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All right, we're beginning a new section of our biblical counseling series, and as you can see from the slide, it's called the Language of Counseling. Just a couple of words, a couple of words for these last few sessions.
We have about four, maybe five sessions left. They tend to be more practical and more useful for the church at large, rather than just for counselors. So you may want to keep that in mind, that whether or not you're ever thinking about counseling or not, these topics are important for any interpersonal relationships, and especially within the church.
So that being said, we'll continue. The Language of Counseling, and the first topic is language and communication. Now we've already studied a little bit about communication in one or two previous sessions, so some of these slides are just going to be a little bit of review.
Communication is essential for any meaningful relationship. That's basic. I mean, there's nothing new there. The next point on the slides is going to be, what is communication? And we've gone over that.
What is the definition, the purest, simplest definition of communication? Who knows the answer? Go ahead. I'm not asking what the parts are. What is the definition of communication? Yeah, yeah. Is it transfer or exchange of information, remember?
And then there's three parts to it. Three elements must be necessary for communication, exactly. Because if you don't have all three of those elements, then no information can be transferred, and then communication has not taken place.
I saw that firsthand when I preached down in Columbia, not South Carolina, but Columbia, the nation down in South America, and where I had to have a translator, because I was speaking in English, because I don't speak Spanish, not very much anyway.
And only, you know, where's the food and where's the bathroom? That's the extent of my... But useful. So communication is, in its purest form, is just the transfer or exchange of information. Language is essential for interpersonal communication.
What do we mean by that? Because language can mean the difference between success or failure in counseling. Now, again, I'm going to be using the term counseling, but this is for any interpersonal relationships.
If you don't have a language that each person understands in a relationship, it's going to be different. In other words, if I'm saying, and I don't necessarily mean, you know, from Spanish or English or that, but if we're not talking on the same note, if the words don't mean the same things, you're not going to communicate.
All right. And that's one of the biggest problems is sometimes we talk over each other or under each other, and we're not really communicating. At the very heart, language is an important gift from God.
And John 1 .1 shows the concept of language, even in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Do you find it interesting that Jesus was referred to as the Word?
And we see it throughout scripture, but there's just one other example in Hebrews 1 .3. And he is the radiance of his glory and exact representation of his nature, and upholds all things by the Word of his power.
Jesus was probably the most effective communicator that ever lived, because he himself was the Word of God. And here are five things that we can determine or we can know through language. And this is only five.
This is just representative. There's many, many more things that we learn. Almost everything we know, we learn through some form of language. But we know that we have the ability to have relationships only through language.
Without language, it would be almost impossible. Anybody here a Star Trek fan? Do you remember the one Next Generation, where Picard is stranded on a planet with the head of another alien race? And it turns out they couldn't communicate, and they were trying to prevent a war between.
And it turns out that the one race, they only spoke in metaphors. And Picard couldn't understand, because he didn't understand the metaphors. He could understand what he was saying, but he couldn't understand the metaphors.
And when the walls was that the name of it? Okay. Anyway, if you want to study a little interesting facts about communication, that was an excellent episode to watch. So, we have the ability to have relationships through language.
We know that man sinned by the Word of Satan. Satan came and used language to entice and seduce Adam and Eve into sin. Man is saved by the Word of God. Again, it's the Word. And we know that it's the preaching of the Word, and only through the preaching of the Word that man will be saved.
That's our doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and why we fight so tenaciously for that doctrine. And it's only through the language and the Word that God has given to us that we know what he requires of us, and that we know what God has done for us.
And these are all crucial things. Now, these were picked out specifically as they affect the counseling situation. It is by words or language that we believe one thing or another. I told you this is going to be very basic.
Beliefs are affected by repetition of words. Do we believe that? How do we know we believe it? Go ahead, somebody say it. What does the world try to do to us constantly? What is catechism? What is a catechism?
What's the purpose of a catechism? It's the repetition of principles and ideas so that we are ingrained, we're soaked in them, and we know the truth. So that can be done either for good or for bad. The world tries to catechize us every day, and so that's why we actually repeat and have a catechism.
Words or phrases constantly repeated help induce attitudes which become part of the mindset. It's just the way God has created us, all right? And we see that in classical education in particular has really adopted that methodology of catechism questions, repetition, and even in the, um, what do you, what do you call it on my, the Latin, what do you call the Latin repetition when you were teaching the young kids Latin?
