methods of biblical change - weebly

Methods of Biblical Change2006 WORKBOOK

PAUL DAVID TRIPP

M E T H O D S O F B I B L I C A L C H A N G E L E C T U R E

1.1CCEF © 1990-2007 Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation

1

Lecture 1

I. Opening Prayer

II. Introductory Remarks

III. What in the world is biblical counseling? (What are the critical elements that

defi ne personal biblical ministry? the essential ingredients?)

A. There is an abiding confusion about what biblical counseling is.

1. Is it a biblical commitment to help people solve their problems where

we are God’s problem mechanics?

2. Is it a ministry of encouragement to make sure that people feel better?

3. Is it an extended ecclesiastical friendship?

B. Biblical counseling is radically different from all of the above.

1. The culture of care that is part of Western culture is different from

the culture of care that is laid out in the Bible.

2. Excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s Subversive Spirituality1

a) What in the world is biblical care or counseling?

b) Your process and skills are developed from how you answer that

question.

(1) Defi ning “care”

(2) Defi ning “cure”

(3) Professional forms of care

(4) We need to realize our poverty in knowing how to care.

(5) “Caring is initiated by a condition that twists it into

something ugly and destructive – need.”



1

(6) Effects of sin: We, as human beings, learn how to use the

conditions of need as leverage in getting our own willful way.

We shrink our lives to the size of our lives.

(7) Caring does not actually cure. Much of our caring nourishes

sin.

3. Paul’s illustration: 5-year-old learning to ride a bike who cries only

when someone is looking in order to get the desired result

4. Continued reading from Subversive Spirituality2

a) This “wound of self” that calls for help is an opening for which

we can listen to and answer God. The wound is an access to God

and to others, a listening post.

b) Do not cover up the wound too quickly.

5. Biblical counseling has to take root at a deeper level than a person’s

situational and relational needs or their experiential neediness.

6. What is it that we are after? What is it that we are seeking to

accomplish? You need knowledge of the gospel to set your goals for

biblical counseling.

C. Biblical counseling is a ministry of the gospel.

1. What is wrong with us is more than what we experience. It is what

we do with what we experience.

2. It is not just that we suffer, but also that we do not know how to

handle our blessings.

3. We believe in a message of radical lasting change. There is divine

power for that. We believe that change can take place.

4. Biblical counseling is a ministry of change that no one wants because

we want our way.



1

5. We need to minister at a deeper level than experience, otherwise all

the care in the world will not lead to cure.

IV. Confusion about how we do biblical counseling

A. Context

1. What is the best place for this ministry to fl ourish?

2. Example of ice skating

B. Process

1. How do we get from where we are to where we need to be?

2. What are the steps?

3. What are the skills that move us along?

C. The issue of context

1. The context of biblical counseling is a robust, personal, Christ-

centered community. Your life and walk with God are a community

project.

2. Western Christianity is shaped by the surrounding culture.

a) We think of our Christianity in shockingly individualistic terms.

The ministry of the Church of Jesus Christ has been weakened

by a “Jesus-and-me” perspective on Christianity.

b) The archetype of Western culture is the self-made person,

“pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” You can not help but be

infl uenced by that ideology.

c) We have a high value on privacy. We prize boundaries.

3. Biblical counseling should not be an aspect of the ministry of the

local church but an expression of what it is. Church is meant to be

an organic, ministering community.



1

D. 2 Peter 1:3-9

1. This passage has an inverted logic:

a) (v.8) Peter’s diagnosis of the church is that there are people who

know the Lord but whose lives are unproductive and ineffective.

b) Who are these people? Peter’s diagnosis includes all of us.

c) Peter’s logic: When the things listed in verses 5-7 rule my heart

in the situations of everyday life, I will respond in a way that is

effective and productive.

2. Why is this happening? (v.9) The issue is identity.

a) Identity amnesia is epidemic in the body of Christ.

b) You are always saying things to you about you all the time.

c) Identity amnesia always results in identity replacement (e.g.,

achievements, a job, a relationship, a problem).

3. There are two pillars of Christian identity that are the foundation of

the Christian life:

a) You are a sinner. You have forgotten that you have been cleansed

of your past sins. (v.9)

(1) We minimize the fact that sin is not just what you do but

who you are. We think our greatest problem is outside of us

not inside of us.

(2) You no longer are a consumer of change. You will erect a

system of self-justifi cation that will make sin acceptable to

your conscience. We are masters of self-atonement.

(cf. 2 Corinthians 10:5) Pretenses are plausible lies. Human

beings tell themselves plausible lies saying, “I am not the

problem here. The deepest problems of life live outside of

me, not inside of me. ”

(3) (v. 5) “Make every effort to add….” I look at myself, and I



1

see that there are things that I lack. I say, “There is

something wrong inside of me, and I need to change.”

(4) We live in a fallen world, but my problem is not just

environmental. It is internal. There is something that I bring

to my diffi culties where I bring trouble to my troubles: sin.

(b) The glory of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ means our

identity is in Christ. (v.3)

(1) There is incredible provision that has been made for me in

Christ.

(2) We tend to have a clear picture of salvation past and future,

but we tend to have an unclear picture of salvation in the

“here and now.” Peter is talking about the present.

(3) Godliness is a God-honoring life between the time I come to

Christ and the time I go home to be with Him.

(4) There is a grace that reaches into the deepest, present

experiences of the human being. It is a grace that is up to

the task of our fallenness and that of the world around us.

(5) Example of marriage: Marriage is a fl awed person married to

a fl awed person with a faithful God. What is the hope of

marriage? There is a gift of awesome grace to help us.

(6) (v. 4) The condition of cultural corruption is there because

we are [corrupt].

(7) We need to hold the drama of our sinfulness in our hands

along with how profound God’s grace is. This will make us

zealous for change and willing to work. It is diffi cult to do

this. Example of a child pointing outside of himself to

explain why he hit another child.



1

E. Hebrews 10: 19-31

1. (v.19-23) The call: Have your living based on the gospel.

2. (v.26-31) A signifi cant call to be serious about sin

3. (v. 24-25) The writer is proposing that if you are ever going to hold

on to the courage and hope of the gospel and the gravity of your

need as a sinner, then you need to be living in intimate, living

community with people. I need daily intervention.

V. Structure of the Class

A. Epicenter of the “Methods of Biblical Change” is not the lecture. You

can not lecture people into skill.

1. The text: Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands is the means by

which you will get the model.3 The content will not be repeated in

lecture. It will be expanded and taken further in the lecture.

2. The community groups are a signifi cant part of the development

that will happen to you in the course. Learning is a community

process. You will experience what we will be talking about in the

course.

3. 30 minute wrap-up is an opportunity to think outside of the box.

Q&A time.

B. Response papers: an opportunity to interact (not summarize) with the

readings in two pages.

C. Every community group will have a secretary who will write a summary

of the weekly discussion and will protect confi dentiality. You are to read

3 to 4 postings of the other community groups.

VI. Syllabus

A. Response papers are responses to the readings. Turn in a reading record.



1

B. The date on the syllabus is the date the assignment is due.

1 Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1997) 154-159.2 Ibid., 160.3 Paul David Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2002)



2

Lecture 2

I. Opening Prayer

II. Principle: Your methodology always comes from your anthropology.

A. The great message of the kingdom of God is change.

1. “Repent and believe for the kingdom of God is near.”

2. Repentance (i.e., radical change of heart leading to a radical change

in lifestyle) is good news.

3. Why is this good news? Because the king is here, change is possible.

This is the message Christ commissions his disciples to take to the

world.

B. In order to understand people, you have to understand these three vistas

of the redemptive story:

1. Who are people in relation to creation?

2. Who are people as a result of the fall?

3. Who are people as a consequence of redemption?

C. Every piece of your ministry is rooted in your theology. Doctrine is short-

hand for the redemptive story.

D. Juxtaposition of the creation and the fall

1. We tend to seriously underestimate the ravages of sin on us and in

our culture.

a) Therefore, a lot of what the Bible has to say about what is wrong

with you is counterintuitive.

b) The category of what is wrong has been constricted to items of

wrong behavior.



2

E. Excerpt from Cornelius Plantiga’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be1

III. Juxtaposition of the creation and the fall

A. At creation, after Adam and Eve are created, God immediately talks to

them. Men and women are unique in creation in three ways:

1. Human beings were wired by God to be revelation receivers.

a) God invested Adam and Eve with distinct communicative

abilities. They are not just to have meaningful relationships

with each other. They are primarily to know God, hear his word,

and understand him. God gave them the capacity to receive his

revelation in order to make sense out of life.

b) We were never meant to fi gure out life autonomously or

independently. We were created to be dependent.

2. Human beings by their very nature are oriented toward wisdom.

a) A child who constantly ask questions

b) A child forming language

c) Every human being thinks that he or she is wise. They argue for

the logic of their wisdom system.

d) Everyone is thinking theologically and is attempting to answer

the major questions of life.

e) When you counsel someone, you never start at zero (i.e., someone

who is entirely open). You counsel someone who is constantly

making wisdom investments. Most people who ask for counsel do

not really want it because you are threatening their wisdom

investments.

3. Human beings function by thought and desire.

a) Thought and desire always precede and shape our activity.



2

b) We do not function just by physiological instinct or anatomical

function.

c) Luke 6: There is a huge root system underneath what is seen.

B. The fall: the effects of sin

1. Sin causes this created quest for wisdom to become an autonomous

quest for meaning. This has several implications:

a) Additional excerpt from Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be2

b) My perspective about “what is” takes precedence over God’s

revelation.

c) It causes me to rely upon my interpretations instead of relying on

God to state “what is.”

d) It causes me to believe that even though I have a limited

perspective, I am able to draw signifi cant conclusions about life.

e) As we back away from God’s revelation, we begin to abandon

the themes of his revelation that are supposed to explain life to

us. (Sin, sovereignty, eternity, and grace are themes that exegete

life.) Doctrine is given that we may understand God, life, and

ourselves.

f) I become a wisdom consumer. I will not be content to live

wisdom-less. I will be open, vulnerable, and susceptible to things

that make sense.

2. Genesis 3:1-6

a) Verse 6: “…desirable for gaining wisdom”

b) The hook or temptation was, “You could be the source of your

wisdom.”

3. I Corinthians 1:18-25



2

a) Passage is critiquing two wisdom systems:

(1) Jews represent empiricism

(2) Greeks represent human philosophy

b) Paul asserts that wisdom comes by means of relationship.

c) Many people are on a wisdom quest of futility.

(1) They are not supposed to fi gure it out on their own.

Wisdom is a dependency function.

(2) People do not talk to you so that you can mess with their

foundations. But, if you do not mess with their foundations,

you can not help them.

C. At creation human beings are created to be incessant interpreters. You

are always in conversation with you.

1. People do not live life based on the facts of their experience. They

live life based on their interpretation of the facts.

a) Illustrations: Paul and his wife’s interpretation of the same

movie; Darney’s interpretation of his dad’s title of “Dr.”

b) People take apart the moment to make sense out of it, so they

can react and respond appropriately. Everything will be attached

to the framework of what I think is going on.

c) The greatest thing you can do in ministry is to intrude upon

people’s conversation with themselves. You will provide another

voice. You will become part of the conversation.

d) We have the amazing God-given ability at that level of

functioning: to take a wisdom statement and apply it to specifi c

situations in our lives.

2. Effects of the fall

a) Sin deteriorates the ability to apply wisdom to life into self-



2

swindling and self-delusion. I am my own personal Judas.

b) Additional excerpt from Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be3: The

heart wants what it wants. I will defend myself against anything

that challenges it. I will excuse myself and shift the blame.

c) Every human being works to present himself more righteous

than he actually is, to make the world tougher than it actually is,

to make other people more evil than they really are. I need life

to be a justifi cation for what I do.

d) I set up various systems of self-atonement. (e.g., “If you lived

with this woman, you would understand why I committed

adultery.”)

e) What this interpretation degenerates into is that now I look

outside of myself as the cause for the things that I do. The

impact this has on personal ministry is that people think their

biggest problem is their environment.

f) No, your biggest problem is inside of you. What you face does

not determine what you do because you have an active heart

that is interacting with what is going on.

g) Effect this has on marriage counseling: Each spouse blames the

other for the problem. The reason that they are in counseling is

to get the other fi xed.

D. Human beings are created to be worshippers (i.e., purpose-driven and

value-oriented). Worship is not fi rst an activity. It is fi rst an identity.

1. At creation, human beings were created to live toward something, to

be in pursuit of something. Human beings have treasure, value, and

goals.

a) We have the ability to dream, to envision what could be. Dream

is imagination coupled with desire and projected into the future.



2

b) We are always after something. Your words and behavior are your

attempt in every situation to get what is valuable there.

2. More effects of the fall

a) Illustration of Johnny at the toy store: Johnny wants to be God.

If you stand in his way, there will be hell to pay.

b) Illustration of an infant who stiffens up his body when he does

not get what he wants.

c) It degenerates into a daily system of self-worship.

(1) The most attractive idol is the idol of self. If I no longer

worship God, I will worship me.

(2) I will shrink my world to the size of what I am experiencing,

desire, and what I need.

(3) My approach to relationships will be to co-op you into the

service of my self-worship. I will get angry at you if you stand

in the way of what I want.

(4) People will want to talk about their pain and suffering, but

you cannot talk about those things without talking about

their worship.

E. Impact on Personal Ministry

1. You never get people who are holding these things in their untainted,

creational form. Everyone is experiencing these things in their sin-

degraded form.

2. So, wisdom has degenerated into autonomous systems of foolishness.

3. Interpretation has degenerated into self-swindling.

4. Worship has degenerated into systems of self-worship.



2

5. There is a level where no one wants what he really needs or wants

what you offer. They want to feel better. They want their problems

solved. You can not give them those things without touching who

they are as human beings.

IV. Community Groups

V. Wrap-up: Three pieces of our humanity

A. Hebrews 3:12-13

1. A passage written to believers, addressed to “Brothers”

2. It is a progressive warning.

3. How could it ever be that a believer would come to this form of

hardening?

a) Spiritual blindness: not only are people seeking alternative

systems of wisdom; not only are they involved in interpretive

self-swindling; not only are they in active pursuit of God-

replacements; they are blind to it all.

b) Sin is the world’s worst masquerade party. Sin presents itself as

something other than what it is.

c) My problem is that I am blind to sin. I do not get that that is

what is wrong with me.

d) I am blind to my blindness.

(1) Paul’s friend, who is physically blind, knows he is blind and

has decided to live.

4. (v.13) “Encourage one another daily.” Personal spiritual insight of

those internal dynamics is a product of community.

a) You do not get it by yourself because sin blinds, and it blinds me

fi rst. You need help.



