August 11, 2020 Show with Dale Johnson on “The Need for Biblical Counseling”

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at IronSharpensIronRadio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on another blisteringly hot day here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, August 11th, 2020.

And I'm thrilled to have a first -time guest on the program today.

His name is Dale Johnson, Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, also known by its acronym

ACBC, and today we are going to be discussing the need for biblical counseling, and we're also going to be announcing the

Basics of Biblical Counseling Conference, which is a weekend conference at the end of this month,

Friday and Saturday, August 28th and 29th, at High Point Baptist Church of Larksville, PA, which is a suburb of Scarsdale.

I keep saying Scarsdale. That's in New York. Scranton, PA. I don't know why

I keep saying Scarsdale. Larksville is a suburb of Scranton, PA, and that conference will be held at the

High Point Baptist Church there, which is a church revitalization effort in northeastern

Pennsylvania through the Grace Advance Ministry of John MacArthur, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dale Johnson.

Thank you, brother. Really excited to be here with you. Very excited about our topic, and looking forward to our conference there in Pennsylvania.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting you there at the conference. For those of you who have not yet me heard during my daily announcements,

I am going to be manning an Iron Trip and Zion Radio exhibitor's booth, God willing, Friday and Saturday, August 28th and 29th, at the

ACBC conference, which is on the basics of biblical counseling.

And if you could, before we have you give your personal salvation testimony, which we always do as a matter of tradition when we have a first -time guest who is also a

Christian on this program, before we do that, if you could let our listeners know about ACBC and also about this conference.

Sure, yeah, happy to do that. We are looking forward to being there with you guys in Pennsylvania. Our ACBC is an organization that was begun about 45 years ago.

It started out of Westminster Seminary through a man named Jay Adams and several of his colleagues there.

And essentially what they wanted to do was they wanted to start a teaching ministry to be able to get Christ back into counseling and counseling back into church.

And along with that teaching ministry, they started to see growth in it, and they started to see churches excited about seeing the

Bible, seeing the scriptures brought back into the counseling room, seeing Jesus as the primary focus of counseling ministry and the means of seeing people healed.

And so when we talk about ACBC, ACBC became a way in which they were able to account for and certify biblical counselors, people who desired to do this type of ministry, in local churches because they started to see this grow and they wanted to see, well, who's been getting training through our ministry here?

And so ACBC became the certifying ministry out of Westminster Seminary, out of the ministry of Jay Adams.

And so we've been around for 45 years, thankfully, and the Lord continues to bless and grow, not just in the

USA but also around the world. We're seeing some incredible movement where people are hungry.

We're seeing churches that are hungry. They're seeing some of the plights and problems that exist in the world.

They're seeing the emptiness of the world systems to try and fix and repair the problems that people face. And it's exciting to see that the scriptures, people are hungry for the scriptures to find themselves renewed once again.

Yes, and the sessions at this conference at the end of this month include the need for biblical counseling, which is our topic for today, the definition and goal of biblical counseling, progressive sanctification, qualifications of a biblical counselor, secular and integration theories, what makes biblical counseling biblical, and a

Q &A session with the audience conducted by Dale Johnson. And if you would like more details on how to register, go to biblicalcounseling .com

forward slash Scranton, S -C -R -A -N -T -O -N dash

P -A dash training. That's biblicalcounseling .com forward slash Scranton dash

P -A dash training. And you can also find out more information about the venue of this conference,

High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania by going to highpointbaptist .church,

highpointbaptist .church. And hopefully we will remember to repeat this information throughout the program today.

Well, as I already hinted, since our guest today, Dale Johnson, is a first -time guest, we are going to have him now give a summary of his salvation testimony, which will include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, he was raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in his life to draw him to himself and save him. Dale, if you could.

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to talk about the story. I grew up in a solid

Christian home. My parents were solid believers, took me to church regularly.

Every Sunday we were hearing the Word of God. I grew up in a place where it wasn't as theologically astute.

I have since grown and learned a tremendous amount. But I will have to say that the Lord used the preaching of the

Word. I can distinctly remember at the age of 11, I came to faith in the Lord Jesus, hearing a salvation message, hearing the gospel preached, which

I'd heard many, many times. But for some reason, that night, the Lord awakened my heart, awakened my mind.

I don't think I could articulate it, certainly I don't live in, but then understanding fully, as I've gotten older, exactly what the

Lord did to save me. In those moments, hearing the Word preached, just recognizing my own sinful heart.

I was a good, decent kid, but the Lord helped me to see, even at age 11, at a very young age, to see my need for Him, and that Jesus was the only way to salvation.

So I repented of my sin, I trusted in the Lord, put my faith in Him. What's been encouraging to me is that even after age 11, even though I didn't understand fully all that the

Lord was doing in my heart and mind, awakening my heart and mind, He's continued to allow me to grow, and to help me to understand the fullness of, when

He regenerated my heart exactly now, the blessing, the fullness of what

He has done in my life. I continued to grow in high school and college. The Lord was faithful to me, and gave me a heart and a desire to pursue

Him, and I was faithful to that, and praise the Lord for that. He kept me consistently in the

Word, and I grew a tremendous amount in college. The Lord used several different ministry opportunities then to solidify

His call of ministry in my heart, and began to pursue that once I graduated college.

And so, the Lord has been very, very kind to me, very, very good to me, and so I'm just so grateful for His salvation, and wake up grateful for that every single day.

Praise God. Well, what was it specifically, if you can pinpoint something or several things that the

Lord used to reveal to you, hey, I really need to pursue being trained to become a biblical counselor?

So, that's a great question. I went to college to play baseball.

That was really my goal. I grew up playing baseball as a kid, and wanted to pursue that.

And when I got to college, I was pursuing a business degree, because that's what everybody else was doing, and I had no idea the direction

I wanted to go exactly. And by the way, Brother, can I just interrupt you for a second, if you could?

