Biblical Counseling (part 4)

So, this book is one that I had mentioned in the first week of class, Practical Guide for Effective Biblical Counseling. So this is a later version of the material that forms your handout. We have one copy now at BBC, but we'll get a few more this week.

So if any of you are interested, you'll probably see this in the bookstore soon. And then the other book, my brother Dan just reminded me, so this is another book that's there in the bookstore, a quick scripture reference for counseling.

It says for men, there's another one for women and for families. And it's a quick tool both for your self-counseling as well as for counseling others. So, with that, I see, I think, a few faces that may not have been here before.

So Catherine has some handouts. So if you are new, you don't have a handout, please just raise your hand and she'll pass them along. All right. Looks like most of you have handouts. Hi. Okay. There is one here.

Okay. Well, before we get started, let's pray. A loving Father, we thank you, Lord, for this day, your day, the Lord's day. And as we, as I speak, may the words of my mouth, and as we reflect, meditate, and resolve, may the meditations of our hearts and our desires be aligned with your will.

In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. All right. So I forget which week we are. Some week of biblical counseling. I have a brief intro and then we'll jump into the material. So before we get started, is there anybody who had an opportunity to speak with someone in the context of biblical counseling this past week?

Especially if it was intentional, someone was reaching out to you, or it was just something you've been doing, but now you realize this falls within the category of biblical counseling. If so, if any of you want to share something brief in terms of what exchanges you had, just as always, provide the level of information that's appropriate.

Does anybody want to share any interactions you've had with your brothers or sisters in the context of biblical counseling? It is difficult to share, so don't feel bad. Everybody's going to raise their hand and I won't have anything to teach.

But be thinking about this, and the whole goal of this is to help us practically minister to one another. We want to remember Matthew 28, the Great Commission involves making disciples of all nations, and sometimes it begins with here.

You may not be involved in the evangelism and the bringing in to the fold of someone who is lost, but you may be involved in discipling them as they're going through times of trial, whether it be of sin, or it be of suffering.

Discipling is helping people look to Christ, draw strength from Christ, and grow in Christ through those trials. So that was one. My second intro is, I was thinking, how do you, so some of you may have already been involved in biblical counseling informally, and this will hopefully help you get better.

For some of you, it may be the first time you're getting started, and how do you think through this? Because you're not a certified biblical counselor where someone's coming and telling you, hey, I have this problem, please help me.

So I was thinking, this may be a paradigm to think of. So those of you who have children, you know you have a responsibility to your children to help them look at life through the lens of the Bible, whether you're positively providing things when all is well, or when they are sinning, how do you come alongside, shepherding a child's heart, looking not just to the behaviors, but looking further into their heart and how they can look to Christ.

Or if you are married, how do you minister to your spouse? You deal with challenges in the marriage, but you don't say, oh, this is my spouse's problem. You come alongside and say, okay, here, I'm observing these things, and what's going on, you try to understand, and then say, oh, here are some scriptures that might help.

I mean, I'm kind of simplifying it in one way. But I think if you think about the people closest to you, how you would want to minister the truth, the gospel, to them. And then with someone who you're not as familiar with, you'll need to kind of learn a little bit more about them.

And as we said, this is not a formal counseling session, but it's an informal, part of discipleship, part of loving one another, serving one another. And if you just think of how you would do with your children, but then use the same principle.

I'm not going to bring out the cannons the first day my child messed up the kitchen floor, you know. But if it's after the 257th time, okay, sipping up for you. Those of you who know the VeggieTales will.

So and that's basically how we minister to one another. We care enough for them, and that whole paradigm, love, know, speak, do. We care enough for them. We point them to the hope that they have, and then we minister.

And then one last comment. So I got some good feedback. One of the challenges I faced is not being able to provide practical examples here. So I'm going to say one thing, and then hopefully we'll touch on that later in today's time in this material.

