5 Biblical Counseling Sustaining Skills: GRACE, Part 3

Note: I’ve developed the follow post from my book Spiritual Friends. In Part 1 and Part 2, I introduced Grace Connecting. In this blog mini-series, we’ll learn five biblical counseling and one-another skills of sustaining by using the acronym GRACE. 

• G—Grace Connecting: Proverbs 27:6

• R—Rich Soul Empathizing: Romans 12:15

• A—Accurate/Active Spiritual Listening: John 2:23-4:43

• C—Caring Spiritual Conversations: Ephesians 4:29

• E—Empathetic Scriptural Explorations: Isaiah 61:1-3

Rich Soul Empathizing: Climbing in the Casket—Romans 12:15

Biblical empathy is the ability to sense your spiritual friend’s suffering and communicate that “it’s normal to hurt.” Picture soul empathy with the phrase “climbing in the casket.” Many biblical passages urge rich soul empathizing:

• Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15).

• If one part suffers, every part suffers with it (1 Corinthians 12:26).

• . . . who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:4).

• Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted (Hebrews 2:18).

• For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16).

• In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will (Romans 8:26-27).

Empathy, like connecting, is incarnational. Jesus entered our story (Hebrews 2; John 1). He is not only the Author of our story; He is in our story.

Empathy means to suffer along with another, to suffer in the soul of another. It involves feeling yourself into or participating in the inner world of another person while remaining yourself. Through empathy, you see your spiritual friends’ world through their eyes as if their world was your own. You seek to understand their inner and outer world from their perspective.

You can picture empathy as placing yourself in the role as a lead character in Becky and Alonzo’s stories. They are the lead characters in their stories; you are their friend, their protagonist. You are no longer simply a reader of their stories; you participate with them in their stories.

How Not to Empathize with the Soul: Slamming the Casket Shut—Job’s Miserable Counselors

If empathizing is climbing in the casket, then slamming the casket shut pictures its opposite. A return to Job’s miserable “comforters” pictures how not to practice soul empathy.

1. Eliphaz: Job 4-5, 15, and 22 

Eliphaz is the master of discouragement and dismay. He provides Job with conditional love while he curses God. Eliphaz teaches that God is good to the good, but bad to the bad. He does not know grace. He does know works: “You can manipulate God into being good to you by being good to him.” What a petty God Eliphaz worships. Eliphaz says to Job, “Don’t live coram Deo. Don’t tell God your heart. Be surface.” He misinterprets Job’s words as venting rage at God rather than soul-sharing with God.

2. Bildad: Job 8, 18, and 25

Bildad has a somewhat right theology with very wrong application. “The issue is your sin!” Seeing only sin, he is wrong in Job’s case. For God, the issue was Job’s response to him in his suffering. The issue was Job’s privileged opportunity to be a universal witness to God’s goodness. The issue was not Job’s sinfulness. Bildad does not know the man he calls “friend.” He labels (and libels) Job “the evil man who knows not God.”

3. Zophar: Job 11 and 20 

Zophar also presents a works righteousness. He believes that good works can cover shame.

4. Job’s View: Miserable Comforters 

How does Job view their counsel? He longs for the devotion of his friends (6:14), which they aren’t. He calls them undependable brothers (6:15), which they are. They can’t handle Job’s doubts, treating the words of a despairing man as wind (6:26). He feels they say, “Forget it! Smile!” However, “Don’t worry; be happy,” does not cut it for Job. His dread remains. “If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will change my expression, and smile,’ I still dread all my sufferings, for I know you will not hold me innocent” (Job 9:27-28). He experiences their total lack of empathy. “Men at ease have contempt for misfortunate” (Job 12:5).

Miserable comforters (Job 16:2) they are. Rather than communicating that “it’s normal to hurt,” they increase Job’s hurt. Having no compassionate discernment, they claim that his wounds are self-inflicted. “How we will hound him, since the root of the trouble lies in him” (Job 19:28). They crush Job’s spirit through their long-winded speeches, argumentative nature, lack of empathy and encouragement, failure to bring relief/comfort, and their closed-minded, arrogant, superior, hostile attitudes based upon wrong motives and a condemning spirit (Job 17:1-5).