Sometimes your voice gets muffled, so if you can make sure you're speaking directly into the mouthpiece of whatever device you're using, that would be helpful.

Sure, sure. And so, when I was in college, I was pursuing business.

That's what everybody else was doing, and so what I chose to do was say, you know what, I'm not cut out for this.

I'm not really good at economics, and so what I think I should do is I should go pursue psychology. I like people.

That's kind of what I want to pursue. So, I began taking courses in psychology, and as I'm sitting in those courses, not knowing any different,

I began to learn about some of these secular theories. And again, the Lord saved me at a young age.

The word was taught to me. I had hidden the word in my heart, and I began to see, you know what, the person that the secular psychologists are describing is not the same person that the

Bible describes. And I began to be curious about that, and I asked a local pastor one day, we were having lunch, and he said, you know what, with some of your questions,

I have a guy that you need to read. And so he gave me a book by Jay Adams, and I began to read that, and Jay began to articulate so many of the questions that I had had, he began to articulate answers to those from the scriptures, identifying people and their problems in a way that seculars could not explain.

And so that began to flourish in my heart and mind. Later, as a junior, once the Lord called me to ministry, and my future wife and I decided that that's the direction we were going to go, we went looking for a seminary that taught biblical counseling, because I wanted to pursue serving people in that way.

And so that's exactly what we did in preparation for ministry. And I'm sorry if you already mentioned this, but what was the seminary that you found that did this?

At the time, I went to Southeastern Baptist Seminary, there in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Oh, and that's where they had this training for the biblical counseling.

Yes, that's correct. Okay, great. Well, a major theme is the need for biblical counseling, but I think before that, you should probably define specifically what you mean, and what

ACBC means by biblical counseling, because, as you are fully aware, the spectrum of theology and philosophy and views of counseling and implementation of counseling is very broad in modern -day evangelicalism.

In fact, I have, in my decades of being a Christian, I was saved in the 1980s,

I have encountered men who are identified as Bible -believing conservative evangelicals who are also counselors who, in further investigation onto what they believed, discovered, sadly, some very bizarre and weird things that they were teaching people in counseling sessions.

And so, just because somebody identifies as a Christian counselor, hangs a shingle on the door that says, we provide

Christian counseling, they might even use the term biblical, but it's really far from that, or it might be, obviously, a wide spectrum of views and approaches and philosophies of counseling that are present, some closer to the truth than others.

But if you could specifically address what you mean by biblical counseling, and how it stands in contrast to other theories.

Yeah, happy to do that, and we're going to flesh this out in even greater detail at the conference that you mentioned before there in Scranton.

So, I'll give a definition, I'll just simply read it, a definition that we worked up, that we try to operate out of, and in this definition, which

I'll be fleshing out, is we try to describe the nature of biblical counseling, what I call the goal of biblical counseling, and then a brief sort of 30 ,000 foot view of the method.

So, when I talk about biblical counseling, biblical counseling is the personal discipleship ministry of God's people to others under the oversight of God's church.

It's dependent upon the authority and sufficiency of God's word through the work of the Holy Spirit. Biblical counseling seeks to reorient desires, affections, thinking, and behaviors toward a

God -designed anthropology in an effort to restore true worship of God and right fellowship with others.

This is accomplished by speaking the truth in love and applying scripture to the need of the moment by comforting the suffering and calling sinners to repentance, thus working to make them mature as they abide in Jesus Christ.

Several really key points that I think distinguishes when we describe biblical counseling, what we mean, is we're describing that we understand people from the perspective of the

Bible, and we believe the Bible is sufficient to help us discern what those problems are, how we're struggling with those problems, and then how to repair those problems.

And that's really critical, a critical distinction. As you mentioned before, so many people do, they call themselves biblical counselors or even

Christian counselors, and often what they mean is that they are proclaiming Christ, they are

Christian themselves, but they're utilizing all sorts of secular theories and often, in our modern day, more of an eclectic -type methodology.

It's sort of, well, we don't think that this methodology is sinful, so we'll adapt this. So they're doing it from a personal confession that they are a

Christian, but it doesn't mean that the methods that they're using are distinctly Christian. Often, they're from secular theorists, they're from naturalists who have proposed different views about man, and so they have different aims and goals.

One of the reasons we wanted to write such a definition like this and try to begin to teach about that is because you're exactly right.

In the modern world that we live in right now, there's so much confusion that's coming out about what biblical counseling is distinctly.

We make a declaration that we believe that the Church is a proper authority, and by that, what we mean is that this type of counseling and intensive discipleship should happen under the true authority, the true auspice of the local

Church that God granted to the Church in the Scriptures. It shouldn't be something that is regulated by the government from a secular perspective.

It's something that should be overseen by the Church with proper authority that God has given to the elders of the

Church. In Hebrews 13, 17, for example, the Lord makes very clear that we as believers in Christ at our local

Church were called to obey our elders, but then further after that, he describes that elders are supposed to watch over our souls, and it goes on to say that they will give an account to the

Lord for how they do that. So we see that the responsibility of caring for people's souls is placed in the lap of the

Church, and so what we want to do is to encourage people to operate under using the sufficiency of Scripture and the relationships that God has given us in the

Church through the work of the elders, and then also every Christian being a minister.

Every Christian is doing one another's to each other. That's a part of the process of discipleship and growing and intensive counseling that happens.

So those are some distinctions that we believe is ought to happen under the authority of the local Church. We believe the Word is sufficient.

The Scriptures makes very clear that God has given us everything that we need for life and godliness. 2

Timothy 3, verse 17, that he's given us his inspired Word, and for what purpose?

That every single word, we can be equipped by this Word that he's given to us, and so we believe the

Word is sufficient to accomplish that work in us and through us as we deal with a myriad of human problems, and primarily the way that we think about doing that is helping people walk through the process of sanctification.