2

b) You need counseling because you are human, not because you

are in the middle of the problem.

c) We all need counseling because all of those glorious things have

degraded all of us. There is a “leveling of the playing fi eld.”

d) God is able to use people who are struggling with their own

blindness to help those who are blind. How amazing is God’s

grace!

e) All of these matters go on unabated because they go on unseen.

f) Before you can give that counselee sight, you have to convince

them that they are blind. No one is going to come to you saying

that they are blind.

g) The war that takes place at the level of situations and

relationships happens because of the deeper war of these internal

dynamics.

h) There is a real way of counseling that results in lasting personal

change, which is almost always conducted at a deeper level than

the presenting problem.

B. We ought to sit here with a deep heartfelt gratitude for the word of God.

God unfolds what is really going on to us in his word.

1 Cornelius Plantiga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1995) ix-x.2 Ibid., 6.3 Ibid.



3

Lecture 3

I. Introduction

A. The fi rst four lectures will lay a context for the methodology that we are

going to be looking at.

B. Your methodology has its roots in your theology.

C. Review of previous lectures:

1. Cruciform community1: a community that forms itself to

the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christological change is a

community project.

2. We are looking at human beings and how they function from a

creation-fall-redemption perspective.

D. Why we are going to look at a biblical theology of the heart:

1. It is one of Scripture’s most dominant themes developed throughout

the whole redemptive story. It is signifi cant, important, and

foundational.

2. Given the culture we are in, it is counterintuitive to us.

a) It does not embrace the kind of anthropology that has the heart

as the central part of who human beings are and how they

operate.

b) Result is a combination of an environmental and biological

determinism.

3. You are powerfully infl uenced by the philosophical oxygen of your

culture.

4. If what we are after is lasting change and the heart is the epicenter of

human functioning, then lasting personal change has to happen at

the level of the heart.



3

II. Opening prayer

III. What the heart does

A. The Bible’s structural anthropology divides you into two parts that

interplay.

1. Your outer person (your physical self)

2. Your inner person (your spiritual self)

B. There is a whole catalog of terminologies for the inner man collected

into the term “heart.”

1. “Heart” is the summary term and shorthand term for all the other

terms of the inner man.

2. “Heart” is the core of your causality as a human being and the

central, motivational you.

C. The heart directs and shapes your behavior and words. Luke 6: From out

of the overfl ow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

1. We try to back away from the direct connection between our words

and our heart.



3

2. Example of Paul Tripp’s family reunions

D. The bright promise of the new covenant is a new heart. If the work of

Christ is to change you, then he has to change you at that level. Even

with all of the radical foolishness, selfi shness and arrogance of your heart,

God embraces you with his grace and changes you at your causal core.

E. Mark 7:1-23

1. Jesus Christ was the “master of the segue.” Christ uses an event that

takes place with himself and the disciples as a metaphor of these very

issues.

2. Christ is indicting the Pharisees. He is saying, “At the level of your

heart, you are not interested in following me at all. You could not

care less about actually serving me from the heart. What you have

erected is a series of alternative regulations that give a pseudo-

defi nition of morality and essentially is a system of self-atonement

that protects you from seeing the reality of your rebellion.”

3. (v. 20) All these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.

This passage decimates biological and environmental determinism.

We are not saying that these things are not infl uential. We are saying

they are not deterministic. What determines your behavior is your

heart. Your big problem is inside of you.

4. Example of sexual immorality: It must fi rst reside in your heart

before it becomes an item of your behavior (cf. Sermon on the

Mount).

5. Example of slander: Before slander ever gets verbalized, it is actually a

condition of the heart.

F. The Church does not have a heart-rooted defi nition of sin. Sin is

profoundly deeper than behavior. It is your deepest thoughts, behaviors,

motivations, cravings, etc.

1. Examples of various sins that are unseen but present



3

2. We have a signifi cantly unbiblical defi nition of sin where sin is

defi ned as breaking God’s set of rules. That defi nition will miss 98

percent of what sin is about. It hurts us.

3. As a result [of an unbiblical defi nition of sin] people can be

Christians, counsel others, and fail to think that sin has anything

to do with how they care for other people. They do not understand

that sin is a motivational category.

4. More examples of sin.

[Note: In the audio, when Paul says “this,” he is pointing to his heart]

G. People need to be won to this understanding of sin.

1. Consider marriage counseling. What you have in relationships is an

intersection and collision of these two hearts (and their desires).

a) You do not give relational principles without addressing the heart.

b) Why? Whatever you teach will be shaped and distorted by what

that heart is after.

2. Illustration of lost watches in a kindergarten class and Jimmy.

H. The process

1. Part of what it means to know another person is to know the heart.

a) When someone is a friend, and you say, “I am getting to know

another person,” what kind of “knowing” are you talking about?

(1) You mean you are getting to know aspects of that inner

person.

(2) You are getting to know the inner person as it gets expressed

in predictable outer words and behaviors.

b) We want to be used of God to know a person (and have them

know themselves) at the level of the heart.



3

2. We want to shine the light of Scripture on what has been exposed.

What does the Bible have to say about that?

3. We want to place the Lord Jesus Christ next to that struggle. What is

offered by Christ to someone who is struggling in this way?

I. What are we really going after when we talk about the “heart?”

1. Romans 1:18-ff

a) God in the goodness of his grace has created the physical world

in such a way that it pictures his qualities. I am confronted with

God and the implications of that confrontation upon me.

b) That revelation of God gets at two human tendencies:

1) Autonomy: God’s revelation highlights that we are his. If

you create something, you own it.

2) Self-suffi ciency: I want to believe that I have everything in

myself to be what I am supposed to be and do what I am

supposed to do. God’s revelation highlights our dependency.

3) Illustration of farm ministry

c) Romans 1:25 is the operational core of this passage

1) “[T]ruth exchanged for a lie,” is a reference to the Garden of

Eden.

(a) The lie of the Garden is that life can be found somewhere

outside of the creator, that you can have that autonomous

self-suffi cient existence.

(b) The lie is, therefore, that you can be like God.

2) Human beings are always serving something. We were meant

to have our life shaped by one motivational desire: the glory

of God.

3) There is a migration away from worship and service of the



3

creator to worship and service of some aspect of the creation.

4) The spiritual is replaced by the physical.

5) The passage is meant to be practical because worship is a

practical, functional human category.

6) Cf. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”, where verse 3 is

about the danger of idolatry. I am apt to wander away.

d) End of the Scripture passage, “fi lled with every kind of

wickedness….” What kind of sins are these?

1) Sins of relationship, involving other people

2) When my heart quits worshipping the creator and begins

worshipping the creation, the result wreaks havoc in my

horizontal relationships.

2. Exodus 32:1-24

a) As God is giving the moral framework to Moses, this is what is

happening on the ground.

b) (v.1) There is some connection between impatience and idolatry.

Waiting is spiritually diffi cult for us. It is a war of worship.

c) (v. 2-4) We tend to use the things that God has given us to build

our own golden calves.

d) (v. 4) We tend to credit idols with only what God can do.

e) (v. 22-24) We tend to blame our idolatry on others.

f) We tend to back away from our complicity and guilt in idolatry.

3. Psalm 24

a) “…[W]ho does not lift up his soul to an idol,” is the best



3

possible defi nition of a pure heart. A pure heart is about worship.

4. Jeremiah 10

a) You will give your heart and soul to something you had made.

That thing will claim your worship. You will leave the mighty,

creating God to fi nd your soul, hope and joy in a scarecrow in a

melon patch. What an indictment of us!

5. I Corinthians 10

a) The common temptation of man is idolatry.

b) The punch line of the passage is, “Therefore brothers fl ee

idolatry.” God is with you in the struggle because he has claimed

your heart and will not push you beyond what you can bear. He

will give you a way of escape. Therefore go where he is going, do

everything you can do to fl ee idolatry.

c) If your heart is gripped by a craving for a certain thing in

creation, then that will tend to be the place where you will

doubt the faithfulness of God. It will tend to be the place where

you will doubt his goodness. It will tend to be the place where

you will doubt whether he has given you more than you can

actually bear.

6. John Calvin

a) “The heart of sinful man is an idol factory.” There is nothing we

are not able to turn into an idol.



3

7. Representative list of idolatries2

8. The idols that are easy to see are those which are overt and physical.

The vast majority of idolatries that grab the human heart are unseen.

a) The power and position of religiosity

b) Family

c) Work



3

J. Excerpt from Vinoth Ramachandra’s Gods that Fail3

When the Bible talks about heart, it is getting at everything you are and

everything you do. It is talking about the causal core of your personhood.

Lasting change will always take place through the pathway of the heart.


A. See Supplemental section of syllabus under Lecture 3.

V. Wrap-up

A. Ministry implications

1. Additional excerpt from Gods that Fail4

a) The radical implications of worship

b) Idolatry vs. biblical faith

2. Sometimes what people want is not your help to remove their idols.

What they want is for you to help them get their idols to work.

3. The most deceitful idols are those which are most Christianized.

a) My desire may not be wrong, but it must not rule me.

b) What God promises me is himself.

(1) Christ often becomes the vehicle to get what I am after,

rather than the object of what I am after.

(2) Example: I am not promised security. I am promised Christ

who is my security.

4. The big danger of idolatries in biblical counseling is that the ends

become the means. We are asking for something creation was not

meant to offer.

5. The people who come to you will not know the danger of what they

are seeking.



3

a) You must be clear.

b) You must be part of a gracious subversion.

c) You have to hold out something better.

6. You have got to realize how easy it is for the gospel to get co-opted, and

when it does we are offering people counseling that falsely says, “The

gospel will meet your needs.” You end up strengthening the very thing

that it was meant to break down.

1 Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001).2 Rev. Timothy Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York City).3 Vinod Ramachandra, Gods that Fail (Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press, 1996) 107-108.4 Ibid., 40-42.



4

Lecture 4

I. Review foundational pieces of Biblical Counseling model

A. Cruciform community as an essential context

B. Human beings from Creation, Fall, Redemption

C. Theology of the heart

D. Biblical counseling and the use of Scripture

II. Opening Prayer

III. Biblical Counseling and the use of Scripture

A. Counseling tends to be topical. There is a temptation to have a topical

approach to Scripture.

B. What is the proper use of the Bible in personal ministry? What am I

seeking to accomplish as I use God’s word in personal ministry? What

are the dangers to avoid as I use the Bible in counseling?

1. Experience of the person

a) “Lost in Manhattan” – What do I need?

(1) Directions? What if I get lost following the directions?

(2) I need more than a set of directions. I need what the man

who can give me directions has. He has the “helicopter view.”

(3) Descriptions of people lost in the “Manhattan” of their

marriage, their emotions, their parenting, their job, their

own depression, etc.

b) Hermeneutic disorientation: Even with all that I have, I am still

not able to make sense out of my life, my own story.



4

c) Spiritual claustrophobia: the size of my life and world shrinks to

the size of my “lost-ness,” to the size of my felt need.

(1) This is an extremely dangerous place for a person to live.

We were made to live transcendent lives, to live for big,

expansive things.

(2) I begin to collect other problems. I make a mess out of my

relationships. I pick up bad habits, etc.

d) Spiritual blindness: I do not see well. I do not see me. I lose an

accurate sense of myself in the midst of my circumstances.

e) Your job is bigger than solving the presenting problem or giving a

three-step set of directions.

(1) The experience of the person belies a bigger issue. There are

reasons they are lost. The presenting problem is the fruit of

something bigger.

(2) We will have agenda confl icts with those who come and talk

to us.

(3) You are not disinterested in the presenting problem. You

better be compassionate, as your Lord will be. That is where

people live.

2. Mistakes we make in counseling

a) We reduce the Bible to a set of directions.

b) Examples: “Here are seven ways not to have a troubled mar-

riage;” “Here are six steps to raising kids who get high SAT

scores;” “Here are the three keys to conquering fear.”

c) You do utter violence to what the Bible is about. You do not help

people in a lasting way. There is a lot of care that does not result

in cure. We are trying to do something with the Bible that it was

not meant to do, and therefore, we are missing what it was



4

meant to do in people’s lives.

C. The nature of the Word of God

1. The Bible is not:

a) A systematic theology

b) A topical dictionary

c) An encyclopedia of human problems and divine solutions

d) A principal-driven, topic-oriented approach to Scripture misses

its heart- and life-transforming nature. This will tend to allow

self to remain at the center.

e) Spiritual consumerism, felt need, hunger-driven

f) The book is meant to tell you what you need, but you do not

know what you need. That is why you are lost.

(1) We cannot be accomplices with counselees in that process.

(2) It omits Christ.

g) Results (the reduction of Christianity to theology and rules): Tell

me what to know and what to do, and I will be OK.

(1) There is no redemption.

(2) leads to a “right here-right now” mentality, rather than “an

already but not yet” mentality

(3) I will solve my problems horizontally.

(4) Formalism: My walk with God gets reduced to the scheduled

meetings and appointments of my church.

(5) Legalism: My Christianity gets reduced to keeping a set of

rules.



4

(6) Mysticism: a series of emotional, spiritual experiences with

highs and valleys in between that denigrates the mundane

moments of my life where God works.

(7) Activism: reduced to participation in causes

(8) Biblicism: reduced to mastering biblical-theological content

(9) Psychologism: reduced to healing of felt needs

(10) “Socialism”: reduced to a pursuit of network relationships

where the means become the end

(11) The results are attractive because they are rooted in some

truth, but none of them is robust enough to lead me to an

understanding of what it means to be a child of God in a

fallen world.

2. Excerpt from David Henderson’s Culture Shift1

a) The epicenter of the agenda of every confl ict is self-denial.

(1) Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:15: Jesus came to break our addiction to us.

(2) I want my way, and I want you to want my way.

b) The Bible is more like a novel. It is one story.

c) “Biblical” redefi ned

d) Misuses of Scripture

e) Scripture’s purpose is to point the person to Christ.

f) Problem: All of the diagnostic work and goals happen before the

Bible is ever opened.

(1) The Bible does not become very good aspirin for self-diag

nosed diseases.



4

(2) The Bible has to defi ne the need.

(3) The Bible has to be more than a set of directions. It has to

be a helicopter view of Manhattan.

3. Additional excerpt from Culture Shift2

a) The Bible is a door that brings self-absorbed humanity face to

face with the self-giving God.

b) seeing the wound of another as access to God and access to

something bigger and better than what this person has been

living for

4. Additional excerpt from Culture Shift3

a) God is not primarily in the business of meeting needs. He is in

the business of being God.

b) God’s agenda is to display His glory.

c) Invite men and women out of the hollow pursuit of living for

themselves and to be consumed by him. It is to make his follow-

ers men and women of deep trust and character, the kind of

Christ-like individuals with whom God is pleased to spend

eternity.



4

5. The Bible is a theologically annotated story

a) About the story

(1) It is the everything (comprehensive) story

(2) The story has a plotline

(word-drama-creation-fall-redemption-destiny).

