Classic Friday: The Essence of Counseling

Counseling as Discipleship, Validation, and the Limits of the Counselor

I think I hit the record button too soon, Steve. Did you? Welcome to No Compromise Radio. I think I maybe did. It's a disaster. Spencer, clean this up, would you? Behind the scenes. He makes us... I can't.

Sorry. He doesn't make us look good, but he makes us sound good. That takes a lot of work. I've got to have some filter on this little Rodecaster Pro 2 somehow so I don't sound like I'm underwater with my nasal problems.

How does that work? I don't know. Are you underwater? I used to hold my breath to see how long I could stay underwater, but I thought after a while that was kind of dumb.

It's kind of boring. Once you got up to eight minutes, you're just like, yeah, I'm done.

Last summer, we had some of Kim's friends over to our little place in Santa Cruz, and they were family friends of Kim that she's known for her whole life. And this lady and her husband were over, and this lady's father held the world record for underwater.

And it was something like that eight minutes type of thing or something. Yeah. How does that work?

I don't know. I mean, I did see some kind of video on YouTube where Tom Cruise talked about training for a movie and how long he had to hold his breath underwater. I don't think it was eight minutes, but it was longer than I would be personally comfortable holding my breath underwater.

I remember once I was swimming with the kids in a pool, and Luke came up behind me. He was 14 or 15, so he's just starting to grow up. And he grabbed me. I was unaware, and he grabbed me around the neck and kind of pulled me under.

But I had just exhaled kind of thing, and I didn't have any breath. I was frightening because he's just horsing around, and I came up out of the water like I was going to drown. My own son drowned me.

Did you ever lose your children when they were in a supermarket or Six Flags or something like that? You just look the other way, and then they're gone? Sure. All the time.

All the time. Yeah, we used to have six kids.

Oh, I got you now. Oh, no. I wonder if they'll ever track you down, some of those lost kids.

Yeah. I mean, it's just that momentary panic, right, where you're just like I mean, today, these days, I'm just like Somebody was talking to me recently about losing, I don't want to just air-tag it, right?

You know? So, yeah, I mean, I'd be real tempted to put air-tags in my kids' clothing these days.

Seriously, that'd be a great idea when you're in the market or something like that, and you're like, okay, where's my child?

When my mom was alive, they put something She was in an institution in Colorado. They put some kind of tag on her so that if she went outside the door of the place, it would go off. She was setting that thing off all the time.

I never even thought of that, Steve, for Alzheimer's, dementia patients, or even if they're trying to stay at home, right? And they have caregivers at home, and then they wander away, and the person doesn't know who they are, but now we know with a little air-tag.

Or she'd take the tag off, too. That was her She'd find it. Wherever they hid it, she'd find it and kill it and escape. So, she was quite the I mean, she was on the third floor, just wandering the streets of Denver.

The Counselor Cannot Fix Everything

Today, Steve, on No Compromise Radio, I'd like to talk about counseling. Some people call it discipleship. Some people call it talking. Some people call it what? What would be some other synonyms for

Well, in the Sheriff's Department, we used to do.

Something called wall-to-wall counseling.

Why is it that I'm fascinated with the show Jail? J-A-I-L. It's like cops, except it's Vegas booking, and they bring in people that they've caught doing things. I'll tell you what. You have to put the spit mask on and all that.

I'll tell you what. You do that. I mean, seriously, because I've done that, the whole intake thing. You do that for about two hours, and that's enough for a lifetime.

Some of the people that are interviewed, the workers there, they said they love it. They love dealing with people. They love the camaraderie of team building, as you have to subdue a person and put them in the chair and put the spit mask on.

There's a word for that, and it comes from the lumber industry. It's called warped.

Those people are warped. Oh, well, see, they found their niche, though. We need people that like to do that. They are never going to be normal. Why do people even get thrown in jail anymore? You can walk into a store and walk out with tons of stuff.

Well, I could tell you why people go to jail these days, but then we'd be delving into politics. Oh.

You're not even at the Capitol, and you get 26 years? Yeah, something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know the backstory, but yeah. All right.

Well, good news is God is just, and one day every wrong will be righted, and every right will be extolled, and all exaltation, extolling will be for the Lord Jesus.

And may it be this afternoon, because I'm ready. I know.

Steve, in counseling, we were talking about it earlier. If we boil everything down to its, we distill it to its essence, how often do you think we just need to be reminding people about who God is, and how faithful He is, and how they can trust Him, even though they can't get out of the trial?

In other words, I think they sometimes want us, as the counselors, to help them get out of the problem, but don't you think they've already been thinking that for a long time, and they probably could already figure out how to get out of it, see where I'm going with that?