One of the critical things, Chris, that I see consistently about counseling that's so important is we see a removal of an understanding of sanctification, and we see a removal of the biblical work of the

Holy Spirit when we talk about human change. And so a lot of secular theists, even people who claim to be

Christian counselors, they often dismiss the true work of the Holy Spirit in the person's life by the

Word. And what we want to emphasize is that the Holy Spirit is the agent of change, that he is the one by the

Word, which we call the sword of the Spirit, that he does work in the inner man that changes us from the inside out.

And those are some primary distinctions when we talk about methodology. Methodology is not something that's simply neutral.

It should come and flourish out of proper theology and proper understanding of who man is according to God's Word.

So those are some key distinctions that will help people to discern if something is truly biblical counseling or just under the guise of Christian counseling.

I want to give our listeners our email address. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dale Johnson, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And obviously, I could readily understand a theme like this evoking questions from those that have very personal, private, and intimate things that are troubling them that they need to ask our guest about.

And so we will obviously allow you to remain anonymous if that is indeed the case.

But I would ask of you, please, if it's just a general question on counseling, if you would give us at least your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

This interview is also a reminder to me that I've got to get a hold of Jay Adams to have him return to this program.

It's been many years since he's been a guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I've got to get him back on if the

Lord opens up that door. He wrote a very nice endorsement for this program, and I'm looking forward to the possibility of getting him back on the air.

We do have already a listener question from CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York.

And CJ says, I know a pastor who is a very close friend of mine who has repeatedly told me that he does not provide biblical counseling at his church because of the very reasons that you stated.

Biblical counseling is important, ironically, in that the Bible is our sufficient, inerrant guide and authority, and that anyone sitting under the regular preaching and teaching of the

Word of God and also studying it regularly, not only in formal settings of Bible study, but in private individual study, should not need any additional counseling.

How do you respond to that? Well, I think that's unfortunate in part because all of us need relationships, we need encouragement.

As a preacher preaches the Word, as a pastor preaches the Word, we trust that the

Spirit of God is going to convict hearts. And through that process, one of the pieces of the puzzle that God has given us in the relationship with the church is

He's given us each other that we can edify one another, we can encourage, we can correct one another in that process.

And so we see the process of discipleship is necessary. And when we talk about counseling, counseling is simply that.

It's an intensive opportunity now for discipleship. And what should be happening consistently in the body is the process of discipleship.

I believe discipleship is critical and key for the satisfying of the soul as we find ourselves in Christ, now growing in Christ in sanctification.

And so when a pastor preaches, it's so important that we see that the Word is going to be effectual in people's hearts.

It is going to bring edification, it's going to bring encouragement, but it's also going to bring conviction.

And so in that conviction, where does that person go? Okay, I know I'm not obeying the Lord in this way.

Now what do I do? They need people who will come alongside them and to walk with them. Or if a person is going through some sort of really difficult trauma in life or difficult situations in life, knowing where to get counsel, how to navigate those difficult situations.

God didn't ask us to live a lonely life. He asked us to live in relationship and in community with one another.

And so to me, it's absolutely critical. A further step that I would take when talking to pastors, it's very important that pastors see that their role is not just simply standing behind a pulpit and preaching.

As important as that is, and I did not at all want to minimize that, that is absolutely critical as a call and a command of God in Scripture, Acts chapter 6, and so on.

But we also see it's so important for pastors to shepherd their people.

And what shepherding means, take Jesus as an example, Jesus didn't remain in heaven.

He came to earth to dwell among us. Jesus' type of ministry was a ministry where he was looking into the whites of people's eyes.

And what that means is it's a personal ministry as well, where we're learning to do personal ministry of the word one -on -one and making application of the

Scripture to that individual person's struggle and difficulty as a means of healing, as a means of growth, as a means of correction, whatever the case might be.

And so having someone like a pastor or elders in the church who can encourage, who can help them grow, who will walk alongside them is very critical.

A corollary point to that that I think is important is it enhances a pastor's preaching, because when he's walking alongside folks who are having difficulty in his church, and he's able to utilize the word, it gives him confidence in the word when he sees the word is effectual in their heart and mind.

Further, when he's making application points when he's preaching, I think he can do that more pointedly because he understands his people, he knows what they think, he knows what their struggles are, and he can make really healthy application of the word.

So I think what it does is it builds a fullness in ministry, where we see that the pastor is preaching faithfully, praise

God for that, but he's also doing personal ministry of the word, where he's shepherding his people and guiding them with the

Scriptures in the difficulties of life. Amen. And thank you,

C .J., from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York. And I'm going to add a couple of my own thoughts when we return from our first station break.

If anybody else would like to join C .J. on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

U .S .A. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dale Johnson after these messages from our sponsors.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is

Chris Arnzen, and our guest today is Dale Johnson, Executive Director of ACBC, which stands for the

Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. And we are discussing the need for biblical counseling on our program today.

And in fact, we're also promoting a conference where Dale Johnson is speaking at the end of this month.

Friday night, August 28th, and Saturday all day until 5 p .m.,

the 29th of August. I will be there, God willing. Manning and Iron Troupe and Zion Radio Exhibitors Booth.

I hope as many of you listening will join me there, whether you have to take a plane, a train, an automobile, a parachute, however you need to get to Scranton, Pennsylvania to attend this conference.

I hope that you will attend and greet me at the Iron Troupe and Zion Radio Exhibitors Booth.

Once again, our email address if you have questions for Dale Johnson today is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private answer.

And what I was going to say in response also to C .J.

from Lindenhurst, Long Island's question and comment, for those of you who just tuned in, he knows a pastor very well who does not practice or provide biblical counseling outside of his own preaching and teaching ministry from the pulpit and outside of public

Bible studies and sees no need for them outside of those things and also the personal study of individuals.

I think that that caricature of what sola scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture is not healthy and if you were really to take that logic to its logical conclusion, this pastor wouldn't even need to preach.

He would just get up to a pulpit and read the Bible and then after he was finished reading the passages that he intended to read, he would just sit down and dismiss everyone or dismiss everyone and sit down.

