10. Solving Problems Nouthetically Part 2.

Solving Problems Nouthetically: Review of Biblical Counseling

All right. Solving Problems Newthetically. This is part two. We started this last week. Remember, this is just a little review. We're looking at biblical counseling, what it is, what's unique about it, how it differs from secular or humanistic counseling.

And to do that, we started with an introduction to biblical counseling. We looked at the crisis in the counseling industry as it is at the present time in our nation. We've looked at the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling and how any true biblical counseling, the Holy Spirit must be preeminent in all that we do.

And then we looked at what is Newthetic counseling. We looked at some of the definitions, et cetera. And then we looked at the difference between directive counseling and non-directive. And in particular, we used the Rogerian model from Carl Rogers to show the difference, to compare it to biblical counseling.

Then last week, we started with this, Solving Problems Newthetically. And we're picking up on that part two of that this evening. So, what have we seen so far in Solving Problems Newthetically? Last week, we looked at man's basic need.

Who can tell me what is man's basic need? Salvation. And why is that? Yeah, man is alienated from God. He's separated from God. And any counseling that doesn't take that into consideration is doomed to failure right at the get-go.

All right. Second subject we looked at, you can't say can't. All right. You like that? Can't say can't. All right. Okay. There's no such thing as absolute truth. Does it fall into that same category? Okay.

Then we looked at hope and counseling. And that's one of the, if you're, even if you're not doing specifically counseling, but if you're helping a friend who's going through somewhat of a crisis or whatnot, first thing you want to do is give them hope.

And of course, the hope we have is all in Jesus Christ, beginning with salvation. But even a person who is saved, when they come into the counseling room, very often they have lost hope. They don't see hope.

And that's one of the first goals of a counselor is to show the hope we have in the Scriptures, in following God's word because of the role of the Holy Spirit and what Christ's work has done for us. Then we looked at the cyclical movement of sin, how what happens, it just spirals down if you handle things in a non-biblical way.

And then we use Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, as a case study. And that's how we ended last week. So picking it up, the next topic is that there are three dimensions of problems that are brought to somebody for counseling.

And I'll explain that as we go. You know, what do you mean the three dimensions? The first dimension is what's called a presentation problem. All right. So if somebody comes to you and looking for some sort of help.

All right. This is the problem that's presented. All right. That's why it's called a presentation. This is the surface problem. For example, somebody comes and they said, I'm depressed. All right. The problem that's presented is the person comes and obviously they're depressed and they believe that that's their problem.

All right. But the problem presented is as a cause, but is usually an effect. That should be an, not and. It's usually an effect. All right. If somebody is depressed, that's not the problem. The problem goes deeper than that.

What is causing them to be depressed? OK. So the presentation problem can sometimes even be a red herring. OK. You follow? The second dimension is what we call the performance problem. And that would be the problem of a poor behavioral response.

For example, I haven't been much of a husband slash your wife lately. That's they're giving the behavioral response. But again, you can see there's a reason behind that. That's I mean, that may be absolutely true.

And it probably is if they're willing to admit it. All right. But. The problem is often presented as an effect, but it's usually a cause, just the opposite of what we saw with the presentation problem.

All right. But there is a third dimension, the precondition problem. And this problem is usually not not only not readily, but usually is not seen by the person, which is why they're in this situation that they find themselves.

All right. For example. Person might say, I avoid responsibility whenever the going gets tough. Well, there's there's a reason behind that, you know, and you would have to see what are the circumstances that the person is avoiding and how are they avoiding that?

All right. So the problem is often presented as an effect. But in reality, the underlying cause is a habitual pattern response. OK. Do you know what that means? A habitual response pattern. Somebody. Who responds in a certain way and then that becomes a habit as to how they how they respond.

In fact, let me just pause here for a minute. This is not in the notes. You realize that God has made us to be habitual people. We all develop habits. Not all habits are bad. Some habits are good. All right.

And it's a good thing because if we didn't if we didn't have habits, we would be thinking about every little minute thing that we did. For example, when was the last time you thought about how to tie your shoe?

You can do it in your sleep. Right. When you're first learning how to tie your shoe, you make the bow. You put it goes around and your parents put you through steps on exactly how to tie your shoe. And you have to practice that.

But after years of tying your shoe, you don't even think about it. You get up in the morning and you bend over and you tie your shoe until you get to be my age. And then you go back to Velcro because tying your shoes, you do have to think about it.

All right. So not all habits are bad. The problem is when we fall into bad habitual response patterns. OK. And we'll talk a little bit about that. So still looking at the preconditioning problem. This problem does not usually come into focus until its relationship to the first two has been understood.

All right. So preconditioned problems are the pattern of behavior that has been established over a long period of time. All right. And this can be anything. All right. Jay Adams likens this to programming a computer.

A computer will only will only do what you tell it to do. All right. And the old expression, gigo, garbage in, garbage out. All right. So if you're putting garbage into compute, that's what you're going to get out of it.

All right. I used to talk about how dumb computers were. But now it turns out with the artificial intelligence, they're smarter than some of us. And here's the key now to what a preconditioned problem is.

If a person responds inappropriately and gets his desired result, he continues because it works. Have you ever seen a little child go up to his mother and say, Mommy, I want a piece of candy? No, not now.

Mommy, I want a piece of candy. No, not now. Mommy, I want a piece of candy. Mommy, I want a piece of candy now. OK, take it and get a piece of candy. Why does that child keep going? Because he knows that if he says it often enough, mom's going to give in and that becomes a pattern.

So as adults, we can do the same thing just with greater consequences than getting a piece of candy. Maybe we shouldn't have. So this is a problem with a lot of people who used to be in mental institutions.

Back in the 40s and the 50s, mental institutions were big all over the country. We had three major institutions right here on Long Island. And then when they started changing what was considered mental illness, a lot of people were put in there who were alcoholics, for example, or drug users because they just didn't know what to do with them, or people who were just giving poor responses.

So these continually bad habits build up because they get the desired result. If a person acts in a bizarre way and it gets in their way, even as an adult, they'll continue to do that if it gets their way.

And this is something that you need to evaluate if somebody's coming to you for advice. And this is just a little note from Jay Adams. Most crisis intervention centers are inadequate in that they only deal with the first two.

Most of them never get down to the root level of what is the problem, what is the habit response pattern that is causing the issue for the person. The goal of biblical counseling is to reach all levels of the problem.

We want to get right down to the root of it. What is the root cause? What about the past? Now, this is a very controversial area, especially nowadays, because with repressed memory syndrome and these other things like that.

Is there a role of the past in biblical counseling? And the answer is yes. The humanist counseling explores the past to find someone to blame for the problems. I grew up to be a bank robber because my mommy and daddy didn't potty train me the right way.

Things of that nature. There's always somebody to blame, no matter who it is. The biblical counselor explores the past to find out root causes for the sinful behavior. In other words, notice too, we're not asking the question, why?

We avoid why questions. Why do we avoid why questions? Because we already know why. Yeah, because we're all sinners and we're all guilty of gross sin. So looking into the past is to take a behavioral history of the person, looking for the pattern of evil or sinful responses, so that you can correct those responses.

Not to blame someone, but just to get to the root cause of it. And I like how Jay calls it. He goes, the counselor should look for perfect tense sins. What does he mean by perfect tense sins? Do you know what the perfect tense is?

If you don't know what a perfect tense in English is, you're not going to understand it. What's a perfect tense? It's something that occurred in the past but continues on to the present. As opposed to perfect tense sins, there are past sins which have effects up to and including the present.

As opposed to the aorist tense. Now those of you who know Greek should be very familiar with the aorist tense, because a lot of the Bible is written in the aorist tense. That's a sin that was dealt with and set to rest.

There's a difference. You don't search the past to look at all the sins that the person has committed, only those which were unresolved or resolved in an unbiblical way. And too often counselors bring up events of the past which have already been settled.

It's one of the biggest problems, and especially in marital counseling. Especially if there's been some deep hurts, this is why confession and forgiveness is so important. Because you have to be able to put these things, once they've been settled biblically, put them to rest.

They're in the past. Once they're dealt with, they're not going to have the same impact as sins, the perfect tense sins, that continue to affect the person's lifestyle. Next issue is total restructuring.

If a person's whole life has been characterized by irresponsibility, then the total restructuring is in order. That means looking at the problem in relationship to all areas of life. In other words, you will find that there are some people who have just made a wreck of their life, ruined all of their relationships, etc.

