14. Presuppositions and Principles in Counseling

Okay, we're continuing in our series on biblical counseling, and as you can see, today's topic is presuppositions and principles in counseling.

Now, of all the topics that we're going to cover and that we have covered up until now, which are extensive, in fact,

I'll go through those first. We looked at the introduction to biblical counseling, the crisis, the role of the

Holy Spirit, what is euthetic counseling, directive versus non -directive counseling, how to solve problems biblically, looked at communication for a while, then we looked at the persons in counseling, the human counselors, plus, again, a more exhaustive role in the

Holy Spirit, and then tonight we start the presuppositions and principles.

And as I started to say earlier, of all the topics that we've had so far, this one is probably has a wider usability, if I can use that word.

In other words, even if you're not interested in counseling or you're definitely not going to do it on a full -time or even a part -time basis, the principles that we're going to be going over, the presuppositions of counseling, will help just in your daily life as a

Christian. So I mean, I think all of these topics will, but this one in particular, so we'll get right to it.

First presupposition is the counselor must be well -grounded in the Word of God. That should go without saying,

I mean, but then I wouldn't have anything to say if I...

So that's kind of a silly introduction, it goes without saying, and then

I'm going to say it anyway, but it is necessary to be said. The counselor must have a systematic knowledge of the whole counsel of God in order to meet human needs.

And notice the word needs, there is a difference between needs and wants, and the counselor is not there to meet the wants of everybody, but to meet their needs, and we'll get into some more of that later.

The first presupposition foundational to biblical counseling is simply this, life has meaning.

And we're going to get into that a little bit more, but it's essential that we understand that life has meaning, and one of the reasons that we have so much counseling, the psychological industry in the

United States has just exploded over the last 50 years. And one of the reasons is because people don't see meaning in life anymore.

And although the short -term activities of life are important, they do not satisfy the human craving for a fuller explanation of the meaning of life.

Remember, who was it, the old theologian who said that everybody has a hole in their heart that only

God can fill? And that's so true. Ecclesiastes tells us that effort profitably expended produces a sense of satisfaction.

Ecclesiastes 5 .12, the sleep of the working man is pleasant, whether he eats little or much, but the full stomach of the rich man does not allow him to sleep.

Obviously what Ecclesiastes is saying here, same author, what

Ecclesiastes is saying is that the person who is not working for what he has is not going to sleep as well as the man who is working hard.

And that relates to our counseling situation. Now that being said, all temporary activity is meaningless, vanity, emptiness, apart from God's purpose.

And that's crucial. I'm not saying in Ecclesiastes, he isn't saying that everything is vanity.

Everything is vanity apart from the purposes of God. So men who live only for such short -term goals must reckon with the folly of such a lifestyle.

Why do you think we see so much drug use, alcoholism, suicide amongst the rich and famous?

They seem like they have it all, but there's no meaning to it, and you just read the book of Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanity, all is vanity.

So many of these people end up seeking counseling because they realize that the things that they have based their life on have no long -term meaning.

Why is that important? Why would

I include that in there? I'm throwing that out now as a question. Why would that be interesting to us and of importance to us?

They're looking for that answer. Yeah. They're hoping someone has it. They expect that it's out there.

Yeah, because they're willing to ask questions, and they are seeking something.

They don't know what they are seeking, and the biblical counselor can provide the answers of life that they really crave.

Now, I'm not saying that everybody who's in that position is willing to listen, but they're at least in a position where they're seeking.

And the first and primary need that these people have is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's one of the keys. That's the point that I was looking for just before.

When you have people who are discouraged and despair, they're distressed, they are the most people susceptible and willing to listen to the gospel.

And again, it's in God's providence whether they receive the message or not, but we at least have that opportunity.

Those of you who do street evangelism, you ever notice how some people immediately say they're listening to you, and they come over, and they have an interest.

And you can engage them in conversation. Other people will walk right by and hurl insults.