Would you say that there's some accuracy in what I just said about that kind of a caricature about the sufficiency of Scripture?

I think that's certainly the case, and I understand pastors feel pressured. They're busy, they have a lot of work to do, and I think that's a faulty way of thinking about pastoring and shepherding is their job is simply to preach.

So I do think there's something to that caricature, and I think that's unfortunate because just like Jesus, as Jesus taught and spoke, he also needed time with his disciples.

They had a lot of questions after parables and after things that he spoke where they needed to learn from him to be able to grow, to be able to be strong and walk strong in the faith.

So I think it's just equally as important for us that we help people to walk and trust the

Scriptures, especially as they're trying to navigate. For a young believer, certainly they're having difficulty walking through life and struggling even to understand what the

Scriptures may say so that they can obey. So I think it does, not just simply because it makes sense, it's an example of what

Jesus gave us, but also the Scriptures teach that. The passage that I mentioned earlier from Hebrews 13, 17 actually calls elders to take intensive care of the souls of the people that they're charged to oversee.

So it's an intentional walking alongside people to check in on them to see how they're doing.

So yeah, I would encourage pastors to engage in that type of ministry with the

Word. And we have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks,

How do you respond to the criticism of biblical counseling that it is too much of an imitation of the world's methods of counseling, even if it is using the

Bible alone as its inerrant guide? And what I mean by that is a clinical, sterilized atmosphere is often replicated where people are sitting in waiting rooms, having these scheduled appointments with counselors for a session, and then paying sometimes hefty fees for them.

How do you respond to those that are not only opposed to this model, but even angry about it?

Yeah, Chris, that's a very good question. And I think we should always be cautious at us trying to mimic the things that the world does.

Honestly, the Church has been good at trying to mimic what the world does, which is unfortunate and scary.

So I agree with the questioner that we have to be cautious and pay very close attention to the ways in which we go about doing ministry.

Let me make sort of a distinction here about biblical counseling that's very important in the process of understanding biblical counseling.

When you think about clinical counseling or professional counseling, each of those counselors who are licensed by their individual states have to follow regulations.

There are codes of ethics that they have to follow. And part of that is them being very aware of what's called the therapeutic relationship, not engaging in other relationships with the counselee outside of the counseling room, and as your questioner mentioned, being very sterile in the approach inside the counseling room.

That's something that's quite foreign, I would say, to biblical counseling, in part because we're called to walk alongside people knowing that as a biblical counselor we're in the same disposition as so many people that we counsel.

We are people who are, we live in the flesh, we struggle with sin, we live in a world that's troubled.

Jesus promised that we would be in difficulty and trouble. The only thing at that point that makes us a clinical expert is that hopefully and prayerfully we're walking in maturity in the faith and we're able to walk alongside and guide someone.

But having a relationship with somebody, that's necessary in order to disciple them intensely, for them to know that you love them well and that you can speak edifying words, but sometimes often correcting words to them.

And so that takes more of an intimate relationship, and I would say that counseling that is done in a more sterile atmosphere is very unhealthy, and I would argue it's an unbiblical view of the way relationships should really look like, even in the counseling room.

And so I think that's something we have to be cautious of and prepared for specifically.

And be aware, be cautious not to fall into that sterile mentality, and not to try and adopt and think that the secular world does everything perfectly and appropriately.

We have to be wise in the way in which we approach people from the Scriptures, and that's what dictates even our methodology, even the way in which we practice.

So good question, and I think that's wise for us to be paying attention to. We certainly don't want to just mimic what the secular, clinical, professional world is doing.

What we're trying to do in the counseling room is to shepherd people. We're trying to care for them well. We're trying to love them with deep relationship as we talk them through the

Scriptures and the things that will be helpful for them. Now if we were going to narrow in on one aspect of the question that we just heard about the charging a fee, is that appropriate for a church to have on staff a counselor that charges individuals for being counseled?

Yeah, that's a good question, and even among Biblical counselors there's been quite a tremendous debate.

In our standard of conduct we ask that, because in the early days, let me give a brief history.

In the early days people would say, no, we should absolutely not charge for counseling. There has been some shift in saying, well, if we pay people to do ministry we have others who would engage in Biblical counseling and aren't they worthy of some sort of wage to some degree.

So I think that's an understandable thing. We have basically written out in our standard of conduct for any of our counselors that counsel should never be refused based on some sort of fee.

So in other words, even if you do charge a fee, you should never limit the ability for someone to come to you for counseling if they can't pay.

So that's a part of our standard of conduct that we require our counselors to sign. In addition to that, we make very clear that no one should charge any exorbitant fees at all.

I was fortunate enough in a place where I started the counseling ministry that our church covered my salary, and so we offered counseling for free to anyone who would come.

And so ideally, my personal opinion is I appreciate when we can offer counseling completely for free.

I do understand that some people, in order to do that type of ministry, they have to make a living and that sort of thing.

But I would never want it to be something that is hindering to another person when they're hurting and they need help.

It should never hinder a person from receiving that type of counsel. John in Bangor, Maine says,

Is your approach to Biblical counseling the same as what was called and still may be called in some circles, newthetic counseling, a phrase coined by J.

Adams? And if so, how do you respond to the harsh criticisms against newthetic counselors who seem to accuse every single person who is going through a trial in their life of having their own personal sin as the core of the problem?

Now, I understand that the fall of Adam and sin in general in this world is the cause for everything that is a problem.

It's the cause for every reason that we find ourselves in unpleasant circumstances and things that bring us difficulty and sorrow.

But there are some who have complained that they are always accused of their sin being the problem, and it seems to, at points, resemble too much the

Word of Faith movement who would do the same thing for physical ailments. Yes, so the idea of newthetic, they certainly coined that term, and that is the movement that ACBC was born out of.

And I think newthetic is absolutely an appropriate, very Biblical term to be used. First, let me say,

I think that oftentimes Biblical counselors get an unhealthy reputation in this idea of newthetic, that they're highly confrontational and that sort of thing.

