Editor’s Be aware: Our July 2024 mini-series on the BCC Grace and Reality weblog affords biblical counselors a couple of extra instruments to your counseling toolbox. On this first article, Tim St. John shares three classes to information counselors in selecting homework that most closely fits the present stage of counseling. In different contributions to the sequence, Joe Hussung explains how confrontation can transfer the counseling dialog ahead, and Keith Evans discusses utilizing versatility and number of prayer within the counseling room.
Towards the shut of each counseling session, an essential query arises in each the counselor’s and counselee’s minds: “The place can we go from right here?” Whether or not a session felt productive, uplifting, chaotic, or discouraging, everybody agrees that the tip of a session isn’t the tip of the non secular battles that rage inside our hearts. As a counselor, I wish to equip these I meet with to proceed urgent into the numerous pathways of grace God supplies outdoors of counseling.
Whereas there are numerous components that would information the homework you create and assign, our ministry makes use of the next three classes to information our counselors in selecting homework that most closely fits the present stage of counseling: coronary heart and life exposing, worship fueling, and group loving. All three filters assist be certain that the assignments we give will clearly direct somebody’s coronary heart towards Christ. That is important as a result of there’ll by no means be a time when we have to look away from Christ to develop. Scripture teaches us that we develop extra like Christ from one diploma of glory to a different solely as we behold Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). Subsequently, since every part we do out and in of the counseling session is about serving to somebody worship Christ extra, we’ve created the next classes to information the kinds of assignments we create.
1. Coronary heart and Life-Exposing Assignments (Prov. 20:5)
Our counselors most often assign coronary heart and life-exposing homework within the early phases of counseling. This helps expose the counselee’s coronary heart and divulges any instant wants that must be addressed. These assignments problem somebody to review Scripture, replicate on questions on their life, and journal. Throughout a session, I may ask somebody to share about their anxieties, but when I ask them to journal concerning the anxieties that come up throughout the week and share that journal with me, it offers them extra time to replicate and removes any pointless strain from the session. These assignments give counselees time to meditate on passages of Scripture, let the Spirit search and reveal their coronary heart, after which journal about questions associated to their battle. I’ve discovered this follow provides far more freedom for his or her hearts and readability to their solutions.
This follow additionally permits me to honor them within the session by not pressuring them to supply a sturdy self-understanding at that second. As an alternative, we will use the counseling hour to debate how the earlier week’s project helped them replicate on their coronary heart and what God is instructing them about themselves. If I discover {that a} query requested throughout our session challenges them to replicate on an space that’s new for them, I normally add it as a heart-exposing project for them to work on between classes. In actual fact, if I discover that they’re wrestling with a query I requested in a session, I normally favor that they take their time to replicate outdoors of the session to take away any strain they may really feel to reply within the second.
With the sort of project, I’m making an attempt to slowly construct solutions to massive class questions like, “What retains them from beholding Christ?” “What risks encompass their lives?” “What lies are they tempted to imagine?” “What dangerous influences have a maintain of their hearts?” These all usually embrace some kind of reflection questions and journal entries. Listed below are some examples from our ministry:
- Feelings Journal[1] – Exposes how we replicate on and course of our feelings
- Identification Research – Exposes the methods we wrongly and rightly consider our view of self
- Powlison’s X-ray Questions – Exposes the anti-gospel worldview of our coronary heart that facilities on somebody or one thing else
- Christ-Centered Scheduling – Exposes how we arrange our lives round egocentric needs and helps us think about what it may seem like to dwell Christ-centered lives
- Uncovering Damaging Patterns – Exposes the relational struggles that {couples} typically wrestle with and the idolatry that fuels it
- Re-writing and personalizing psalms of lament and confession (e.g., Ps. 13, 51) – Exposes how we at the moment course of our struggling and sin
2. Worship Fueling (Ps. 63:1-8)
As soon as the heart-exposing assignments have revealed the areas of somebody’s coronary heart and life that have to be targeted on in counseling, I usually give worship-fueling assignments. With the sort of project, I’m primarily asking, “How can I assist them see Christ and switch towards Christ?” Irrespective of how succinct, descriptive, or theologically profound my phrases may be in a session, they don’t maintain a candle to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life as they meditate on Scripture themselves. Through the years, I’ve discovered the significance of instructing much less and primarily discussing the fantastic thing about Christ they meditated on by means of their assignments and different pathways of grace (e.g., sermons, small group, fellowship, prayer, and many others.). Fairly than merely giving them the reply, I wish to see them mature as they examine and transfer from ingesting milk to consuming meat (Heb. 5:12-14). For instance, reasonably than instructing a counselee about the advantages of God’s love from Psalm 103, I might ask them to meditate on the Psalm so we may focus on and replicate on the advantages of God’s love collectively. Listed below are some examples of assignments we use to attract a counselee’s consideration to Christ to assist them mature:
3. Group Loving (Rom. 13:8-10)
As soon as a counselee understands how their coronary heart turns away from Christ and the precise truths that assist them worship Christ, we wish to assist them think about show this imaginative and prescient of Christ by means of the way in which they love. With these community-loving assignments, we’re contemplating this query, “How can I assist my counselee proclaim Christ inside their relationships?” Listed below are a few of my favourite assignments underneath this class:
All of the great work our counselees do outdoors of a session really creates an encouraging ministry partnership with their counselor and supplies a mutual enjoyment of every session as they replicate collectively on grace and luxuriate in what God is doing. This format for biblical counseling continues to be an amazing encouragement to our counselors as a result of it locates the principle enviornment for private development in a believer’s stroll with God, not their stroll with a counselor.
I hope this weblog has helped you see how counseling assignments remind each the counselee and counselor that God is our Great Counselor and His ministry of grace by no means stops (Isa. 9:6; Ps. 32:8). As we rigorously create and curate assignments for counselees, could God use us to assist them see His enough grace that’s continuously obtainable and at work in them.
Questions for Reflection
- What kinds of counseling assignments do you advocate to your counselees?
- What different pathways of grace do your counselees interact with and the way do these help your ministry to them?
- What particular steps can you’re taking to increase the grace of counseling into the day by day lives of these you counsel?
[1] The attractive design for all our assignments was finished by Ruthanne Kamimura (ruthynoel@gmail.com)
