Nouthetic Counseling Pitfalls

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

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The New Book on Sexual Fidelity

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name's Mike Abendroth and what's going on around here? Pouring rain outside and I feel guilty, not because of the rain, but because I just ate one half. I would've ate the rest, but there's only one half here.

One half of something to the equivalent of a salted nut bar, salted nut roll. What do we call those? Kind of red packaging. There's salt and there's nuts. It's kind of a nougat bar. Maybe that's the new official food for No Compromise Radio.

I've been putting the miles on the bike and maybe it's a time for me to start stashing some calories for the winter. It feels like winter already with the snow. No, sorry, with the rain. If you want to write me, you can info at nocompromiseradio .com and I get those through Spencer.

If you want to bypass Spencer, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. The Tuesday Guide to Steve, Josh, you can just write those folks. Don't forget, coming up soon is the new book, Sexual Fidelity, No Compromise.

And it's the first NoCo Media book. It's about 150 pages. I'm guessing around 12, 13 bucks, something like that. And 30, approximately 1 ,000 word chapters, one chapter you can read a day to get you to think properly with a biblical perspective about the topic of sex.

And I'm not trying to be funny now or anything like that or uncouth. It's not some kind of manual or something like that. It's not how to. It's how to think rightly about sex and how to avoid sexual lust and temptation.

And then if you're married and join your wife, it uses biblical language, but that's it. So anyway, I didn't want to go into the, I mean, I'm 55 now. I mean, I should be able to talk in a godly way without any kind of gut or mouth or anything like that.

I think you'll find it, well, it's written in a NoCo style in the sense that I'm trying to prod you and make you think through issues, whether it's pornography or how to talk to your children about sex, what about adultery and Proverbs 7.

So it's biblical. It's provocative in the sense that it makes you think. I have to kind of have a little disclaimer there in that NoCo slogan. And it's in that order. So you can order through NoCo Media and the website should be up soon.

And just click on it and be good for men's groups. Ladies can read it as well. And I think I'll print a couple thousand and see what happens. So that's a scoop there. I'm excited about it. A few years ago, I had turned it into a large Christian publisher and it made it to the editing table, the conference, the roundabout deal, and then it didn't make it.

So anyway, there you have it. I'd like to talk today about counseling. What about counseling? Do you like counseling? Do you like to go to counseling? Are you in counseling? Do you counsel other people?

There are psychological counseling people. There are folks that counsel with the Bible. And there are those that mix the two. They integrate psychology and the Bible. And I am for the last one that is, no, the second one.

No, the first one? What am I for? You don't know who you're for, you don't know who you're against. I'm obviously for biblical counseling. I think psychology, out of the 300 different types and veins of psychology, pretty much all have the view that man is good or man is better than what the Bible states regarding Adam's fall and the consequential sinful nature that everyone inherits, of course, except for the Lord Jesus.

And when you try to mix oil and water, doesn't work. Same thing with the Bible. I'm not one of these guys that says, let's take some of these truths and see what we can do. Obviously, if psychology means we analyze behavior and routines and patterns, then those things, I'm not gonna disagree with Pavlovian salivation in dogs and hoons.

But I am going to say you can't change the behavior into godly behavior using anything less than the Bible. If the behaviors changed, well, the common grace of God would influence people and they can, I mean, I quit cocaine and marijuana without the Holy Spirit in terms of in dwelling me directly.

I'm sure he was helping me as my mind was getting clear so I could understand the gospel better and the implications of it. But I wanna talk about, there's some different stripes of biblical counseling.

Benefits of New Thetic Counseling

Not all biblical counseling is the same. And if I had to say, do I like the, what's termed euthetic counseling? Noose is mind. And so using your mind to admonish is one of the words, 1 Thessalonians 5.

I would say that much of the theology and euthetic counseling I would agree with. And so if I got to pick one, that's the one I would pick, biblical counseling. Of course I would pick that. And there are some benefits of euthetic counseling.

I would say, what are some of the benefits? Well, number one, I think it understands drugs and how to use drugs. If you should use drugs, at least that's the right question to ask. Should we use drugs in treatment, right?