And I think some of that is unfortunate. I'll talk just in a second about some of J. Adams' works, that if you read those, it really dispels some of the ideas of the harshness.

Now, I do have to recognize that there are some counselors under the guise of Biblical counseling who act in that way, who are somewhat harsh.

And so I can't deny the fact that some people have experienced that. But that's not the way of Christ, in my opinion.

So what I would say is that newthetic is one aspect of what it means to counsel

Biblically. What J. was trying to recover in his day was he was trying to fight against things like Carl Rogers, who was person -centered, non -confrontational whatsoever at all.

So he sees in the Scripture this idea of newtheteo, which is basically a laying truth upon the mind of a person.

It's a confronting of the truth toward a person. And so he sees that in several different places,

Romans 15, 14, and several places in the Scriptures where he says, you know what, if we are Bible believers and we can't follow the way that pastoral care is going right now, following Carl Rogers and trying to be person -centered, the

Bible calls us to take the word of God and to lay the truth of God upon the minds of people.

And so that's the idea of newthetic. Now, we see very clearly that we are not only called to confront or admonish, as that word is often translated, but we are called to edify and to encourage.

We are called to rejoice with people who are rejoicing. We are called to weep with people who are weeping.

So what we see from a biblical counselor appropriately, and I would say the newthetic style as well, is we see someone who is primarily compassionate toward the individual but willing to love them, to speak difficult truths to that person when necessary and when appropriate.

I was just writing a chapter and I was dealing with some of Jay's writings.

And in this chapter I was talking about chronic illness. And I heard all of the criticisms of newthetic counseling and some of Jay's words and that sort of thing about his harshness and so on.

And you know, Chris, I was reading through, preparing to write this chapter, and I saw something in Jay that so many people don't recognize because many people who have those criticisms of Jay and newthetic counseling haven't read much of Jay, to be honest.

And I was reading just widely, he wrote over 100 books widely in Jay's works.

It was a tremendous thing for me to see how much he talks about suffering as well as sin and acknowledging that these are the two difficulties that we face in a world that has been cursed by sin.

And so it was encouraging to me to see, you know what, some of these criticisms about Jay being harsh, they're unfounded because even in Jay's works he talks about how we deal with folks who are suffering.

Now I think it's important for us to understand that for us as human beings who have flesh and who struggle with sin, that it's always appropriate for us to examine our hearts.

Matthew 7 makes that very clear. Even when a sin comes up from another person, we still want to examine our heart over and against the

Word. I think that's the disposition of humility is we want to examine, is there sin in my own heart first, because that's the only way that I can move to help another person, as the language of Matthew 7 continues, getting the log out of my own eyes.

So I think that is a disposition and sort of a first order is absolutely appropriate.

In fact, can we pick up right there where you left off, because we have to go to our midway break right now.

Sure. And folks, just as a reminder, this is our longer than normal break, the midway break, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them the localizing of Iron Trip and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida.

So while they air their own public service announcements and other local announcements, we air our globally heard commercials during the midway break, and we ask of you to use this time wisely.

Please write down as much of the information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you can so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them or even respond to them to thank them for advertising with us.

This may, God willing, further ensure that these sponsors will remain our advertisers, which will also subsequently,

God willing, further ensure that we will remain on the air for a longer future because we absolutely rely upon our advertisers to exist.

So always keep that in mind when you're hearing advertisements, that these fine folks who believe that we are valuable enough to spend money on advertising, that they are enabling us to even exist.

So we thank all of you who do respond to our advertisers, and I hear from Mike Gaydosh of Solid Ground Christian Books, for instance, regularly, who raves about how many of you are ordering books from him, and he is very grateful and very thrilled to see the results from advertising on Iron Trip and Zion.

So please do that, and also write down questions about biblical counseling for our guest, Dale Johnson, and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after these messages with more of Dale Johnson and the need for biblical counseling.

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

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And always tell them that you heard about them from Chris Orens in an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before I return to our discussion with Dale Johnson on the need for biblical counseling,

I just have some important announcements to make. First of all, I want to repeat the information for the upcoming biblical counseling conference that's being held in Scranton, Pennsylvania at the

High Point Baptist Church in Larksville, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Scranton. And that's going to be

Friday and Saturday the 28th and 29th of August. It starts Friday night and then continues all day

Saturday until 5 p .m. I will be there, God willing, manning an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor's booth, so I hope you join me there.

The lectures that Dale Johnson will be conducting include The Need for Biblical Counseling, The Definition and Goal of Biblical Counseling, Progressive Sanctification, Qualifications of a

Biblical Counselor, Secular and Integration Theories, What Makes Biblical Counseling Biblical, and a

Q &A session with the audience. For further details, go to biblicalcounseling .com

www .biblicalcounseling .com And you can also go to the website of High Point Baptist Church of Larksville, Pennsylvania, the venue for this conference, which is highpointbaptist .church

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click support, then click, click to donate now. Also, folks, if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, and you're not prayerfully seeking for one, please rectify that situation.

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet Earth, and I have helped many people in our audience all over the world find churches near them that they didn't even know existed that are faithful to the

Scriptures. So if you are in that predicament where you don't have a church home that's biblically faithful, and you don't know where to find one, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. I may be able to help you find one. Even if you're just going on vacation and need to find a good church wherever it is that you're traveling, or if you need to recommend a good church to family, friends, and loved ones who may not have a church home,

I may be able to help them as well. chrisarnson at gmail .com. That's also the email address where you can send in questions to Dale Johnson, the

Executive Director of ACBC, the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, our guest today.

And that email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I'm sorry

I had to interrupt you before we went into the midway break, but if you could remember where you left off, then we could pick up from there. Yeah, Chris, we were talking, specifically about criticism against synthetic counseling, particularly the harshness.

And I acknowledge that some people have had that experience, and some counselors may enact in that way where they're harsh.