(3) It answers fundamental questions of meaning. Meaning is

rooted in the work of God and the story of God’s work.

(4) The story contains mysteries.

(5) We are inside the story (as broken sinners in need of

redemption).

(a) Sin causes us to want to write our own story

(b) Competing stories = war of worship

(c) The between the stories in each situation/relationship

(6) All the mini-dramas are part of the maxi-drama.



4

(Bible is not a collection of stories.)

b) There are constant story summaries. You can lose sight of the big

plot. Those story summaries come before the directions.

(1) Example of 1 Peter 1:3-9: These verses are a plot summary of

the whole story of redemption to provide you with new birth

in Christ.

(a) “Then” of the past

(b) “Then” of the future: No one can take away all of the

things in life that are truly worth living for.

(c) “Then” of the now: “grief,” “suffer,” and “trial” are allu-

sions to metallurgy. When you come to Christ you are an

ore-ifi c Christian (with imperfections). God does not

leave you in this state. In his redemptive love, God will

boil you.

(d) That is the story people need to hear from you and will

make sense out of their own existence.

i) People want to be sovereign over their own story.

ii) If you misuse Scripture, you will be an accomplice

to the very thing that the Redeemer is trying to

break down. You will be teaching people how to

make their idolatries work (and they will like you).

c) 1 Peter 1:13: set of directives

(1) Those directives only make sense if you understand the plot.

They are seven reminders of how to live in the plot that was

just summarized. They need the story in order to make sense.

(2) Example of Proverbs: We need to live in the way the plot is

going, and there is blessing in that. Using the Bible in a topi-

cal way will result in people losing confi dence in the Bible.



4

(3) Example of relationship with George

7. Goal in ministry

a) Embed this person’s story in the larger story of redemption.

b) Teach people how to live within the plot (Proverbs).

c) Give story-rooted hope, not hope in theological abstractions but

in the work of Christ. Purpose of systematic theology is to

provide shorthand for the story. Theological terms are shorthand

for the story, not replacements of the story.

Versus



4

(d) Roots of identity, ethics, mission in the story

(e) What does the story give us for everyday living (jazz vs. sheet

music)?

(1) I do not have an exact script from God. The Bible gives me

a key signature and a time signature, and I am invited to

play jazz. As long as we stay within that key signature and

time signature, we will play harmonious music.

(2) What we do not like about the Christian life is that God

gives us one big “improv” experience so that we would rely

on him.

(3) Key story questions:

(a) Who are we?

(b) Where are we?

(c) What is wrong?

(d) What is the solution?

8. Two Operations:

a) Understanding what you see

b) Understanding what you do not see: People’s problems are not

just what they do see, but the hugely signifi cant things that they

do not see.

c) Excerpt from Subversive Spirituality4

d) Imagination: It is not to conjure up what is unreal. Rather, it is

seeing what is real but is unseen.

(1) When your imagination is atrophied, all you see is your

problem and what your track record is so far.



4

(2) When you see your reality in whole and in context, you

respond in totally different ways.

(3) You get reality not just by explanation. You also get it by

imagination.

(4) You cannot see God’s kingdom, but we know it as real as

anything you can see, touch, smell, etc.

(5) Story of Elijah

e) Continued excerpt from Subversive Spirituality5

(1) If my imagination is stunted or inactive, I will only see what

I can use or something that is in my way.

(2) Imagination and explanation are meant to be used in

tandem.

f) People’s diffi culty is not just confusion with what they see. It is

the huge, signifi cant realities that they do not see. As a result,

they do not live with the faith, hope, love, and courage that they

would if they saw those things.

IV. Prayer

V. Community Groups

A. See Supplemental Section of your syllabus under Lecture 4.

VI. Wrap-up

A. Comments on Community Groups

1. There were a myriad of applications.

2. Experienced the discomfort of the process.



4

3. Sweet moments of honest self-disclosure.

B. Astounding beauty: We are people who get lost easily, are so self-

centered, are hurtful, do not see God, etc.; and God moves toward us,

loves us, and pursues us in order to radically change us. His response

is awesome in love, in grace, in patience, and in faithfulness. You start

living in a very different way.

C. Excerpt from Subversive Spirituality6

1 David Henderson, Culture Shift (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 1998) 26-27.2 Ibid., 27-28.3 Ibid., 29-30.4 Peterson 131-132.5 Ibid., 133-134.6 Ibid., 163-165.



5

Lecture 5

I. Introductory Remarks

A. Personal Inventory forms (found in Supplemental Section of Syllabus

under “Personal Inventory Forms”)

B. Community Group Case study (found in Supplemental Section of

Syllabus under “Case Studies”)

II. Opening prayer

III. Methods of Change

A. Love: Building a relationship with a person in which the work of God

can thrive. This is an intentional relationship.

B. Know: Gathering the information that is necessary to discover where

change is needed in this person’s life.

C. Speak: Functioning as an instrument of “seeing” and an agent of

repentance.

D. Do: Applying change with specifi city to the relationships and situations

of everyday life. What does change look like?

E. The above is found prominently in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.



5

IV. Process of being Ambassadors

A. Love, Know, Speak and Do are a discreet list of skills. You should think

of these four areas as containers.

1. Love: Everything I would do to build a godly relationship

(e.g., the way you greet a person).

2. Know: All the things that you do so that you come to know this

person at the level of the heart, helping him or her to get to know

him or herself. This is the ministry of asking rich biblical questions.

3. Speak: All the things that I would do to help a person develop two

things.

a) Biblical self-knowledge

b) A sense of gospel calling: What does it mean now to participate

in the work of change that Christ is seeking to do in me?

4. Do: All the things you would do to assist this person as they now try

to live out change in the specifi city of their daily situation or experi-

ence. Insight is not change; it is a step of change. Change is not

change until it is change.



5

B. Although there is an order of process with the above, you should not

think of these four elements as phases of a personal ministry relation-

ship. There is a sense that you are doing all of these things at once.

C. 2 Corinthians 5:11-21

1. Ambassador only does one thing: He represents. He incarnates the

ruler that he represents. He is a fl esh and blood representation of

that ruler. When God places you next to another, you represent

Christ with your facial expressions, the tone of your voice, etc.

2. (v. 20) “We implore you….” “You” refers to Corinthian believers.

What is this further work of reconciliation? Legally, believers are

reconciled to God. If you have the legal standing, then you want to

have the actual experience of being reconciled to God lived out in

your everyday experiences.

3. What is the appeal? “Be reconciled to God.” Verse 15 clarifi es this

appeal, “… [T]hat those who live should no longer live for them-

selves.” Those areas where I am captured by my own desires, I need

to be further reconciled to God.

4. Reconciliation is both an event and a process. It is a legal event

where I am reconciled to God based on the work and salvation of

Christ. It is also a process called sanctifi cation where I will live for

him and him alone in my everyday life.

5. Illustration of Paul Tripp’s conversation with his wife.

V. Love

A. Redemptive activity always takes place in the context of relationship.

We have a covenantal view of change. God enters into relationship with

us and then begins this radical work of change in my life.

B. In lasting, personal heart change, relationship is not a luxury. It is an

essential ingredient.



5

C. Four critical activities of love:

1. Love has to do with the willingness to enter into this person’s world.



5

2. I want to incarnate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Biblical

ministry is not just a ministry of word. It is also a ministry of deed.

3. I want to identify with suffering. I want to take seriously life in a

fallen world. All of us face the brokenness of our world and are

sufferers.

4. I want to accept this person with agenda. It is not just this, “I’m OK

you are OK,” acceptance. It is acceptance unto change. God’s grace

is not just the grace of acceptance. It is the grace of change as well. I

never want to offer acceptance that compromises God’s work of

change.



5

5. Re: arrows. These are cross-pollinating and mutually supporting

activities.

6. Although these do not summarize everything you would do, they are

critical aspects of love.

D. Example: Preaching is a craft of content and communication. It is the

same with personal ministry.

E. “Enter” skills:

1. Be natural, relaxed, and friendly. Do not leave your relationship

skills at the door.

2. Get the details of the situation. Be aware there is a great temptation

for you to fi ll in the details of a situation that you really do not know

about. This is because of the familiarity of the terms people will use.

3. Uncover how they are feeling about the situation. Not just emotions

but rather use emotions as a way to see how the person is reading or

interpreting and then responding to what is going on



5

(e.g., physical illness).

4. Deal with the “right now” issues. Slow down and aim low. What

right now has this person in its grip? That is what you go after. You

touch that and the person will say, “Yes, this is a place of understand-

ing and help, and I want more.”

5. Connect the Bible to their struggle. This is not the time for huge

theological platitudes. Help them to see that the Bible speaks into

the real world in which they live, cf. Psalm 88:

a) Why is this in the Bible? This Psalm that has no hope is the

most hopeful Psalm in the Bible.

b) Written for the sons of Korah as they lead the procession to

worship. God is saying, “You come as you are.” There is not a

contradiction between worship and the deepest, darkest and

honest cries to the Lord.

c) It is great that this Psalm does not have a resolve. On this side of

heaven, there is some darkness that will not be resolved here.

d) The Bible is fi lled with fl awed people who are rescued by the

grace of God.

e) The grit of Scripture is its glory. Because into that grit came the

Lord Jesus Christ.

6. Show appropriate emotion. You ought to be touched by what you

hear. Something is wrong if you can sit there stoically and passively

and listen to the loves of others.

7. Instill realistic hope. Model hope. Do not just say hopeful things but

model that you can be right in the middle of the overwhelming things

of this person and not be overwhelmed. You have a confi dence in Christ

that is so huge and robust that he can do things even in the convoluted

life of this person. You want to be a person of infectious faith.



5

F. “Incarnate” Skills:

1. Remember who you are (ambassadors in need of grace also). I am in

the process with this person and the “wonderful counselor” is work-

ing on us both. I want to keep my own need of grace before me.

2. Look for ways to model Christ’s love and grace. If you are with a

struggling person, there will be opportunities to model this. It is

called prepared spontaneity.

3. Do not correct every wrong you see. They will quit talking to you.

4. Ask, “What of the character of Christ does this person need to see?”

5. Be honest about where and how this person pushed your buttons.

When you are in a personal ministry relationship with another

person, their sin becomes your fi rst-hand experience.

a) Illustration of Paul Tripp counseling a very angry man.

b) Counseling is fraught with temptations. You will not always feel

loving toward the person you are ministering to.

c) I do not want to be in the way of what Christ is doing. I want to

ask, “How is this person affecting me?”

6. Be patient and forbearing. Change is a process. You will be able to

envision change long before change actually takes place. Forbear-

ance is patience under provocation. Example of Christ’s forbearance

with his disciples.

G. “Identify” Skills:

1. Help the person to “name the silences.” The personal, intimate

details that often involve prominent people in their lives are diffi -

cult to talk about, so people have decided to keep silent. I, as a

counselor, am not afraid of what gets put on the table. The gospel

can handle that. I am afraid of what does not get put on the table.



5

2. Avoid platitudes. (You cannot fi x suffering with words.) Jesus was

willing to be rejected so that we would no longer be.

3. Be an advocate. You ought to be an agent of mercy. A person will

notice how you respond to the injustices in their life.

4. Be willing to tell your own story. You do not tell it so that you are the

painting that they look at. You want to be a window to the glory of

God.

5. Learn how to use your theology to comfort and console.

6. Help a person see how they can “trouble their trouble.” That can

give hope to people.

7. Point to a suffering Savior. Christ fully faced what it means to live in

this fallen world.

H. “Accept” Skills:

1. Do not ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. People

need to see that it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.

2. Avoid both extremes of condemnation and/or compromise.

3. Remember mercy is both word and deed.

a) What does this person need to see in the grace of the Lord Jesus

Christ?

b) How do you need to act on their behalf?

4. Offer grace that promotes change.

5. Remember that acceptance (grace) is more than simply listening and

understanding.

6. Emphasize the purpose, presence, forgiveness and power of Christ for



5

change according to Galatians 2:20.

a) “I have been crucifi ed with Christ.” This is a statement of

redemptive historical fact. The work of Christ on the cross is

effective for me.

b) “I no longer live but Christ lives in me.” Based on that historical

fact, I have an identity. The dominant life force is no longer me.

It is Christ.

c) “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who

loved me and gave himself for me.” This is a statement of

personal commitment. I will now live on the basis of my identity

in Christ.

d) Everyone you will counsel will always be measuring their poten-

tial, usually in two ways:

(1) Potential = What is my track record?

(2) Potential = How big is the problem?

(3) The above are not illegitimate measures of potential, but

they are inadequate. I have been given a whole new

potential that has altered the nature of my identity. You then

begin to live life with expectancy and hope.

(4) Believers should look at diffi cult situations and see stunning

beauty, but people are not there yet. It is our job to help

them see it.

(5) You cannot give away what you do not have.



5

VI. Community Groups


VII. Wrap-up

A. We are seeking to develop a relationship that promotes the work of

personal change that God is intending to do in this person’s life. It is a

matter of activities and character.

B. Love: character qualities

1. The New Testament is clear about what these character qualities are.

a) Galatians 5, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, and 1 Corinthians 13

b) The above passages all have very precise character qualities

that harmonize well. If you want to be part of this work that

Christ is doing in the life of individuals around you, this is the

kind of way that you need to respond to people in your life.

2. Be humble. Humility is very important. It is working out of an

accurate sense of who you are.

3. Be patient.



5

4. Bear with one another in love. That is not tolerance. It is forbear-

ance. I respond in loving ways even though you are struggling.

5. Be compassionate. What would it be like for you to take time to

place yourself in the middle of that person’s experience? (e.g., How

would you respond to someone whose husband left for a younger

woman?)

6. Be kind.

7. Be gentle. Gentleness means that you do not damage the thing that

you are working with in the process.

a) Illustration of Paul Tripp’s son bringing fl owers to mommy.

b) Not all ministry is gentle.

8. Forgive. Do you minister with a spirit of forgiveness because you

have embraced your own need of forgiveness?

9. Love. Do you look for ways to love this person in demonstrative ways

(e.g., sending a card, giving a card of encouraging verses, etc.)?

10. Be faithful. Are you willing to sign on for the duration? That may

not mean you. It may mean attaching this person to other resources.

11. Be self-controlled. There will be times when this is hard.

12. Be joyful. Are you a celebratory person? Do you minister with joy?

a) Illustration of seminary student who viewed people as projects in

the way of ministry.

b) Can I minister with joy in the face of diffi culty?

c) Do I minister with a sense of feeling privileged to be used in the

hands of the redeemer?



5

13. Make peace. People want allies and ammo.

14. Be hopeful.

15. Do not boast. You are not there to promote your successes. You are

there to promote a picture of what Christ is able to do in a person’s

life.