What is a mental illness? Can your brain have an illness that's different than your mind having an illness? Is there a difference between brain and mind? Can your mind that's tainted by the fall, supposed to be used by God, used by us to worship God, loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I think it rightly understands chemical imbalances is just this catch-all term that even many unbelievers would say, well, what do you have to try to balance out when you give lithium to people? What's that balancing?

How does that balance? What poison does that balance out? So I like the way euthetic counseling thinks through that. I think that's a benefit. Secondly, I think euthetic counseling exposes man-centered humanistic psychology for what it is and how it doesn't sanctify the saints.

When I was in Vienna, I went to Freud's house and whether it's a Freudian psychology or anything else, matter of fact, he came here to the United States, Freud did, after he was fleeing Vienna because of the Nazis and he spoke here in Worcester, right?

Spoke in Worcester, Clark University of all places, Zygmunt Freud. So smoked 20 cigars a day and basically his face was getting eaten away toward the end. I don't think he quit though. So I like euthetic counseling because it has a bead, name small, miss small.

It goes after psychological counseling and the quote-unquote science of psychology. How can it be a science if it keeps changing all the time? That's what I'd like to know. It shows that psychological tests are basically worthless.

Again, when it comes to changing behavior, analyzing behavior, that's one thing, changing behavior, that's another. Euthetic counseling is wonderful when it drives people back to the text. What does the text say?

The Bible is sufficient, sola scriptura. I think euthetic counseling excels in that area. What else is it good for? Well, back in the day, remember Larry Crabb? Euthetic counseling would expel integrationists like Larry Crabb.

He's not really one of us when it comes to the counseling realm. There's psychological counseling, there's biblical counseling, and when you mix the two, these integrationists, as we might call them, we know what you're doing.

We don't agree. And probably the last thing, well, second to last thing, it emphasizes dealing with sin as sin, and it emphasizes forgiveness and hope. You can be forgiven for sin. Every sin is forgivable, short of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which you can't commit now on earth.

At least, I don't think you can. I mean, if you die in any sin, you're going to hell, but die in sin, meaning not forgiven, not justified, you're condemned then, of course. That's the opposite of justification.

And there's a sin that leads to death, and you're not to pray for that, but you can find out what that is in context in 1 John, and that's the repeated, over and over and over, Jesus isn't God in the flesh.

Maybe you think it's something else. Well, that's for another show. You can get on the troll Facebook and debate it all you want. Sometimes I pop in and make comments on Facebook. Most times I don't. People Crabby, I especially don't.

People sending in money, I especially do. Fred, just kidding. And it says, New Thetic Counseling, that you should focus on hope. You should focus on hope. If we do things God's way, there's hope, right?

There's hope for the future, right? And so there's many things. I'm sure there are other things too, but those are a few things that I like about New Thetic Counseling. But there are a few things that I don't like about New Thetic Counseling.

Why Counseling Must Not Eclipse Preaching

And the dislike that I have for New Thetic Counseling, I'm gonna mention now, is nothing to the degree where I dislike integrationist or psychological counseling. So if somebody comes to the church and says, I'm big into New Thetic Counseling, I'm pretty much happy that that would be the case that they've studied.

But there's a few things that over time we might have to tweak here or there or the other, right? So what about the preaching of God's word? Bill Good said, unless the issues of sin are seriously and properly dealt with in counseling, is the context.

The preaching from the pulpit is merely a Band-Aid solution. Now, see, that's the kind of stuff I don't really like. I think if you talk to him and you work through it, it would be closer to where we would be, both be in all that stuff.

But I think that language is tough to swallow because the proclamation of truth from the pulpit pretty much is everything. Now, should there be some discipleship behind the scenes and pastoral ministry behind the scenes?

I'm not saying there shouldn't. I'm just saying you shouldn't talk this way about preaching from the pulpit as a Band-Aid solution for anything. There was no counseling. Nobody trained in euthetic counseling.

No discipleship. The word of God would still do what the word of God does. And I just would agree more with John MacArthur. The word of God always accomplishes its intended purposes. Then he quotes Isaiah 55, 11.

"'So shall my word be which goes forth from my mouth. "'It shall not return to be empty "'without accomplishing what I desire "'and without succeeding in the matter "'for which I sent it.'". MacArthur also says the greatest need in the church today and therefore the greatest need in the world today is biblical, powerful preaching.