Each of us have applied God's word to our own circumstances. You faced temptations, you faced trials, you've seen and drawn the help from the Lord. And as you're thinking to help others, it's helpful for you to just look back and say, okay, let me reflect on the most recent trial or the most recent temptation I've faced.

What were some of the scriptures that the Lord used? How did I have to practically work through those things? So as you recount God's help to you in these trials, it'll help you as you see someone else going through a similar circumstance and then help them.

And for illustration today, I'm going to start with an example, which is not a fake example, it's a real example. And I don't want to embarrass any of you, so I'm going to embarrass myself. So hopefully I'll be a little smaller in your eyes when this class finishes.

But hopefully Christ will be a little bigger in your eyes when you walk out of here. And so the question I have, I'm going to throw it out to you. So I want you to be thinking of how you would counsel me if I told you this statement from my life story.

So I'm going to give you this statement, pretend that I'm just one-on-one with you. I'm saying, I am depressed. That's the word you're hearing. And it's a true statement as of yesterday. If you heard me say this yesterday, that would be a true statement.

Now, by God's grace, I've been able to minister God's word or the spirit of God to help me. And then I've kind of discovered some reasons for what was there and how I walked through it and where I am today.

But I want you to think, if I told you I am depressed, what would be the way you would serve me, minister to me and help me in biblical counseling? So with that, we'll jump into our material. And through the material, I'll give you some opportunity to ask some more questions.

So we have a handout. So if you don't have a handout, you can pick one from the chair. All right, so here's the summary. Page one, you have involvement, which is we want to promote biblical change by establishing a change-facilitating relationship.

You need to be in this person's life in some way, shape, or form to the degree that is appropriate. And that begins with compassion, showing respect, being genuine and honest, and praying for the person, and showcasing in our own lives the spirit of God at work in us, and then being careful not to over-promise what we intend to do.

Inspiration, the next page, biblical change is promoted by inspiring or influencing the counselee to develop and sustain an attitude and feeling of hope. So the counselee, in times of trial, is lacking hope or having hope in the wrong places.

And you want to point them to Jesus as being, oh, are you looking for a handout? Oh, it's right there in front of the, are we out of handouts? Okay. Why don't you pass that to, does everybody have a handout?

Anybody don't have a handout, please raise your hand, she'll pass it along. Okay. So the second one is hope, and we want to point to Jesus and the gospel as the basis of hope. If someone knew that, but they have forgotten in the midst of their trial, we want to inspire them to remember that, and give them the motivation to work through this trial and change, and point them to the true hope that is there.

And once again, not hope them, not provide a false hope or a hope that is unbiblical. The third one, and this is where we kind of paused, is in inventory. So we promote biblical change by gathering enough of the right kinds of information to accurately understand the counselee and the problem.

So this is what, so I told you, I gave you a statement, I am depressed, and you may want to find out what that means when I say that statement, and then what kind of information do you need before you can actually give me counsel on that statement.

So A and B we are going to see in a moment, but we covered this page, page three, which is A, figure out if I'm a believer, and it's important because there's a way in which you minister to believers, and there's another way you minister to unbelievers, and how the gospel applies in each of these cases.

We are going to deal with a presenting problem, which is, you heard me say I'm depressed, and then how do you understand this, and then get to the root of the problem. The way to do that is asking effective and appropriate questions, and those four questions that we had there are a good guideline to think of how you try to understand what's happening in this person's life, and who is this person, and how might you help this person move forward.

So with that, we are coming into the new material that's on page four, drawing out what's going on in the person's heart, and here we'll do a little practical work as we look at these scriptures. So I need people to read these verses, so the first one is Proverbs 4 .23, who would like to read that?

Dan. Matthew 12, okay, you've got to, and then Mark 7, thank you. And then Luke 6, all right, so we'll pause with Luke 6, because the next, the rest of the verses are slightly different, so let's read these sections, we'll talk about them, and then we'll talk about the rest of the scriptures.

So Dan. Thank you. So, I mean, you might think it's kind of repetitive, all these verses had a common theme, they're talking about the heart of the believer, or the unbeliever, and then the fruit of the believer, or the unbeliever.

So when we talk about a presenting problem, you're going to see some of the fruit, and that's where you're beginning, but as a counselor, and as a self-counselee, when you're counseling yourself, you want to remember that it is the heart that you are dealing with, and not necessarily just the fruit, the fruit is an indicator of where this person's heart is, and you're trying to help this person examine their heart, recognize where this heart, what is it in this heart that is causing either these bad fruit, or bad responses to these trials that they are facing, and what about this heart needs to be focused back on the Lord, you know, have its affection set on the right things, and that way they can start to draw the resources that the Word of God has given, and then be able to produce the fruit that is in keeping with where their heart is.

So just keep that in mind, that's central to biblical counseling, just like shepherding the child's heart, we don't just, you know, give corporal punishment every single time, just to change the behaviors, it's not about the fruit in and of itself, it's about the heart of this little child that I want to be able to point to the Lord, that they can look to Jesus, and be changed by Jesus, and want to please Jesus with all of their being.

So that's one element, so let's keep that in mind, the next section, let's read the rest of the verses now, Luke 14, can I have a volunteer, again, ok, thank you, John 15, ok, this is a big passage, but you know what, it's probably worth for us to read it, let's read the whole John 15, Jonathan, and then the last one is Hebrews 4 .12, thank you, alright, so let's begin with Luke 14, thank you, alright, so in Luke 14, we got to see how, where our heart commitments are, our values lie in, and how we, when we came first to Christ, we were willing to give up everything in order for the Lord, and for the greatness of the salvation that we have procured, and sometimes we need to be remembering ourselves when we go through trials, you know, where is my heart, you know, is my commitment for the Lord all in, where am I wavering when I think of my challenges I'm facing, John 15, I mean, there's so much here, and in fact, in addition to the fact that my abiding in Christ is central to my fruit producing, you know, are there areas in my life where I'm now relying on sources that are outside of Christ, and how do I need to bring that back to focus, you know, in terms of loving Christ, obeying His commandments, and feeding from Him in order that I may produce the right kind of fruit, and then there is hope there, I mean, if you saw, I forget which verse it was, where, you know, when you abide in Christ, you have all things in Christ, and for you when you are down, there is nothing like that joy that when you realized in Christ I have all things, and I have nothing to fear, and I will produce fruit again, and again, it is the Word of God that gets into the heart of this person's life, so when you're ministering to people, you want to be able to bring that flashlight of God's Word, and be able to shine in those places where this person may be blinded to their own areas of not abiding, or not forsaking those things that they need to give up and rest fully in Christ, and of course, it's not just me, it is the Spirit of God that will take the Word of God, and then help this person come back to Christ from their time of trial, so with that theology now, let's look at a few of these examples, actually, you know what, let's pause here, so I gave you a statement, I am depressed, so what would you tell me, or ask me, if I said this to you?

Excellent, and I think in the previous page, we had like four or five questions there, which talk about this, okay, something is happening, what is the background? You know, part of me may want to just come quickly and say, hey, you shouldn't be depressed, here's the right answer, and it might be appropriate in certain circumstances, but I think it's good to ask these questions, so that you know exactly how to minister God's Word, where in this person's heart is the problem that needs to be ministered to, so we could extend this over a period of time, I'm just going to give you a bunch of answers, and so that way we can move quickly through this, so I could say, for example, you know, Friday night was a very intense late night for me, and I was very, it was a very, I've had headache Thursday and Friday, I've been pretty down, Thursday was another late night of ministry, and I came back very late, I normally sleep at eight, and I, that didn't happen these two nights, Wednesday was like the most important meeting in my company, and I've been preparing for a month for this whole thing, and I've been just wiped out, no sleep there again, and Wednesday, I had to grade like a hundred papers on top, because it's my second job, and then on Tuesday, I mean, and the list goes on, there's about 20 things I was able to look back yesterday, I was like, oh, okay, I kind of see what was happening, and I needed to rest, you know, I kind of had to shut down some things, and then just slept, and I felt a little better in the evening after I slept, but depressed is still a pretty strong term, you know, I could have said I'm a little downcast, and that would have been like, oh, okay, I can point you to Psalm 42, here's what the Bible says, but when someone says depressed, your antenna should kind of go up a little bit, it's like, all right, so yes, you were busy, you were facing a lot of things, you, on Monday, you had a two and a half hour call with someone who was, it was very difficult, and so you've been drained, but depressed seems a little more, so you've got a little bit of the background of what was going on, and let me pause here, we'll come back to this in a moment, so that's a great way to start the conversation, let me find out what's happening, and then what do I do next, we'll see that in the next section, but for here, let's try it at a few other examples, so here we see pleasure, you know, what is misplaced hope, I'm not going to explain these, tell me if one of your friends in the body or elsewhere comes and talks about any of these things, so I'll give you an example for one of these, and you can just think of examples for the others, and then, wait, let me give you an example, and then you'll know what I'm looking for from you, so one C, it talks about misplaced hope in your husband, wife, children, extended family, so here's this person who comes and says, you know, my children never visit me, or you know, they've, I'm just so discouraged, because you know, here I have poured my whole life on these children, and they just don't seem to care, they're not, they don't call, they don't visit, and I just feel like my life is kind of meaningless at this point, I was looking forward to spending a lot of time with my children in my older years, but now that they are all settled, they don't seem to care anymore, you know, just, and I'm sure many of you have heard this, and I have from more than a couple of people, so with that kind of example, you know, you can just think of all the other stuff that is listed there, think of the verses we read above, where you're looking at some fruit, which is just words here that are coming out of this person's mouth, and then look at their heart, and then what is misplaced in their hope in all of these lists that are listed here, so I just gave you the example for children, if you can just give either that or other examples here, what is misplaced, what could be misplaced in any of these, excellent, so that goes to Luke 14, where it talks about, you know, where is the, my hope fully anchored in, if my children are all that I have, that once they fail me, my life is meaningless, to, you know, is my hope anchored in Christ, so that my life is flourishing, even if my children will never again talk to me, yes, I want to help you in your relationship with your children, but that's not your hope, if your hope is that, I was listening to a song on Caleb coming back, and can you tell, remind me the names of the words, the title of the song, it said something about, you know, this person's confidence in God, that he hears our prayer, he's a great God, and all that was great, but the repetitive theme there was that God was going to change things around, and yeah, turn things around, or something like that, I forget the exact phrase, but I was like, um, okay, okay, I'm waiting, it's good, but let me hear a little bit more, because I was, I was hoping, you know, this would have been great, I could have written the lyrics, the last word could have been, he turned me around, and I'd be like, oh, that would be fantastic, I didn't come with that song, but but the thing is, you know, while we want to help the person in their area, the Lord is doing a heart change in us, and we want to help people with that, so that was a great example.

Thanks, Charlie. Um, any other of those examples, what listed there, what would be the heart issues, Dan? And I, and I think that's, that's great, I think both what you said, you want to remember for this mother, her heart is probably broken, and like bleeding when we are talking to them, as a counselor, I want to remember, this is where I want to get to, and the very first thing I want to be saying is, how do you dare not look to Christ?