16. Do not be rude. Do not throwing out platitudes.

17. Do not be self-motivated. What do I want out of my ministry? Am I

after personal success? Is my ministry a stepping stone to other things?

18. Do not be easily irritated. People will do the exact opposite of what

you offered to them as being helpful.

19. Do not keep a record of wrongs. How can I collect the data that I

need and not hold onto it in that record-keeping way?

20. Do not delight in evil. It is very easy to delight in the dark side of

another person’s story. There is an inquisitiveness that is not healthy.

You know you have to walk through another person’s story but that

is costly to you. You wish you never had to hear stories like that.

Watch for sinful inquisitiveness.

21. Demonstrate an excitement with truth. Do you celebrate truth?

22. Always protect the person. It is a very signifi cant thing.

23. Decide to trust. From day one you want to trust the person. You trust

the person until they give you reason not to.

a) Example of a couple with fi nancial diffi culties

b) People will not talk to you if you have a questioning attitude.

24. Model hope. Literally help people to see hope living in you.



5

25. Persevere.

C. You never stop working on your relationship with the person God has

called you to counsel. These character qualities will empower and con-

textualize the things you have to say. Things that are hard for a person

to hear are phenomenally easier to hear from a person who is sympathet-

ic, forbearing, gentle, and kind. All that relational capital empowers all

the hard things you have to say to that person.



6

Lecture 6

I. Reminders 1

A. Midterm exam

B. War of Words reading

II. Opening prayer

III. Reminders 2

A. No lecture wrap-up

B. Personal inventory sheets

IV. Know

A. This component is a critically important aspect of the counseling

process. You can only minister to those who you know.

B. The process (see Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands)

1. Start with the situation.

2. Begin to understand how people respond to those situations

(i.e., behavior).

3. Understand the motives behind those behaviors.

V. Biblical Counseling’s two-sided hermeneutics: interpretation of the word and

interpretation of the person

A. Biblical counseling is itself a hermeneutic process.

1. Hermeneutics is the science and methodology of interpretation.

2. Biblical counseling has two critical pieces of interpretation.



6

a) Both have to be healthy and robust.

b) Everyone will have a tendency to move toward one side or the

other.

B. Every counseling system gathers data

1. What makes us different is what we do with what we gather. The

epicenter of getting to know a person is not just gathering

information, but what you have done with what you have gathered.

2. The goal is to know the person biblically, looking at this person

through the lens of scripture.

C. Isaiah 55

1. You are counseling people all the time who are making life

investments in things that will never satisfy. They are asking creation

to do what only the Messiah can do.

2. Here is this free offer of grace. You have the opportunity to radically

alter this whole person’s existence.

3. (v.7) It is not just a call to the righteous for insight. It is a call to the

unrighteous as well to come to a merciful God.

4. As biblical counselors, we call people to relate to this surprising,

unexpected God. It is the surprise of grace.

5. (v.11) Am I using the word of God in the way that the Giver of the

word of God intended?

6. (v.13) A promise of radical change, of new fruit in the life of the

individual

D. Excerpt from Tremper Longman’s Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.1

1. We are all in the process of fi nding ourselves.



6

2. We need to ask, “Who am I? Why am I here?”

3. The one thing you will fi nd when you counsel people is that they are

not paying attention.

E. Continued excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.2

1. The Bible is a mirror of our souls.

2. The Psalms are an anatomy of the soul (John Calvin).

F. Case study: Sam and Mary

1. The Psalmists became their own voice of fear and anger. It also

redirected their souls and gave them hope for the future.

2. The Bible is a mirror to our souls:

a) It helps us to understand ourselves in the midst of our confusion.

b) It gives us an architectural structure for our thinking.

c) It ministers to us by pointing us to God. We read the Scriptures

and see inside ourselves.

3. Paul Tripp’s concern:

a) The eager biblical counselor will miss the angst, confusion,

lost-ness, and blindness of Sam and Mary and skip right over to

issues of leaving and cleaving. The drama of the moment is at a

much deeper level than the issue of leaving and cleaving.

b) In an attempt to fi x the problem, you miss the person.



6

G. Two great commands

1. For some, you will need to be much more biblically literate.

2. I do not want to take for granted the fact that because I know things

about this person, then I know this person.

3. In John Owens’ writing you see how a deep understanding of God’s

word and a deep understanding of people come together.

4. Theologically astute people will view ministry as mastering God’s word.

a) Knowing the word of God is a life-long process. You should

never have a spirit of “arrival.”

b) Think of ministry as a bridge between the shore of the truth of

the word of God and the shore of the truths about this person’s

reality. Your goal is to build a bridge between those two shores.

c) Theological study is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end.

It is meant to radically rearrange you and everything in your

existence, all to the glory of the One who deserves the glory.

5. The “people” people: Paul and Luella, his wife, as illustrations of

these two types of people



6

H. The hermeneutic process is the same for both sides.

1. Context is important

a) God calls you to a person in a particular passage in their life. You

will be on-site for a limited period of time. You want to understand

this person in context.

b) Arriving at meaning always takes place before you give advice

(even if you do not realize it).

I. The biblical hermeneutic always rules the personal hermeneutic.

1. You push the data through the sieve of Scripture. Your counsel

results from looking at this person’s story through the lens of the

biblical story.



6

2. Additional excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.3

J. You are always dealing with a “double narrative” context.

1. You look at this particular moment in the context of the story of this

person’s life. It will give some kind of meaning to what you are

hearing.

a) How will you understand a man who is avoiding relationships

and who previously lived with a man who was brutally abusive?

You will begin to make connections, but that is not enough.



6

b) You need to understand the big narrative (the biblical story) in

order to understand the smaller narrative (this man’s story) so

you can help the person in this moment.

c) Embed this person’s personal story in the biblical story.

2. Data gathering involves two steps:

a) You are entering in to know this person in this moment.

b) You are working to know this person in light of their narrative.

We are not talking about historical determinism. We want to

understand this person’s shaping infl uences.

1. Take historical data of this person via survey questions.

2. Looking for things in that context that would be signifi cant

connectors to what is going on now.

3. My ultimate goal is to teach this person what it means to

live within the context of God’s story.

a) You will have an agenda confl ict with the person to

whom you are ministering. They do not come to learn

how to live within the plot of God’s story.



6

b) Make sure you do not make them feel like you are doing

a “bait and switch” on them.

c) Remember God’s after something more than situational

and relational solutions. God is after the core of what

makes this person tick or what moves and motivates

them. He wants to rule that core, and He will use this

moment to get at that core.

d) Counseling often tends to settle on too little in that we

become situational and relational mechanics.

e) This moment is a moment of access to God.

K. Continued excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind.4

1. Consider experiences that convey the transcendent.

2. Human beings were created for transcendence, for God and the

grandeur of His kingdom. The borders of our lives are meant to be

vast. Sin causes us to shrink our lives to the size of our lives. We pull

the borders in to nothing bigger than the shape of us.

a) Paul Tripp’s encounter with people in the church who do not

have time or make time to think about their lives from God’s

vantage point.

b) What are they communicating about their value system?

L. Case study: A man who was his own god



6

VI. Know: The Process

A. How does the Bible explain, interpret and make sense of the data about

this person in this situation?



6

B. Organize in clear biblical categories.

1. What is going on in this person’s life?

2. How does this person typically respond?

3. How does this person think about what is going on?

4. What does this person want from what is going on?

Note: This is not an alternative to the Three Trees model. It is an

organizational tool. There is emotional material on all of the above.

5. Ongoing process of organization and interpretation

a) You are seeking to biblically organize and interpret what you

hear from the person.

b) This will lead to more clarity in direction. Your understanding

will deepen, their insight will deepen, and the agenda for change

will become clearer.

c) Progressive sanctifi cation model: piece by piece, step by step;

things that I can say that will be helpful; I will have more

questions to ask so that my understanding will deepen.



6

C. Know involves gathering (i.e. all the things you seek to do in order to

know this person) and interpreting (i.e. discover where change is

needed).

D. What should happen?

1. Change will begin to happen before you even begin to make

statements.

2. The person will begin to grow as you ask them the right questions.

Insightful people are not those with the right answers. Insightful

people are those with the right questions that lead to the right

answers.

3. We need people to help us know ourselves.

4. We never seek to stop knowing the person more deeply, more

accurately, more in context, and more biblically.

E. The Know function extends through the whole process. I am always

open to the fact that there may be further connections made that

will change how I view things and how I biblically interpret it. You are

always gathering and interpreting data.

VII. Q& A

A. Question: What are the “borders” that you were referring to earlier?

Answer: The transcendent purposes of God’s kingdom, His glory,

purposes for His creation. I tend not to care about that. I tend to care

about my own life—that it works, that it is comfortable, and that it is

happy by my defi nition.

B. Question: What did you mean by “transcendence”?

Answer: It means I was created to live for something bigger than the

details of my life. I am literally connected to something that spans



6

from origin to destiny. I am part of something that is bigger than my

defi nition of happiness, the easy schedule and a good job, etc. These

things must be viewed as small pieces of a huge whole. Example: What

is a family communicating who takes their kid out of church early to

attend a baseball game? What happens if an injury causes him to quit

playing sports? Paul Tripp’s story.

C. Question: How do you apply these things to friends or unbelievers who

are not in a formal counseling relationship with you?

Answer: Respectfully, delicately. You can engender those types of

friendships where you can press below the casual. The Bible does not

reduce ministry to formal, scheduled moments.

VIII. Community Groups


1 Tremper Longman, Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1997) 28.2 Ibid., 28-31.3 Ibid., 13-33.4 Ibid., 33-34.



7

Lecture 7

I. Reminders

A. Midterm exam

B. War of Words reading

II. Opening prayer

III. Speak

A. We are not talking about phases of a counseling relationship. Instead,

think of these categories as coexisting functions in being an instrument

of change, and think of these functions as containers.

B. Speak is functioning as:

1. An instrument of seeing

2. An agent of repentance

C. Personal spiritual insight is a result of community.

D. Sin blinds and deceives.



7

1. Guess who it blinds and deceives fi rst? You.

2. We have a natural and instinctive ability to recast what we do in a

way that is acceptable to our conscience.

E. I need the help of the body in order to have an accurate sense of myself

(cf. Hebrews 12:12-13). I need daily intervention.

F. People will be heartened by your understanding and helped by your good

questions, but they will need you to help them see with biblical accuracy.

G. Commitment to a new way of living comes from a new way of seeing.

1. If you understand that confrontation has as its goal being an instru-

ment of seeing, then you know a lot about the process.

2. If I am working to help a person see and not just making a pro-

nouncement of judgments, then I am doing a different thing.

a) Having seen, they will want to confess, commit to a new way of

living, and commit to change.

b) You need to ask, “What is the work that I need to do to help this

particular person in this particular situation see the things that

God wants them to see?”

c) Confrontation is more of a participatory process than it is an

event. It is more of a dialogue than a pronouncement event.

d) It is a process.

(1) Instead of one big moment of confrontation, it is many mini-

moments of confrontation.

(2) It has a progressive sanctifi cation fl ow to it: more moments

of insight, leading to more moments of insight, leading to

more moments of insight, etc.



7

H. Excerpt from The Peacemaker1

I. You cannot possibly have relationships in life that have nothing to do

with confrontation. If you are a friend, spouse, or co-worker, you have

been involved someway in confrontation.

J. Begin with, “What is my style of confrontation?” “How much does my

ministry feel like the gospel?”

IV. Consideration, Confession, Commitment, and Change

A. The model is a process, and these four words together form a practical,

concrete, process-oriented defi nition of repentance.

B. Repentance is a radical change of heart that leads to a radical change

in the direction of your life. Consideration and confession look back at

what has been done. Commitment and change look forward to what will be.

C. Consideration

1. It is not just the wrong things in behavior but the thoughts and heart

as well.

2. We are not just talking about the heart either. They need to see the

grandeur of God’s grace, a God who is for them in His grace. We



7

want the truths of God’s grace to invite them out of hiding, to be

dissatisfi ed with “spiritual plastic surgery.” They can come honest

before Him and be drop-dead unafraid.

3. It is not just seeing myself. It is seeing myself in the shadow of a large

and glorious Christ. This is how biblical counseling is radically differ-

ent from all that the world has to offer.

4. For all the calls of secular counseling to honesty, secular counsel-

ing does not have Christ. The bedrock of personal honesty is not

the law. It is the gospel. It is the goodness of God that leads to

repentance.

5. Ted Tripp’s story of a boy who took money from the offering plate.

(Imagine a father who drags his son to the pastor.)

a) Can you imagine that the human heart in the face of being

caught would cut a deal with the Messiah?

b) We want people to understand that the Messiah died so that

there would be no need for any more deals.

c) Pronouncements are encouraging the heart to hide, to cut a

deal. Note: We are not saying to compromise the truth of what

needs to be said.

d) Tedd knew the child was not yet a confessor. He had been

caught, but there was no turn in his heart. Tedd wanted to

encourage a turn in the child’s heart.



7

6. Getting a person to:

a) Slow down: settle down and step outside of himself or herself

and begin to look.

b) Look: inviting a person to self-examination.

(1) Help them to step out from themselves and take a look at

who they are.

(2) Example of Christ’s use of the parables

(3) It is hard to look at yourself. We often get defensive and get

into modes of self-explanation.

c) Listen: to be willing to hear things that are hard to hear, that

challenge my typical assumptions about myself.

d) In order to do (a) to (c) you have to be relaxed, patient, kind,

joyful, and pleasing in your character as you are with the person.

(1) To portray that is not an act of judgment, but this is an act

of love. You are physically incarnating the gospel, the love

of Christ.

(2) You are there not because God is turning his face away from



7

this person, but because he is turning his face toward this

person in love, mercy and grace.

(3) Example of the prophets in the Old Testament as evidence

of God’s grace and love

e) Think: inviting a person to think through their motives, their

desires, and to be involved in the process of exegeting

themselves.

(1) Metaphor of unpacking a suitcase to see all the clothes laid

out on the fl oor

(2) What makes you think that decades of blindness will calm

down in 30 minutes? Consider the disciples who were with

the Messiah for three years and still did not get it. Jesus

response, “There are many more things I want to share with

you.”

f) Evaluate: inviting a person to step back, make connections, and

draw conclusions

(1) I make an evaluation.

(2) Ask: “What is God showing you?” “What are you

concluding?”

(3) I am not doing that for them. I am making them evaluate for

themselves, which leads to a confession where they own up

to things for themselves.

g) The above is a dialogue process, a conversation, a journey two

people are taking together. It is a journey of insight.

(1) Example of the prophets doing ridiculous things



7

7. What consideration is not:

a) If, by virtue of the force of my presentation, you acquiesce to

something, your heart has not moved. You acquiesce to get out

from under this uncomfortable moment.

b) They set up a false confession and a false repentance.

c) You can actually encourage a bogus confession and repentance,

a hypocritical turning.