That person can still have hope with coming to Christ and working out their sanctification. That's the only reason that we would look into this total restructuring. What does that look like? A structured life is one that conforms to God's commandments.

Why would we say that? What's the role of God's commandments in all of this? Why would we say that a structured life is one that conforms to God's commandments?

Go ahead.

Because God is the master of order, and so His commandments are the way that we should be living according to the design.

Yeah.

God's commandments is specifically the Ten Commandments. It's the moral law. It tells us what the standard of God is and should be in mankind. If you want to totally restructure your life, the first place to start is start with God's commandments.

That's just the starting place. But that means a life of discipline. What you're talking about, if somebody needs a total restructuring, in other words, their life is just a mess, and what you'll find is that this will be true in every area of life.

It's very seldom that you find somebody who is, well, they're okay relationship-wise, but their finances are gone. You know, they don't know how to handle finances. They don't know how to handle interpersonal relationships.

Now, if somebody's really, really gone, it starts to affect every area of life, and so you're looking at a whole new life of structured discipline. Even if a biblical solution is reached through counseling, if the lifestyle is not disciplined, new problems will occur and will probably not be dealt with biblically.

You follow? It's not merely—the best example of this is when the disciples tried to cast out the demons, and Jesus said, not without prayer and fasting, and then when you cast them out, what do you have to do?

You have to fill the room with something, because if not, they're going to come back. And that's a biblical principle, and it's the same thing with just living a godly lifestyle. The goal is holiness, all right?

Structure is the means of moral living. We are called to holiness, and the principles of structure are the Ten Commandments, all right? When the commandments are violated, then God disciplines, and that's something that we need to keep in mind as well.

And don't be afraid to tell somebody this. Not like Job's friends looking for ungodliness under every rock, but if somebody is living just a lifestyle that is undisciplined, you have to tell them that, you know what?

All these problems that come in, this could be God's hand disciplining you, because we see that throughout the Scriptures that God does that. According to Hebrews 12, God's discipline on a person shows that he's a child of God.

If you show me somebody who is completely morally bankrupt, and they're fine mentally, spiritually, well, not spiritually, mentally and financially and everything is fine, you've got to look back at that person and say, uh-oh, that's not a good sign, because God disciplines those whom he loves.

He will not allow his children to continue in sin forever, all right? There comes a point where he will stop it, and the reason for that is God's discipline is always for the person's good and to bring him toward holiness.

Remember, we are called to live holy lives. Be ye holy, for I am holy, says Peter, quoting the Old Testament. And God's discipline always profits his children, because his discipline is perfect. As a parent, it's always a question of when your child is disobeyed, you want to do the right thing.

You want the right amount of discipline and the right amount of love, and we don't always get it right. We always tend towards the extremes, especially if we discipline in anger, okay? But God's discipline is always perfect.

That's why you can never say, I can't handle this, because if God has brought it into your life, he will bring more into your life than you can handle. Even Jesus learned from his experience of suffering.

You find that interesting? Hebrews 5 .8, speaking of Jesus, he says, although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered. That's an amazing statement, but one that we need to always keep at heart, and it's an excellent verse to use in counseling if you're dealing with somebody who is really depressed.

Holy living involves developing biblical habits. It's what Paul talks about, putting off the old man, putting on the new man, all right? In the book of Ephesians, where he talks specifically about that, it's very important how we see that it's never just stop doing something.

It's replacing the sinful act with godly acts. Stop stealing, Paul says. Don't steal. Him who stole, steal no more. But what? Would rather let him labor with his hands. So you stop stealing, start working.

And then there's even a purpose given. Why do we labor with his hands? To make enough money for himself and to give to others, okay? These biblical habits are formed by regular, consistent practice in our lives.

Jerry Bridges wrote a couple of excellent books on sanctification. The first one was The Pursuit of Holiness, which we went through in one of our Bible studies here. An excellent book. If you've never read it, I heartily recommend it.

And then he followed that up with a second book called The Practice of Godliness, which again gives you the idea. It is something that we need to practice. Philippians 4, 8 to 9, these are verses that you should definitely commit to memory because it tells you all about practicing holiness.

Finally, my brethren, whatever is true, you want to change how you think, this is what you need to do. You know what? In this world, we have so much garbage going in, both to the ears, to the eyes, and we're immersed in ungodliness if you work in society.

So whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there's any excellence, he sums this up, if there's any excellence and anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

That's what he means when we talk about the practice of godliness. And then Paul adds the caveat, the things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.

There's a little caveat there for counselors. If you're going to counsel somebody, can you be as bold as Paul is? The things you've learned and received and heard and seen in me. We're too quick to say, oh, don't look at me.

Well, if you're practicing holiness, you shouldn't be afraid to tell somebody, well, this is how I do it, this is how I strive. Not perfectly. We don't put ourselves forward as a perfect example, but just follow me.

As Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ. And you can say that, follow me as I follow Christ. If I stray from following Christ, then don't follow me. The result of corrective, disciplined, and structured living is righteousness.

See that again? The result of corrective, disciplined, and structured living is righteousness. And that results in peace. When a Christian sows discipline, they reap righteousness, which results in peace.

And isn't that what most people are looking for? Most people who are coming for counseling or struggling in their life, they don't have peace. They're depressed. They're anxious to get peace, discipline, and righteousness.

Hebrews 12 compares the undisciplined Christian as an athlete who is out of condition. And the root problem with the Hebrews, according to the apostle, was the root of bitterness. That's why we spent so much time on confession of sin.

We did a whole evening on confession of sin, because if sin is not confessed and there's no restoration, no reconciliation, that root of bitterness will form in the heart, and that's deadly. So the root of bitterness needed to be pulled out in order for them to progress into sanctification.

How do you do that? The discipline of holiness uproots bitterness. When the Christian is not self-disciplined, God brings outside discipline into his life and from two primary sources, and you'll see this in life, from God's Word and providential sources.

The biblical counselor uses both to confront the person. Don't be afraid if you're helping somebody. Somebody's struggling in their Christian life, and they come to you, and they relate to you what their problem is.

Of course, the first place you're going to go is God's Word, because we know that it's not only sufficient, but it's sufficient for all of life and godliness. There's not a life problem that is not dealt with in the Bible in some manner or form.

But also, don't be afraid to use the circumstances that they find themselves in. For example, a marriage that's breaking up. Well, what's the problem, the most recent problem? Well, I called my wife some names I shouldn't have called her.

Well, how's that working out for you? Does that bring you the results that you desired? So providential sources could be financial collapses, many other things that happen in the life of a believer that God brings in providentially to move you back in conformance to his law.

So the biblical counselor explains how the Word of God is relevant to the condition the person is experiencing. He explains how God uses providential pressure to bring about the confession and repentance.

And that's so crucial. God will bring about pressure. You can be sure of it. But sometimes we're just very thick, and we don't see it. And the counselor's job is to break through some of that. Breakdowns or breakups.

We have to address this. Incompetent to counsel, Jay Adams discusses this topic, as some refer to it. But put aside the psychological terminology of a mental breakdown for a minute. Because remember, everything we're discussing in this class is not those who are truly mentally ill, those who have organic problems.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about people who are in a set of circumstances because of sinful lifestyle. So when a person has suffered this kind of distress, that's depression or anxiety, that's an opportunity for the biblical counselor.

This mental state occurs when a person can no longer deal with the situation and gives in or gives up. A depressed person can be depressed for so many different reasons. Trouble at home, trouble at work, financial issues.

There's so many different things that can weigh on a person that brings them to the point of depression. The biblical counselor doesn't go, oh no, what do I do? You go right to the word of God. And the word of God always has the answers for you.

At this time, the counselor can show how sinful patterns have been the underlying cause of the person's condition. The counselor can show the person how to put their life back together by following biblical guidelines and beginning biblical patterns.

In other words, putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Having a life of discipline, reading the word of God every day, praying every day, learning how to help other people instead of focusing on everything that's wrong in your life.

Sometimes the things that drive people to depression in particular could be an illness, illness in the family, grief, financial loss, broken relationship, just to mention a few. But those things can really affect people, especially if they don't have a biblical view and they're not walking in holiness.

They can be devastating to a person. A person in despair is suited to biblical counseling. Despair is so easily seen from a biblical perspective and the remedy for it is in scripture. So why? Because you know the truth and the truth is what will bring a person out of despair.