Of them, Job concludes, “These men turn night into day; in the face of darkness they say, ‘Light is near’” (Job 17:12). They are like the counselor who says, “Don’t talk about your problems, don’t think about your suffering, and don’t remember your past hurts. Forget those things which are behind!” They have no night vision, no 20/20 spiritual vision, and no long-distance vision; so they have to call the darkness light. Job, however, has long-distance vision. His heart yearns for God and he knows that he will see God (Job 19:25-27).

Job feels no rapport with them. “They torment me, crush me with words. I sense their reproach as they shame me. They exalt themselves. I feel so alone when I am with them. So alienated and forgotten. Here’s how my ‘spiritual friends’ make me feel: alienated, estranged, forgotten, offensive, loathsome. All my intimate friends detest me; they have turned against me, having no pity on me” (author’s paraphrase of Job 19).

They are unwise. They offer nonsense answers because they’re not paying attention to life, not learning life’s lessons. “You have not wisely paid attention to how things work in the real world. Your academic knowledge, your theologizing, is out to lunch. How can you console/comfort me with your vain nonsense, since your answers are falsehood? You are wrong about life, about me, and about God!” (author’s paraphrase of Job 21).

They are “sin-spotters.” They know confrontation only. Thus, they become co-conspirators with Satan the accuser who condemns men and curses God.

5. God’s View

What was God’s view of their counsel? After speaking to Job, Yahweh says to Eliphaz. “I am angry with you and your two friends because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). They failed to speak of God’s generous goodness and grace. Their God was a tit-for-tat God who could be easily manipulated by and impressed with works.

Our greatest failure in counseling arises when we speak wrongly of God while we speak to one another. 

The Rest of the Story 

Return for Part 4 where we learn How to Empathize with the Soul.

Join the Conversation 

What additional examples of non-empathy would you add?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth 

5 Biblical Counseling Sustaining Skills: GRACE, Part 2

Note: I’ve developed the follow post from my book Spiritual Friends. In Part 1 we introduced Grace Connecting. We continue to explore Grace Connecting today.

Building a Connected Spiritual Friendship: Galatians 6:1

How do you develop connected relationships? Exploring how not to develop grace relationships begins to answer that question.

How Not to Build Grace Connections: Job 16:2 

Job accused his “friends” of being “miserable comforters.” The word “miserable” means troublesome, vexing, and sorrow-causing. They were the opposite of “comforters”—they were not consoling, sympathetic; they did not feel deeply Job’s hurt. They never said or conveyed in any way, “It’s normal to hurt.”

Instead of grace connecting, they practiced condemning distancing. Read the verses below and notice examples of their poor relational abilities flowing out of their poor theology (Job 42:7) and their cold hearts:

1. Superiority: Job 5:8; 8:2; 11:2-12; 12:1-3; 15:7-17

“We’re better than you. You’re inferior to us.”

2. Judgmentalism: Job 4:4-9; 15:2-6

“It’s not normal to hurt! Your suffering is due to your sinning!”

3. Advice without Insight/Discernment: Job 5:8; 8:5-6; 11:13-20; 42:7 

“Here’s what I would do if I were you.” “Do this and life’s complexities will melt away.” “I have the secret that will fix your situation.” They offered quick, trite advice. They were rescuers, answer men, and cliché makers.

How to Build Grace Connections: Galatians 6:1-3

Remember that connecting is a commitment to love another person. It is compassionate discernment in action. It is not a technique to be mastered, but a way of life to be nurtured by personal communion with Christ. Communion with Christ leads to connection with others.

Galatians 6:1-3, in the context of Paul’s discussion of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, exposes how to build grace relationships.

1. Loving Motivation: “You who are spiritual.”

The fruit of the Spirit characterizes effective spiritual friends. The Holy Spirit is the Comforter who comes alongside to help in time of need. In the Spirit’s power, you are to be a friend acting in the best interest of your friend. You’re a friend acting on behalf of another, interceding for, defending, and advocating. You’re an encourager standing up for, standing behind, standing with, and standing back-to-back and alongside your spiritual friend. The “spiritual” person is like a coach who has been in the game, lost, struck out, but has some game experience that sure does help.

2. Intimate Friendship/Knowledge: “Brothers.” 

Spiritual friendship requires intimate family relationship. “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Proverbs 17:17). “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Picture best friends hiking a mountain. One has been there before, so she’s the guide who has found a few good routes and gladly shares them with her best friend.

Evaluation forms from folks who have been “counseled” by lay encouragers express this sense of intimate friendship. “Even though we had never met before, our times were like two friends walking together.” “I could feel your concern; we were on the same level.” “You accepted me. You didn’t scold me like a Mom, but were honest like a friend.”