8. Goal of consideration



7

a) To show them themselves without distortion

b) Helping a person establish a habit of looking into the mirror of

God’s word again and again (cf. James 1)

9. Consideration requires:

a) “Relational Capital” (I Thessalonians 2:1-12)

(1) Paul is reminding the Thessalonians of the quality of his

relationship with them, “You know how much we loved you.”

(2) He is doing that because he is about to say very hard things

to hear.

(3) Everything that you do to build a loving, godly relationship

with this person is contributing to your ability to confront

them.

(4) To the degree that this person knows that you are for them,

they are more apt to listen to you, to be self-disclosing to you

because they trust you.

(5) Every good relationship-building thing that you do is build-

ing toward that success of confrontation.



7

b) Depends on good data gathering

(1) You cannot confront that which you do not know. You can

not give clarity if you do not have it.

(2) Every good question you ask is helping you to confront in a

way that is clear, concrete, precise, and helpful.

c) Biblical clarity

(1) If you are gong to invite a person to look into the mirror of

God, you will need to have already done that.

(2) Biblical clarity is essential and important.

(3) One of the prevalent errors in confrontation is that it is a

nasty mix of personal opinion and biblical truth. They do

not need personal opinion.

(4) You can never approach a person objectively.

(a) Their sin becomes part of your experience.

(b) Story of a man who chased his boss around with a forklift

d) The right heart (Colossians 3:12-13)

(1) You have to deal with your own heart.

(2) You cannot start with verse 15. You have to start with verse 12.

(3) Ministry is not an antiseptic. It is fraught with temptation.

People who need ministry are hard to minister to because

they are people who need ministry.

e) Commitment to the process

(1) You cannot get ahead of the game. You cannot do too much

too soon.

(2) You have to celebrate any moment where the person is



7

seeing things. You cannot be so focused on the end goal that

you diminish the steps a person is taking in the process.

f) Prepared spontaneity

(1) You do not know where the Spirit will blow.

(2) You are ready and active, but you need to be fl exible.

D. Confession

1. What is it?

a) It is a two-part confession: to God and to the appropriate people.

b) Do not assume confession. Lead a person to specifi c moments

of concrete confession. Ask, “What is it at this moment that

God wants you to confess?”

c) Hosea 14:2, “Take words with you and return to the Lord…that

we may offer the fruit of our lips.” The most precious sacrifi ce

you can make to the Lord is a sacrifi ce of words, a sacrifi ce of

confession.

d) This confession is “heart-deep.”

2. Leading a person to confession



7

a) Asking questions

(1) It is better to ask questions because it engages the person.

(2) You are asking questions not to get more information, rather

to get the person to fully understand and own what has

already been covered.

(3) Example of Jesus’ process of question and answer

b) Marshall insight by giving illustrations and stories.

(1) Draw pictures, tell stories.

(2) God designed his world to be metaphor of truth.

(3) Story of a controlling man

(4) If you pull a metaphor from that person’s life, it will continue

to confront them even when you are not there.

c) Think of appropriate self-disclosure

(1) Example of Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1

d) You are always moving a person towards this thing. Have a

person summarize what they are seeing.

(1) It will tell you how you are doing and what still needs to be

done.



7

e) You must recognize that it is only the work of the Holy Spirit.

You must be praying for yourself and for them. You are only an

instrument.

E. Commitment

1. If the wrong way was the wrong way and the person has owned that

and confessed that, then there should be a natural commitment to

the right way. You do not want to assume that.

2. You can only counsel the person that God has placed with you.

Although there may be situations and people that need to be

changed, you can only be part of the change in the place that God

has placed you. Your focus is the person in front of you.

3. You are calling them to deal with what God has put on their plate.



7

4. Big Question

a) Call a person to be committed to specifi c and concrete new ways

of living. It is not generic.

b) The cast of that love has to fi t the context of that relationship.

What will that look like in the details of this person’s life?

F. Change

1. The new commitments now need to be applied where I live everyday.



7

2. Steps of change:

a) After the fact: a person looking back after something has happened

(1) Praise God that the person has seen that! It is failure (This

is what the person will see.) and insight. There is growth.

(2) The call is to confess and recommit.

b) During the fact:

(1) A person has insight in the middle of the moment that they

are doing it again. The person will see it as discouraging.



7

(2) You have to point out that there is growth. The Bible says,

“Stop, fl ee, remember.”

c) Before the fact:

(1) Person looking forward, “Here is one of those situations that

is trouble for me.”

(2) The call of Scripture is to prepare.

d) Gone



7

(1) You are not saying that you are incapable of falling in this

area. You are saying that this thing is not dominant in my

life like it once was

3. Process

a) Change happens this way:

V. Community Groups




7

VI. Facilitating Change

A. Clarify priorities: Person will be overwhelmed with the thought, “Where

do I start?”

1. You want to say, “Here is where you are to begin.”

2. Lay out the logic of the steps.

B. Laying out a plan for change:

1. Prioritize steps of change

2. Person will fi nd such comfort by the fact that you can think about

change in an orderly way.

C. Recognize the importance of little steps.

1. Any movement toward what God says is right should be celebrated.

You should not just be an end-goal person.

2. Celebrate those little moments because people live in those little

moments. We live in the utterly mundane. Change typically takes

place in mundane little moments.

D. Be ready to encourage.

1. Change is hard. It beats at the borders of your faith. When you



7

change, you want everything else to change, and it does not.

2. Example of a wife who has changed and a husband who gets more

critical

3. People will need to be encouraged. According to Hebrews 6, God

will never forget the work that is done in his name. Encouragement

is never inappropriate on this side of heaven because we live in a

broken world with broken people.

E. Deal patiently with resistance.

1. Understand how deep the roots are and how resistant even followers

are. The disciples were followers. They had left their lives to follow

Christ, but they were incredibly resistant along the way. Consider

the patience of Christ. He continued to love, teach, was willing to

confront, but he was also patient with that resistance.

2. Unpack the resistance. It may be about confusion, the dissenting

counsel of others.

F. Be willing to readjust your plan.

1. Do not have your identity in your plan.

2. Hold your counsel with an open hand. Always be ready to have your

insight clarifi ed, try a different approach, etc. Be a counselor who is

ready to be counseled.



7

VII. Romans 8:1-17

A. Confrontation is a ministry of the gospel.

B. The comfort of the gospel (Romans 8:1-11)

1. Removal of the sentence of condemnation which corresponds to the

sin

a) Calls me out of hiding, denying, excuse making, etc., to say,

“This is me, and this is what I’ve done”

2. Indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit

a) Corresponds to the inability of sin; sin leaves me lame, weak,

and unable to do what God has called me to do.

b) God has given me the power to do what he has called me to do.

c) As a counselor, you should be able to say, “You are not alone.

There is a new life force in you that gives you the ability to do

what is right.”

C. The call of the gospel (Romans 8:12-17)

1. A true son celebrates his identity as a son by trying to be like his

father.

2. The call is also to put to death the deeds of the fl esh and to live as a



7

true son, committed to the likeness of the Father.

D. Tendencies

1. Antinomianism: lawless; emphasis of the comfort to the exclusion of

the call

a) Example of counseling the abused and the abuser

b) Temptation is to overemphasize the comfort over the call in my

counsel to the abused. That person needs the comfort as well as

the call of the gospel.

2. Legalism: emphasizing the call without the comfort

a) Example of counseling the abused and the abuser



7

b) Temptation to hammer the abuser with the law

c) There is a whole underbelly that has not been discovered. If he

does not have the comfort of the gospel, he will not come out of

hiding and make deals with the Messiah.

E. Everybody needs the call and comfort.

1. There will be nuances of emphasis and different entry points, but

everyone needs a whole gospel.

2. You get in the way of what God is doing in that person’s life when

you emphasize one over the other.

3. It is hard to call a person who has been abused to confess the wrong

way they have dealt with the situation.

4. You will be afraid to offer the comfort of the gospel to an abuser for

fear that he will not take his sin seriously.

F. There needs to be a balanced gospel offered.



7

VIII. Q&A

A. Question: How do you preach this (i.e., the comfort and call of the

gospel) and not put someone on a pendulum of comfort-call, comfort-

call?

Answer: It is never either-or. It is both-and. Scripture does not talk

about the two in opposition to the other. It is two pieces of a whole and

you have got to hold onto the whole.

1 Ken Sande, The Peacemaker (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004) 162-165.



8

Lecture 8

I. The midterm exam

A. Timed exam: 3 hours

B. Question regarding 2 Corinthians 5 will be 20% of the exam.

C. Honor system exam: You can have your Bible and computer.

II. Opening Prayer

III. Do

A. Although there is some sense to the order, these are not chronological,

linear phases of ministry. They are coexisting functions.

B. Personal ministry is messy and unpredictable. You have to function with

prepared spontaneity and be fl exible.

C. There is a tendency to end ministry too soon.

1. There is a tendency to end it when there is real insight, confession,

and commitment to change.



8

2. They end the relationship before applied change has happened.

3. What is sharp and clear in your counseling conversation becomes

less clear when they take it back to their everyday situations and

relationships.

4. They need encouragement and warning as they apply things that are

not intuitive to them.

D. You need a team perspective as to what you are doing.

1. You may need to marshal resources so that another person can walk

alongside this person as they begin to apply change.

2. Example: an older couple coming alongside

E. There are four things that are emphasized:

1. You need to set your ministry agenda.

a) Where are you going?

b) Do you need to change goals?

c) How is that going to take place?

2. You have to deal with the issue of responsibility. This is a critical

piece.

3. You want to provide accountability.

a) It is not being someone’s Holy Spirit. Accountability is for the

person who is already committed to change.

b) The person who makes accountability work is the person being

held accountable.

4. Continue to instill in people their identity in Christ.



8

F. Embedding a person’s story in the larger story of redemption.

1. You are doing more than getting people to live out isolated,

biblical principles.

2. You are getting people to live in their particular piece of the world

that moves in the direction of God’s story. What is God up to?

G. Get people to see the plot of their lives in the plot of God’s story.

1. Marriage example

a) What in the world is God at work at in my marriage?



8

What is God revealing?

b) What does it mean to love this person with the love of Christ?

2. Parenting example

a) The goal is not about getting the right response out of a child.

b) Better question: What is God after in the life of my child, and

how can I be part of what he is doing, even if that means things

stay messy longer than I want?

3. This is not what people think about their problems or what they

want from you.

4. What does God say about people, about life in a fallen world, about

grace?

5. This is something uniquely and qualitatively different than solving

problems. It is teaching people how to deal with their diffi culties and

that they are living within the plot of God’s story (i.e., why Christ

came).

H. Themes



8

1. Sovereignty

a) There is someone who is in control of my existence who is the

defi nition of what is true, wise, and loving.

b) There is purpose to this sovereignty.

2. Fallen world

a) We minimize how signifi cant the damage is. Shalom has been

shattered, and that brokenness is everywhere.

b) People come to counseling with a surprise as the Bible describes

what life is like in a fallen world.

3. All of these are not just theology.

a) They are elements of the story.

b) They are lenses that I use to look at life.

c) They defi ne life for me.

d) They set an agenda for me.

I. What does change look like?



8

1. It is when what I want at the street level of my life follows the map of

God’s purposes for me.

2. A person’s actions and words in a given situation or relationship are

that person’s attempt to get what is valuable to them.

3. If I am going to be part of what God is going to do then it starts with

my desires mapping onto God’s purposes for me. The bottom line

problem is that we have an agenda confl ict with our Lord. What we

want and crave is different than his purposes for us.

J. What should this desire set look like for this person in this life?

1. Parenting example

a) Examine typical motivations of a parent

b) The quandary for mom is not what she wants to do but what she

should do.

2. Example of Paul Tripp’s son lying to him about where he was going

and what he was doing

a) God was already about the work of rescue in the life of his son.

Paul was fi lled with a sense of God’s love which changed his

agenda towards his son.

b) Paul’s conversation with his son. It deals with the practicalities

of what you need to deal with (e.g., issues of disobedience and

lying to dad), but it goes at it in a radically different way. If God

has already begun a work of rescue, what does it mean for me to

be part of that rescue?

K. The bible is not a book of magic. It is a story.

1. Every principle has the whole story embedded in it.

2. Application is all about hermeneutics. If you cannot apply a principle

to a person’s life, it is not that you do not understand the principle,

you do not understand the story. The principle is tied to the story.



8

3. Example of, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” It is not a mechanical

thing. It is about a movement to be part of where God is going.

L. Application is not about what you do after you understood a passage of

scripture. It is how you have understood a passage of scripture.

M. What will change look like? I want to be specifi c because people live in

utter specifi city.

1. How will the fundamental character of this relationship need to

change? How will this man need to talk to his wife?

2. Perhaps the whole living situation is a monument to obtaining

“heaven on earth.”

3. What are these people living for? Is this a mom who really believes

that she can turn her children into trophies? Or is she ready to live

with the messiness of having given birth to sinners in a fallen world?

4. How do these people defi ne what is important or what they need?

What are they calling essential, and what are they calling nonessential?

5. What role does relationship with God play in the scheme of things?



8

6. How much of a role does money play?

7. Do they have a sense of the essential nature of the community of the

Body of Christ?

8. Are there things in their history that have never been opened up?

9. How do they make sense of life? How do they interpret what is

going on in their world?

N. Circles of responsibility and concern

1. Responsibility

a) It is my God-story job description.

b) The only proper response is to obey.

2. Concern

a) These are things that are not my responsibility but are important

to me. I am not able to do or produce them.

b) Example: Salvation of a loved one—the only proper response is

to trust God.



8

3. There is massive confusion over this issue of responsibility. It will

come on the table as you begin to mobilize people toward change.

People need to know what their job description is. People need to

know those things that are important, but they must entrust these

important things to God.

4. Overly responsible (“Mini-Messiah”)

a) This person will know frustration, doubt and depression because

she is doing something that is not in her responsibility and not

within her realm of ability.

b) She is acting as if God does not exist.

c) It creates anger and fear in the people that this person will come

in contact with.



8

5. Irresponsible (“God’s vacationers”)

a) This person will experience the same host of diffi culties as the

“Mini- Messiah”.

6. Confused

a) Fuzzy about where God’s responsibility ends and his begins.

7. You want to make this a conversation. It is helpful to have people

make their lists.



8

a) What is God calling you to do? What is you job description?

b) What are the things you need to entrust to God?

c) People tend to get the lists mixed up.

8. It is a model. It is meant to be an instrument. People do have

tendencies. You do not want to use it in a way that stereotypes or

puts people in unhelpful categories.

O. Operational questions



8

1. Think concretely.

2. The purpose of the public ministry of the word is general application

to groups of people.