But I was talking about Jay and his works, and reading the plethora of works that Jay has put out, it's interesting to me to see that there is a balance that he casts between our responsibility as men and women of God to speak the truth to one another in love.

And we do that understanding that the primary problem that we as individuals face is our sinful nature, our sinful disposition in life.

And that has consequences, and the consequences are myriad. And so making sure that we examine our heart first for issues of sin is not harsh, it's actually a humble response for us to respond in that way.

And so our counselors do attempt to utilize the scriptures to unveil those types of things that may be in our heart.

And David prayed about presumptuous sins, sins that we may not even be aware of in intention.

But the Bible says that by the work of the Spirit that he can unveil those things in us.

He can help us to see Hebrews 4, 12, and 13. This is what the living and active

Word of God does. And so we try to utilize the Word as our goal. We speak the truth as our goal as well because I believe that's loving.

But we speak the truth with compassion and love as the scripture commands in Ephesians 4. And to go back to a specific aspect of the question, obviously it would be very wise and biblical to rule out one's own unrepentant sin that may be at the very root of a problem, a trial that this person is going through.

But as the listener indicated that euthetic counselors have been accused, and of course not every euthetic counselor or one that claims to be is a cookie cutter of somebody who also identifies that way.

But the accusation has been that it's always a matter of somebody's active personal sin, not just a trial created by the fall in general and the fact that sin exists in the world.

But that this person is without question, if he is having difficulty in his life in a trial of some kind, is always involving his own personal sin.

Number one, do you think that that's an accurate accusation that some make? And number two, is that something that you would advocate?

Definitely, I'll answer the second one first. I would definitely not advocate for that, because the Bible makes very clear that we have troubles of all sorts and all kinds.

Sometimes we suffer and experience difficulty because of things in the natural world.

We lose a loved one, or we get in a car accident, or COVID -19 happens and our bank account goes southward, and we have offenses against one another, and that sort of thing.

So we encounter troubles of all sorts and all kinds. And so, yeah, I would say that all the problems that humanity has are not because of their own personal sin.

They are, in fact, because of the brokenness of the world and what I call corporate sin, because of the fall of man and sin entered into the world, and the curse that's on sin.

That's what creates the havoc that we see in the world that we have to deal with. And so we have to engage people in their suffering.

And those are moments where the Scriptures command our disposition toward people who struggle like that.

It's weeping with those who weep and being compassionate, walking with them through the process of their suffering and upholding their arms, providing for them, whatever the case might be, to help them walk through this issue.

I do think, I can't deny that people have experienced biblical counselors being harsh.

So I don't want to deny someone's experience. But I will say, I think that that's an unfair criticism, because even from the beginning, that's certainly not what is being taught now, but even from the beginning with Jay, you read his books and you see a balance where he wants us to probe specifically the areas of sin.

He allows the Word to unveil that. And that's a critical piece of the puzzle for us to do.

But to say that that's always the case, I think that that's an unfair criticism.

Yes, and as much as Jay Adams and every Reformed Christian, theologically

Reformed Christian, or biblically sound Christian in general, would be very opposed to the

Word of Faith movement as a heresy, which would teach that if your faith is adequate, if your faith is strong enough, you will never be sick.

As much as we would radically oppose that as a wicked and even satanic heresy, at the same time, it would be wise for you to do some soul searching, reflect upon your life, and to rule out if unrepentant sin is the cause in some way of your illness, even physically.

So that would really just carry through in the same way for a mental issue or a trial of other kinds that requires counseling, right?

Chris, I would agree. I think you look at something like James 5 where we're told that if any of us are sick, we're to come before the elders of the

Church and to ask for prayer. I mean, that is helping to rule out.

He's not saying, the Scripture's not saying there that our sickness is because of sin, but he does tell us to not dismiss the spiritual reality that could be contributing to that.

A second point that I would add to what you said is a denial of the

Word of Faith movement. When you look at 2 Corinthians chapter 4, that's a critical passage that helps us to see that even when our body is wasting away, as sin has infected and affected our bodies and we're wasting away, the

Bible still says that we can be renewed in our inner man day by day. That's a critical distinction and difference that the

Word of Faith doesn't teach. Actually, our faith can grow amid that suffering. That's, again,

James chapter 1, 2 and following, where he tells us to consider our trials and struggles that we could be strengthened by walking through that difficulty.

So that's completely opposite of what the Word of Faith describes. But when these trials come, we want to pay attention to how do we respond.

Do we respond in ways that are about honoring and glorifying, or do we respond in ways that are earthly? And those things all have to be tamed by the

Scripture as we seek as believers to respond to any given situation that we have in a way that's honoring to the

Lord. We have an anonymous listener who asks, I have personally heard the accusation from those that profess to be advocates of euthetic counseling that I should never use medication for depression or anything else that is a problem in my life due to mental issues.

I have heard that there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown, and I have heard that there is no reason that counseling coming from the

Bible isn't the only way to help solve issues involving the mind.

Is this really the way that euthetic counseling operates, or is this just the chosen actions and beliefs of a handful of those out of step with the broader community of biblical counselors?

That's a wonderful question, and it's a very logical question. I think it's a good and very fair question.

And I would say, personally, I don't think medication is bad or wrong at any turn.

I don't think that that's a common disposition among biblical counselors. I teach and continually talk about medication.

I want people to be very informed about not just medication, but about people's views about psychotropic and the quote -unquote science behind psychotropic medication.

So I'm just extremely cautious when we describe those types of medications, and I think that's healthy for a myriad of reasons.

We look at the quote -unquote science that we see coming out about psychotropic medication.

Is it beneficial? There are so many questions today that even raise the issue with psychotropic medication even being beneficial.

We start to get into understanding that they could be addictive. We start to get into the research that demonstrates that they could actually increase suicidal ideation and that they could have long -term effects like total dyskinesia and akathisia and things like that.

So we have to be very cautious when we open up Pandora's box when we talk about medicine. I think we have to be very careful, first of all, to establish that we are, based on the scriptures, we are body and soul.

So when we have things that are affecting our inner man, we're going to see physical ramifications.

If we're anxious about stuff, it's very normative if we do that over a long period of time that our bodies would respond and we would have reaction to those types of things where we have heart palpitations or we get sweaty palms or whatever the case might be or we feel like we can't function, almost paralyzed.

But that becomes a chicken or the egg question, right? So is this something that's being caused physically or is this something that my body is responding to my disposition and what

I believe to be real and true about life around me? So I want to explore those types of things.

Any time I engage with someone who has deep anxiety or who struggles with deep despair, what

I try to do is I want to work with a physician to rule out any type of organic causes and that's a huge distinction and difference than just assuming the secular chemical imbalance theory which has been proven to be false to say that any time

I have despair, feelings of despair or anxious thoughts, the medication is going to be a cure and a fix.

That's completely false. What I want to do is get them to a physician who can do a legitimate workup on them and rule out any type of organic causes or contributing factors and to me, that really helps the person to solidify and understand what's really going on in life and again, being body and soul, we can't just minimize something that happens in our mind which is not equivalent to our brain, something that happens in our inner man and to say it's caused by the biological in fact, the

Bible describes that we operate from the inside out. It's not that we're not affected by the external, we respond to it, that's true, but we operate from the inside out and what's most important about us is not the things that happen to us, they don't identify who we are, it's how we respond to those things and those are the things that biblical counselors should be focused on is we can't fix or even promise that God will fix your situation but what we can do is how do we strengthen you according to the scriptures so that you can respond in a way that's

God honoring and God glorifying in the middle of this difficulty, in the middle of this trial, in the middle of this suffering of despair and so on, so that's what's critical for us as biblical counselors not to just simply dismiss medication because I think there are times when someone is incapacitated or they cannot function in life where it could be a helpful stopgap in very, very small, minute cases but it's not curative.

Not one psychiatric medication is curative and we have to, the common public is often not aware of that but we can't assume that that's the case, that biblical counselors want to keep you from some medication that's going to cure you.

Statistics show somewhere between 25 and 35 percent of people who are on psychotropic medication actually start to feel better and so we can't say that this is a one -to -one curative.

Biblical counselors just don't want you to get on that medication because we think that that medication will help you and only the

Bible can help you. That's not the mentality at all whatsoever. It's we want to be able to focus on the things that we know can help you walk through difficulty, the difficulty that you're facing right now and that's the inner man so we want to build the inner man, we want to strengthen the inner man so that we can respond appropriately to trials that are coming our way.

And of course there is a sad reality that we who find ourselves dependent often on physicians for the answers to our problems, unfortunately we have even seen in the media during this coronavirus how often they disagree with each other and how often they have contradicted themselves.

So I'm not saying this is going to be easy for folks but at the same time people need to be very careful about either themselves going off medication without the supervision of a doctor or recommending that somebody else does because I know personally people who have plunged into such despair after either going off medication or changing medication that they have attempted suicide and because of the biochemical reaction to this.

Now this may be because the medication itself created a serious problem in the minds of the patients but I don't know that for a fact but I'm just saying that we have to be really cautious about ourselves or the counseling of others you have to go off that medication unless a doctor is involved to observe them and to perhaps counterbalance what the reaction is with another medication or whatever the case is and I know like I just said this is not an easy thing because doctors are not

God and they do disagree with each other so how do you respond to what I just said?

So I would agree anytime we teach about medication we always give a caveat that as a biblical counselor you're not a medical professional and so it's not our role or job to give medical advice we have to utilize the wisdom that the

Lord gives the medical community but I would also agree with you in the fact that we see quote unquote science in some of these areas is being questioned to a great degree so much so that I would put much of it in the category of what's considered scientism and the idea that's behind it which you go into a long history of philosophy here as it relates to psychiatric medicine and psychology but just suffice it to say simply that there are people who have a philosophical agenda and it relates to the predominant way of thinking of naturalism and so the way that they approach data from a scientific perspective when they look at a person who's struggling with depression if they understand man and boil man down in their philosophical approach to man as being simply naturalistic and that he's a natural being that comes out of evolutionary thinking and thought then it's a one -to -one correlation for them to say well this has to be something that's wrong with their biology and so we begin to see this psychiatric medicine flourish as an answer because we suppose based on our secular understanding of anthropology that if you have this problem it has to be biologically explained and that becomes the problem that's the biggest issue

I think is we even in the Christian community have adopted a faulty anthropology that's been built by the scientist when it's not an unbiased position it's a biased position that they see the data through the lens of a naturalistic perspective and so they begin to try to make the data make sense in that perspective and we have to be cautious when we hear scientists, doctors describing things from that perspective and so I think it's worthy for us to be cautious not to mention the plethora of information that's coming even out of the psychiatric community right now questioning some of the practices of psychiatric medicine there is a whole movement that you're seeing that's coming out of scientific research right now that questions the findings of psychiatric medicine historically so we have to be cautious we're not pitting science and faith against one another

I'm just cautious about folks who look at data from a philosophical disposition that's anti -Christian yes and I think that there's something that is also unquestionable and irrefutable is that many doctors have over -medicated over -prescribed medications too freely and quickly and especially when it comes to children

I think that I have heard horror stories from parents who believe that harm physical harm and mental harm has come to their children because they were immediately prescribed drugs for their children just because boys are acting like boys

I mean our culture our leftist anti -Christian anti -biblical culture has come to despise masculinity and despise anything that resembles the results of testosterone in even a child and they want to remove anything that that reveals a child's energy and activity and boys being boys and it's really a nightmare situation at times and it's interesting how

I saw a Netflix documentary on a physician who actually was making so much money prescribing

Oxycontin that she became a full -fledged drug dealer and her office hours were open until 2 and 3 in the morning and people were just going to this doctor to purchase

Oxycontin and other similar things and during the documentary they were interviewing these people who were salesmen and women for the pharmaceutical companies who were not even people given formal medical training and they knew more about the drugs than the doctors did so would you agree with that assessment that people are being overly medicated and that prescriptions are being too freely written out especially in the area perhaps of children?

Yeah, and I would say that that's not even really opinion that's pretty commonly held belief by even many who are in the secular psychiatric community

I mean there are several just a plethora of books that are demonstrating that one is by an unbeliever he was a leading psychiatrist for about 25 years he actually helped author the

DSM -IV he wrote a book called Saving Normal and he talks about specifically with children medication with ADHD and things like that and so he describes the over -medication that happens and so I'll give you another example

I think your example about masculinity was really a perfect example that shows we're listening to a secular people describe wanting to get rid of this idea of femininity and masculinity from a biblical perspective and they're trying to use science to describe it that's not science that's philosophical it's scientism it's similar when we look at medication when we see this flourishing in our world one example is the coronavirus pandemic this was about a month ago

I was looking at a statistic and we've seen an increase of at least 35 % if not upwards of 50 % increase in the prescription of of antidepressant medication and anti -anxiety medication you see one of the things

Chris that demonstrates is that this is not something that's just simply biological this is something that people are impacted and affected by events that happen around them when we fear we respond with anxious thoughts and so people are trying to now believe the cultural narrative is that well if I feel like that it has to be something biologically wrong with me rather than dealing with the reality that God made us responders to our environment and when we respond earthly to things we're going to see some of these manifestations in our heart like depression like despair fear worry anxiety all these things are going to be strong in our responses because of what we're believing to be true about the reality around us when we're called as believers to walk by faith and it doesn't mean we don't ever find ourselves fearful we're earthly creatures but when we find ourselves in those situations it's an indication that we need to run to the one who is the rock that is higher than any of us we're to run to the refuge the shelter who is

Christ and that is a constant reminder for we who believe that that's how we need to respond when we start to feel those pressures in life and we have to go to our final break right now it's going to be a lot more brief than the last two breaks if you intend to send us a question of your own please do it very quickly because we're rapidly running out of time our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com as always give us your first name at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter now don't go away we'll be right back with Dale Johnson right after these messages from our sponsors

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Los Angeles California juvenile hall in the lawsuit that is pending regarding this, this is a very frightening thing to hear according to the boy and his family that he was not told what he was forced to do take in regard to the estrogen and his parents were not informed either yeah and I think that's a perfect example of even what we were discussing earlier where in the name of science you have philosophies being promoted that they look at the data of why this young kid was struggling with behavioral issues and with the way that they shape how they see the person, how they see the world in their world view it makes sense that it has to be something that they're struggling with in their identity or something like that and so it forces them to try and look to solutions like hormones or whatever to repair these problems but the bible has a completely different world view, it doesn't deny the fact that we have problems, in fact

I don't deny that we struggle with feelings of depression and feelings of anxiety and behavioral problems and all those things are real in our experience we experience those things but the lens by which we see the world then dictates why we think those problems exist and then how we think we're to approach repairing those and the bible gives a distinct way of seeing people describing their problems, the how and why we have these problems and it always provides

Jesus as the answer to those problems and how we respond to life and the way that he encourages us and the way that he changes us he makes us new and the way that we look differently at life or if we have to wait until the time that he returns or when we die, he is the answer that will make all things right, we'll get a new body we'll be without sin whatsoever at all,

I mean he will change everything and heal us completely and we have an anonymous listener who says

I have a word of warning to all your listeners that the cult known as Scientology very often masquerades as being another organization outside of this cult with different names and they very often appeal to the sympathies of Christians who are opposed to much of what goes on in the world of psychiatry and psychology,

I am saying this as a warning because I know people who have been duped into even inviting speakers from these organizations to speak to their

Christian groups and congregations only to find out that these were representatives of the

Church of Scientology Yes, you know I can vouch for that person's accuracy because I remember on several occasions years ago being contacted by an organization,

I can't remember the front name for the group but they wanted me to interview their experts who were opposed to the rampant overprescription of drugs and were hitting a lot of the button points that Christians are very concerned about when they hear about the abuses of Freudian and other kinds of secular psychiatry and psychology and they were trying to dupe me into having this person on my

Christian show and after questioning them laboriously long enough they finally admitted that they were affiliated with the

Church of Scientology so I can vouch for that. Have you heard anything like that as well? Oh yeah, absolutely and those who have been part of Scientology 1 for example is a man named

Thomas Wallace who wrote from an anti -psychiatry perspective and so yeah

I think that's a proper warning, we have to pay attention to who's speaking and what voice they're articulating and what their end goal is but I would also say just because Scientology has latched on to something relative to psychiatric medicine doesn't entirely mean that some of their approach and explanation of the problems in psychiatric medicine are necessarily wrong.

I think for us with Christian wisdom and discernment, what we have to do is say, okay, what is the end goal?

Is the end goal in our case it would be, we want to see sanctification, we want to see growth we want to see

God honored in the life of this person so we can look at scientific data more objectively we don't have to have the baggage of something like Scientology and I would argue that it's not just Scientologists, it's not relegated to just a small segment of Scientology, they have their own agenda.

You have a plethora of psychologists and psychiatrists, mainly from Britain.

Part of that has to do with because Britain is not so saturated with the dollars that go into the benefit of the

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and so you're seeing British psychiatrists write heavily and do research heavily against psychiatric medication because they don't stand as much to lose as much as many that we see in the

U .S. context and so we're seeing psychiatrists that are not religiously affiliated do this research and demonstrate some of the concerns with the medication there.

Well we are out of time and I want to remind our listeners if you want to register for the upcoming conference where my guest

Dale Johnson will be the main speaker Friday and Saturday the 28th and 29th of August in Scranton, Pennsylvania at the

High Point Baptist Church you can go to the website for the

Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and that website is www .biblicalcounseling

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