Biblical Counseling and Discouragement BCC Partner Ministry Resource July 2016
About This Resource BCC Staff Note: The materials contained in this document have been posted at the Biblical Counseling Coalition s Grace & Truth blog site. Each one, in various ways, relates to the theme of discouragement from living in a fallen world. You will find strength and hope for the counselor as well as for the counselee. We describe the BCC s Grace & Truth blog as Voices from the Biblical Counseling Community. The modern biblical counseling movement spans a diverse spectrum of people and organizations committed to a view of people helping summarized by the Biblical Counseling Coalition s Confessional Statement. It is with this diversity in mind that we have collated these resources into one document exclusively for our BCC Partners. Usage/Quoting/Permission We encourage you to make use of this document. We would ask that whenever quoting from this document, you state: The following materials are used with permission of the Biblical Counseling Coalition and are taken from their collated BCC Partner E-Source Connection Resource, April 2016. If you use the embedded links and then quote directly from the original post, please include the following: The following materials are used with permission of the Biblical Counseling Coalition and are taken from (add the title of the blog post, the author, and the URL). Table of Contents Dear Counselor: Don t Grow Weary by Deepak Reju Where s God? Counsel for the Sick and Dying by Adam Embry Pastor, Why Should I Keep Trusting God? by Sam Hodges There Still are Reasons for Hope by Jeffery Forrey
Dear Counselor: Don t Grow Weary By Deepak Reju You re a counselor and you ve got a lot of difficult situations to handle. Life is not easy. Most of the time, your counseling load can be a lot to deal with bad marriages, eating disorders, guys trapped in pornography, workaholics, women abused by their fathers, and the list goes on and on. Like anyone else, you can be discouraged because change can be slow. Sometimes, really slow. Sometimes, impossibly slow. Like anyone else, you can be prone to discouragement. Is God really working? Am I doing anyone any good? Maybe I just shouldn t be doing this if no one gets better! Where is God in all of this? Being a counselor is like standing in a mud swamp, with other people s muck up to your ankles (maybe even your knees!). You live in the world of other people s burdens, and that can be really hard to endure day-to-day. Hopelessness is a deadly weapon of the evil one. No one neither counselor nor counselee can survive without hope. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (Prov. 13:12). God knows that you need daily doses of hope. As a counselor, you ve got a high tolerance for spiritual and emotional messiness, but no counselor can survive without hope. For those of you who are growing tired and weary, remember the words of the apostle Paul: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers (Gal. 6:9-10). You would do well to recall those times God gives you a situation which changes right before your eyes. You re reminded that God s truth really can change lives. You re encouraged to see someone s life revitalized and their hope restored. You re thrilled to be used as an instrument of God s grace. It reminds you why you became a biblical counselor in the first place to help people see and know the love of Christ.
Where s God? Counsel for the Sick and Dying By Adam Embry You step off the elevator as nurses pushing beds and doctors reading clipboards whiz by. Then you find the room around the corner, quietly greet the nurse as she exits, and see your church member in her hospital bed staring out the window into the grey skies. Where s God? I m glad you re here, pastor, she tells you, but where s God? What counsel will you offer in response? You only have several precious moments to give an answer, so you look for the chair in the corner and push it near the bed. She turns to look at you with tears in her eyes. Why me? she asks. It shouldn t end this way. Will God heal me? she pleads. The seconds are passing by as she waits for your response. What hope will you offer? I believe Psalm 103 provides several truths that remind the sick and the dying that God has not forgotten them. There is hope for sick and dying Christians. God will be good to them (verses 1-5). God will remember them (verses 6-14), because He never waivers in his covenant promises to them (verses 15-19). God will be praised through them (verses 20-22). God Will Be Good to You You hear plenty about health-care challenges these days from government legislation to health care provider changes since they are regularly in the news. However, having God s benefits in view is what controls the psalmist's heart. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, David tells himself (verse 2). The benefit of healing is on David s mind. Bless the Lord... who heals all your diseases (verse 3). God heals us. Though we get sick, God is still good. In David s mind the focus isn t on the theological relationship between sin and sickness (that is, the impact of original sin), but on God who satisfies with goodness those who have sinned and those who are sick (verse 5). This is exactly what sick and dying believers need to hear: God is good and brings healing. God has promised to heal and restore their frail bodies whether healing comes in this life or the next. Healing may be temporary now in this life, but it will be permanent in the next.