3. Communicating Equality: “But watch yourself or you also may be tempted.” “Restore gently.” 

Gentleness looks like a tamed stallion, strength under control, firm compassion, mature self-control, and power and love mingled through wisdom. Christ labels himself “gentle” in Matthew 11:29, saying that unlike the Pharisees who were sin-spotters and burden-givers, he was Rest-Giver and Sin-Bearer.

“Watch” (Galatians 6:1) is the Greek word skopon from which we gain our word “scope.” Put yourself under the microscope before examining your spiritual friend. As a grace connector, maintain a strong mental attention to your own potential temptability. Remain humble in spirit.

4. Demonstrated Commitment: “Restore.” “Carry each other’s burden.” 

Paul places “restore” in the present, continual tense. Maintain a patient persistence in mending, furnishing, equipping, and setting the dislocated member of the body back in place. Picture the marathon runner. “I love you for the long haul. I’m in this relationship for a lifetime.” Picture the physical therapist who brings her patient back to the place of health by pushing without being pushy.

Paul also describes the spiritual friend as a committed burden-bearer. “Carry each other’s burden” (Galatians 6:2). God calls you to pick up and help carry the weight that overwhelms your friend. “Weight” means anything pressing on people physically, emotionally, or spiritually that makes a demand on their resources. When your friend’s platelets are low, become a spiritual blood transfusion of grace. When your friend’s RPMs are slowing, become their energy conduit.

Carrying each other’s burdens is not optional, nor the domain of a few. “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Pastors can’t say, “I just want to preach from the pulpit,” not if they intend on fulfilling Christ’s law. Lay people can’t say, “That’s the pastor’s job,” not if they intend on obeying Christ’s law. Professional counselors can’t say, “I must maintain a professional distance,” not if they intend on living Christ’s law.

The Rest of the Story

In our next post in this mini-series, we’ll explore Rich Soul Empathy—Climbing in the Casket.

Join the Conversation 

Becky has just told you about her boss’s unwanted advances. You know of her past trust in him as a good Christian friend. You know something of Becky’s fear, her sense of betrayal, her concerns about telling her husband Jim (who also is a good friend to her boss). How would you provide grace connecting with Becky?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

It’s Supernatural to Mature

Note: This is the seventh and final post in a blog mini-series asking the simple question: Is there a biblical model for spiritual friendship, one-another ministry, biblical counseling, and pastoral counseling?

Read Part 1: Spiritual Map Quest, Part 2: God’s Treasure Map, Part 3: Biblical Soul Care for Suffering, Part 4: Climbing in the Casket, Part 5: Celebrating the Empty Tomb, and Part 6: Dispensers of Grace.

I’m summarizing these posts from Spiritual Friends.

God’s Biblical Counseling GPS # 4: Guiding—”It’s Supernatural to Mature”

Biblical counselors have the privilege of guiding believers to realize that it’s supernatural to mature. Our task is to guide faith by strengthening our spiritual friends to understand, depend upon, and apply Christ’s resurrection power.

We start the process by understanding new life in Christ—our new nature (regeneration) and our new nurture (reconciliation). We look inside our struggling spiritual friends and see the power of sainthood—a new creation in Christ, and the presence of sonship—a new relationship to God.

Growth in Grace: Stir Up the Gift of God

We enlighten our spiritual friends to the truth that God’s grace not only saved them for all eternity, but also changed them for life now. In Christ, they have everything necessary to live a godly life (2 Peter 1:3). Thus it is neither impossible to mature, nor is it natural to mature. Maturity is the supernatural work of God implanted in us at salvation and growing daily in sanctification (2 Corinthians 3:18; 2 Peter 1:3-11; 3:18). We grow in grace by grace because God is gracious.

We continue the guiding process by envisioning the work of God within our spiritual friends (2 Timothy 1:5-7; Hebrews 10:24-25). Paul realizes that he does not need to create spiritual power, love, and wisdom within his disciples. All he has to do is stir it up. Provoke it. Fan it into flame.

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline” (a sound mind, wisdom) (2 Timothy 1:6-7, emphasis and parenthesis added).

In fact, according to the author of Hebrews, one of the prime directives for Church life is mutual provocation.

“And let us consider how we may spur (provoke) one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25, emphasis and parenthesis added).