3. The genius of private ministry is that it can be done with utter

specifi city. If you do not get specifi c, you have turned private

ministry into public preaching.

P. Accountability

1. People need your wisdom, insight, guidance, correction, and

instruction as they seek to implement change.

2. People need encouragement. Change is hard. It takes longer than

you imagined. There are potholes, distractions, etc., along the way,

and people get discouraged. They get a vision of what could be, and

they get discouraged.

3. People need warning. It is tempting to want to go back to Egypt.

a) Numbers 11:4

(1) The problem is menu-boring food.

(2) The tendency is to think of another menu.



8

(3) When you are discouraged, it is easy to fall into a revisionist,

romantic history.

(4) They are missing the awesome manifestation of God’s

covenant love. Manna is such an awesome picture of God’s

provision that Jesus takes manna as his name, “I am the

bread that comes down from heaven.”

b) These are people just like us. In the middle of a journey, it gets

hard. You are eating things you do not want to eat. You start

dreaming about “back there.” That is why people need warning.

Q. Identity: Helping people to properly measure their potential

R. Typical ways people measure their potential:

1. Track record and size of the problem I am facing

2. In contrast, from the vantage point of Christ’s presence, promises,

and provision:

a) It is a “both-and.” I need to be honest about my track record

and the size of the problem but also see with the lens of an

active and present redeemer.

b) That is not intuitive to people. You cannot remind people



8

enough about their identity in Christ.

c) People forget who they are. Identity amnesia leads to identity

replacements.

IV. Q&A

A. Question: How do you do this when you do not have regular weekly

meetings with a person?

Answer: We have God ordained limits. This model is elastic and some

times it can give me tracks to run on. Other times it gives me lots of

detail that I can use.

B. Question: To what extent are you limited with someone who does not

know Christ or does not accept Christ?

Answer: It is a great evangelistic model. Most evangelism enters into

the middle of a person’s story. It is going to have some nuances that are

different.

C. Question: To what extent does prayer come into play? Frequency?

Answer: It is important. I always pray in the beginning when I am meet-

ing with someone. I need to remind myself. I pray “we” prayers because

God is at work in all of us. There are times where you pause and say,

“This is not working, let’s pray.” When a person is mad at you. It is

important for a person to hear you pray for them as a redemptive

advocate.

V. Community Groups




8

VI. Syllabus

VII. Plan for change

A. You have got to know how this person is experiencing what is going on.

That is where you get all the heart stuff, the thoughts, and emotions.

You have to sense their struggle within the struggle.

B. You have to have a rich base of specifi c data. Know the details. Build a

bridge between the shore of the biblical story and the shore of this

person’s story. Do not build halfway bridges.

C. Have a clear grasp of the biblical story. What is the redemptive intention?

[Note: In the audio, when Paul refers to “this top one,” he is referring to #1 in

the picture above. “Next one” is referring to #2 in the picture above. “The

third one” is referring to #3 in the picture above.]

D. Every part of the model needs every part of the model to work. Think

functions, not phases.

E. Three complimentary elements: You are developing knowledge of the

person which is different from knowledge of the problem. It is cross-

pollinating with what I know of the person’s world which is embedded



8

in my knowledge of the biblical story. This tripartite way of knowing

gives me my sense of direction. People do not know themselves well

because of their spiritual blindness. People misinterpret their world.

They do not understand the movement of God.

VIII. Application: A Narrative Approach1

A. Biblical narrative

1. How does the biblical story unpack this person’s story?

2. How does the bible help me make sense of what is going on in this

person?



8

B. Personal narrative

1. How have they responded to life? I am getting a window on what

makes this person tick or where they fi nd identity.

2. What am I learning about who this person is and how they deal with

life? I am in the story with them. I am watching this person with

their child, with their spouse, and as they make decisions.

3. What is this person after? What do they want? Interaction of the

personal story and the biblical story.

4. How are they making sense of their life so far? Where do they get

confused? Where do things not add up for them? Mirror of the

word of God should give me insight.



8

5. What are those troublesome questions they have never been able

to answer? On what basis does this person make decisions?

Expediency? Fear of man? Financial resources?

6. If this person had the courage to put into words what he really wants,

what would he say he wants? You are answering these questions in a

parent-child relationship context. What is revealed by words and my

actions?

a) At this point, where you are making concrete applications of

change, it is easy to forget all that you have learned so far and

become a principle mechanic. You have sold your birthright.

b) Rather this is an awesome opportunity to connect this person in

a deeper and fuller way to the purposes of God.

c) This person can wake up with a deeper sense of God’s mission

and purpose.

d) I get engaged and excited when I am caught up in something

more captivating, more beautiful than what I want. God’s grace

is such a gorgeous thing.

e) It is not impractical and ethereal. It is very practical, but it is

bigger than “three steps” to solve this problem.

1 Longman 33-35.



9

Lecture 9

I. Introductory Remarks

II. Opening Prayer

III. Love (remixed)

A. Excerpt from Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places1

1. Community is hard. It is not that we just do not love our enemies.

We do not love the people we say we love.

B. God calls us to love people who are not really loveable. You are going to

be stained by the struggle.

C. Excerpt from Peterson’s Eat This Book2

1. The ascendancy of wants, needs, and feelings.

2. There is the assumption that I have the ability to determine what I

need.

a) If that assessment (of wants, needs, and feelings) moves me

towards that ministry, I have already decided what I want from

that ministry.

b) I do not come as a counselee. I come as a consumer.



9

D. These messy relationships are not an option.

1. God models that. God makes a relationship with us that become

the context in which change takes place. Justifi cation precedes

sanctifi cation.

2. This is the foundational function. Without this the other three func-

tions will not work.

3. Love is a skill. There are skillful things to do. But it is much more a

matter of character than skill.



9

4. As you are doing counseling, you have to fi ght the self-righteousness

that can be part of ministry.

a) Be willing to humbly keep your heart open to the Wonderful

Counselor.

b) Be willing to start with your own heart.

c) If you do not deal with your own heart fi rst, all that has been

taught this semester can make you dangerous. It can degenerate

into power, control, manipulation, and other things that are

reprehensible to the gospel.

5. Colossians 3:12-16

a) (v. 15-16) One of the New Testament’s call to a world of

personal ministry.

b) The whole platform of the call to personal ministry is the call to

incarnate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. The call is meant to

dye everything you do in ministry.

E. What happens when that character is lacking?

1. Other motivations: success, anger, fear of man, self-righteousness

2. If you are not motivated by love, you hear a different rendition of

what is being said to you.



9

a) I will not experience the other person’s pain. I am experiencing

my pain.

b) If angry, you will be thinking that this person has become a

square for you.

c) I do not hear the data accurately. Therefore, my responses are

not based on being touched by your experiences. Data has been

reprocessed.

3. Beginning counselors tend to forget to love the counselee.

a) They love themselves.

b) Example of a beginning counselor who was motivated by wanting

to do it all right, get everything covered.

4. Successful ministry is not about acquiring academic skills.

F. Love: Practical Considerations

1. Do not let your ministry devolve into being a problem mechanic. A

person will pick up the fact that you do not really care about them,

you just want to fi x it.



9

2. Be natural.

a) Laughing can be a particular grace in a moment.

b) Walk with a person somewhere outside the formal counseling

offi ce.

c) Be patient. Small steps for you might be mountainous leaps for

the other person.

d) Work to be understanding: What is it like to live in that person’s

world?

3. Be willing to serve.

a) Pass a tissue with a word of comfort.

b) Make a phone call.

c) Write an encouraging card.

d) Never let displays of emotion pass. Comment on it.

4. Be aware of who you are talking to

a) If you are a child and you are talking to a professional, you have

two assumptions: I am sick or I am in trouble.

b) Each of those relationships has a particular caste. You do not

address an older person like a peer. You do not talk to a child like

an adult.



9

5. Early data gathering is not to build a case. You may have the topic,

but you do not know how this person is living in the topic. You are

gathering data so that you can know this person.

a) You already have a catalog of skills in relationships.

b) Example of Paul’s son and Tedd’s daughter

6. Be aware of the setting you are in and its limits.

a) Love recognizes the limits. I want to help you be comfortable

with those limits and to live within them.

b) It is weird not to talk about those limits.

7. Do everything you can to guard this person’s reputation.

a) It starts with you. You should not now treat a person as if they

are a particular sin on two legs.

b) Issues of confi dentiality. You should never promise a person

blanket confi dentiality.

(1) There are instances where that is illegal.

(2) Instances where a person confesses a crime.



9

(3) You might be called into cases of church discipline.

(4) Counsel with the principle of informed consent. Spell out

the exceptions.

8. You want them to be comfortable with the process.

9. Be aware of how a person affects you.

10. Be willing to be confronted by the person. Receive that confrontation

with grace.

11. Be willing to confess sin in the context of that relationship.

12. Pray “we” prayers. You do not counsel from above; you counsel

alongside.

13. Hold loosely to your agenda. You want to have a sense of direction

but you do not know what new things God will reveal or where the

Spirit blows.

G. Remember that the Wonderful Counselor is working on everyone in the

room.



9

1. There is never a moment when you are counseling where you your-

self are not being counseled.

H. Remember to think in ministry categories.

1. Love has a lot of shades to it. Love is not a uniform thing. Love is

multifaceted.

a) Is this a person who primarily at this moment needs comfort?

b) Does the person need encouragement? Illustration of a woman

whose husband left with everything.

c) Does the person need to be rebuked?

d) Does the person need teaching?



9

I. Mature love

1. “Thoughtful”: It thinks (not just reacts), evaluates, analyzes and

meditates. It exegetes the context and the purpose.

2. “Focused”: It is thinking, “At this moment, in this situation, at this

time, with this person, what does love look like?”

3. “Progressive”: What was appropriate yesterday may not be appropri-

ate today. Love morphs with the need of the moment.

4. “Productive activity”: It is doing this activity with the hope that the



9

activity will minister productively.

J. Additional excerpt from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places3

1. Love is immediate.

2. Love is context specifi c.

K. Love means continuing to ask myself what it means to love this particular

person, who is in these relationships, in the middle of these situations.

1. How does our relationship and life-context help me to love this person?

2. Love is always contextualized

L. How do you love …

1. An angry person? Love will emphasize gentleness, patience, forbear-

ance, rest in God, fi rmness.

2. A discouraged person? Provide encouragement and show perseverance.

3. A suffering person? Show mercy, justice, hope, etc.

4. A fearful person? You want the person to have courage.

5. A manipulative person? Honesty, forthrightness. I do not want to



9

get into a power struggle.

6. A confused person? Patience. Clarify.

M. It is multifaceted, chaotic, and messy. That is why you have to think

context: Who is this person? What is our relationship like? What are the

limits of my ministry? What does focused, thoughtful, progressive, and

productive love look like with this person?

N. Sharon case study (cf. Supplemental Section of syllabus under “Case

studies”)

1. How do you love Sharon?

2. You are called to love Sharon and Ed.

O. You will not be uniformly touched with everyone you meet. You will not

fi nd everyone loveable.

1. The call is still to love, to be an instrument in God’s work.

2. Illustration of Paul and parenting.

P. There is a call to humility and call to context for God’s work of change.



V. Jesus: the Wonderful Counselor

A. Excerpted reading from Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places4

1. Same Jesus, same gospel, remarkably different approaches. Why?

Context. Nicodemus and the Samaritan women are from remarkably

different contexts.

2. The gospel does embrace every variation of the human race. It is like

water that fl ows into every crevice of the human experience.



9

3. Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor. The work that needs to be done is

done by Him. The change that needs to happen is a work of His

grace. The center is Christ.

4. There is never a day where you will possibly love the person sitting

across from you more than Christ does.

5. The most important encounter in counseling a person will have is

their encounter with Christ. You are an agent of that encounter.

1 Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 2005) 250-251.2 Peterson, Eat this Book (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans, 2006) 31-34. 3 Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places 13-19. 4 Ibid., 327.



10

Lecture 10

I. Opening Prayer

II. Know (remixed)

A. Data gathering is a way to build a relationship with a person. You want

to know this person. You do not want to make untoward assumptions.

1. If, in data gathering, you fi nd out that this person has a hard time

trusting people, that is going to affect how you are going to build a

relationship with that person.

2. If, in data gathering, you fi nd out this person has had a bad experi-

ence with counseling, that is going to affect how you are going to

build a relationship with that person.

B. Challenges to building relationships

1. We are used to living in causal relationships with people.

2. Particularly if you are in a formal counseling situation, it is awkward

to build a relationship in that setting.

C. Everything you do in counseling rests on that middle box (see graphic

above).



10

1. Bad data gathering always results in bad counseling.

2. You have to be committed to becoming one who asks good questions.

D. Data gathering for helping the person to see biblically:

1. You are not just making pronouncements. You do not know if the

person has owned and understood what has been discussed unless

you ask questions.

2. Insightful people are those with the right questions, not primarily

people with the right answers. You do not get to the right answers

without the right questions.

E. Do not jump to conclusions. Keep an open mind.

1. Implications if you do not:

a) You will be counseling a person who is only in your mind and not

the person in front of you.

b) The person will feel manipulated.

2. Data gathering as a journey. It is like driving a car to a destination

you have never been to before.



10

F. Skill of asking questions

1. It is not asking a barrage of questions.

2. It is not following your intuition.

3. It is not following your interests.

4. It is following a progressive line of questions. You will have to resist

rabbit trails.



10

G. Characteristics of good data gathering:

1. Focused: Stay on topic.

a) Resist all the interesting things that you can talk about.

b) Get at the issues where change is needed, there is confusion, etc.

2. Flexible: You want to be prepared for small and dramatic changes

from what you expected this meeting to be like. Your real confi dence

is not in your control, but in God’s Spirit.

3. Attentive: This is hard focused work. Listening is not a passive

experience; it is an active skill. It is a holy calling.

a) A person will not always tell you something in the order of

importance.

b) A person will not tell you things in a chronological, historical

order.

c) When a person is emotional, they will communicate in bits and

pieces.

4. Patient: rather than ask one big question, ask fi ve questions to get

there (conceptual ramps).



10

5. Thoughtful: Do not feel the pressure to respond to every statement.

Do not feel the need to get to the next question. Feel comfortable in

saying, “Let’s take a minute to think about what you just said here.”

6. Prepared: You must reach this tension between data gathering and

being prepared, and also being spontaneous. You should be thinking

ahead of what you need to ask this person and ways of asking that.

But you cannot prepare a line of questions. Ask yourself:

a) What do I not know about what I have already heard?

b) What is the best way to draw out that response? Think of some

questions.

7. Repetitive: Ask the person, “Tell me about that again.” There are

many vantage points to talking about a particular thing.

8. Creative: Uncreative questions get empty, uncreative answers. Ask

questions that are like conceptual Velcro (i.e., a lot of things stick to it)

a) “Tell me about your marriage,” versus, “Tell me fi ve things you

love about your marriage;” or “Give me three ways, if you can

change your marriage, these are the three things you would

change.”

b) “Why did you do that?” versus “When you got angry in that

situation, what were you trying to get at or go after?”



10

9. Biblical:

a) You want to ask rich, biblically informed questions.

(1) Unbiblical: Why is God not working in my life?

(2) Biblical: What is God doing in my life, and why am I not

seeing it?

b) You are asking the types of questions that the person is not able

to ask themselves.

10. Relaxed:

a) This cannot feel like an interrogation or a set-up.

b) You have got to be willing to slow down.

c) Realize even with a developed knowledge of this person, there

are vastly important things you do not know about this person’s

heart. You are limited. You have got to let the process do its

work.

d) You cannot have a few paid professionals doing all the work,

carrying the burden. You need a mobilized body of Christ to

do the work. We cannot allow ourselves to compromise the

process of ministry because there are too few people ministering.

11. Selective:

a) Be aware that you are sorting the information into categories all

the time.

b) You are sorting what is important and what is not. What is the

valuable critical information? What is the stuff you just do not

need to pay attention to or unpack further?

c) You are sorting what you need to unpack further.

12. Responsive:



10

a) It is an interactive process. You are in the moment.

b) In the moment you are not thinking, “How am I going to help

this person? What Bible verses will I use?”

c) You are being responsive. You are allowing yourself to be touched

by what touches this person. That responsiveness is critical for

this process to be what it is meant to be.

III. Helpful Hints

A. Always take good notes.

1. Your mind is not good enough to retain the details.

2. Do not apologize for taking notes.

3. Give an apologetic for taking notes.

4. Reading over your notes helps you to see things that you normally

would not have. Helps you to make connections that you would not

have “on the fl y.”

B. Develop shorthand. You want to be interactive so you have to develop

your own shorthand.



10

1. It is appropriate to say at times, “What you just said seems very

important. Say it again to me. I want to take it down so we can talk

about it further.”

2. If a person has a strong opinion, emotion or signifi cant quote, put

the phrase in quotes and bring it up to the person. It is important to

play back a person’s words to them and then say, “I want to unpack

what you just said.”

3. Use single words to unpack history statements, identity statements.

Do not try to take notes into those categories. (You will do that later.)

C. Keep eye contact. This person wants a relationship with you. Learn to

pay attention to the person.

D. Ask the person what they are learning. See what the person is doing

with the process.

IV. Other Data Gathering Methods

A. Examine your notes.

1. Look for themes.

2. Look for things you want to follow up on.



10

B. Carefully observe the person: Be interactive and attentive.

C. Inventories can be helpful. (See Personal Inventory worksheets.)

1. Develop your own inventories. (See Wayne Mack’s inventories for

marriage counseling.1)

2. You can give that to them, and they can bring it back to you to get a

sense of how they are thinking.

D. Bringing in other people

1. You have to get permission to do this.

2. There may be a signifi cant person in their life who knows them well.

You can get very interesting information from a person who was

there in that moment when you were not able to be.

E. Journals

1. You will not get people who will write about their entire life.

2. Focused journals can be helpful.

a) Not asking a person to journal their entire week

b) Ask them to choose one or two “fl ash points” (e.g., a person at work

they have problems with) that they are going to journal about.



10

c) Ask them to have something with which they can make a note

to themselves, “I need to journal later.”

d) At the end of the day they are going to journal around that

particular issue.

e) Give fi ve questions that they build the journal around:

1) What was going on? A brief description of the situation to

get me on board with what happened.

2) What were you thinking and feeling as it was happening?

Directing the camera to include this person in what is going on.

3) What did you do in response? Getting a person to think

biblically about the situation. There was a response out of

your heart.

4) Why did you do it? What were you seeking to accomplish?

This goes after motives. I have bracketed behavior with

the thoughts and motives of the heart (Hebrews 4: thoughts

and motives of the heart). This is getting a person to exam-

ine themselves in ways that people do not typically do.

5) What was the result? Goes after “harvest.” The seeds were

planted in (2) and (4).

f) Have them keep that journal for two or three weeks. They can

go through that journal and think through it.

g) When they bring it back, ask them if they learned anything from

their journal experience.

h) Take the journal and look at the journal for themes and patterns

which will get at heart issues for me. Highlight those patterns

with a highlighter.



10

i) Give them back to the person while they are with you. “Tell me

what you think about what I highlighted.”

j) Example of an angry woman who did this exercise

k) You are getting a person’s own words and description to work with.

l) Helpful in getting a person to see as well as gathering information

F. Real-time data:

1. You have a relationship with this person. You experience how they

respond to you, to diffi culty in your relationship, to authorities in

their life.

2. How are they in their relationship with you?

G. Follow through with homework you assigned. Make sure you work

through the homework you assigned the last time you met. That will

become the basis for the questions you will ask, cover, and unpack

further in the current session.

H. Outside application: You will learn a lot about this person by the way

they follow through, by how committed they are to the process, and

what they say about the work that you have assigned to them.

V. The Five Big Questions of Interpretation:

A. What does the Bible say about what is going on in this person’s world?

1. Example of a husband and wife who are having marital problems and

who are in a particular fi nancial situation.

2. Illustration of a man who was so involved with his career that he did

not have time for godly parenting.

3. We are not ignoring the situation and rushing in for the heart. Often

that situation is a result of previous decisions made that have formed



10

it so. Few people are as trapped as they think they are.

B. What does the Bible say about how this person is responding to their world?

1. You have an active person who is doing things.

2. What does the Bible say about how they are dealing with what is on

their plate?

C. What does the Bible say about what this person thinks about their world?

1. What have I learned about what this person is thinking and about

how they have made sense of their world?

2. Are they thinking biblically, from the vantage point of truth?

D. What does the Bible say about what this person wants out of their world?

1. Motives, goals, desires, demands, cravings, idols, etc.

2. What is ruling this person’s heart?

3. What does the Bible say about the values of this person and about

what this person is living for?

E. You are pushing every category through a biblical sieve.

F. Where does the Bible say that change is needed?

1. Given what I know about the situation, this person’s responses, their

thoughts, their motives, where is God calling this person to change?

2. What will that change look like?

3. That is your agenda.

G. The questions may tell you that you need to do more data gathering

because you may fi nd you do not know enough about this person’s situa-

tion, or how they are making sense of this particular issue, or what they

want here.



10

1. Cycle back and unpack those things some more.

2. You should end up at a place where you have a clear sense of where

God is calling them to change. Where you can call them to clear,

specifi c, biblical commitments. You want them to see that and own that.

VI. The Four “Must Not” of Data Gathering

A. Human relationship of any kind depends on shared experience, of some

kind of identity of experience (i.e., shared experience of language). You

need that shared experience in order to communicate.

B. Very often, misunderstandings in relationships result from the assump-

tion of shared identity of experience.

C. Because I have an experience of “father”, and you said “father”, I assume

things about your experience of “father” that I should not. If I do not

ask questions about the concept of “father” you have mentioned, I am

getting my defi nition out of my own experience. This is deadly.

D. Ask what appear to be “dumb” questions. You have got to be sure.

E. If you are not sure, ask anyway. If you are sure, ask anyway, then you are

sure.



10

F. There is a big temptation to “fi ll in the blanks” all the way.

G. Make sure your conclusions are the result of gathering of a good base of

data. Resist those early assumptions.

VII. Q&A

A. Question: What do you do with a person who resists the homework you

assigned, possibly because they did not understand what it means?

Answer: That becomes my counseling issue. That is what I am going to

talk about. That is everything. If I am talking to a person, and I am not

being accusatory, but they are getting angry, I am not going to pass that

up. There is something being communicated when a person on one hand

says, “I want to change, but I am unwilling to invest in the process of

change.” Hold those things up. “I do not want to judge you, but I am

confused about something.”

B. Question: What happens when you go through the process and you make

a statement of where change is needed, and you did not get it right

Answer: This process is a journey. You are going to take wrong turns. Tell

people, “This is a bit like a journey, and we are not sure all the turns we

are going to take, and I want you to say to me, ‘I think you are getting

it wrong.’ I want to be able to say to you, ‘I know you do not know

where I am going, but trust me for a moment. Do not resist me.” We

want to have that kind of relationship with one another. If you blow it,

confess that.

C. Question: If they do not tell you that you are wrong, how do you know?

Answer: If you get to this point and you kind of sell an agenda to this

person, and they are less than enthusiastic, then that is what you are

going to unpack. Maybe that is just them being resistant because they

are afraid of change. Then they need gospel encouragement. But it may

be that it does not fi t. I’ll say, “You seem to be less than enthusiastic



10

here. Tell me what is going on. You can be honest with me because my

identity is not tied up in my conclusions. I want to be helpful to you. If

this is not helpful, then let’s talk about it.”

D. Question: Have you ever been in a situation where you had to let go of

someone? What are the circumstances that may cause that to happen

Answer: Sure. There comes a point where I am dependent on that

person’s willingness to be part of the process. I’ll say, “I do not have

anything else to give you. To the best of my ability, I am convinced that

this right. I am convinced that this is where God is calling you to. And

you are fi ghting me. I have got no more arguments to make. Here’s what

I want to do. I want to say to you that I am here for the duration, but I

am not willing for us to have verbal duels every time we get together, so

I am going to cut you loose. But I want you to be honest with yourself….

What is happening is that you have made it very clear that you do not

want what is being offered here. At least leave being honest with what is

going on here.”

E. Question: Are there times where a person may be more comfortable,

more responsive to a counselor of the same gender?

Answer: I think there are a whole host of wisdom issues here. I do not

think the Bible prohibits cross-gender counseling, but you need to be wise.

F. Question: Can you give an example of “repetition” in the process of data

gathering?

Answer: Let’s take the example of family. In the fi rst meeting with the

person, you might ask, “Tell me about your family,” and they will give

you a three minute summary. All you have is a summary. So you go back

after family again and you may hit that ten times before you get the

family story. To the person, it may seem like you are just repeating ques-

tions. That will not happen for very long because soon they will see that

there is a lot more on the table the second time around and even more

the third time around, and they will be more tuned into the process.



10

G. Question: Given the skills like note taking, journaling, homework, etc.,

what does that look like in an informal counseling context?

Answer: Example of an informal dinner conversation turning into a

counseling moment. The model is fl exible. Love-Know-Speak-Do will

help me in a ten-minute conversation as much as it will help me in a six-

month relationship because it gives me ministry categories to work with.


A. See Supplemental Section of syllabus under Lecture 10.

1 Wayne Mack, Preparing for Marriage God’s Way (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Hensley Publishing, 1995)



11

Lecture 11

I. Opening Prayer

II. Speak (Remixed)

A. Speak has to do with embedding the story of a person into God’s larger

story of redemption. It is more than fi xing a person’s situational and

relational diffi culties.

B. Excerpt from Eat This Book1

1. Bible as a meta-story

2. Story invites our participation.

3. The Bible invites us in as participants in something larger than our

self-defi ned sense of need and ambition.

4. A person’s sense of need and ambition are not objective. They have

been informed by the surrounding culture as to what they need and

what their ambition should be. They experience that sense of need

because the culture’s defi nition has become their worldview.

a. Saying the Bible meets those needs and ambitions does violence

to the Bible.

b. The Bible offers a radically different defi nition of what a person

needs and a higher calling of ambition.

[Note: In the audio when Paul refers to “this,” he is referring to a

person’s sense of need]

c. Do not do a “bait and switch” on the person where they come

in to talk about their sense of need and you say you are willing

to, but you are not really because you want to talk about

something else. The person is going to feel used and manipulated,

and they will not participate.



11

d. Example of a child at night who is scared because they think

there are monster spiders on the wall. The child’s experience of

fear is real, even if unfounded. Take seriously the thing they are

struggling with.

C. Continued excerpt from Eat This Book2

1. If it is just information, you take it into your hands, and you decide

what that information means.

2. Story invites you in, and it defi nes your location.

3. The Biblical themes are counter-intuitive to people, so you need to

be patient. It is a “third way.” People will struggle, doubt, fi dget, and

worry, so you will need to be patient.

III. Speak

A. Be an instrument of seeing. (How can I help this person see themselves

from the viewpoint of the Biblical narrative and be ____?)

B. Speak should not be reduced to making pronouncements, to get a

person to do something. You are working towards having a change

working through this person, so they will own responsibility and commit

to a new way.



11

1. Speak is not an event. It is a process. That means each step is a

process.

2. Speak is an interaction.

a) If you are really after heart change, you have to be conversing

with the person, know they are on board.

b) There is a place when a person is stiff-necked and obstinate,

where it is right to make pronouncements and call a person to

respond, but that is not where you start.

3. The goal is that there would be real, concrete change of heart that

begins in the context of the situations and relationships where God

has placed them; that they would take up God’s plot in the place

where they live.

C. Always begin with the gospel.

1. You want to root everything you say in the work and person of Jesus

Christ.

2. You are giving them a different identity (cf. Galatians 2:20).

3. Confrontation is a ministry of the gospel (both the comfort and the

call).



11

D. Speak is an interaction and process, messy and unpredictable.

1. There is need for prepared spontaneity.

2. Be open to the Spirit of God.

3. Be creative and fl exible.

E. You do not want to get into a power battle with people. People will push

you and fi ght for that turf.

1. Guard your heart and be humble.

2. You want to be candid and honest.

3. You do not want to be manipulative.

4. You want to have a clear distinction between your opinion and the

mirror of God’s word.

F. You have to be committed to listening and being patient.

1. Are you taking good notes?

2. Are you coming in prepared?

3. Are you prepared to advance the conversation (through thinking,



11

praying, talking to other people)?

G. Ask clarifying questions that help the person face the implication of

what they said:

1. “Are you saying that…?”

2. “Is there an example you could give me?”

3. “I am confused. Do you mean…?”

4. “Would I be correct in concluding…?”



11

5. “You said_____. Tell me more about that.”

6. “What do you see as your God-given ability in that situation?”

7. Above are heart-revealing questions of thoughts and motives.

H. Occasionally summarize and paraphrase what a person is saying as you

are helping them to see. Summarize so that those can be the next steps

for this person to change.

I. Look for places to encourage and agree.



11

J. You do not want to be adversarial, but you must be willing to disagree.

1. Say, “No, that’s not it,” in a loving way (not with an attitude, but

with clarity and fi rmness).

2. Give the sense of a person not standing above, but alongside.

3. You need to do this whenever it is necessary. That clarity helps the

person to trust you more.

K. Confrontation is not about listing out charges but helping the person to

see God.

L. Incarnate God’s grace through the processes “Love” and “Know”. Go

through the whole process of “Speak”.