The first and primary goal is the gospel. They may be brought to a point of despair in order to bring them to Jesus Christ.

And that's why you have to look at it as an opportunity. When you have people who are psychologically, emotionally distressed, there is an opportunity to present the gospel.

You have the answers that they need, whether they understand it or not.

So they must come to understand that Jesus Christ is the only source of abundant life.

And we'll talk a little bit more about abundant life in a moment. Because nothing else satisfies in the long term, okay?

And we've seen that some of the most miserable people are the most famous in their later years.

And they're just downhearted because once, you know, you see this especially with some of the movie stars and famous even politicians, famous athletes who are just in despair because the fame is all gone, and there's nothing left.

And they crave it. Someone who is faced with a meaningless existence in this way and faces despair is often said to have a nervous breakdown.

Now, notice I put nervous breakdown in quotations. And the reason

I put it in quotations is because it's a misnomer. Their nerves have not broken down.

The fact is their nerves are doing their job. Their nervous system is signaling to them something is wrong, okay?

That person has actually given up because he sees life as meaningless. And if you've ever seen somebody who truly has what the psychological community calls a nervous breakdown, you can see just how much in despair they really are, all right?

They're dispirited, they're disillusioned, and often bitter, okay?

They think that life has dealt them a poor hand or a bad hand. And so the short -term solutions to their situation may be running away, lying, or the big one, blaming somebody else.

And that's really one of the big ones is when people find themselves in despair, it's everybody else is wrong, society is wrong, all right?

And unfortunately, we have a political system that preys upon these people and tell them that they're victims.

They victimize everybody, all right? Instead of looking at yourself to see what can you do to get yourself out of this, they're looking at, and who's the big brother nowadays?

The government. The government. The government has a plan, you know, to have a, you know, you have a beautiful life and beautiful plan for your life.

So says Uncle Sam, and we know how that leads, where that leads. And they often try to escape life by means of drugs or alcohol.

And I mean, we've seen that in our culture, just look at the drug and alcohol abuse.

And so they stop functioning because they do not know how to function any longer. Because nothing is satisfying their longings, nothing is satisfying the emptiness that they feel, booze doesn't do it, drugs don't do it, illicit fornication doesn't do it, nothing seems to fit, and they're left with nowhere to turn.

And then Christians who find themselves in similar circumstances are there because they have lost the sight of long -term goals of Scripture.

I'm not saying that the believer can get as bad as the non -believer, but they can closely approximate it if they take their eyes off of Christ.

And that's where biblical counseling really comes in and why we're going through these presuppositions.

They need to be reminded of the promises of God as related in the

Scriptures. If you systematically go through the

Scriptures and look at all the promises of God to the one who trusts in Christ, how can you possibly live in despair?

And so that's where you want to take them. And there's a number one goal, and we'll get to that in a few moments.

A nervous breakdown is similar to depression, but not exactly the same.

They're related. They're like first cousins. A depressed person has given up, and his attitude is, what's the use?

What's the use? Has anybody ever seen a video that Bette Midler put out?

She sits there and she just goes, she's going through all the circumstances of her life, and after each one she says, why bother?

Has anybody ever seen that? Who's Bette Midler?

Oh my goodness. Okay, never, well, anyway.

They get to the point, the attitude is, what's the use? In other words, there's no use, there's no meaning.

What's the meaning of it all? There is no meaning. Whereas the person's attitude who suffers a nervous breakdown is, what can

I do? Like you can see, they're closely related, but slightly different. A nervous breakdown can lead to depression if not addressed and not handled properly.

In both circumstances, the person needs hope, and that's the point that I've been driving towards.

The very next principle here is hope. Hope is one of the most important elements of biblical counseling, one of the first goals of a counselor.

And again, this is, if you're not planning on counseling or whatnot, this is something that you can use even for yourself, for your family, and for your friends if somebody's going through a tough time.

Most important thing, when somebody walks through the door of my study for counseling, within that first session, one of the first things

I'm going to offer them is show them the hope they have in Christ. Because without hope, you're going to get nowhere.