We draw out what God has already placed within.

The Goal of Guiding

Notice what we draw out—love. The goal of guiding is not to make life easier. The purpose of biblical spiritual direction is not to change circumstances. The focus is to equip and empower our spiritual friends to love—holy living through Christ-like loving.

Created for Paradise, our friends find themselves in a desert of suffering. Tempted to dig broken cisterns (self-sufficient idols of the heart and false lovers of the soul), they repent and receive Christ’s grace. Turning to God, they drink from the Spring of Living Water. Streams of living water overflow into the lives of others (John 7:37-39). Empowered by the Holy Spirit, our spiritual friends become shepherds in a jungle. In the jungle of fallen life in a fallen world, they exalt God by loving him and loving others.

God’s Roadmap; Our Treasure Map

God really has left us His roadmap, our treasure map. Discovering it, we uncover His plan for offering biblical soul care and spiritual direction through sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding.

How to, of course, does not imply easy to. It does not suggest a one-size-fits-all, mechanical, soulless process.

Consider sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding like the four points on a compass. They inform you what direction you are heading and what direction to head. However, there’s still the journey. The dance. The art of biblical soul care and spiritual direction (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

The Rest of the Story: Be Equipped with 22 Biblical Counseling Skills

To learn twenty-two biblical counseling skills of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding, visit RPM Ministries’ Spiritual Friends Page.

Join the Conversation

Who has stirred up the gift of God in you? Who has fanned into flame spiritual growth in your life?

What is your biblical model for spiritual friendship, one-another ministry, biblical counseling, and pastoral counseling?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Dispensers of Grace

Note: This is the sixth in a blog mini-series asking the simple question: Is there a biblical model for spiritual friendship, one-another ministry, biblical counseling, and pastoral counseling?

Read Part 1: Spiritual Map Quest, Part 2: God’s Treasure Map, Part 3: Biblical Soul Care for Suffering, Part 4: Climbing in the Casket, and Part 5: Celebrating the Empty Tomb.

I’m summarizing these posts from Spiritual Friends. 

God’s Roadmap Marker Number Two: Biblical Spiritual Direction (Noutheteo)

Recall that God’s roadmap, our treasure map, provides two directional markers: biblical soul care (parakleo) and biblical spiritual direction (noutheteo). The absence of either lens leaves our biblical counseling out of focus, distorted.

Some counselors focus only on the evils we have suffered: the damage done to us. They tend to ignore or minimize the sins we have committed: the damage we have done. Comprehensive biblical counselors, on the other hand, also focus on the truth that “God is gracious even when I am sinful.” They are disciplers who practice the ancient art of fraternal correction—concerned confrontation and challenge encouraging core heart change.

Biblical counselors understand spiritual dynamics and discern root causes of spiritual conflicts.

• They understand anthropology—God’s original design for the soul.

• They grasp sufferology—the effect of being sinned against in a fallen, hurtful world.

• They comprehend hamartiology—sin, our fallen nature, and the horrors of personal sin against God and others.

• They apprehend soteriology—salvation, sanctification, and the process of growth in grace.

Biblical counselors use their discernment to provide loving wisdom that reconciles and guides people. Their reconciliation and guiding emphasizes the same ultimate purpose of sustaining and healing—communion with Christ and conformity to Christ. They want to empower and equip people to fulfill the great commandment of loving God and loving others.

God’s Biblical Counseling GPS # 3: Reconciling—“It’s Horrible to Sin, but Wonderful to Be Forgiven”

Some counselors who focus on sin fail to focus on grace. They are quick to quip, “It’s horrible to sin.” But slow to grasp, “It’s wonderful to be forgiven.” We must focus on both.

Satan loves to foul and fool us. Even as regenerate believers with a new heart, Satan dupes us into believing that we are his slaves. He tempts us to curse God, condemn others, and experience contempt for ourselves. It requires tremendous biblical wisdom and personal discernment to sort through his pack of lies and cling to God’s Word of truth.

The truth is, it is horrible to sin. Sin alienates us from God, separates us from each other, and dis-integrates us from our own selves (Romans 1:18-32; Ephesians 2:1-3; 2:11-19; 4:17-32). Due to sin’s deceitfulness (Romans 7:11; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 4:17-20; Hebrews 3:13) we need spiritual friends. We need biblical counselors who can ask and answer the question raised in James 4:1. “What causes fights and quarrels among you?” Only biblical counselors like these can fulfill the ministry description provided in Hebrews 3:12-13.

