Bad Counseling strategies (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Prayer Circles, Henna Evangelism, and Ballroom Dance

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and Steve, you walk any prayer circles these days?

Very few. I prefer rhombuses, prayer rhombuses. I�m going to write a book about it.

Well, it�s interesting because in our sanctuary, in our place of, you know, where the saints gather, there�s a big Awana circle, yeah, and I don�t walk the circle when I pray, but I like to just walk in a circle because I guess I could do jagged lines or something, but I guess I have to confess I walk prayer circles.

Well, and now everybody on No Compromise Radio knows.

All of our fans worldwide. Oh, I�m just so sorry to have to say to the prayer circle just one simple word, �Forget.

You. Oh, one word for you, �Forget you.

Hey, you know the extent of the influence of No Compromise Radio. When R. Scott Clarke knows what �heno� means, then you�re set. Oh, nice.

That�s very impressive. Now if he writes a book called �heno. Well, I know.

Did you see the other day, it was the International Missions Board, which is the missions organization of the Southern Baptist Convention, and there�s an article that they posted about evangelizing with henna and ink and stuff like that, and you can put special symbols so Muslims ask you questions, so Hindus ask you questions, and it was the Twitter handle, not Chuck Finney.

He said, �I�m in Jesus� harem now. That�s what basically you can put on with your henna. And then I had to say, you know, and there�s stories too, Steve, hennastories .org, so I want to have a new URL.

It�s going to be henostories .org.

Well, it sort of reminds me of, you know, coffee evangelism. It�s dope-io.

That is so funny. Kim and I are taking dance classes, ballroom dance classes, and there�s something in the tango that I think is called a �corte�, and you kind of lean back a little bit if the floor is getting busy and you need to move and stop and pause, a �corte.

I think it�s called that. Well, I just call it the �cortado because everything has to be coffee-related. What else is happening in your life? You have your home groups on Friday night? Yes, we do.

Is that a faux fellowship group? Is that like in lieu of Sunday morning worship? How does that all work?

No. You know, we�re looking at, well, we have a theology of biblical counseling by Heath Lambert that we�re going through, and so we do that. We pray. We sing. In fact, I really like the singing tradition that we�ve developed.

People are allowed to pick their favorites, right? But they have to lead it. Oh, that�s good. Yeah. Uh-huh. So it�s like, �Don�t stick me with your favorite.

You pick it, and you sing it. Remember our old home Bible study back in North Hollywood? Yes, I do. And Edwin picked those songs out. Yep. And he led them. Yep.

Uh-huh. Yeah. That�s good. So we do that, and, you know, I mean, we�re kind of, you know, we�re getting used to things. Kind of. Yeah. Attendance is up? Attendance is good. Singing? Singing? Singing is good.

Louder? I think, you know, I think everybody likes it, so, you know, I love music, you know, personally. And what are you talking about in that? Well, we�re talking, oh, tonight we�re going to be talking about attributes of God and how they�re applicable during counseling because people need to be, you know, we point people to Christ, we point people to God, and we want them to rely upon Him.

You know, people want solutions that are problems, and ultimately the solution is God. Excellent.

Christ Our Sympathetic High Priest and Going to the Throne of Grace

So. Well, before our show, we were talking a little bit about Hebrews chapter 4. It says in verse 14, �Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus�, that�s his human name, �the Son of God, He�s divine.

Let us hold fast our confession, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who is in every respect, who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

And so what Steve and I were talking about is counseling and just being able to go to God as well with your troubles and, you know, go to the throne instead of the phone, that type of thing, right?

Or go to the throne instead of Facebook. Oh, wow.

Stop me when I�m lying. Okay. So before we get into a little bit more about counseling and how we can help other people with their problems, if you�re a Christian, you have the Spirit of God, and you have the Word of God, and you have friends, and you can help them and point them to the Lord and His Word.

A Pastoral Encounter with Self-Harm and the Problem of Endless Therapy

What was that situation you were telling me about when we were at that restaurant during the Shepherd�s Conference?

How did that all come about? This was obviously just a few years ago because it was before I came out here, and while I was still in seminary. So it had to be maybe 2001, 2002, something like that, and we were all at a restaurant, and you were there, and Pat, and some other men, and I think there were a number of guys from OBC and probably BBC, and we�re sitting around having lunch.

Well, I had to go see an E-doctor because I was getting treated for all these different things that I would eventually get surgery for, and so I�m trying to track down the waitress so I can pay my part of the bill and go, and these two ladies said, they sort of flagged me down, and they said, �Excuse us.

He said, �Are you a pastor

Was it the collar, or was it the Geneva and robe?

No, it was just my suit, you know, plus I don�t know. Maybe they overheard us talking about some theological thing or something, and so they said, �Are you a pastor And I said, �No. You know, and I was like in a little bit of a rush, but I was also just thinking, I don�t know what they want, but so I�m just like, �No, but those guys over at that table, I�m pointing at you guys and I�m like, �They are.

And one of the ladies said, well, you know, I don�t remember how she phrased it, but it just seems like, �Well, you seem like you can help us. You know, you seem nice. Such a sweet face. I think it was the suit.

So Geneva and gown. So you know, to make a long story short, they were cutters, and what they wanted to know from me, they said, you know, �Do you believe Were they cut in front of you? To pay? No, but they showed me the scars on their arms, and I only just recently had learned about this.

I never knew it existed. And so it was heartbreaking, really, to sit down with them, and then they said, you know, �Do you believe that God can heal And I said, �Yes and so they told me that they had been seeing a counselor whom they were paying quite a bit of money, and he told them it was going to take them years to stop cutting themselves.

And so, you know, it was one of the things that we were talking about, you know, can you imagine you're getting counseling advice, and there's really no end. There's no end in sight.

You're just going to keep going and paying. So how that came up is Steve and I were looking at bad counseling advice online, and you know, what you don't want to hear in counseling, and we were thinking about, of course, the great counselor and the great Lord Jesus, the high priest.

So the one I have in front of me, Steve, is by Noah Rubenstein, and it's 50 Warning Signs of Questionable Therapy in Counseling. That's what we have in front of us, and that's kind of the jumping off point.

Hope, Dependency, and the Goal of Biblical Counseling

I think a number four is what you just referenced. Therapist provides no explanation of how you will know when your therapy is complete. Well, maybe it's coinciding with the number of co-pays that are left in your insurance plan.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, what is this? If this just sounds like, you know, I want you to become dependent upon the therapist, which is the exact opposite of what a biblical counselor wants, right? I don't want you to be dependent upon me.

I want you to be dependent upon Christ. So I don't want our counseling relationship to go on and on and on and on, you know, indefinitely. That's not the point. The point is for you to ultimately have that relationship with the high priest, with the ultimate counselor, with the, you know, the wonderful counselor.

Steve, when we have new membership classes here at the church, they just never end. We don't tell people how long they're gonna take. We just keep going and going and going. You'll just know. Uh-huh, yeah.

It's similar with our philosophy for premarital, and there's a couple that expresses their love toward one another, and they'd like to get married, and so we say, well, we have a few things required. One is premarital counseling, and we just don't know how long it's gonna take.

It's kind of like some of your sermons, they just, how long is it gonna go?

I have no idea. Well, the sermons always go 45 minutes, but how long will I be in that particular verse?

He'll tell us it's either cassette today or reel to reel.

Well, the great part about 8-track, it just keeps going and going. When track eight is done, track one begins.

Yeah, but it'll just like record right over the, you know, so.

I remember my dad's car, he had some Volkswagen or something, and it was an 8-track tape player in there, and that was when the, you know, 8-track of the month club, you know, you could get eight of them, and then you had to buy, you know, like five more or something.

Yeah, the Columbia tape of the month. And I remember he had Merle Haggard and Hank Williams Jr. and Willie Nelson. And I think there's a Captain and Tennille one thrown in there somehow, maybe for my sister.

Muskrat love.

I know. The best of Captain and Tennille. Yeah.

How did that work? Well, discipleship here at the church, when I enter into a discipleship arrangement with a group of men or a few men or a man, I always try to tell them, you know, just going to go on indefinitely.

No, no, there's, okay, four weeks for a new membership class. We have six weeks for the premarital, and why don't we meet for the next six or seven weeks and work on such and such an issue here? I mean, I don't know the number, but don't you think it'd be good to know?

By the way, Christian, you're struggling with a problem. The first thing we're going to tell you is that there's hope for you. Is that like a foundational thing, don't you think?

And it's the truth. Yes, it is absolutely foundational. We, you know, again, what do we want? We want people to have hope in the Lord, hope in the sufficiency of Scripture, not hope in Mike, not hope in Steve, you know.

I mean, it just reminds me of the words of Paul, you know, he didn't come to us with sophisticated words of wisdom, because why? He ultimately wanted the people's testimony to, the Corinthians testimony, to be built on the Word of God and the power of God, not on his sophistication.

It says here, number one, counselor does not have sufficient and specific training to address your issues and or attempts to treat problems outside the scope of the practice. That would be, according to Dr. Rubenstein, if he's a doctor, that's a warning sign.

Well, I mean, you look up at the wall and he's got a doctorate in dentistry. You're just like, um, yeah, I kind of counsel on the side, you know.

Well, when I was getting different opinions for the prostate cancer, there were certain doctors, some in Los Angeles that, you know, they had doctorates, but it was in other things. And they were just good gurus on vitamin B, ginger, pomegranate extract and such.

Empathy, Sympathy, and the Attributes of God in Suffering

How about this? How about you're a pastor in New England, God just parachutes you behind enemy lines, as it were, and you know, you've been to seminary, you understand Hebrew some and Greek a little bit better, systematic theology, historical theology, exegetical theology, practical theology, and somebody comes to you and they've got some problem, let's say with cutting.

I never had anybody come to me until, you know, the last 10 years, I've got a problem with cutting. What's our first response, Steve? Is it to call the cutting experts? I'm not trying to be funny. Is it to call the secular psychologist, to call somebody that you know who used to cut so you can get advice?

What do you do as a pastor? And then translate it into what do you do if you're just a Christian and another Christian calls you and says, I've got a problem with blank, and you don't know really what to do.

Should you immediately refer them on or what should the Christian do?

Well, I think the first thing is empathy, right? I mean, we want to, and I cannot think of a time where somebody's come to me with a real problem. I can think of times when people have come to me with complaints where I wasn't entirely empathetic.

But when somebody comes with a problem, I'm empathetic for a number of reasons. One is because I feel, I don't want to sound like Bill Clinton, but I feel their pain, right? I mean, and when somebody comes to you in pain, even just as a parent, as any kind of human being, you don't just brush somebody off.

You are empathetic and compassionate and you want to help. And sometimes we think the best way to help is to pass them off to somebody else because you don't feel like you have the expertise, but that's generally speaking, not the right thing to do.

Steve, as you were talking about empathy, I was thinking about that passage back in Hebrews, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. And so Jesus, positively, what the writer is trying to say is He can sympathize because He's a human and He has been tempted.

Both empathy and sympathy in the English language have that root path, pathos, you know, feelings. And as I was studying this week, empathy is, you know, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes and feel your pain.

And sympathy is, I'm putting myself in your shoes and I'd like to help, right? So Jesus is able to help, and of course it goes on in verse 16 to talk about going to this throne of grace to receive mercy and help in time of need.

Aren't you really doing both as the counselor? I'm trying to figure out what it feels like to be you in your situation, and then I want to try to help you. That's exactly right.

And the only reason I stress empathy is because if you can't even fathom, you know, sort of walking in their shoes or imagine what it's like, then, I mean, do you have to be able to do that? Maybe not.

But I think you should feel a certain weight. I mean, even when I was a police officer, I remember some of the hardest things I did, even as an unbeliever, like telling a woman that her husband was a child molester.

And I don't believe that she knew about it, right? And it was hard to sit across the table from somebody and tell her that, you know, it was just difficult because her world, you know, knowing what that meant for her kids and everything else was very difficult.

So that's the first part. But the second thing is, yes, we want to present help because that's why they came to us, right? They want, they don't just want somebody who can relate to what they're going through.

They want some help. They want some hope. They want some, you know, positive direction for their life.

Even if we say, Steve, I don't know what to do. I'm at a loss. I, as the counselor, our friend, or the one that, you know, you're coming to to receive help, I've only known about this now for 10 minutes, so I don't know exactly what to tell you because I have to process this and ask God for wisdom.

But what we could do right now, back to what you're going to talk about tonight, let's just, let's just ground ourselves again in who God is and God knows and God is able to help and God has brought this into your life in a sovereign way and we don't know the ends and the means and everything else.

So let's go back to this God who, when we think of the incarnation, God with us, he's with you and let's, let's bolster our attributes of God, theology proper, Christology before we take the next step.

Would that be a good idea?

It's a great idea. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I've told somebody this, that while I can't fully comprehend, you know, why this is happening exactly, here's what I know. I know that Romans 8, 28 is still true, that God's using this for your good.

You know, even if we can't see the good in it right now, it's for his good or for your good and for his glory. And right now it's very difficult, you know, but we also need to, as you said, think of the attributes of God.

God is sovereign. God is holy. God is all knowing. And as we were just saying before we got on the air, he knows what is best. You know, does he love, I tell people this all the time, I go, here's what I know.

God loves his children more than anybody could possibly love them. If you're a child of God right now and you're listening to this, here's what you can know without question, that God set his affection upon you before the world began, and that is immovable.

And he loves you more than anyone will ever love you because it doesn't change. It's 100%. He loves you in Christ. And that is a promise of God that is a great assurance, I think, even in the most difficult circumstances.

Steve, I don't have my Bible open to Romans 8, but you referenced 828. I think 831 talks about if God is for us, then who can be against us? And at least with myself, I say, you know what, Mike, this is a big problem and, you know, probably self-inflicted.

But just think if God was against you and you had this problem, then, but God's not against me. It seems like my circumstances reveal, right, to my own experience that somehow God must be against me. But even if this is chastening, God's not against me.

He's for me, and this is for my good, and it's for his glory, and certainly eternity will bear that out, but probably even time will bear it out. Yeah.

I mean, like I said, here's the problem with us. We're at a particular dot in time, right? And we see time as very linear. Yeah, but it's my dot, Steve.

It's my personal me, my dot.

Well, and we become me-centric and, you know, focused on that dot, and we can't see anything beyond that, and we can't really see how anything good can come out of it. Well, God is not constricted by time.

He sees not just the dot. He sees everything, and not as a linear event kind of thing, but as basically like a picture. So he sees the beginning and the end. They're equally the same to him. He's not mystified.

He's not, you know, confused. He knows exactly what he's doing, and we are called to trust him.

That's a lot of this, is walking by faith in the object of Jesus and not by sight with our own eyes. Steve, I think it goes on in Romans 8 to talk about, nothing shall separate us from our love to Jesus Christ.

What if it was that? And so all these things are good to be reminded. I'm preaching Romans chapter 8 in a few weeks in California, and just what a great chapter because it has nothing to do with our primacy, but all about who God is and what he's done for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ, right? And the answer is, of course, no one.

And doesn't it say, I'm going to have to, since I've referenced it a few times, he quotes from the Old Testament to reveal to the people that it's going to be trouble, right? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, or danger, or sword separate us from the love of Christ?

And then what Paul says, quoting the Old Testament in verse 36 of Romans 8, as it is written,. And for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Very difficult passage from Psalm 44.

You know, you're going to have troubles, contrary to everything that Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Word Faith, Prosperity Teachers, Stephen Furtick does the same thing now. In spite of what they say, there's going to be trouble, but God is for you.

And so then it really doesn't matter who's against us, right? I mean, even if we are against us, and we often are, right?

Yeah, I'm against myself. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be, but in all practicality, when I was a kid, I was in a five-foot-and-under basketball league. You know, they're six foot and under, but I was younger, five foot and under.

I don't know how old I was, 13 or something. And we went to a bad part of town, and I was exactly five foot, therefore I was the tallest person on our team, therefore I was the center, and I had to jump center for the basketball.

Ref throws the ball up, whoever can time it best and jump the best wins. Well, the other guy walked up to me, and he shook my hand like, you know, sportsman would, and he said, if you don't let me win the jump ball, I'm going to kill you after the game.

This is in Omaha, Nebraska. So did he kill you after the game? Well, here's the thing. I looked over, and my dad, who didn't come to a lot of games, he was a fighter, kind of a golden-gloved kind of a guy, and was a bouncer for a long time at bars, 6 '4", 240.

My friend, ten years after my dad died, my dad's friend told me, you know, I don't think I ever saw your dad lose a fight. Anyway, here's Big Dad right there. And I looked over, and I thought, I'm going to try my hardest, because my dad's going to be with me after the game, nobody's killing me.

And I jumped as high as I could, and I still lost. So there was nothing happening at the end of the game, sadly. No recriminations. I know. But I'm just thinking about, if I could trust in my fallen father's strength, then the obvious connection spiritually should be there for us.

And it's so, you know, intense sometimes. People just lose—again, I just think it's easy for us as sinners to just get lost in ourselves, lost in our difficulty, and to forget that God's in charge, to forget that He loves us, right?

That He hasn't moved, He hasn't left us, He hasn't forsaken us. And you know, I think Romans 8 every day is probably good for us, right? Just remind ourselves.

Hope in God, Sufficiency of Scripture, and Gospel-Centered Counseling

That is so true. So class, today on No Compromise Radio with Pastor Steve and Pastor Mike, we've talked about kind of what not to do in counseling and what to do. So I would summarize it this way, Steve.

Hope, God-centered, empathy and sympathy, and Romans 8. And gospel. That's right. We're going to talk about that next time. Info at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

We will talk to you next time. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.