Hope is closely related to meaning or purpose. One of the best ways to show, especially the believer, to show the believer that he has hope is to go through the scripture and show that life has meaning.

We didn't come from some primordial ooze and developed into the being we are.

We are, even as fallen man, we are all image bearers of Christ, image bearers of God.

We have been put on this planet for a purpose. And finding that purpose in the scriptures is one of the best ways to give the person hope.

1 Corinthians 13 reveals a close relationship between faith, hope, and love.

And it's important to think that everybody's familiar with 1

Corinthians 13. It's often called the love chapter. But it's really much more than the love chapter.

It's the best exposition of love, the elements of love. But it also shows the close relationship between faith, hope, and love.

This, I think, is a pretty good explanation of it. One day faith will turn to sight. You're not going to need faith in eternity.

Why? Because you're going to see him. Hope will blend into reality. You're not going to hope for something that you already have.

But love will continue through eternity. So there is a relationship between faith, hope, and love.

And that should be part of your counseling and part of the way we think as believers. Even though hope will fade into reality in the afterlife, in this life, hope is an essential element of the

Christian life. You cannot live without hope as a Christian. Hope gives the person endurance during the difficulty of early failures.

When you're counseling, remember, in fact, let me just back up for a second. Remember how we've described what biblical counseling is.

Biblical counseling is an element of Christian discipleship.

But it's crisis discipleship. When somebody comes for counseling, it's because something is wrong.

They're either in sin or they've lost their way, and they've strayed from the path, and they lose hope.

And that's why one of the first things that we want to do is give them hope. Hope will give them when they look at the promises of God and see what

God has promised them as believers. Like, one of the best ways to give hope is, especially in the church today, one of the things that is missing is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

Most Baptists believe in what they just call an eternal security, you know, once saved, always saved. But they don't hook it in with the biblical teaching on how do

I know that I'm assured, which is what we're going through in 1 John. When you see that you can't lose your salvation, and no matter what you've done, there's always a road back from it.

That's the hope that many people need. And I like the way

Chris Arnton signs off his radio show every day. He says, remember,

Jesus Christ is a greater Savior than you are a sinner. You can't out -sin Christ.

No matter how much you sin, He can forgive you. So it's giving them hope.

Hope overcomes the awkwardness of newly changed habit patterns. When a person is confronted with Christ, and they're either born again or they've repented of their sin if they're already a believer, and they're walking in the newness of life, it's somewhat awkward.

To go back into your workplace, for example, where people know you as a good old boy, a great sinner, and now all of a sudden you're a goody two -shoes.

The hope that we have in Christ will get us through those awkward times. According to Scripture, hope is a confident expectation.

Biblical hope is hope only in the sense that it hasn't become a reality as yet, but it's a guarantee it will come to fruition.

Everything that you hope for as a believer, according to the Scriptures, will come true.

That's why we call it a confident expectation. Now, we've already learned that an essential characteristic of the counselor is that he must love people.

Accompanying love, the counselor must also be a man or a woman of hope. The counselor's love of people will avail little if he cannot give them hope.

I say that word a lot, don't I, hope? Any idea why?

You're a MET fan? No. I like it.

I like it. But unfortunately, the hope I have in the METs is not a biblical hope.

As much as I hope for them to win the World Series, it's not a guarantee by any stretch.

I had something a little bit different in mind, but I appreciate the pause.

What's the name of the church? This church was named very specifically.

We didn't just pull out, oh, hope sounds good. We've only got room for four letters on the sign. No. No, we chose the name hope because as we were preparing to found this church, the families that were involved, we looked around and said, what's the biggest need?

And we looked and said, we live in a society without hope. And so we decided that let's put it right in the name,

Hope Reformed Baptist Church. So it's there. So that's why one of the reasons that we focus a lot, you'll hear that word a lot in sermons and in teaching because it's so important.