It would be like, all right, just bury the grave and put me in already, right? So here's someone who's, who's wounded and hurting, and, and I, because I'm not in the situation, for example, I'm able to see a little more clearly that the sister doesn't see at this point, and I want to come alongside and say, you know, I love you, I care for you, and I want to, I want you to know that the Lord is with you in this circumstance, but there is a hope in the God whom you trust, and there is some, and then there are practical ways in which we can get through, so the next, in section five, we will go through, how do I now help this person get to where they need to be, which is a great confidence and hope in the Lord, but I need to be able to detect that, so all, all of you gave the right answers, if I don't recognize it, and I'm like, oh, how, just a moment, yeah, how dare your children not honor your parents, let's fix that, and your life will be all fine, I'm like, okay, I'm just feeding a false hope, and that's not going to help them, and it's not going to honor the Lord, amen, it's, it's part of that count your blessings, right, that being thankful, I mean, in fact, Philippians four, it talks about bring your supplications with thanksgiving, I mentioned that last, I would say again, because especially when I'm praying with this person, I want to be able to help this person be thankful for all that the Lord has done and is doing, and part of that is, you know, when the trial, I've been fixated on it, it's come so close, some close, I can't see anything but this trial, you know, it is just so overwhelming, and I feel like my life is ending, and then I kind of have to help them say, well, let's just look and see where, what the Lord has done, and be thankful to him for everything else, hey, your children are alive, are you thankful for that, you know, the Lord could take them, and then, yeah, they won't be visiting you, you'll have to visit them, yeah, that's beautiful, I keep telling Charlie, you need to be doing these things here, you know, there's a couple of things, I'll just reiterate what you said, one of them being, you know, in relationships, you know, there's always two sides to this thing, and the one thing I can begin, that I can certainly change is me, and part of that is like, okay, what is it about me that I can do differently, if I've sinned, how do I rest, set it to rest, and if I am pestering my children with just the calls, versus there's a different way in which I can approach this, in a way that's winsome and helpful for them, there are practical ways I can do certain things, and that's important, and I think, Mark, you asked last time something about peace, and when I have looked to the Lord, I have set things right on my side, like you said, I can sleep on my pillow with peace and comfort, knowing that the Lord is in charge, it's not like I'm holding back all the trouble with my two little puny arms, it's now the Lord is, I've left this in the Lord's hand with a clear conscience, and I can rest, and the Lord in his time will do these things, and just as an example, I didn't mean the children to be the main example here, but it was great, because I think we've gotten to see how to think through situations like this, of misplaced hope, and in this particular case, this mom needed certain things to do differently in relating to her children, and then the children needed to be talked to about, hey, honoring means something, what does it look like in your life, and then, and I can tell you in this particular example, there's a great relationship going on, yeah, there's some hiccups here and there, but it's no longer that, you know, let's not see each other type of thing, and let me not put all my hope in them kind of thing, so that is our joy as we disciple one another, as we minister God's truth and grace to one another, and in the end, all of them are to be looking to the Lord, and rejoicing in the Lord, rather than just the fixed problem, it's not just the fruit, it is that abiding in Christ that grows, and actually, Charlie, when you said, I mean, not just Charlie, all of you, we've done sections three, four, and five, as we've talked about these things, and we are not formal biblical counselors, you don't need to take two weeks to have a sheet like we have here, as you're talking, you figure this out, you move into section four, three is data inventory, section four is interpretation, how do you analyze this and say, okay, how do I know, what does the scripture say about these things, and five is instruction, now you tell this person what do you need to do, and we've kind of gone back and forth on that in this particular case right here, and I'm just going to throw out a couple of things on top, so control, here's a situation where this person doesn't have control, and wants to, is despairing because of that, and they think the right way to get out of despair is to get control, that's their hope, it's like, hmm, let me kind of help you through that, you know, only the Lord is in control, it's not, if you're just seeking to have control over all parts of your life, you are doomed to a life of perpetual despair, because that's never going to happen, no matter what situation you think you have control over now, COVID, and then everything goes away, so, you know, so that's part of what we try to do in the inventory, what is it that they are putting their hope on, and then helping them to step back and see, here is, well, before you do that, you need to understand where their false hope is, anything else on this section, yeah, Jonathan, or it's a bad theology, I used to think, oh, as a Christian, I should be able to, like, I don't think that's what the Bible exactly says, and I, and I think, you know, when the, I like the way you said it, you ask why, because, A, as, you know, whether it's self-counseling or counseling others, I need to first know what the truth is, but when I'm counseling others, it's easy for me to just say, hey, here's what is true, and here's what you should do, but if you can help them get there by themselves, you know, and that was one of the things I heard in the conference a lot, was like, you know, help the person walk through what you've already made the connections in your head, ask the right kind of questions, point them to the right kind of scriptures and resources, and help them get to that themselves, and once someone can see it for themselves, it's not like, oh, Pradeep told me, so I'm doing this, it's like, whoa, the Word of God tells me this, and I can see it in my own eyes, here's where I was mistaken in my hope, and so asking those questions are crucial.