Nobody going to help, huh? Yes, that's what that's, the word failed me. The word failed me. Yes, we teach the kids Latin by, by doing the Latin chants in their classrooms, and they do that every day. An ungodly mindset may have to be broken, broken before counseling can be effective.
When you hear something repetitively day in and day out, as we do in this world, the influence of this world is constant repetition of ungodly thoughts and behaviors. For example, addiction is a disease.
If you, if you ask that question out in the mainstream, what, what, if you ask the question, is addiction a disease, what do you think the answer is going to be? Yeah, because we're constantly told that addiction is, is a disease.
What is the, what does the Bible say? Bible says, well, I, I guess that's another slide. Bible says addiction is what? Sin. So part of the skill or the technique, as we learned last week, that aids a counselor in learning to recognize what people are, are saying, that's part of the skill that we need to understand, get to know, what do people mean?
Repetitious phrases can often reveal unbiblical attitudes. For example, take the phrase, I can't. People, if, if you, if you tell somebody to do something and they don't want to do it, what do they say?
I can't. How often do we say I can't do something when it's really what? I don't want to. So the person must see their condition in light of God's power and the gifts he has given to them. One of the problems in, in counseling with people that you will encounter is this negative attitude.
I just can't, it's too hard. I'm not, it's not in me to do that. And if you're dealing, remember the presupposition in biblical counseling is you're dealing with a regenerate person. And if you're dealing with a regenerate person, you've got to change that mindset that the world has, has catechized into them.
All right. And convince them that from the word of God, that they are able to do far more than they think they can. So the counselor must be aware of the misuse of language. All right. So for example, a person may say, I need to do this, or I need to do that, or I need this instead of, well, I, I really, I want that.
And you have to demonstrate and show them you don't need it. It's, it's that you want it. And that's a very popular one. And a person may use metaphors or figurative language to avoid the real problem.
And that can come in, what, what seems to be the problem? Well, my, my husband's just a pain in the neck. You know, and using phrases like that without getting right to the real problem. He's not literally a pain in the neck, unless he's a vampire.
The person may speak, for example, about tension between him and another person. What's the situation? Well, we, there's tension between us. Is that really the problem? The problem is not the tension, but the problem that causes the tension.
And if you're dealing like with tension, you're only dealing on a, on a superficial or a surface level. And what you want to do is get to the problem. Why is there tension between you? All right. So the proper use of language can often be the decisive factor in helping a person to solve problems biblically.
If you can convince somebody you don't need this, you want it, or you, when you say, when you say I can't, you're really saying I won't. All right. And show them that you, they do have the ability. So the biblical approach to correcting language issues is first to confront the person.
No surprise there. That's exactly what we're admonished in scripture to do. Then explain the facts. These are the facts. Because remember, most often when there's interpersonal relationships, whether it's husband and wife, two friends, whatever, there's a question of misperceptions and then a lack of understanding of what the other person is saying.
That's a big part of it. So explain the facts, confront the person, explain the facts, and then set about biblically correcting, correcting the errors. The counselor must be aware of language masking unbiblical thought and attitudes, and then correct it.
Such as using clinical, psychological terms to describe something. And that's why if you've ever come to me and you said, well, you know, I have a friend who's ADHD. I said, well, I don't know what that is.
All right. Usually most, you know, want to know the problem with most people who claim to have ADHD? They're BAD. Okay. My point is, I'm not saying that there's nothing wrong, that there was something that doesn't need to be addressed.
What I'm saying is we have to be careful of buying into psychological terminology. A perfect example of how to use language is Jesus to the rich young ruler. Remember, everybody here knows the story. There's no novice here.
All right. The rich young ruler comes, what must I do? All right. And he calls him good teacher. Remember? And what does Jesus say? He says, why do you call me good? There's no one good but God. All right.
That little encounter is rife with biblical example. Jesus showed the ruler at least two crucial facts just with that brief encounter that we read in the scripture. One, when he tells him to go and sell all you have, all right, he shows him that he didn't really keep the law.
And he was not good like he thought he was. All right. And two, Jesus was either God because he called him good or he was not good at all. And so he cut just with that brief encounter, Jesus cuts right to the quick.
A good counselor will want to get to the bottom line as quickly as possible. We don't like to drag things out. There are some biblical counselors that only counsel somebody four or five times. You don't got it by then, you don't got it.
Whenever it appears that counseling is not going well, it's wise to reexamine the use of language. What is the person really saying? Also, the frequency of words or cliches may be a clue to the hindrance in counseling.
If you're struggling with somebody and you're not getting anywhere, make sure that you're talking on the same level. Make sure that they understand what the words mean. And especially if you're dealing with a Christian, we have our own form of language.
We have Christianese. We say a lot of things, you know. You start talking about redemption and atonement and things. The average person on the street doesn't know what you're talking about. So you have to be careful so that they understand exactly what it is that you mean.
Here's a little chart that I took out of J. Adams' book to help. First column is what is a typical response from a counselee. And the second is an example of how the counselor should respond. So person says, in response to a failure to do something, he says, I did my best.
What does the counselor say? Something like this. Remember, the best is what God says to do. Notice, what do you do? You always bring it right back to the scriptures. I could never do that. And here, this is a typical J. Adams response.
It's a little snarky. Never is a long time. Now, that's only one. There's a number of answers to that, to rectify that. Don't ask me, but I am asking you. Who else would know? If you know J. Adams, you could see his fingerprint on this.
I can't. God says you can. Do you mean can't or won't? And by the way, this left-hand column, these are very, very typical responses that you get in a counseling room. Don't blame me. You're saying you're not responsible?
God says, and you give the answer. I've done everything I could. Everything? What about? Because if somebody says they've done everything, you know that's not, one, it's not conceivably possible, and two, it's an exaggeration.
You know how it is. No, I don't know. Can you explain it more fully? I've tried that, but it didn't work. Did you really try? I usually tell them try is a four-letter word. You don't try, as my good friend Yoda says.
We don't try. We do. I'm at the end of my rope. Which end? Perhaps you're beginning to uncoil your problem for the first time. I told you this was J. Adams' chart. I would never be that sarcastic. Okay.
Many people have learned to use crisis language when the issues are only minor, you know, and you see this consistently in exaggerated words. And, you know, this is the end of the world, you know. Nothing is going to be the same anymore.
This changes everything. Exaggerations usually stem from three sources. Perceptual distortions. A person isn't just looking at it correctly. Self-interest. Preserving their own integrity or making that they don't want to look bad.
Or just limited experience. Frequent language like she makes me sick or he's a pain in the neck may indicate the usage has gone beyond metaphors. You get to a point where you realize that it's serious.
Four types of people who tend to exaggerate. The introverted. Shut-ins. Self-oriented. And those just out of touch with reality. And you can see how each one of those groups. Yes. It's just by experience.
It's just that introverted people have a tendency to exaggerate. I don't know why it is, but that's based on, you know, the studies that NANC and CCEF do. Well, we'd have to realize what an introverted person really is.
It's not just somebody who's shy. An introverted person is just focusing in on himself. A lot of people we call introverted, not really introverted. How should a counselor respond to these statements?
But I have prayed about it. And this is something that you'll hear a lot, especially if you're doing any amount of counseling. But I've prayed about this. Fine. Then what are you going to do about it?
Or what did you do about it? Prayer. Believe this or not, prayer is one of the biggest excuses that people give to avoid action. That comes from my experience. People will say, but I have prayed about it.
And then they use that as an excuse for not taking the action that the Bible says they should take. I have a need to. Is it a need or a desire? I'll never forgive him. If you're a child of God, you will.
That's impossible. You mean it's difficult. Do you see the difference? And you see how, as a believer, we always draw things back. We don't allow ungodly or unbiblical language. You have to always bring them back.
And if you look at everything that we've looked at so far this evening, you can see that by doing this, you're actually giving the person hope instead of it's impossible. You know, I can't do it. It's impossible.
I've tried. I've done my best. No, this is what the scripture says. You may have to keep on trying or you may have to keep on doing. And there's always giving memory, always giving hope. Notice the counselor is always bringing the person to biblical reality.
Another thing, words like emotional problems are euphemisms and are misleading at best. We hear a lot about emotional problems. When someone complains about emotional difficulties, there's nothing wrong with the emotions.
Again, it's not to say that they're not feeling what they're feeling. The feelings are real, but that doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the emotions. The emotions are responding to a particular problem.
They're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. So to control the emotions, the counselor must get to the underlying problem, which is usually sin. And when dealing with sin, the Christian counselor never euphemizes.
Using the word alcoholism, which society considers a disease, implies the person is not responsible. What's more accurate is the biblical word is drunkenness. What we try to do is alcoholism, or I'm an alcoholic, sounds a whole lot better than I'm a drunk.
And we try to, you know, save people's feelings. When you're not only not saving their feelings, you're saying the same thing, but you're using an unbiblical term. And especially since the connotation that's applied to alcoholism is that it's a disease.