That s hope that endures. Remind your sheep that we have a greater hope of receiving imperishable bodies no matter what happens now (1 Corinthians 15:54). One day we will live in a new, whole, pain-free body. God will heal them. God will be good to them. God Will Remember You Sick and dying believers can have moments of doubt, wondering where God is in the midst of their suffering. Their thoughts turn toward Him. Yet they wonder if His thoughts are turned toward them. Good pastoral counseling will assure sick and dying believers that God does have them in His thoughts. For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust (verse 14). How else does God act toward us? He always does what is right (verse 6). He is the covenant Lord who has promised to be merciful and gracious (verse 8). In between verses 6 and 8 is a statement about God's loving actions to His people in history. God has bound Himself to His people covenantally, so He surely will remember them. He is no longer angry toward His people (verses 9, 10, 12). His covenant love is always directed toward them (verse 11). He acts as a loving, compassionate Father toward His children (verse 13). These are beautiful realities that God exhibits toward all believers, even the sick who know all too well that they really are frail as dust (verse 14). Helpful biblical counseling communicates that God always remembers His people. He knows what they re going through and does not forget about them. He always has loving thoughts toward them. God Will Never Change The contrast between the fact that we re finite, weak creatures and the fact that we have an infinite, powerful God is never more apparent than when we re sick or on the brink of death. Life is changing fast for the person in the hospital bed. Nurses and doctors change every shift. Day changes into night and night into day, blurring the sick person s daily schedule and routine. One day life was well and ordered; the next day life was dark with sickness and chaos. The psalmist knows how great the contrast is between our human frailty and God s greatness, so he turns to this contrast in verses 14-19. This contrast, however, doesn t bring despair. It brings him comfort. In light of eternity, we last as long as a blade of grass or a flower, growing upward and green most the year, only to fade under the frightfulness of winter (verses 15-16). Yet God lasts forever and never changes (verse 17). His loving, covenant faithfulness never ends toward those who love and obey Him (verse 18). His kingdom endures forever (verse 19). God s eternal nature and existence is a source of comfort for sick and suffering believers. God Will Be Praised through You
The final part of Psalm 103 ends with praise to God (verses 20-22). All of His creation angels, servants, and creation itself will praise Him. God s benefits bring about praise. The fact that He knows and remembers us is a cause for praise. His unchanging nature is a reason for praise. The sick and dying often need such a reorientation to the psalmist s God-centered perspective; they need to believe once again that God is working all things according to His will, a will that is motivated by grace and love for us (Ephesians 1:5-6). Psalm 103 helps us reorient sick and dying saints toward the God who is present. It helps us provide wise and tender pastoral counsel.
Pastor, Why Should I Keep Trusting God? by Sam Hodges God is like an elevator; He lets people down at least that s what many people I ve met would say. As I ve created curricula to help suffering people, I ve interviewed a number of people who ve lost loved ones, people who have been betrayed by lovers, people who have been misunderstood, misrepresented, and mistreated in dozens of ways. And I ve noticed that quite a few of them have felt let down by the promises of Scripture. Take Amy, whose father passed away. She told me: I felt like God had betrayed me. Everything I had believed up to that point about God and what He could do and how powerful He was, I felt like was a lie. So I became angry, and I didn t want to be in a relationship with God if He was not going to live up to the promises that I felt He had made to me. How do we keep people from getting to the point that they feel like their faith has failed them or those who are angry with God? Here are four suggestions. 1. Give Nuanced Descriptions of the Christian Experience When we talk about the nature and benefits of faith, peace, hope, joy, etc., don t give the impression that there is a level of Christian living in which people are no longer affected by sin and suffering. Give people a picture of what it looks like to live under the influence of the Holy Spirit in a fallen world, particularly in the midst of suffering. Dr. Edward Welch gives such a description of faith: It s a myth for us to say that faith simply is happiness, that faith is somehow a lighthearted confidence in God. Faith, true faith, is expressed in the shadows, in this valley of the shadow of death when we can t see our God clearly and we say, Lord, I trust You, but help me to trust You because the loss still feels like it s going to overwhelm me. 1 Notice how Dr. Welch s description of faith allows people to see that feeling overwhelmed doesn t mean that faith isn t present. 2. Remind People Where We Are in Redemptive History Helping people remember where we stand in redemptive history is another way to keep them from having unrealistic expectations about the Christian experience. Dr. Robert Jones puts it this way: Do we mean that if we read, believe, and do all that the Bible says, then all our personal
problems and relationship problems in this life will be fixed? No. Those who have been traumatized in their childhood might continue to struggle with some level of fear throughout their adult years. Those who have been sexually active in sinful ways might continue to struggle with measures of lust. Those who are inclined toward depression might continue to battle various degrees of depression. Only the second coming of Christ and the work of the triune God in His final stages of redemption will fix all our human problems. 2 Not only is it important for those who suffer to understand Dr. Jones s point, lay leaders in the church need to know it too. It s painful to be cared for by someone who thinks your anguish or struggle is purely a result of spiritual immaturity. And if your leaders think that bliss is possible in this life, even if they don t verbalize it, they ll wonder why those they try to help don t get it or don t lean into the promises of God or don t have more faith. As a result they ll come off as patronizing and insensitive caregivers. 3. Help People See the Benefits of God s Sovereignty One of the chief questions people have in the midst of a tragedy is, If God is in control, how can He allow something like this to happen? Unable to answer that, some people have difficulty trusting God or they turn away from Him. But, as Dr. Stephen Viars points out, if a person has trouble trusting in the sovereign God revealed in Scripture, he needs to consider what he plans to place his trust in moving forward: During a time of grief we all have to decide what we re going to trust in. If we [decide] that God is not sovereign, where does that leave us? We could trust in circumstances. Or we could trust in our own ability to make things better. But that s a pretty weak philosophy when you take it out to the future. 3 Phil Sasser, senior pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Apex, NC, further explains why such a position is hopeless: If God were not all-powerful, there would be no guarantee that justice would ultimately prevail [or] that evil would ever be vanquished. There [would be] no reason to expect that death would ever go away, so if a person denies the sovereignty of God, first of all, it s not biblical, and second, he s saying evil might yet win. 4 Helping people think through these issues can help them trust God s plan for the future. While the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is challenging, it s ultimately a source of great hope. 4. Encourage Lament When people are in the midst of suffering, they quickly realize there are ways that they want to express themselves that don t look, sound, or feel like joy. That s why it s important to help people to understand that God encourages them to lament. Michael Card describes lament as a difficult conversation that we have with God when we are sorrowful, or when we are angry, or when we are confused. 5 There are three reasons we can encourage people to lament:
1. The Psalms are full of examples of lamenting. 2. Jesus lamented in the garden of Gethsemane. 3. Lamenting is an expression of faith. How is Lament an Expression of Faith? The first two points are easy to understand. But the last one? Dr. Stephen Viars explains: When I bring my questions and even my complaints to the Lord, that s not a bad thing. That s actually an expression of faith, because I m saying that I believe God has answers to life s insoluble problems. You don t complain to a person at the store who you think can t do anything about it. You say, I want to talk to the manager. Why is that? Because you re convinced the manager can solve the problem. In a lament, that s what we re saying: We want to talk to the manager. 6 The Benefits of Lamenting When we let people know that they have the freedom to lament and that it s normal to do so they won t feel as conflicted when they lament in respond to their confusion, doubts, and fears. Take Anne, whose brother John suddenly died from pneumonia and who initially struggled with thoughts and feelings that she felt were not befitting of a Christian. Anne wondered what people would think about her if they knew she was constantly sobbing, wrestling with what if questions, confusion, and anger, and questioning the Lord. Anne described her concern that was layered on top of her grief: I had a sense that I am a Christian; I have the joy of the Lord; He s always with me, and I have all of His promises. And wham, now I m hit with something that rocks my world. Do I still have the joy of the Lord? Are people going to see my struggle and think that my faith isn t really real? I finally came to the realization that this is where I am. God deals with reality. Anne recalled, Through this process of grief, I did learn that I could go to God with things that I was not proud of, things that I would have thought, I can never say that to God, with my anger, my disappointment, my confusion. Over time, Anne realized that she had no right to accuse God of wrong, and she repented of that. Guidelines for Lamenting Make sure people have good theology. There s a direct correlation between the benefits of one s lamenting and his or her view of God. Lamenting is an intense conversation with God. But if a person holds deficient views about who God is, those conversations aren t going to be helpful. We need to make sure people have a solid understanding of who God is. Encourage people to complain, not curse. This reminder comes from Dr. Bob
Kellemen, author of God s Healing for Life s Losses. For Dr. Kellemen, biblical complaint is synonymous with lament. Cursing is its evil twin. Here is a chart summarizing the distinctions he makes between the two: Lamenting is not pleasant, but living in a fallen world cannot always pleasant. We will be regularly reminded that this world is not our home. This is why lamenting, properly done, is an act of faith. We trust that God hears our pleas and that he will respond in accordance with his plan to renovate the world to be the home of righteousness forever.
There Still Are Reasons for Hope by Jeffery S. Forrey NOTE TO COUNSELORS: This worksheet is designed to help discouraged counselees rediscover the hope that is theirs in Christ (Eph. 1:12). You can work through these exercises in sessions together and/or use them as homework assignments. The overall goal is to help your counselees have their minds reoriented toward the promises of God--promises that secure the eternal blessings of God for them. PART 1: What is hope according to the Scriptures? Instructions: Below are three sets of passages. For each set of passages, do the following: (1) Read each passage in the set and write, in your own words, what each passage says about hope. There may be some repeated ideas. Be sure to look for what each passage says that is unique. (2) After each set, write a sentence or two that summarizes what the passages as a whole in each set are teaching about biblical hope. A. Set #1 (four passages) 1. Psalm 130:5: 2. Jeremiah 29:10, 11:
3. Lamentations 3:19-23, 25, 27-29, 31, 32: 4. Romans 4:18-21: Your summary sentence for set #1:
B. Set #2 (two passages) 1. Romans 8:18, 19, 23-25: 2. 1 John 3:2, 3:
Your summary sentence for set #2: C. Set #3 (three passages) 1. Romans 5:3-5: 2. 2 Corinthians 4:1, 2, 16-18:
3. 1 Peter 1:3, 4, 6, 7: Your summary sentence for set #3: PART 2: What causes hopelessness? Instructions: Below are four possible causes of hopelessness. First, review the passages above and assign any that apply to each of these causes of hopelessness. Second, put a check mark in front of those that are part of your experience of hopelessness. A. People grow hopeless when they do not know God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture. Relevant passages from above:
B. People grow hopeless when they ignore or misunderstand God s promises. Relevant passages from above: C. People grow hopeless when they impose their timeframe on God s fulfillment of His promises. Relevant passages from above: D. People grow hopeless when they become more concerned about their present happiness/comfort than living for the glory of God. Relevant passages from above: PART 3: What prompts hope in God s people? Instructions: Below are four activities that can prompt hope in your heart. Put a check mark in front of those that you need help with. Then jot down one or two specific experiences in which the particular activity (or activities) probably would have been helpful. This will be a basis for
further discussion with a mentor. 1 A. Meditating on specific characteristics of God as revealed in Scripture and in people s lives. Experience(s) in which this would have been helpful: B. Remembering specific promises of God s promises that apply to you as His beloved child. Experience(s) in which this would have been helpful: 1 A mentor is a mature Christian who knows the Scriptures well and is committed to helping you grow in your relationship with the Lord.
C. Reflecting on God s eternal timeframe for His plan in your life. Experience(s) in which this would have been helpful: D. Choosing to live for God s glory alone as your purpose for existing. Experience(s) in which this would have been helpful: