are some of the analytical skills.

What are the instructional skills? Let me go through a few of these rather quickly. Good counselor uses figures of speech, metaphors, and illustrations abundantly. Don't be afraid to do that as long as they're appropriate. Use scripture and let them read the scripture frequently. Use diagrams. Write them on a whiteboard.

I always, when I do counseling, I always have a whiteboard handy. Somehow people remember things when you are able to use diagrams. For example, I'll talk about a husband and a wife, and I'll talk about the fact that they have a relationship to God, and the closer they are in their relationship to God, the closer they are going to be to one another.

I want them to see that. The closer that they have their relationship to God, the closer they're going to be to one another. Or we'll talk about the conscience, and I'll say to them, "Imagine that the conscience is like a triangle, and every time you sin, that triangle spins, and these little edges of this triangle prick your conscience.

You feel it. You feel bad because you know you've sinned, but you can also sin to the point where you wear those points off of your triangle, and even though you're still sinning, and that thing's still spinning, you don't feel it any longer. Then you have what the Bible calls a seared conscience, a hard conscience, a conscience that doesn't feel any longer.

You've done this to your wife, or to your husband so much, you don't even feel bad about it anymore. That's where your conscience has been seared, and it's going to require going back to the Word of God, and allowing the Word of God to retrain your conscience and sharpen it so that it is sharp again, so that it'll prick you again every time you sin, so that you'll feel bad about it.

Now, when you use illustrations like that, and you just put them on the board, somehow they remember it. I mean, several weeks later, they'll say to you as a counselor, "You remember when you put that thing on the board? I can remember what you said about that." They could describe the whole thing to you, and all you did was draw a little simple picture.

That's all you did, but they remembered that. They heard you describe it, they saw you write it, it made sense to them, so don't be afraid to do that. Use diagrams, all that you can do. Also use a lot of open-ended questions, not closed questions. Closed questions only seek a yes or no type of answer.

Open questions, they have to think about how they're going to answer. So use yes or no questions, or open questions, not yes or no questions. Furthermore, use role play strategies. I'll do that frequently in counseling as well. I'll assume the role of a husband or a wife, and then I'll ask them, let's say we have Bill or Barbara, I'll say to Barbara, "Okay, Barbara, when Bill says that to you, how do you think you should respond?

Remember, you told me that your response was one of anger. You got really angry with Bill when he does that to you. How should you have responded?" She sits there and says, "I'm not sure." And I'll say to her, "Okay, Barbara, you become Bill, and I'll be Barbara. You react to me the way you see Bill reacting to you." So she does.

And then I say, "Okay, now I'm you. How am I going to respond to Bill?" "Bill, I don't like the way you're doing. This is not nice. But you know what? I love you, and I want to work things out with you, and I think that would be most honoring to God." At this particular point, Barbara's got a big smile on her face just like you do, all right?

But I'll do that in counseling. I'll just play out the role. And I'll give them ways that they can respond in a more godly fashion to one another. And when I do that, it's incredibly memorable for them, all right? They'll remember that, and they'll take it home and use it, that somehow that sticks.

So role play with them. Switch roles. Go back and forth. Teach them how they should be responding. You see, that's when you are doing more than just dumping the Bible on them. You're training them in righteousness. And that's what we want to do. We want to train people in righteousness.

So use role play strategies in order to help them. Furthermore, use worst case scenarios. What's the worst thing that can happen to you, Bill, in your marital situation? Well, he said, "Barbara could divorce me." Well, that would be terrible, but that's not the worst thing that could happen. "Well, she could take the kids." Well, that'd be horrible, too, but that's not the worst thing that could happen.

He says, "Well, what could be worse than that?" I said, "Well, there's something worse than that. She could get really angry at me and shoot me." Well, that would be horrible. If you died, I no longer have a counselee. But there's something worse than that. Bill goes, "If I were to die, there's something worse than that?" "Oh, yeah, absolutely." Okay, what?

If you were to dishonor God in this situation, that's worse than death itself. Worst case scenario. What's a worst case scenario? What's really important? Is obeying God more important than life itself? If it's not, then all those martyrs in past Christian histories died for nothing. What's more important? What's the worst thing that can happen?

Use your counselee's involvement in readings and responding to questions and opinions. Use a lot of encouragement there. Make plans and follow an agenda, but be ready to scrap them, because you may have plans for a counseling session, and your counselees come in with some pressing issue that came up that week that changes the course of this a little bit.

Well, put out that little fire, and then go back to your original plan. Be appropriately open. Share your own life with them, how God has worked in your life. And you can use self-disclosure, but make sure it's appropriate. You don't want to glorify sin. We can spend so much time talking about how God has worked in our lives, and how God has worked through sin in our life.

You don't want to glorify sin. Or do you want to give the counselee some kind of sense that, "Well, you know, I guess my counselor participated in that sin, and he's turned out okay, so it's okay for me to get involved in that sin, because I can turn out okay, too." No, you don't want to give them that sense.

Keep momentum up by open-ended questions, by stimulating them to analysis, too. The best kind of counselee you can have is a thinking counselee, when they're using the Word of God and applying it to their problem, and they're thinking about it carefully. Don't give the impression you're in a hurry.

Don't do that, because that just undermines hope. Be appropriately authoritative and directive, as Titus 2:15 says. You can speak the Word in power, but you need to be appropriate with that as well. And then allow yourself to identify with and personally experience their pain. That's what Paul said there in Acts 20, 31, how for night and day, he didn't cease to aneuthetao each one of them in tears, admonish them with tears.

He was able to experience their pain. You can see the same thing there that we saw in the Romans 12 passage. In verse 15, he says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep." So allow yourself to identify with and personally experience their pain. You'll gain a lot of involvement with your counselees if you're able to do that.

" " Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. You'll gain a lot of involvement with your counselees if you're able to do that. "