In recent years, I feel that preaching has been minimized. It has been given a backseat to counseling, administration, programming, entertainment, and so forth. On the same tape, you can tell this was older when I did this research, MacArthur quoted Lloyd-Jones regarding the substitution of the word of God by counseling, which was, of course, in that case, psychological counseling but the primacy of the word of God.

And I think here's what happens often. I think pastors begin to counsel people and if they're gonna meet with seven people during the week at an hour at a time for 15 weeks in duration each, pretty soon that starts taking away your day besides the emergencies that would come up and brush fires and forest fires that would come up just in life.

In his own life and in the life of the people in the church. And then you cut back some of the preaching because you're doing a lot of preaching one-on-one. Now, I think preaching one-on-one is important but one of my problems with newthetic counseling, and of course there are some newthetic counselors that don't do this, but just, this is a potential trap where the pastor counsels a lot of folks and instead of counseling folks, I think he should be, you can counsel folks and train leadership.

2 Timothy 2, verse two, where you're training up the leaders for the next generation and even the current generation. And so you have people in 1 Thessalonians language, some that need help, some that need encouragement, some need to be rebuked, right?

Some are mature, some are immature. And so if you're only hanging out with immature people, telling them the truth, well, pastors of course have to do that. But if you train others, then those others can hang out with some of those that are just chronically needing help, that are people who are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and you should invest into them, but not to the exclusion of training other leaders.

It is my own anecdotal research that when I find a pastor who does an inordinate amount of time of biblical counseling, he doesn't train other leaders as much. You can kind of do one or the other. And so I'm not saying it's either or, I'm just saying heavy on biblical counseling means light on men's discipleship.

You say, well, then he brings in people for counseling and then they listen in. So I understand those things, but I'm just saying don't ever underestimate the power of the word preached, no matter what else is going on.

You say, well, I'm an euthetic counselor and I wouldn't disagree with you. Okay, good. Don't overdo counseling so that you underdo the pulpit ministry. Because of course there's preaching house to house, I know that, but there's also the discipleship element, okay?

So Mike Ebendroth, just a few concerns, some concerns when it comes to euthetic counseling. Maybe you disagree with me, you can write me. Maybe you say, yeah, I see some of the warnings there. Thirdly, what about hermeneutics?

Hermeneutics and the Ditches of New Thetic Counseling

Sometimes there's something called the euthetic hermeneutic that's coined by Ebendroth, Patrick, a euthetic hermeneutic. Actually, maybe before Pat, Dr. Robert Thomas talked about the euthetic hermeneutic when I discussed this with him in 1996.

Six, there is a quote here that I will read. The Bible has much to say about resolving conflict. Almost every book in the New Testament says something about this topic. Romans 12, almost an entire chapter focuses on preventing and resolving conflicts.

Romans 14, same emphasis culminating in verse 19. This is in a book called Biblical Principles of Conflict Resolution. I don't know who did that book. I wanna say that's a J. Adams thing, but I'm not really sure.

There are some euthetic counselors that have stated that the key verse or theme of the book of Philippians is, I urge you Odia and urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. J. Adams, New Testament commentaries, I think you will see a euthetic hermeneutic where everything is looked at through the lens of biblical counseling.

I think that's an error. I think the proper grammatical historical method of interpretation isn't the euthetic hermeneutic. How about this? Intro to biblical counseling. Finally, page 262, finally, in order for our instruction to be appropriate, we must be aware of our counselee's receptivity to counsel.

Jesus said, do not give what is holy to dogs and do not throw your pearls before swine, as they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces, tear you to pieces. Matthew 7, six. So what we don't wanna do is take a verse about unbelievers and make it for believers and say this is receptivity to counsel.

This is common where you're so into things, and by the way, being into things, people are into counseling, people are into euthetic counseling a lot. And maybe there's some things that have been changed and you can get degrees in euthetic counseling with a proper understanding of the word of God as central.

Discipling men, if you're a pastor, is key and having the right hermeneutics. I'm not saying there isn't, I'm just saying these are some ditches that you could drive into if you're a euthetic counselor.

Watch out for these ditches. Okay, that's a better way, the ditches of euthetic counseling. How about fourthly, the structure? This is, here's the fourth ditch that you might drive into if you're not careful, the structure of counseling.