M. Keep an eye on your own heart. Be willing to be confronted by them and

be willing to make your own confession.

N. Make sure your judgments are tempered with compassion, mercy and

love. Minister with a sense of priority. Every form of ministry has limits

attached to it.

O. Make sure your confrontation is from alongside and not from above.

1. Example of parent confronting a child



11

2. The person who confronts is also a person in need of change.

Confronter and the person being confronted share identity.

P. Always invite people to look at underlying heart issues, not just

behavioral and situational change. You want to root change in the heart.

Q. You have to be prepared.

1. You cannot be a guide through this messy process unless you are

prepared with wonderful perspectives from the Word of God

a) Illustrations

b) Metaphors

c) Self-disclosing stories

d) Good questions

2. You do not know when you are going to use them, but you prepare

for the moment God will give you.

R. Give confrontation the time and place it needs to be successful.

S. Make sure you are resisting giving a monologue.

1. Break up what you are saying with questions.



11

a) “What are you hearing?”

b) “Are there places where you are struggling with what I am saying?”

2. Get the person active and interacting with you.

T. Use the Bible with care and skill. What does it look like for this person

to engage life with a God-story mentality?

U. Get to the level of concrete practicality. Confrontation has to go to the

details of everyday life. Otherwise, it has not done its job.

1. What would change look like in the context of this relationship?



11

2. In this family?

3. In this moment in time?

4. What is God calling this person to?

5. What would this person say?

V. Keep affi rming your limits. You change no one. You must depend on the

Spirit of God.

W. Always end each time you meet with clear and persuasive gospel hope.

1. Does this person understand their identity in Christ?

2. Do they grasp the implications of the abiding presence of the Lord?

3. Do they get the grandeur and the practicality of the provisions that

have been made for them in the person and work of Jesus Christ?

4. The process is bracketed by the gospel (i.e., the beginning and end)

and dyed with the gospel throughout.



11

X. Give plenty of time for feedback.

1. Have those feedback moments small and often.

a) Is the person on board?

b) Are they committed to change?

2. What are the evidences of those things that you can see in that person?

Y. Follow up with the person.

IV. Diagnostic

A. Consideration: How well are we doing in terms of “sightedness”? Do



11

they see themselves with clear Biblical sightedness or do they see them-

selves with distortion?

B. Confession: Is the person still minimizing? Rationalizing? Self- atoning?

1. For the believer, the heart of stone has been taken out, and he or she

has been given a heart of fl esh, so the believer will have a sensitive

conscience.

a) In the face of a guilty conscience, he will either confess his

wrong and place himself under the justifying mercy of Christ to

receive His forgiveness.

b) Or, he will erect some system of self-justifi cation that makes that

wrong acceptable to his conscience.

(1) He has relieved his conscience with self-atonement.

(2) He is insulting the grace of Christ and will not be motivated

to change and move in a new way, because he is OK with

the old way.

2. Do not assume confession. Have them confess right then and there

a) Are they bargaining with God? Keep your standards high.

b) Confession is different from self-atonement, minimizing, and

rationalizing.



11

c) It is not loving to allow a person to be okay with something that

God says is not OK.

C. Commitment: Do they see clearly and specifi cally where new living is

needed?

1. Example of a man from Montana

D. Change: Does this person give concrete evidence of acting and follow-

ing through with the commitments? There should be enthusiasm,

reports, etc., as they are now doing things that God has made clear to

them through the consideration, confession, commitment process.



11

E. Remember that the above are not events. They are part of a process.

1. Have many mini-moments of change. You do not try and operate

with “Love” and “Know” to build a case against someone so you can

have one explosive moment of confrontation.

2. The Bible has progressive sanctifi cation in view. There are hundreds

of moments of personal change.



11

V. Excerpt from Eat This Book3

A. We enter this text to meet God as he reveals himself, not for principles

B. We mistakenly try to fi t Scripture to fi t our experiences.

1. We often come with a hermeneutic of suspicion, take nothing at face

value.

2. Example: The Jeffersonian bible where Jefferson cut and paste what

he thought valid and true

VI. Q&A

A. Question: Can you give an example of how you would embed a person’s

story into God’s big story?

Answer: The Bible is not a collection of stories. It is one story. You are

not embedding a person into a particular story of scripture. You are

embedding a person’s story in the story of scripture. Example of a

husband and wife in confl ict

B. Question: Regarding an informal counseling context, how do you

prioritize what you hear?



11

Answer: Asking the question: “What right now has this person in its

grip?” is the one that helps me.

C. Question: Regarding an informal counseling context, how do you decide

which people to move towards?

Answer: There really is not a way. I guess you could say, “This circum-

stance is more dramatic than others,” but you have to realize that you

are not the only tool in God’s toolbox. You always have limits. You say,

“God, I have an opportunity with this person. I have opportunities with

these twelve. I cannot do these twelve. I commend these people to your

sovereign care, and I am going to jump in here.” No one knows your

limits more than the Creator who set them for you. Other considerations

are that you might have a platform of relationship with this person. The

person might be in crisis. This person might be available in this moment

in a way that others might not be.

VII. The Peace of Christ

A. If that same rest in God’s story is not controlling your heart, you are

going to be an anxious, fretful, fearful minister.

B. You do not experience people’s pain. You do not get their story because

as it comes to you, it gets reprocessed as, “Oh no, what am I going to

do?” You actually experience your anxiety, not their diffi culty.

C. You are not really loving that person. You do not realize that you are

only an instrument. I am going to encounter people that I cannot help at

this time of my life. I can rest in God’s work.

D. It is a powerful experience when someone gets your story.



1 Peterson, Eat This Book 40-41. 2 Ibid., 63-66. 3 Ibid., 67-69.



12

Lecture 12

I. Opening Prayer

II. Review of the semester

A. Often counseling ends too soon. Insight is wonderful, but it is not

change. Change has not taken place until change has taken place.

B. People need us to hang in there with them through the process of

change.

C. Presented with a model that is fl exible for both brief, informal moments

to extensive, formal contexts. Love-Know-Speak-Do guides my

interaction with people:

1. Love would say to me, “Do I genuinely care? Have I somehow said

to them, ‘I care’ because I am an ambassador, and I represent Christ?

If I can communicate that care then I remind them that Christ is

with them. Christ is near. Christ is involved.”

2. Know: What do I need to know in this brief moment so that I can

provide help for this person, so I can understand what is going on?

What questions should I ask that will help guide my ministry?

3. Speak: What does this person need to know even in this brief

moment? What can I help them see that they are not seeing in this

moment? Where are there places I can encourage them to turn from

doing one thing to something that is better?

4. Do: How can I help this person bear the burden of God’s call?

Where does this thing get concrete? How can I help them with

those issues?

D. The model can help you diagnose the relationships God has placed you

in. God determines the length and kind of relationship you have with

others.



12

E. It is not, “This is what you always do with this person in this particular

situation.” People are not mechanical. You need to have a prepared

spontaneity.

F. You and I are never ever anything more than an instrument in God’s

redemptive hands. You are not a messiah. You can focus on what God

has called you to do. You do not have to focus on God’s job.

G. Questions to ask yourself:

1. What does it mean to build a relationship in which the work of God

can thrive? How am I doing at that?

2. Do I really get to know people, or do I allow myself to be trapped in

these terminally casual relationships that are full of assumptions that

I should not be making? Do I fail to ask good questions because I

assume I know a lot more about people than I actually do?

3. How am I doing at helping people see the things they do not see?

How well do I hold that mirror in front of people so they see

themselves as they actually are? Do I tend to confuse my opinion

with God’s perspective?

4. Am I good at laying out God’s way of repentance, helping people to

see radical changes of heart that will lead to radical changes in the

direction of their life?

5. Do I avoid confrontation? Am I really good at establishing

relationships with people, but I never say tough things?

6. Am I just a theological sledgehammer? People should never be

crushed by the way you use God’s word. They should be crushed by

God’s word.

7. How do I get people to get moving and make application in their

life? Am I able to be specifi c? The Bible is a street book. It lives in

everyday, real life. I want to use the word of God in a strikingly



12

practical way. People do not need ideology. They need transformation.

H. We believe change is possible because Almighty God through the man

Christ Jesus had feet that touched earth, and He said, “The time has

come. Repent and believe the good news. Change is possible.” In Mark

1:14, Jesus tells His disciples to proclaim, “Change is possible.”

I. If a joyful, humble heart is not motivation for you, the skills you learned

will make you dangerous.

J. It is not just hope for other people. It is hope for us.

K. This way of reading the Bible is not intuitive for people. People will

come with different expectations

1. Excerpt from Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind1

a) A treasure chest

b) A grab bag of promises and comfort

c) A compilation of riddles and secrets

d) A talisman of magical power

2. As your goal is to embed the particular story of the person into the

larger story of redemption, realize you are doing something with

people that they are not prepared for. Be patient with them, and be

careful as you lead them in that way.

III. Do (remixed)

A. You need to have a set of directions: You cannot guide another person

unless you know where you are going.

1. What is your method/strategy?

2. Ponder those questions outside of the time you are spending with the

person.



12

B. Bi-level goals:

1. We are interested in heart/character change.

2. We are interested in situation/relational change.

C. James 4

1. The topic is human confl ict

2. There is a dynamic of heart and hands:

a) Anything that controls your heart gets expressed in your hands.



12

b) When he calls for change, he says hands and heart.

(1) It has to be this bi-factorial agenda: hands and heart. Every

heart change has implications for change of hands.

(2) We have to work on both levels.

(3) Some may be good “heart” people. Others are better “hands”

people. You need to work at both levels because that is the

call.

3. “Hands”: James’ summary for behavioral change.

a) What are the things that they need to stop doing?

b) What are the things they must do?

c) How are we going to get from where we are to where we need

to be?

4. “Heart”:

a) What needs to change in this person’s thinking?

b) What’s their view of God, self, other people, meaning and

purpose of life, life in a fallen world, change, etc.?

c) What is this person living for? (motives)



12

D. Issue of responsibility and concern

E. Help person prioritize his or her lists



12

F. Help person live with his or her circles in a proper biblical balance.

G. Accountability: length of time between my contact with the person

and growth to continue

H. Remember people are always measuring their potential.

I. Remember people tend to forget who they are. If you forget who you are

in Christ, you will quit pursuing what belongs to you in Christ.

J. Identity amnesia always leads to identity replacement.

1. Replacements: What gives me identity enslaves me.



12

K. The way a person assesses their potential is its connection to their

identity.

L. 2 Peter 1:3-9

1. (v.8) If those character qualities are ruling your heart, you will be

productive

2. When I remember my awesome potential as God’s child, I am not

satisfi ed with occasional love, a little bit of kindness, spotty

perseverance. We often live short of the destination, and we make it



12

work. Identity is powerfully motivating.

M. Galatians 2:20: Identity in Christ

1. Historical redemptive fact: Every piece of your identity in Christ is

rooted in His actual work on earth. At the cross, he did not purchase

the possibility of save-ability. Christ took names to the cross.

2. Present Redemptive Reality. The life force that energizes this man is

not me, but it is Christ. I have been re-powered by Christ. My

potential is Christ.

a) Personal lifestyle commitment: I am going to live in my

situations and relationships in a way that refl ects that I actually

believe that Christ has risen and lives in me.

b) Biblical counseling is not offering a system of redemption. We

offer people a Redeemer. The Redeemer is our hope.

IV. Elaine case study (See Supplemental Section of syllabus under “Case studies”.)

A. Facts of Elaine’s situation (anything outside of the heart)

1. Loss of job

2. Single



12

3. Family background: controlling father; mother, a woman of few

words and little affection

4. Life in the big city

5. Her body

6. Betrayal of Sam

7. Your response:

a) You can begin to predict her responses as you get to know her

situation.

b) You ought to respond to whatever realities of the fall that is on

this woman’s plate with compassion, mercy and grace.

c) You are learning how to better minister to this person by

clarifying things, incarnating the love of Christ, beginning to

predict the places where she will be tempted, etc.

B. Elaine’s responses (i.e., behavior, actions, reactions, responses [not

emotions])

1. Does not go to church, small group or choir

2. Willing to talk with you again

3. Sleeping

4. Does not perform at work

5. Seeking food for comfort

6. Working at a plain job

7. Pulls back from her activities at church



12

8. Pleads with God.

9. Your response:

a) What themes jump out?

(1) Withdrawal

(2) Despair/no hope: not that of an atheist. She is pleading with

God. She is willing to talk. This is the messy life of a person

with faith.

b) As you look at her responses, you ought to recognize you. You

are not going to help Elaine if you view her as fundamentally

different from you. Our cries get mirrored in the Psalms.

C. Elaine’s thoughts (i.e. interpretation that energizes her responses)

1. She feels she is angry, frustrated, and depressed.

Note: Every thought is connected to a feeling.

2. God is sovereign.

3. Life is hell.

4. There is nothing anyone can do. I just have to ride it out.

5. I could die and no one would care.

6. Your response:

a) If that view of life is right, reading the Bible, going to small group

is futility.

b) You can understand the choices she is making. You

understand her logic.

c) You want to help that person. They are in this cul-de-sac of their

own concepts. As long as they hold onto that way of thinking,

there is no way out.



12

D. Elaine’s motives (i.e., What does she want, crave, desire?)

1. “I am not asking for much. Just someone who loves me and reason to

get up in the morning.”

2. Does not want to live alone

3. Tired of a work life that does very little except to pay her bills

4. Wants a wedding that includes her

5. What are the themes?

a) Strong desire for relationship

(1) Is this bad? No, this woman was made for meaningful

communion with God and people. At the level of desire, it is

not a horrible desire.

(2) But it has been put in the identity, purpose, and meaning

container. That will not work.

(3) At that level, she is doing it to her. Holding those things in

that way is not about the situation. It is about what she is

doing with her situation. She has allowed these things to be

in a place in her life where they should not be.

E. It is more than a way to organize data.

1. Helps you identify with this person

2. Helps you know where you do not know enough

3. Begins to predict where change needs to take place and

gives you a sense of agenda

4. It ought to give you a tender heart. This will affect the way you deal

with this woman. You will see yourself in all four categories.

a) I am not dealing with these spontaneous fragments that come up

in her story. I am ministering to her entire story, and I am



12

viewing her as a person just like me.

b) You want to embed her story in the story of redemption because

the hope for her story is found there.

5. It is never just about the other person. There is never an answer I

would give that I do not need myself.

6. Every one of these tools is not just for ministering to another person.

They are tools for you to know where hope is found. The Wonderful

Counselor is committed to the work of change, to the completion of

all his people.

1 Longman 53-56.

1803 East Willow Grove AvenueGlenside, PA 19038

For more information, please contact CCEF customer service.800 318 2186ccef.org

Oaksusu Designs | oaksusu.net

methods of biblical change - weebly

Documents