“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”

We also need biblical counselors who can use the living Word of God to expose the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12-13), and to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness so that God’s people are equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

As biblical counselors, we are like the Puritans who practiced the art of loading the conscience with guilt. Like them, we know that to break the habitual web of sin’s deceit, people need to experience the horrors of their sin against God and others.

We also need to be like the Puritan soul physicians in practicing the art of lightening the conscience with grace. How sad that many counselors de-emphasize grace. It is wonderful to be forgiven. Forgiveness by grace is the dynamic God uses not only to cleanse our lives, but also to change our love. Christ woos us back to God by grace (Romans 2:4; 3:1-5:21; 1 John 4:7-20).

Dispensers of Grace

Christ calls biblical counselors to be dispensers of grace meeting human guilt with God’s grace and forgiveness. Grace is God’s medicine of choice for suffering and sin. Grace is God’s prescription for our disgrace.

Notice how the author of Hebrews exposes grace in the context of exposing sin. After exposing sin in Hebrews 3:12-13, he shifts to grace in 3:14. “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” We detect the same pattern in Hebrews 4:12-16. After discussing the power of the Word to expose evil in 4:12-13, he immediately focuses on grace in 4:14-16.

“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (emphasis added).

We expose our spiritual friends’ sins and Christ’s grace. We speak the truth in love to them, softening their hardened hearts. We invite them to drink from Jesus their Spring of Living Water who is the Friend of sinners—even of sinners who dig broken cisterns that can hold no water.

The Rest of the Story

I invite you to return for Part 7 where we learn about Biblical Counseling through Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Mature.”

Join the Conversation

Who has been a dispenser of grace in your life?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Celebrating the Empty Tomb

Note: This is the fifth in a blog mini-series asking the simple question: Is there a biblical model for spiritual friendship, one-another ministry, biblical counseling, and pastoral counseling?

Read Part 1: Spiritual Map Quest, Part 2: God’s Treasure Map, Part 3: Biblical Soul Care for Suffering, and Part 4: Climbing in the Casket. 

I’m summarizing these posts from Spiritual Friends.

God’s Biblical Counseling GPS # 2: Healing—“It’s Possible to Hope”

In sustaining, we said that we should not be ignorant of our friend’s earthly story of suffering. In healing, we are saying that neither should we be ignorant of God’s larger story of hope.

When we are ignorant of God’s story, then we allow Satan’s lying story to win the day. His story proclaims, “Curse God and die.” His story reads, “Life is bad and so is God. Life is bad because God doesn’t care about you.” Before our friends buy the lie, they need healing.

What if our friends do buy the lie? What if we leave them in the casket? They know we care, but that’s all they know. Sustaining faith is an awesome starting point, but an awful finish line. Notice how Paul moved from the casket of despair to the resurrection of hope.

“But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9b).

Like Paul, in healing we’re sharing the power of Christ’s resurrection.

We need to stretch our spiritual friends to God’s eternal story of hope. They need to know that “it’s possible to hope because God is good, even when life is bad.” We encourage our spiritual friends in the biblical sense of that word—to stir up courage to face life with God and for God.

We encourage through extensio animi ad magna—stretching the soul to great things. Soul stretching is necessary in the midst of suffering because when life stinks, our perspective shrinks. Created for Paradise, we find ourselves in a desert. Naturally, we’re parched, thirsty. In our thirst, Satan tempts us to forget to remember God (Job 1-2). We feel as though Father has skipped town, abandoned us to this evil world, and left us orphans.

Seeing with Spiritual Eyes

So, we need spiritual eyes to see life from God’s eternal perspective.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Spiritual friends learn how to perform spiritual laser surgery on their friends by engaging in spiritual conversations that invite God back into the picture. They create a greater God awareness by developing a spiritual curiosity. “I wonder where God is in this? I wonder what he’s up to? I know he always has a plan. He amazes me how he works stuff out. Where do you see him at work even in this?”

Their spiritual curiosity causes them to see what others might miss and pursue what others might ignore. They scope out and share ways their spiritual friend is already connecting to God. “Jim, how in the world have you been able to cooperate with God to survive and thrive like you have? It’s amazing to me what a loving, together man you are. God sure has been doing a great work of healing in your life over the years.”