So, you know, psychological elements, you meet for 10 or 15 weeks, you know, you get your halo data, you've got your PDI, you've got your form, there's the solver acronym that I was taught. You talk about the right things from the Bible, but you do it in a framework or a format or a setting that's talk, it's talk therapy.

It's back to Freud again. Hey, we can talk through these things. Now, of course, there has to be some talk. This is what the Bible says about the subject. This is what the Bible says about how you can change, you know, okay, I'm not against talk, that's not my point.

But the 15 week structure, let's talk and work through this. I think maybe if you were doing something together, it would be better. And you say, that's what we do. We talk for three weeks and we go do something together in light of ministry.

So I know there's exceptions to the rule. These are possible ditches. MacArthur, the typical modern Christian breastplate is a little paper bib, absolutely useless. It's made up of a system or a method or a program.

10 to 12 sessions with a counselor. That's not what you need. What you need is about 10 or 12 hours in the presence of God until you sort out the unholy characteristics in your life and get right with Him.

End quote, Believer's Armor Study Notes, Ephesians 6, page 33. And then lastly, the fifth ditch in euthetic counseling movements that you should watch out for is the kind of the Gnostic aspect, the training that's needed.

I am trained in euthetic counseling and you are not, and I have the insider knowledge and you don't. You say, well, I believe in euthetic counseling and I don't believe that. Well, again, it's just a ditch to watch out for.

I know I'm lacking in so many areas, but I believe that when the Spirit of God through His providential hand dropped me here in Central Massachusetts with a Bible and His Spirit dwelling in me, He, the Spirit dwelling in me, that I was competent to counsel, that I was competent to counsel.

I believe that's true. I was with one of the key guys in euthetic counseling years ago in the car, giving him a ride to the airport and discussing a friend of mine that was struggling with homosexuality, a man calling himself a Christian, and he would leave our Bible study and we were talking about the Word and the Lord, and then he would drive past some bar and just go in there and do things he shouldn't.

And basically this person told me that if he was working with him, that there would be progress. And so there's an agnostic inner knowledge, people that have been trained. One man said, there's a team of counselors available to minister to regular attenders.

According to Romans 15, 14, any Christian should be able to be competent to counsel. Proverbs 20, verse five, though, it is clear that not all can draw out the deep waters of the heart. Okay, an introduction to biblical counseling, interpreting counseling data is both a science and an art.

Becoming an effective counselor involves not only spiritual giftedness and knowledge of the science and interpreting data, but of a continual practice of those principles until they become second nature.

Good said, in addition, we insist that every staff member who counsels non-members must complete successfully the NANC certification. Thank you. I know. MacArthur, Romans commentary, page 328. All faithful Christians are divinely equipped to admonish one another as needs and opportunities arise among them.

I could just say the priesthood of all believers, couldn't I? So, Mike Abendroth here. Watch out for these ditches when it comes to the New Thetic Counseling Movement. I probably in seminary had all kinds of thoughts about this and I probably had some extreme thoughts.

Me, that I would have an extreme thought and I think I've mellowed over the years, but I still see the possibility of driving off the road into these ditches. And if you're gonna have a conference and you're gonna say it's a marriage conference, packed.

Marriage and sex conference, packed. End times conference, packed. Counseling conference, packed. And then if you say, we're gonna have a conference on the Trinity, say what? I mean, people just don't show up.

Very, very popular to have the New Thetic Counseling track. I think you could do it. If you avoid these five ditches, I wouldn't say, hey, you shouldn't teach New Thetic Counseling. You shouldn't get a bachelor's degree or master's degree or something like that.

I wouldn't say that at all. I'm just saying, you're gonna drive down in the ditch if you're not careful. And you're gonna go searching for idols of the heart. And I don't think sometimes even anybody knows what the idols of the heart are except maybe that person.

Adam sinned and God deals with the act, not some inner issue or he was dealing with the manifestation of the heart, the outward act. What's the idols of the heart? So maybe that'd be my sixth ditch. Be careful of the idols of the heart business.

Closing Thoughts and Ministry Sign-Off

But we're out of time on NOCO Radio. So my name is Mike Avendroth. This is nocompromisedradio .com. Don't forget the new books out. Go to the website, check it out.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Avendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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

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