Hope rests on the unalterable fact that God is faithful and will always fulfill his promises.

That's a biblical hope. And yes, I wish the meds did have a biblical hope.

But, alas, this hope based upon the faithfulness of God gives the counselor enthusiasm, conviction, and assurance when emphasizing the possibility of change in the person.

And that's one of the very first things you do, whether you're doing it in a strictly counseling situation or just speaking to one of your friends who's going through a tough time.

The hope that you have can be contagious if they see you enthused and you have a conviction and the assurance that you have that all the promises of God will be fulfilled.

That's infectious. And you can transfer that to somebody else. Everyone needs hope.

And if a Christian loses hope, he can very easily fall into the sin of despair and make no mistake, for a

Christian to be in despair is sin. Why would I say that? Why would we say that it's a sin for a

Christian to be in despair? You're denying what the

Lord has said. Yeah, it's a lack of faith, a lack of hope, and it's a lack of believing the promises that God has made.

And the one promise in particular, we looked at it last week, was that God causes all things to work together for good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose.

So no matter what you're in, what despair that you're in, you don't have to worry because God is going to turn it around for his glory and for your good.

Remember, the twofold hope of the gospel, and this is important. First, and this is what everybody looks forward to, eternity with God in heaven, however you view that, and abundant life now on earth,

John 10 .10. Jesus said, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I need to say it.

I know most of you don't hold that view. This is not what the word of faith people talk about, that this means having money and big cars and your own airplane.

No. The abundant life is having life to the fullness of the joy of the

Lord, and that's what he's talking about, abundant life now. Some of the happiest and most joyful and most fulfilled people in the world have nothing but to have

Christ. They may live in a little shack, and it doesn't make any difference because they know their future is with Christ.

While everyone needs hope, there are certain people who especially need it. And I've given you a list here just to give you an idea that there are certain people who, if you're ever going to deal with them, and in a church context, you will deal with most people that are going to be on this list, and so we'll go through it.

Those with longstanding problems, those who have serious issues coming maybe from how they were raised, their childhood falling into a life of sin, those who have longstanding problems, they have a tendency to lose hope.

Like, well, there's no help for me, there's no hope for me. And so hope is one of the first things you want to give them.

Those with particularly difficult problems, there's different degrees of problems.

Some problems are easy, others are very difficult, and those with difficult problems need to be reassured that there is hope for them.

Those who have been given false solutions to their problems in the past, maybe they were at a

Word of Faith church, and they have a physical ailment, and their promise was that you're going to be healed of this.

Just come in and give me $5 ,000, and I'll heal you. You know? And they can move towards despair.

Those who are fearful, if somebody is afraid, they need hope.

Those with dashed hopes, those who had big aspirations, and everything, life came crashing down around them, they need hope.

Those who have tried to solve their problems and have failed, they need hope. They need to be shown the right way to solve their problems, but that there is still hope even after failure.

Older people, don't look at me like that. Yes, older people can, as the effects of age starts to wear on them, they can lose hope.

Those who are depressed, that's obvious. Those who are suicidal, most suicidal people are those who have lost hope.

Those who have experienced life -shattering experiences. And then the last one, of course, is kind of like a catch -all, but it's true, those without Christ.

If they're without Christ, they have no hope. The Bible has the answers to each and every one of life's problems, and that's something that you need to get drilled into your heads, is that there is no situation in life that the

Bible does not address and have the answers for. Two important facts to keep in mind in line with giving them hope.

People need meaning in life. That's one of the greatest ways to give them hope, is to show them biblically that there is meaning to their life.

And they need hope for the future. They need hope for life now, but also for the future.

Next point is prayer, which is the base for Christian counseling. If hope is one of the most essential ingredients, and the

Word of God is the basis for that hope, the base for Christian counseling is prayer.

Prayer is an essential part of the work of counseling. I think I might have told this story before of a woman who was sent to me for counseling.

She had been going to, quote, a Christian counseling center at a large church here on Long Island.

And as I started talking to her, she was relating to me the situation that she was facing, and I wanted to ask her some questions about the previous counseling she had because a lot of times when somebody's been to, not necessarily a biblical counselor, you have to undo some of the things that have already taken place.

And so I asked her, I said, all right, well, what portions of the Word of God did the counselor have you read?

Oh, we didn't use the Bible in the counseling. I said, well, all right, how about this, you know, have you prayed, did the counselor pray with you about these issues?

Oh, no, we never prayed. You didn't open in prayer and close in prayer? No. How can that be called

Christian counseling? Prayer is an absolute essential part of the work of counseling.

The counselor must pray for himself and for the people that he's counseling. It could be argued that prayer is the essential element in the

Christian counselor because if you ever think, if you ever get to the point where you say, well, I know the

Bible, I've got this, I know the answers, anybody come in and I know the answer to the problem, think again.

While the Bible has all the answers, problems can come in different forms.

And so one of the things that I pray for all the time when I know I have a counseling session coming, I pray for wisdom from above to discern what the problem is and that the

Holy Spirit would guide me into the right portions of Scripture to answer the questions. I never take for granted, well,

I've seen it all. No matter how much you've seen, you've never seen it all, believe me.

Therefore, prayer must be a part of the counseling session. If it's not part of the counseling sessions, it's not

Christian counseling. And there are two specific dangers to avoid concerning prayer.

I'm not going through a lot of time with prayer only because we've gone through it so many times, both from the pulpit and from the teaching section here.

So we're just highlighting some of the things particularly pertaining to counseling. Two specific dangers to avoid concerning prayer and counseling.

Forcing the person to pray. You want them to get to the point of praying, but don't force them.

You don't ever want to force anybody to do anything in the counseling. You can get them to do it and it's superficial and relatively meaningless.

Second thing is hesitating to pray. You may have some nonbelievers that have been sent to you.

Don't change the way you counsel because they're nonbelievers. They're coming to you for a reason.

If they had the right answers, they wouldn't be coming to you. So don't hesitate to pray.

If a person is hesitant to pray, encouraging them to pray at home might be helpful.

In other words, it takes wisdom. We're dealing with broken people. And remember, one of the hallmarks of biblical counseling is love.

And we want to do what is best for the people, so we encourage them. We move them along.

We don't try to herd them like a cattle rancher. There are two more dangers to avoid concerning prayer in counseling.

That's the counselor cannot depend upon prayer alone. There is study of the

Word of God. Changing sinful habit patterns requires work on the part of the person and the counselor.

Prayer is essential, but not prayer alone. And second, prayer must be accompanied by work.

Work both on the part of the person who is the counselee, and the counselor must do his work in looking up the right verses and knowing how to apply the

Scripture to the particular circumstance. And then lastly, don't turn prayer into a pity party.

Prayer is for a function, for a reason. And that's why we've spent all types of time in prayer, from the pulpit talking about...

In fact, I just admonished... It was a couple of weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago, and I said, go through the

Scriptures. Look at the prayers of Paul. You want to learn how to pray? Look at the prayers of Scripture and see how to pray.

Questions? Yes, Brian. More so an observation, but it was really that last part, you know, not depending on prayer alone.

I think they asked Spurgeon one time, is it more important to read or to pray, or is it more important to breathe in or breathe out?

And, you know, I say that they go hand in hand. And so, yeah. Yeah. I remember hearing a pastor or a preacher or something saying how with counseling, he wasn't going to do counseling anymore.

He was just going to teach people how to pray. It sounded very spiritual, very pietistic, and very stupid.

Very anti -biblical. Yeah. Paul encourages, I know you

Romans are able to confront one another in love. Any other thoughts?

You see what I mean, how you can take all of these principles and just apply it to your own family, just apply it to your own life, your own relationships.

And if you get good at it then, then you can become a counselor. Okay. Ryan, would you close us in a word of prayer?