Yeah, I do, and I think, yes, they want to escape, right? And I'm going to go in a slightly different direction, but I'm going to keep it on the same trajectory. Here's what people really want. They want you to validate their feelings.

They want you to validate their feelings. I know what the Bible says, Pastor, but you don't know how I feel. I mean, I want to go into Tom Petty mode. You don't know how it feels. Where's Tom Petty when we need him?

Well, he's in purgatory.

Okay, let's back up even another step. With isolation, COVID, commuter churches, air conditioning, so you have a back deck and you don't have the front porch and you don't walk around the neighborhood, don't you think people are lonely?

Sometimes they just want someone to talk to, and then they can tell their feelings to that person they're talking to?

Yes. Yeah, they just want to dump all their problems, really, just kind of vomit them forth. Yeah, I think there's a lot of that. But I think social media gives, unfortunately, outlets for that sort of thing as well.

People go to social media and just write all their problems on social media, or sometimes it'll be more private. They'll send a private messenger or message or something like that. But yeah, there are a lot of ways of getting things out without going to see a pastor, without coming to another brother or sister in Christ and going, you know what, I just need some help.

Can you just come alongside me? I feel like I'm not thinking rightly about this. Can you help me? Which is what you want. How many times it's like the unbeliever says, what must I do to be saved?

What we want the believer to do is, hey, I'm really struggling in this area. Can you help me?

And instead, it's almost like evangelism, because you've got to go out there and go, brother, sister, are you hurting with this? You've got to play the amazing Kreskin and figure out what everybody's struggling with.

Steve, a while ago, I just thought to myself in the midst of a bunch of counseling situations, and of course, not only their sin, but my sin makes everything complicated. I thought, they're coming to me and I can't solve their problem.

I mean, if somebody's a brand new Christian, or maybe they didn't have a dad, or there's something maybe that they just didn't think of, and someone from the outside says, oh, you should do that. Or maybe we can just, with a track record of kindness over 20 years now, just tell them the blunt truth.

So they go, oh, duh. But nine times out of 10, I can't solve their problem. They're coming in wanting their problem solved. I can't figure it out. They've thought about it for weeks. I've heard about it for 10 minutes.

And even if I just kind of dwell on it a little bit and mull it over, I can't solve it either. Lends itself to another question. Is the pastor, are the elders called to solve everyone's problems?

They can't even do it. No. I mean, if we could, this is going to sound badly, sometimes we can't even solve our own problems. I mean, we're wrestling with our own issues, right? And sometimes, you know, it's just like everything we were talking about earlier.

I mean, we all are in different places, kind of in our walks and our thinking, you know, in our various stages of sanctification. But if somebody comes to me and they say, you know, here's the problem.

Well, I have some canned answers usually for just about anything because having been around a while, not just almost 20 years here in ministry, but also, you know, 20 plus years on the sheriff's department where, you know, it sounds like it's vastly different.

But what do deputy sheriffs do? What do law enforcement do? They handle people in all kinds of tense, traumatic situations. And, you know, so the jobs aren't different in that sense, not in the counseling sense.

They're different. We have a different rule book. You know, we have a shared belief system, that kind of thing. But, you know, I have some canned answers for things. But I think sometimes, you know, you just have to listen long enough to figure out if this is a unique problem or something that you've not heard before, or if they just need some kind of a different nudge or push or response.

Jeffrey Averbeck. Sometimes, Steve, I'll get in one of these loops, some kind of computer loop, or I just keep going over and over and over and over, and I can't seem to get out of it mentally. And then if someone from the outside said, Mike, you need to think this way, you need to repent of that thinking and think this way for these reasons.

I think we can do that in counseling. That's often helpful when someone, I don't know, is caught up in some sin and we say something. Or another example, someone says, I'm really struggling with anxiety.

I mean, it happened right behind me here with two people, or no, one person, and I'm struggling with anxiety. Tell me about it. They mentioned their girlfriend. And I said, do you live with your girlfriend?

Oh, yeah. And then now there's, we can help that way, right? Where I said, you don't have an anxiety problem. You need to run. You got a sin problem. Yeah. You got to flee immorality. Yeah. How about gently talking to counselees about counting it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, James chapter one.

How do we go about doing that? I mean, we just, everybody walks in and we say, Romans 8, 28's in the Bible. You should live it out. That's our kind of motto. They fill out the personal data inventory and they have to memorize.

He's working all things for good, bro. Have a good one.

There's probably a time to say that, but maybe not that time.

Probably not. And you know, sometimes even when you say, you know, count it all joy, pastor, you're not listening to me.

There's no joy in this for me. Well, then what if I said to them, congregant, you're not giving me joy right now when I'm talking to you.

You know, you can't do that. I mean, because, you know, it's just like, I mean, how many times if we could walk around with Jesus and just see his face as he's, you know, dealing with people. That's chosen episode four.

Yeah. Well, no. We would see somebody who's not going, who's not on the verge of exasperation, who's not ready to blow a fuse, who's not, you know, about to reach out and clamp somebody by the Gizroid.

We would understand that this is someone who's infinitely patient, who's listening and who already knows everything anyway, and who's listening and just thinking, you know, dear friend, let me help you.

You know, I understand exactly what you're saying. I know your motivations. I know what you're thinking.

Now, let me help you. I thought Jesus's face was more, how can you call yourself one of my Christ followers and do that? By the way, I know following Jesus is in the Bible a lot, but just there's something about when people always say Christ followers and never say believers.

Do you count the cost? The other day on social media, I said, denying yourself as part of the gospel is something like 60 of the people said that law, denying the gospel, denying yourself as part of the gospel.

If it makes you feel any better, though, you know, because I asked somebody in my house, I won't mention any names, you know, that question. And it took probably about, you know, a minute of thinking, you know, the house kind of went quiet for a minute.

And then, you know, the right response came out, you know, but I know the first inclination was the wrong one. And I go, I understand. Yeah, right. I understand. Well, because it's hard, right, to separate, you know, obedience and the gospel.

But it's once you think, okay, is the gospel really about my obedience, my submission, my, you know, my anything? Nope.

Right. Just me sinning. That's the only part of it. If someone said to me, do I have to deny my sin in order to come to Christ? Do I have to hate my mother, brother, sister? Do I have to count the cost of discipleship and all that other stuff?

I would say, friend, let me remind you who Jesus is. And you're called to believe in Him. And by the way, when you believe in Him, the Spirit of God will dwell within you. And you'll begin to deny yourself.

And you'll begin to count the cost. And you'll begin to say, you know what? Even my mother and father that I love so much, I love Jesus more. And all that stuff will happen. But it's not antecedent. It's consequent.

Why didn't I learn that a long time ago? Many things I do know. This I do not know. Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith life is forced into the open and it shows its true colors.

So don't get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so that you become mature and well-developed, not deficient. In any way. It's not totally terrible. That's probably what makes it so bad. Is that half the time it's got some right stuff in there.

Yeah. Yeah, sometimes. Why don't we have our own translation? Sure. Let's work on that. Yeah.

Whose name's first? Yours. It's alphabetical. Hey, wait a minute. We could call like AC, the Abentroth Cooley Bible. Curriculum. Yes.

A, B, B, C. A, C, B, C. What if we want it to be like Abba or something? So it's a good Kiliastic kind of thing. And then people think of the band when they search for it. Oh, that's good. Abentroth. But where's the C?

Oh, well, that's a problem. What's your middle name, Buchanan? Yes. Buchanan, that's right. Sinclair Buchanan. Steven Buchanan. Okay. Back to counseling. Wouldn't it be good if we were counseling others and we talked about the faithfulness of Jesus and resting in him and how you can still trust him with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he'll make your path straight?

What place does that have in counseling?

Well, it has a very high place because I think, you know, one of the things, I mean, typically in counseling, people are angry with somebody. Sometimes they're angry with themselves, right? Right. How could I have done this?

You know, I've destroyed my family. I've done this. I've done that. And, you know, how could God ever forgive me? And, you know, I'm such a bad person.

Or angry with God for putting me in this situation. Yes.

I mean, and the answer to both is the same, right? Oh, you're angry with God. Well, let's just take that side for a moment. You're angry with God. Well, that's interesting because he created you. He gave you life.

He gave you all these other things, right? And then, you know, by your own profession, he forgave all your sins and you're angry with God. That's a very interesting position to be in, especially for a Christian.

Wouldn't you say? Because the reality is no matter what's happened in your life, if you truly belong to him, then you're going to heaven. And in light of everything else, whatever other circumstances you have in this life, these are temporary, right?

They're going to pass away. But eternity is, duh, eternal, right? Eternity with God is eternal. There's no changing that. So, to have eternal life, to know that you will spend eternity with Christ, there is no better gift than that.

Seems to me that you're falling back into that seminal era of preaching the gospel to the counselee, even though they're Christians. Yes, it's a seminal era. You don't want to do that. You don't want to give them hope.

Okay. So, Steve, let's think about this for a second. Even back to the law gospel paradigm, which is in the social media news a lot these days. How about this? Because you put it there. I forced it there.

Here's what I was thinking. Law, written on our hearts, written with the finger of God, as it were, at Sinai. It's in the scriptures, obviously. But the gospel has to come from outside of us. Law is in us.

Conscience. Think of Adam for the fall, even. But the gospel has to be proclaimed. How are they going to hear without a preacher? So, I would say 99 of people who come in and say, my wife's mad at me.

I'm the husband, and I need some help. I'd say 99 of them, and I'm failing poorly in loving her. 99 of the men, if I told them, you know, you're supposed to love your wives. I think they know that.

I bet you even unbelievers know that. I bet you Mormons know that. I bet you nominal Christians know that, and name only. Universalists know that. Yeah. Because it's within the heart, love God, love neighbor, built into the system.

But what's not built into the system is something we have to proclaim. I was studying Luke 2 this morning, and the angel shows up, and he gives the shepherds, first they're scared, and then he says, fear not.

And then he gives them good news. And there's a son that's going to be born, and he's a savior, and everybody's praising, and the heavenly host, and everything else. That has to be from a messenger. It doesn't come from our hearts.

Lots of times, the counseling needs to be reminded of who Jesus is again, and that he loves them.

So, he brings good news. I would have to assume that part of that good news is our performance.

You know what? As long as you meet your end of the bargain, keep up your semi-Pelagian, Pelagian, Roman Catholic views, you're going to be fine.

I bring you good news of great joy. If you live up to your end of the bargain, so will God.

Well, can you imagine? That's the medieval church, right? Here's this grace that's not demerited, not unmerited, not undeserved. Favor, not grace, God's riches at Christ's expense,. G-R-A-C. It's you do your part, God does his, or he does his part, so now you can do yours.

And there's a lot of value in that, in counseling, because people, again, I think if they really, if they internalize the gospel, if they understand what grace really is, and what God has done in them and for them, and even can do through them, then I think that changes attitudes.

Totally. I mean, can you imagine? You've got somebody sitting there.

They know they're wrong. They're in for counseling. They'd like to do better. And there's something to be said for, okay, God is present with you. God understands. There's forgiveness. Half of this, Steve, in my mind, and I'm being hyperbolic, people who are in counseling, many of them, it's because they're selfish, right?

Self-consumed, that's a lot of our problems, and then pride and lack of humility, etc., etc. And then you begin to tell them about somebody who's not themselves. We're talking about someone else. We're not even talking about you, maybe as an object of God's love.

But we start talking about someone else. That's what we all need. I think about myself too much. I'm obsessed with myself, and I'm told not to do that. So, I just think we need to put Jesus back in the counseling arena, even though I'm not really hip on some 12 weeks in a row we're going to meet and talk about this.

I think it's going to be a few times. Let's try to work on this and then plug you in someplace. How many times do you think you should meet with somebody? 10? 15?

30? I've never tried to set a limit on it. I think there are some people who will take longer. I don't know what the magic number is there. I really don't.

Well, what I usually do is, if I'm strapped for cash a little bit, maybe the starter goes out of the Volvo, I usually extend the counseling. Because at $200 a shot, then I get more money if it's longer.

We can't deal with every problem right away.

Boy, I mean, the one thing I don't think I could ever do is be a counselor for money.

It's one thing, Steve, if you do something nice for someone and they send you a pound of coffee. It's another thing to say, you give me the money first, then I'll talk to you about the scriptures.

It'll be two pounds of coffee a week, and we're going to be talking about at least 20 weeks. You remember, this is years ago, these ladies who we were at Shepard's Conference, and everybody was over there, and I had to leave.

I was going through my knee and shoulder appointments and all that stuff, and I was still living in California. I had excused myself. I think Pat and you and some other guys were over there at the table.

These ladies flagged me over because I was wearing the full seminary getup, the suit and tie and all that. They said, are you a pastor? I said, no, I'm a seminary student. They said, well, can we ask you anyway?

They'd been cutting themselves and paying to see a counselor. They said, how long do you think it would take the Lord to heal us from this cutting? I just talked to them for a while, and I said, I really don't know.

But what I do know is, because they even said, this lady, this counselor is telling us it's going to be like two years. I thought, how could you even know that? How could you have any idea how long it's going to take?

Then I just thought, oh, money, two years, sure, because as long as you're going to keep coming and keep paying, I'm going to keep on counseling.

I probably should give the caveat, I'm not saying you meet with somebody once or twice and you blast them and say, here's who Jesus is and send them on your way. I mean, there are problems that have occurred because people have done repeated behavior for 10 years, and so we need to help them through.

But it always doesn't have to be us, right? It doesn't mean that I have to be the one doing the 30 weeks of counseling. We hand them off to someone else who's been trained or who can come alongside and encourage.

And I think Romans 15, 14 even says, believers are competent to give counsel. I think that's a book. It doesn't say that? I think that's a J. Adams book. Okay. I wonder what J. Adams would think of modern counseling today, biblical counseling.

I don't know. I mean, he's considered the father of... Yeah.

So, who's going to be the next? I think it was kind of like Adams, Paulus, and then who's the next one? Avendroth. ACBC, Avendroth, Cooley. What's the B going to stand for? Bible Certificate. Do you have to be certified in order to be a counselor or do you have any certification?

Or are you just kind of winging it?

Well, I do have certification. You know, I was certified in wall-to-wall counseling by the Los Angeles County... Okay, you have an MDiv. Yeah.

Yeah? Yeah. You have a master, you've mastered divinity. Well, I have a doctor of ministry. So, we're changing everything. You know, we're trying to work on a new website.

Everything's Dr. Mike Avendroth. I have a DMin. I was certified for restraint. You know, I could have used force and I didn't. And I got a certificate for that.

Do you think you ever maybe pushed the envelope a little bit trying to restrain somebody, give them a little extra nudge? Or you were tempted to at least? In the sheriff's department? Yeah. Absolutely not, no.

Well, that goes back to my show. Okay, but on your what? That's my show last week that I did with you. Do you confess your sins? Do you obey? Do you desire to love others? Have you ever pushed the limits when it comes to...

In all seriousness, I don't know how police officers, male and female, have the restraint they do because somebody's trying to hurt them and they're trying to subdue folks to go home at night safely. I think that has to be a very difficult job.

Yeah, sometimes we take it to the limit.

Remember Darrell Gates said, the problem with the LAPD is we hire people from the wrong race. No, that wasn't Darrell Gates. Who was it? Was Joe Friday. Oh, well, I think Gates maybe said it too.

He said, well, this is in like early 60s before Gates. Right, he would have been earlier. Gates was even the chief. He's talking to his partner, Joe Gannon, or Bill Gannon. Bill Gannon. Yeah, and he says, yeah, we work at a handicap.

And Bill says, what's that? And he goes, we have to recruit from the human race. That's right. Isn't that amazing?

Counseling with the Bible, Grace, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Well, my name is Mike Gabendroth. Steve Cooley here. Let's put like a bow on this, Steve. We're talking about counseling today, kind of the counseling that wants the best for the counselee. And how would we kind of summarize our philosophy of counseling?

I mean, it's hard without going into specific details, but I would say overall that I do believe that the Bible is sufficient, you know, and that there's really nothing that happens in life that we can experience that's outside of categories, you know, that the Bible would deal with.

And I think so often the gospel really points the way, right? If we consider who we are and what we deserve, and then we think about all that we've been given in Christ Jesus, that can kind of give us the right mindset.

And people who are usually resistant after really kind of working through that, you know, then there are maybe some other issues. But I think that's a key.

Well said. It's because it's in my mind, Steve, since I just preached it. But probably I'm going to use these verses in counseling from now on.

Yeah, until you've got another jugular text.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. And before he gets into the suffering that Satan gives and everything else and God of all grace, just even that, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

I mean, it really is one of the, in addition to, you know, Ephesians 2, or, you know, but God, this is just one of the more stark, you know, shining statements in all of scripture that God cares for us.

I mean, this is like a real, who are we that he should care for us and that he should even consider us.

I just got a text, little Amos, my grandson, up all night, fever, off to urgent care. And you think, casting all your cares on him, God the Father, because he cares for us. If a father and a mother love a child so much, they care for them.

It's 24 -7 care, by the way. Well, then the Lord is going to care for them less. Of course not. Okay. Some good words today from Pastor Steve. Steve, you know what? You're getting better at this without a note stuff.

Kind of just going along with my ADD stuff. No, no, no.

This is just, you know, after summer stuff, you know. We're just burning out some energy here.

You can write us info at nocompromiseradio .com. That goes to Spencer. If you want to write directly to me, you can. Mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

And what are you, Steve, again? Don't even think about it at nocompromiseradio .com. I think you're the Tuesday guy. Is it the Tuesday guy? Nocomradio .com? Yeah, well, I don't know, because that's my Twitter handle.

I think I'm just Steve at NoCo.

Steve at NoCo or Tuesday guy? I don't know. That's a good question. TG, TG, Tuesday guy. Really? Yeah. Okay, that's news to me.