Of course, a person must be approached in love. That goes without saying. The biblical approach is directive and authoritative using the only source of truth, and that's the Bible. But, and that's a big but there, the scripture ties together truth and love.

No matter where you go, you'll find out we're confronting in love, but not kindness and truth depart from your lips. Throughout all of the scripture, it's always confronting in love. It's not, you know, hey, hey, dirtbag, you know?

No, it's, hey, it's hey, brother. I know what you're talking about. Sorry, that's my police face coming back. It's a habit pattern I have to break yet. That's what I call one of my dogs, by the way. So truth and love, neither one without the other.

What happens if you, if it's, let me go back to that for a second. What happens if you just focus on truth and you don't, and you're not doing it in a loving way? What's, what's the danger? Yeah, can hurt feelings, can come across they know it all, just turn the person off that they don't want to listen to you.

What happens if you have to exercise love without the truth? Yeah, placating them. And, and, and just, we see the permissive lifestyle, the permissive attitude of our society. All you got to do is look around our society today and see what is the permissive attitude.

How is it, how is it getting us anywhere, you know? We see that in our criminal justice system as well. It can be too heavy-handed or it can be just too soft and mushy. What about someone who's in despair but is still cocky or proud of the way he has been handling his problems?

What do you say about that? You're sitting there, you're trying to help the person and they say, ah, no, I got this. You know, I know, I know what's going on here. It happens. Precipitate a responsibility crisis for him, all right?

For example, if he's wrong somewhere, set up a meeting to deal with the problem because that's never comfortable. And because, and by putting the person in this situation, it'll cause him to see that, well, maybe I haven't handled life so important.

That's, that's probably one of the few things that I agree with Dr. Phil on. I loved, I borrowed his expression. You know, somebody says, well, no, this is the way I've been doing it. Well, how's that been working for you?

It also gives the counselor the opportunity to confront biblically. This type of confrontation, and that is the biblical confrontation, when someone is hurting is often discouraged by secular and even some Christian counselors.

And I put Christian in quotation there because I wanted to differentiate. There's no such thing as Christian counseling. You know, there's no such thing as Christian psychology. There are Christian counsel, all right?

But unless you're doing biblical counseling, it's not, it's not truly Christian.

All right?

But, so, and even some Christian counselors say, oh, no, you don't want to be too harsh. You don't want, you don't want to, you don't want to give them the truth. In fact, I read one psychology book by a Christian and his advice to somebody who was suffering from depression, don't go to church if there's preaching there.

Well, first I had a question about what kind of church does this guy go to that wouldn't be preaching? But the whole idea is that you don't want to confront somebody in sin even if that's their problem.

All right?

They describe this as yanking. That's a made-up psychological term by which they mean a quick or sudden confession in dealing with sin. In other words, if you're counseling with somebody and all of a sudden they give you a set of circumstances and you say, well, here, here's what you need to do.

You need to confess your sin. You've sinned there. All right, they say, no, no, that's yanking. That's not something. They prefer a method, and these are their terms, by the way. Oozing, meaning a slow, gradual process.

The claim is that yanking hurts. What do we say to that? They're right. Yanking hurts because confrontation of sin always hurts because confession of sin hurts my pride. Confession of sin is always something that, you know, even when you know you have to do it and you know that you're going to feel better on the other side of it, it's still not a pleasant thing to have to go through.

Nobody likes to say, yeah, I was wrong. The bottom line is there's no process that can be devised that painlessly deals with sin, and it's a folly for any counselor to believe that he can. If you think you can deal with a problem and help somebody and have them not confront them with their sin, it's a fool's errand.

Yanking, as I said, is a made-up word for what the Bible calls for, and what does the Bible call for? The immediate confession of sin. There's no example in Scripture where God told someone to delay confession and repentance.

In the long run, immediate confession is less painful than the humanistic method of oozing, all right? And why is that? Because the immediate confession and repentance completes the process right away, and the new path toward holiness begins immediately.

So the new path, the process of oozing, the process drags out, and sin is constantly brought up again and again and is painful for days, weeks, or months. And that's a terrible thing to have to face. So we see once again God's wisdom is always superior to the thoughts of men.

Final thoughts or questions?