That's why people will have no problem calling themselves an alcoholic. Likewise, kleptomania, it's an irresponsible term for somebody who's a habitual thief. They call themselves a kleptomaniac, which means that I'm not responsible.
I can't stop myself from doing it, which obviously, according to the scripture, is wrong. When a person is following a biblical pattern of life other than prescribed by God, he's behaving wrongly, and he's sinning.
And we have to call sin, sin. Especially in a counseling room, or if you're helping a friend, don't try to mitigate the terms. Because by doing so, you're going to give the person the wrong impression.
In each of these circumstances we've talked about, there's nothing wrong with the emotions of these people. If they feel bad, if they feel trapped, and whatnot, those feelings are real. There's nothing wrong with those, because they're an indication that there is a deeper problem.
The conscience may trigger all sorts of pleasant or unpleasant emotions. In that case, the conscience is doing its job. The problem we come up with is if you, if the person has seared their conscience, and there is no emotion, that's what, that's a more serious problem, according to Romans 1.
The conscience has the ability to make judgments about one's own behavior. The conscience that God has given to us works, if it's making it, if you sin, then you feel bad, that means your conscience is working, it's doing its job.
What a lot of modern psychology does, it's like, if we're sitting here in this room, and all of a sudden the fire alarm, the fire bell goes off. And I say, don't worry about it, I got it. I take out my pair of diagonal pliers, and I cut the wires to the bell.
Bell stops. Is that better? If you're having emotional, quote, emotional problems, what people call emotional problems, that's an alarm. Something is wrong. But you got to find out the problem isn't the emotions.
The problem is what's causing the emotional, discern, the emotional issues. Sinful behavior leads to unpleasant emotional experiences. And we know that. If you're in this room tonight, and you're a believer, and you've just, I want you to think back to a time when you know you did something wrong, and you're trying to hide it.
How did you feel? Doesn't feel good, does it? A person who is really seeking the Lord can't wait to confess it, ask for forgiveness, and have it dealt with. And that's what this is all about. The way to get relief from unpleasant emotional experiences is to repent, seek biblical alternatives, and to change behavior.
However, repentance is not merely for the purpose of relief. Remember, motivation is just as important as the actual act. True repentance comes after the recognition of sin against God, and then true repentance.
There's some very poor teaching in the church today, and especially in seminars, that you need to forgive people for your benefit. Now, it's true that you get a benefit when you forgive somebody who has sinned against you, but you're doing it for their benefit because they're the offender, and they need, they need the forgiveness.
So, to forgive somebody for your sake has got the whole thing twisted upside down. Unpleasant visceral responses are largely involuntary and are triggered by behavior, thoughts, and attitudes. I'm going to leave that for a minute, because I think that'll become clearer as we go through.
The solution to these problems lies in rooting out the cause, discovering the sinful pattern, and changing those habits through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. You've got your conscience bothering you, you have emotional issues because of something, find out what it is, repent of it, change that sinful habit pattern through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
That's true and lasting change. The next one, if you notice what just flew in here, the language of emotion and action. This is a little slightly different, but now we're going to actually talk about the emotions.
First, some important definitions, and this is what I've been waiting to get to. Feelings. Where's my microphone? I'll sing that for you if you'd like. No, I won't. Feelings, the perception of a bodily state as pleasant or unpleasant.
That's just a very broad, succinct definition of what feelings are. Attitude is a combination of presuppositions, beliefs, convictions, and opinions that make up one's habitual stance toward the subject, person, or act.
Notice the difference between feelings and attitudes, and behavior, the activities of a whole person that may be judged by the law of God. Understanding the difference between feelings, attitude, and behavior is key to counseling and even in your own self of making sure that you're not carrying around any issues that are going to manifest itself in emotional issues.
Two categories of feelings, good and bad. Very simple. We don't have to get any more in-depth than just that. Emotional responses of the body are responses to judgments made about the environment and oneself.
The situations that you find yourself in will affect your emotions based upon what those circumstances are, whether they're pleasant or unpleasant. The era of the Rogerian approach to feeling is that he reduces thoughts, opinions, beliefs, convictions, and attitudes to feelings.
And as we can see, they are different. It's not the same thing. So, when a person complains in the Rogerian system, when the person complains, I feel inferior, he's really saying, I am inferior. Okay.