When we’re at the end of our rope, there’s less of us and more of God. When we embrace and face our suffering, then we can embrace and face our need for God. As in Paul’s soul, so in ours:

“This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9).

During the dark night of the soul, as we trudge through the valley of the shadow of death, God is present. He does care. He comforts. He heals and delivers—in his time and in his way—but he always heals. “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:10). Paul knows that God has a good heart.

Did you notice who Paul hopes in? “God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9, emphasis added).

In sustaining, our calling is to climb in the casket. In healing, our joy is to celebrate the empty tomb!

In his excellent book Mourning into Dancing, Walter Wangerin teaches us to embrace our daily deaths so that we can experience daily resurrections. Death is always experienced as separation. So every event of separation (divorce, job loss, empty nest, fractured relationships, illness, etc.) is a “mini-death.”

When we invite God into the casket of our mini-deaths, then we can experience daily resurrection. Every day is Easter when we hope in God. Again, as Paul reminds us:

“Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened so that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9, emphasis added).

The Rest of the Story 

I invite you to return for Part 6 where we learn about Biblical Counseling through Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin, but Wonderful to Be Forgiven.”

Join the Conversation

Who has helped you to see life with 20/20 spiritual visions? With spiritual eyes? With God’s eternal perspective?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Climbing in the Casket

Note: This is the fourth in a blog mini-series asking the simple question: Is there a biblical model for spiritual friendship, one-another ministry, biblical counseling, and pastoral counseling?

Read Part 1: Spiritual Map Quest, Part 2: God’s Treasure Map, and Part 3: Biblical Soul Care for Suffering.

I’m summarizing these posts from Spiritual Friends.

God’s Biblical Counseling GPS # 1: Sustaining—“It’s Normal to Hurt”

Knowing that life lived in a fallen world can be raw, we communicate to one another, “It’s normal to hurt.” We weep with those who weep, refusing to blame people for hurting or shame them for feeling pain. We join them in the fellowship of their suffering.

Created for Paradise, our hurting spiritual friends now live in a desolate desert. Our first calling is to sense their earthly story of suffering. We empathize with their agony, engaging them in their despair.

How? We offer compassionate commiseration, a term flowing through the pages of Church history. Co-passion feels another’s passion, shares a friend’s suffering. Co-misery becomes a partner in our spiritual friend’s misery and woe. Such empathy is not simply understanding with someone’s pain, but sharing in and experiencing his or her pain.

Shared Sorrow

Shared sorrow is endurable sorrow. As Jonathan with David, the binding of our hearts together exponentially and miraculously enables us to endure what otherwise would overwhelm. Ponder Paul’s words.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same suffering we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3-7).

In order to provide compassionate commiseration, we need to practice dual listening: listening to our friend’s earthly story while listening to God’s eternal story. Spiritual friends tune into their friend’s smaller story that communicates “Life is bad” (sustaining). Spiritual friends also tune into God’s larger story that communicates “God is good” (healing).

In sustaining, our empathy promotes our spiritual friend’s grieving. Paul commands us to grieve within the context of hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Without hope, grieving terrifies. Faced with what appears to be nothing but a black hole of unending pain, we back away. We deaden ourselves; deny. We refuse to grieve and groan. Often to start the “chain of grieving” we must grieve for our spiritual friends before they can grieve for themselves. Our weeping allows them to weep. Grieving is the bridge toward healing. When we grieve and groan we admit that we are not God, that we cannot control life, and that we need God (Romans 8:18-27).

Climbing in the Casket

Spiritual friends understand the essential principle for sustaining faith in the goodness of God: we have to climb in the casket with our spiritual friends. Life is a series of multiple deaths, daily crucifixions. We need the courageous compassion to climb in the casket with our friends in the throes of death, in the valley of the shadow of death. When they sense us there with them, when they see our courageous hope, then they’re encouraged to face death so that they can face life again. As Paul wrote to his friends in Corinth:

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9a).

Sometimes it appears that our “default” response is to “spot sin.” Instead, let’s be biblical counselors who understand suffering. Let’s not be ignorant of our friends’ earthly stories of suffering. Let’s not miss their hearts. When we do, we tend to cram God in. Instead, we want to encourage them to invite God into the casket with them.

The Rest of the Story

I invite you to return for Part 4 where we learn about Biblical Counseling through Healing: Celebrating the Empty Tomb.

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Who has climbed in the casket with you in your suffering?

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth