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Dr. Irwin "Rocky" Freeman
Together. If we, of course, were in a family counseling seminar, then we would be dealing with more personal matters. I feel like we would be remiss if we didn't do that. So, what I would like to do today and perhaps somewhat tomorrow, part of our time tomorrow, is to cover some basic information on counseling.
And what I'm going to share with you is, of course, adaptable to the minister, to the staff member, or to you as a layperson. Because there are certain principles that can be utilized by anyone. It is my philosophy, my firm conviction, that every Christian is capable of counseling.
It just depends on to the degree that one wants to go in the depth of that counseling. But yet, you and I must be very careful because we must be prepared to counsel. And I think there's much scripture that would give us the authorization for it.
Now, it is extremely time-consuming and so, therefore, most people will kind of move away from it somewhat. So, what we want to do is, I want to cover some basic information about counseling and then move into some particulars.
And then somewhere in the middle, I would like to pause and I usually tell people we'll take a test along about Friday. But perhaps we won't take a real test. But I would like for us to evaluate some thoughts concerning ourselves, where we are.
You know, men have a difficult time, staff members, businessmen, leadership, and so forth, because men have two dominant characteristics. Those two dominant characteristics are pride and arrogance. Men have a market on those two.
The women have it, it just seems to be in the male species more than it does the other, or at least it shows up more. And yet, if that man can be channeled and if his energies can be channeled into the way that God wants them to be channeled, then, of course, he can become that spiritual leader in his home, he can become the spiritual leader as well as a leader in his business or whatever place God has placed him in, he can become what God wants him to be.
And I appreciate what our brother said to us this morning in one of the closing remarks, that the priorities are your first responsibility is to God, always and ever. And it's interesting to me that the real formula for that is that you only reserve 100 allegiance for God, never man.
Only 100 allegiance belongs to God. He alone demands that. We give much allegiance to one another. Second priority is wife, children, family, etc. And the third is our career and our calling. As far as ministers are concerned, I have no hesitance in telling you that most of the ministers that I meet, most of the staff members that I meet, and most of the people that I meet, God really isn't first.
They believe he is, but he really isn't. That job, that career, and that calling is usually first. And then God will usually be second, and then the wife, if she's fortunate, may be third. Sometimes the children are third and the wife is thrown in there somewhere.
And because of that, the home is being devastated, the churches are being destroyed, because churches are made up of people, and people formulate families. And because of that, there is a great weakness and almost a paralysis in Christianity today.
And so we want to talk about some of these things, and then I want to reserve as much of Thursday as I can, and also all of Friday, to discuss with you, and some have already been asking questions about demonic problems.
Detection, recognition, or what have you, and go as far as we can, simply because the demons of hell have been unleashed on the planet Earth, and the closer we come to the coming of our Lord, the more difficult the problems are going to be.
And I do not believe that every Christian needs to be counseling in this area, but I do believe that every child of God must be aware that you have an enemy. And we are in the enemy's territory. This is the enemy's world.
Three times Jesus Christ called him the God of this world. He is the Prince of the Power of the Air, and he's very, very active. And so we don't want to make the mistake that many Christians are making, that because you are a saved person, you are immune to the attacks of the enemy.
That just isn't so. And so, you and I want to look at that, and to open up avenues whereby we might be of assistance, and at least have some prayer truths that we can utilize to prevent the enemy. And I'll give you a couple simple little tests that you can just take as you go home, back and forth, to show you very quickly how the enemy works.
It's just very simple, but you can put it to the test very quickly to find out some of the things that you and I accept in our lives as natural phenomena, or medical phenomena, or actually assaults from the enemy in your life as a child of God.
And we'll show you how to prevent that very quickly and very easily, although the battle is very difficult overall. So the question then I want to present, to start our thinking together, if you'll turn with me please in the scripture, if you have the Word of God with you, and if you don't have and you have the Bible memorized, I'll be reading from the right-hand side of the page, in the book of Romans, chapter 15.
Why are Christians competent or able to counsel people? The basic reason is, I think, is because a Christian is a born-again person who is born again by the Spirit of God. A born-again believer recognizes that a person is a trichotomy.
They are a tripartite being. We are a body, physical. We are a soul, intellect, will, emotion. And we're also a spiritual entity. And this is what the world does not recognize. The world does not recognize the spiritual entity of man.
So they deal with man basically on the psyche, the mind, and they deal with him on the basis of the body. And so we'll see the problem that results from that. Now Christ is our example, and He counseled people constantly as He walked the planet Earth.
He was constantly counseling. Yes, you would say He witnessed. Yes, He presented who He was. He taught them about Himself. He taught them about God the Father. He gave them, but He counseled constantly.
Everywhere He went, He was constantly counseling with people. Now one of the scriptures that we can use, there are many, is Romans 15, verse 14. And it says,. And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.
That word admonish is interesting because that word can be translated counsel one another. Now we think admonishing is a very strict thing. I want to admonish him. You're going to counsel that individual.
You're going to give that person some kind of a direction to go. And whatever way it's given, it is counsel. It can be good counsel. It can be bad counsel. Now Romans 15, 14 gives us an authorization, as do many other scriptures.
You can go to Luke 4 and find where Christ said He was anointed for the healing of the brokenhearted and so forth and so on. But the basic thing we need to know is that a Christian brings a dimension into their relationship with another person that no one else brings in.
And that is a spiritual insight. A spiritual insight. I will say very quickly to you that 97 of the people who are in mental hospitals on the planet Earth, they cannot find anything organically wrong with them.
Nothing. They are there, 97 of them. That means 3 are there because they found something organically wrong with them. That means that they failed someone's test. They failed a non-believing, a non-Christian psychologist, a psychiatrist test.
Now it's also my firm conviction that a psychologist has a place in our society. I mean obviously it does. A psychiatrist I find has no place in our society, although he does have one. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who has learned to grunt.
By that I simply mean he has a medical degree, he can give medicine, and when you go to the doctor, your doctor doesn't treat you well. Now I don't have any problem with him talking to his dog, because I talk to my dog.
But if that dog ever answers me, if that dog ever speaks back to me, then I seriously need to go see someone myself. But people do not understand a psychiatrist has a place, a place of medicine. I am firm belief that what the psychiatrist is doing today, the only thing that he does that a minister cannot do is to prescribe medicine to him.
He's a medical doctor who prescribes it. Now I am convinced, as many other people are convinced, that if these people who are in mental hospitals, people who are in our churches, who are undergoing tremendous treatment, they're undergoing great crises in their lives, that they deserve a competent Christian counselor, who not only understands something of personality, who not only understands something of the difficulties of life, but also has the strength and insight that there is an enemy out there who also is working against that person, and who can give them those resources to be healthy and free, and we haven't had them all.
Now here's the amazing thing, the reason I talk about Jesus, and you ladies with excuses around it, is because I've seen Donald Trump this way. I find him an amazing symbol of idealism, almost every time.
He's like saying, look at me when I told you. You told them, you gave sounds, but there was not communication, because they have an amazing medical phenomenon built within them, they can turn it off or turn it on without ever touching a dial, it does not matter.
But we are able to do that. So these four ingredients, there is the communicator, that is the person who speaks. The one doing the speaking is the communicator. A good communicator will exemplify, so obviously you see immediately I am not a good communicator, hopefully good character and a good speaking skill.
That is one of the requirements of being a good communicator, to articulate words clearly. And I am probably the world's greatest in exploring words, exploring words. Have you ever heard this, and the word of God's there, word of God, word of God, word of God, it's tremendous.
I don't hear it when other people say it, I just don't hear it myself. So this is the part of being a good communicator. And then there is the message. Without a message, obviously there is no communication.
The message goes primarily through words. Now you can do other things to enhance those words. Some people say to me, you know you do this all the time, you know you tie your hands, you cannot speak, and I suppose that would be true.
But we do a lot, and we talk about this, verbal, non-verbal, but it goes primarily through words, and therefore the message requires a definition of terms. This is important to you and me as a Christian.
Do not ever assume, we cannot assume that people understand everything we are saying. You know, people say something and you say, what, you know what I mean, you know what I'm saying. I am not a psychic, I don't know what you're saying, I only know what you are speaking to me, but I don't know what you're thinking.
What do you mean? Now there is a movement in the world called the unity movement. It is the world's largest mail order religion. The unity speech, you see a lot of them, they say the word for today is, and they'll give you this word.
And they'll say, they'll tell you the word atonement, and you get that, and you read through all that, but they don't mean the same. They'll say, oh we believe in God's revelation, but that word revelation does not mean the same to them as it means to you and me.
So consequently there has to be within that message a definition of terms, and always when you speak to people, we must be very careful to not use jargon. J-A-R-G-O-N, jargon, we don't use that, and that is professional cliché.
Ministers probably, excuse me, are as guilty as any people on earth in using that most preachers look alike, talk alike, and act alike. Have you ever noticed he looks like a preacher? Now, someone tells me that, I said, well I have been sick for quite a while, you know, and, but most of them, have you seen them?
At a funeral or a wedding, it does not matter. Funeral or wedding, there they go, always, I mean, it's interesting. Now, I'm just so delighted to see your pastor with, you know, a light colored, most of them are black.
Black tie, and they come in and beg them, do you have joy in the Lord? Well, you know, I don't believe you have to swing off the chandeliers, I think joy is deeper than that. But, you know, you want to see something, and the particular trade you're in, your business, people do not understand the clichés and things that go on in the office.
There are certain things that mean something to you and yourself, but they wouldn't mean anything to the average person who comes in. People come in, they throw this lingo at you, that they use among the machinery and things like that.
You know, the average person doesn't know, same thing is true with Christianity. You know, Christianity, you've been saved? Well, that guy said, yeah, best I understand it, you know. You don't save ground, brother?
He said, man, best I, I believe I am, you know. They don't understand, you've been born again, that word has been thrown, that means so many things. The first church of Satan teaches about being born again.
All your eastern cults talk about being born again. All your religions of the world have some kind of an experience that they equate to being, quote, born again. And so we have to define those terms within the message.
And another thing that is required in good communication is the communicator, the message, and also there has to be a channel. And the channel simply is the method of which the message is sent. The way you get the message to this other individual.
And then, of course, there is the receiver. Without a receiver, there can be no communication. Have you not felt like many times in your life? You were just giving out everything you had and there was no receiver.
Oh, they're there. There's a body. And it's there, but you might as well be in a mortuary or something because that body is not responding at all, you know. And there's nothing worse than counseling with people.
And oh, I have caught myself doing this so many times. Someone will be talking, and I like to look away when I think sometimes, you know. I just, but with people talking to you, you have to lock eyes with them.
And it's been very difficult for me because, you know, I just, I don't know. If somebody's talking to me, I'll look them in the eye and I'll listen to them. But when I start thinking, I want to flip my mind away.
And the moment you do, they think you're not listening anymore. He doesn't hear me anymore. And they'll just stop. Well, my mind's locked in on something else and I find I'm really not listening to them.
And then they'll ask you a question. And I'm not able to respond. And if I do, they know and they can sense it. And so there must be this communicator, the message, the channel, and the receiver. And the receiver is one who is listening and who will act as a communicator by feeding back.
They become the communicator. You become the receiver. And that brings communication. Now, if that is true, and I believe it is true, then I believe there's a tremendous lack in the family life. I believe there's a tremendous lack in the church life.
I believe there's a tremendous lack in society as a whole in good communication. Because we like to talk, but we don't like to listen. And yet, you know, we demand of our youth, listen to me when I speak to you.
And yet they'll come in with some trivia and we'll go wash the dishes or we'll, you know, be in the office or we'll be in the study. We'll be doing a number of things. And they'll come in and sure, it may be trivia to you and me, but it's tremendously important to them.
It's a part of their life. And so somewhere down the line, it's going to come back. As one gentleman said, them old chickens come home to roost. Sooner or later, they will come home to haunt you. And so you and I want to have communication.
Well, in the area of communication, there are two kinds. There is verbal and nonverbal communication. And both of them are extremely important in the Christian life as well as in society as a whole. Verbal communication is a message that is transmitted and received through words, such as those that are spoken personally, by telephone or by letter.
It's words. Verbal, spoken, written. Somehow or other, words that have expressed the ideas of another individual, that is verbal communication. Nonverbal communication, that is tremendously important, consists of body movements and countenance.
Have you ever heard this? Don't look at me that way when I'm talking to you. Oh, you know, my dad would correct me, and I said to him, quit those teeth. Don't you look at me that way. And I go, you know, like I'm really obedient.
Boy, and that heart just rebellious, you know. But I figured, you know, well, we do that with the Lord sometimes. Lord, I love you today. Now, you think I'm singing in a choir tonight. No way, no way.
Lord, I love you today, and I'm committed to you, Lord. I know I'll be teaching Sunday school in church, but I don't have time for that, Lord. And so by our words, we express one thing. By our countenance, we can grin before the Lord or we can get a pious attitude.
Nonverbal communication is extremely important, and yet we misconstrue it. Many times in the life of a believer, people will be in a meeting, and I've seen it happen so many times as you have in a meeting.
Someone will come up, and they'll say, now, come on, smile and be happy. Well, smiling doesn't make you happy. Some people smile and aren't happy. In fact, I suspect anybody that smiles all the time. Don't you?
We just had one in our White House, you know, and I, man, I, listen, I, anybody that sits around grinning all the time, something's wrong because through life, it just doesn't work that way. You and I know that happiness, most of the time, depends upon things and circumstances.
Joy is a deep, calm serenity that depends upon our relationship to Jesus Christ. And so there's this verbal and nonverbal. A person can, in your presence, as they talk with you, sitting in the living room of your home, and they come with a problem, they begin to fidget.
They begin to get very nervous. That's an indication something's going on, obviously, in their mind. There's something you and I want to detect. Why are they nervous in my presence? What are they doing here?
And their face may grimace, or they may sneer, or they may start smiling, and you may be dead serious. So we need to make sure that we are aware and very alert and sensitive to this nonverbal communication because it's extremely important, and it is also a great indicator when you're sharing the Word of the Lord with people.
Watch their eyes.