All right, so, so let's look at the next section, halo or non-verbal data, so when you're talking to someone, okay, I got to give another example here, facial expression, body language, sitting close, sit far apart, is in relationships, holding hands, before we look at even the scriptures, I'm going to just tell you this, yesterday I heard this phrase many times in my house, it was, be happy, be happy, one of my daughters was like, daddy, be happy, and she put on the most vicious, I mean it, kind of face, and say that, I just crack up, okay, let's put a smile on that face, and the truth was, I needed to be reminded, you know, my heart was down, my head was splitting, and I wanted to be like, and my biblical counseling daughter comes along and says, daddy, be happy, and that was all it needed, well, she needed to do it several times, but it worked, I mean, she said, be joyful, and I don't know, it probably pierced my heart completely, but I, that's, this is what we do to one another, we see someone, and we're like, I can tell you what you need to do, but, but she was just cuing in on my countenance, and so let's look at the scriptures here, Genesis 4, 6, I think all of us know that, can somebody read it, thank you, and then Proverbs 6, 13, and we know the circumstance here, the Lord has accepted Abel's sacrifice and not Cain's, and the Lord comes and deals with him, and his only indication of where his heart is, is in his face, and then, sorry, Proverbs 6, 13, that's normally the remedy to most of your counseling, it's like, just let's read a psalm, and so this is talking about the people that are wicked, and they may not have come out and told you I just murdered this person, but you can kind of see something is going on that's not right, and whether it is this, you know, this countenance that is showing displeasure with God, or it is habits that are showing how they interact with other people in a deceitful way, or it is, you know, just a grievance of the heart, you have Hannah, who doesn't have Samuel yet, before Eli in the house of the Lord, and she is just like murmuring and down, and the biblical counselor Eli decided she was drunk, and it's like, you know, we want to be a little more careful when we are discerning the countenance of the people that we meet, and I think, you know, there are some things people will say, and some things you just can observe, so as you're pulling together the data, it is not just the verbal data or written data, but it's also what you see in terms of recognizing where the problems are, and how do we deal with that, so the next section, I'm just going to go quickly for the sake of time, so the para-linguistic, how are they saying things, I love my husband, I love my husband, I love my husband, all right, okay, let's get to what that really means, so there are ways in which you want to be sensitive as you're listening to the person that you're talking to, the next section preached acronym, physical, and I think this is crucial, the crisis I went last year, if I had not discovered what was going on, I probably would still be in that same crisis, we'll look at the fact sheet in a moment and see what that means, resources and relationships, you know, what do they have, how are their relationships going, where is their emotional state, are they just completely gone, what are the actions, things that they're doing, what are their concepts, what are the ways in which they understand, look at life, historical, what is their background, you know, what has happened either this week or with their children all your life, where is your desire, what is it that you're looking for to move through, so here are all some of the data that you're looking at, not all of them may be appropriate for every single conversation, but some of these things are good to keep in mind, oh, maybe I need to think a little bit more about what's going on in history before I actually start looking at what they need to do next, and then the last verse for here is Proverbs 18, 17, can someone read that, Proverbs 18, 17, thank you, and this is to hear from everyone involved, we already heard that with their children, it's like, okay, you know, maybe there are things that you have done, and maybe we need to talk to your children next, and so especially in relationships, it's helpful to make sure we have, okay, you know, this is how you see what happened, let's now bring the other person, Matthew 18, you know, you go talk to them, if not, let's the three of us talk, and then we'll figure out, you know, how exactly things are and work through those things together, so, and so the point of this whole section is just making sure we have the right kind of information before we try to apply the right kind of counsel, I, we are out of time, and I want to just comment on the next section for now, very briefly, so that way you can think about it, and then maybe we'll figure out how to move forward with this Sunday school, so the previous section, I forgot what it is called, inventory, the eight I's, so I know it starts with an I, so inventory is getting the right data, and now you have to interpret this data, we already did some of that in terms of, okay, they are thinking hope is this, but the right hope is that, and so part of the interpret, let me just read the definition here, promoting biblical change by analyzing and organizing the information from the inventory phase in order to accurately identify the biblical nature and cause of the problem, and to convincingly explain this to the counseling, so this is the part where, you know, for yourself, so if you're doing biblical counseling, if you have enough understanding of the scripture to recognize this connection between the inventory and the interpretation, then sure, and we do this all the time, you know, I open the scriptures, the spirit of God leads me, I recognize what I've sinned on, I repent, or I see how to look at this trial in light of what God has shown me, and I have hope, and I move forward, and we do this in small things, big things, and when we are helping someone, this is crucial for many reasons, because when you're listening to someone speaking their really, really hard and challenging story, the danger that you face is that you can start to think through the problem like they do, so you've got all this data, it's overwhelming, and I'm like, oh, how dare your children do this, and that's the path I end up going, and I want to be very careful that I look at it, look at the biblical nature and cause of the problem, and that's where I don't become a Job's counselee, you know, where I just come alongside and say, oh, here's all you need to do, and destroy an already heartbroken man, but instead, you want to be like Barnabas, you know, someone who comes alongside and is helping this person through their time of grief, or, you know, when I say Barnabas, I'm thinking of John Mark, where, you know, he kind of gets kicked out of the ministry, and it's like, okay, I'll take you along, and we'll work through, and then there is some reconciliation in the end.

All right, so in terms of moving forward, I don't know how much longer we'll be doing this, so we'll continue a little bit further, but feel free to read ahead. If you have any questions, bring it today.

I think we got to talk about some practical examples. Hopefully, that helps you connect the scriptures with how do you do this in real life, and so number four, I think, is crucial before we get to number five.

Five is where you are actually giving instructions, some practical ways to help this person move through, but if you get four correctly, then you are a biblical counselor, and then you just have to work at the skill of doing this well in helping this person, and so if you look at section four, interpretation, you can see a bunch of these things.

Feel free to read them ahead of time. There'll be labels that come and say, oh, this is a dysfunctional family, or I gave you a label of depression, and you'll need to now look at it and say, okay, what does the Bible say about this, these things, and how do I now help this person think biblically through it, and I can tell you a little story.

I remember meeting a brother here who was normally not downcast and looked very downcast. I said, is everything okay? The first time, I didn't hear much, and then I saw that again a month later. I said, is everything okay, and this person chose to open up, and we ended up having a discipleship, and had a fantastic time, worked through all of those things together, and it's like, but it takes some, you know, it's like, okay, do I want to invade this person's privacy, or do I want to come alongside as a brother, and James 6, 1, you know, find out how I can help this person through, and so you can initiate those conversations.

Thanks. I wish you had brought this up a little earlier. Maybe we'll pick this up next time, but I want to show a verse that I meant to cover today. As usual, I've not gotten to it. You don't have to turn here.

Romans 15, 14, Paul talking to the Romans, whom he hasn't met, he says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another, and you'll see this in the next section, 5, that this is actually a qualification of a biblical counselor.

You need to be able to be full of good things, you know, recognize what the word is, and how do you minister that to other people, and we develop in the skill. Nobody's going to be perfect, but if I, the one thing I don't want to do, and in that example you gave is, this person is annoying me, and I'm going to be this ideal biblical personal counselor to just stop and end to that annoyment, and I'm going to say, you know, here's how you could do it.

So, we want to do it with good motives for helping this person, loving this person, and honoring the Lord through all of this. So, we'll stop, and we'll continue next time. Loving Father, we thank you for your word.