Now, an I am inferior is a self-judgment about one's own character. Right. Now, whether is it an accurate one or not, maybe the person is inferior in the circumstances that he's in, but whether he is or not, that's a self-judgment and that can affect his feelings.
Now, here's where this affects the Christian counselor, especially on the issue of the assurance of salvation. One of the things that we hear frequently in counseling, I don't feel saved. As Jay Adams says, it's not proper to say.
That's not something that you should be saying. Here's why. Conviction that one is saved is not an emotion. Assurance is not a feeling. Okay. You follow that? Let me keep going. One may feel afraid, sad, or angry over doubts about salvation, but one does not feel saved or unsaved.
How does one feel saved? It's not an emotion. If you say that you don't feel it, you're relegating your salvation to an emotion and that's not the place you want to be, because salvation is not an emotional state.
Salvation is a relationship to God which affects the emotions, but it is not in itself a feeling. When a person is saved, they have overwhelming feelings of joy and happiness, but that's based upon the knowledge they have of that they have been delivered from Satan, sin, and death, and translated into the kingdom of God.
Those objective facts lead to an emotional response, especially if the emotions are working right. Does that make sense to you? But to say I don't feel saved, what does feeling saved feel like? It's important to distinguish between the emotion and the conviction of judgment that triggers it in order to find a solution to one's problem.
Assurance of salvation is an important issue. Look at how long we've been preaching from the and almost every message comes back in some form affecting assurance of salvation. John's whole letter, five chapters, was written to increase the assurance of the early church.
So it's a major issue, and part of the problem why it's an issue is because we have an unbiblical view of what assurance really is, and that's what we've been trying to do in the morning messages. Assurance of salvation depends upon, and there's a few things, and notice how these line up with what we've been preaching on.
Assurance of salvation depends upon God's promise in the Bible, faith in and reliance upon Christ and his finished work, evidence of salvation in one's life. Remember the three tests from John 1. The witness of the Holy Spirit, and those are just four things, but notice those things are all objective.
They're convictions. They're judgments. They're not feelings or emotions. If you look at that, and you can say, yes, I believe God's promise in the Bible that he saved me. I have faith, and I'm relying on Christ for my salvation, and on him alone.
I have experienced fruits of repentance in my life. I've seen the difference from what I used to be and what I am now, and yes, I know the promise the Holy Spirit has witnessed to my own spirit. That will produce, hopefully, an emotion of joy, but it's the joy of the objective fact of your salvation based upon the Word of God.
Follow that? Okay, just want to make sure you're there. Okay, just a couple more quick slides. I'll move some of these a little more rapidly. The genuine feelings of salvation will only come out of a judgment soundly based upon the scriptural basis of such assurance.
In counseling, attitudes may be addressed and changed more directly than feelings. Attempting to change feelings without changing the underlying causes solves nothing. The person will only lapse back into the same state as they were before.
It is attitudes that often stand in the way of solving issues. Like I said, I'm going to go through this a little quickly because we're running late. If you have a problem, a question, just raise your hand or holler out.
Attitudes usually involve habits or thoughts. Changes in attitude require changes in habits, which stem from the biblical putting off, putting on dynamic that Paul teaches in the book of Ephesians. Now, Skinnerians, followers of Skinner, consider any and all activities of the body as behavior, including functions of the nerves and glands.
In other words, even feelings and emotions. You can see how that would cause problems and how that would even affect, like calling alcoholism a disease. They usually draw the concept, deny the concept of any responsibility whatsoever.
Remember, he believed man was just a complex animal. And Skinnerians never deal with the problems of mankind as a result of sin. And the problem of sin will be addressed in a future session. Questions?
Yeah. This is more of like a statement. So.
Before and I agree with this completely, that this is this is true, that when you ask someone when they say, well, I've done all that I could. No, I've prayed. It was like I've already prayed about it.
And it's like, well, what have you done about it? Something that I have issues with is I'll do too much action about it and not pray. So also a good thing to ask someone.
When they say I've done all I could is, well, have you prayed about it? Yes. Yes. And in fact, a couple of weeks ago, we we gave how to make decisions and we broke it down into some steps. One of those steps is praying.
It should always be prayer involved. Prayer is the base is the basis for biblical counseling, because we know that it's not the it's not the skill of the counselor. It's not even the willingness of the person.
But it's God, the Holy Spirit, who is going to do the results. Excellent. Excellent observation. I know a lot of this may sound counterculture because it is. Because our culture has been so psychologized, even the church has.
OK. Pastor Anthony, would you close in a word of prayer?