I was in Bible College many years ago and we would have Chapel uh every day uh Monday through Friday we had a chapel service every day and I still remember some of the statements that were made during those chapels uh it was a very influential time in my life uh one of the statements that a speaker made was this God's callings are God's enablings in other words if God calls you to do something he will equip you and give you the strength to do it uh there have been many times in Ministry through 43 years
where I've been tired today is one of those days and that statement has been going through my mind today uh here's another statement that I heard a long time ago in Bible College God's work done in God God's way will never lack God's Supply uh that statement is motivating me this evening to talk to you about how to use the Bible with counsel this whole week we've been talking about counseling systems and God has given us a complete counseling system in the Bible so I want to do his ministry with his tools uh what I'm
arguing here is extremely significant because some people would say there are not enough resources in the Bible to help people with deep problems I believe that that is a ridiculous statement I have been doing this for 43 years and I deal with all kinds of very serious problems and I've been telling you about some of the types of issues we deal with in our counseling Ministry and I find No Lack in the principles of scripture but here is the weakness many people don't know how to use the Bible they don't know how to interpret it
properly they don't know how to assign homework to counsel they don't know how to be creative with the Bible so that's that's what I'm going to talk to you about this evening along with finishing my ess's or finishing my seven points we stopped by looking at Isaiah 26 this morning and I was describing to you a woman who is a victim of very serious domestic abuse and I told you that she's had nightmares I told you that she's having panic attacks that she has many intrusive thoughts uh I did not mention this this morning but
she has even had Suicidal Thoughts uh living with the husband that she was living with was a very oppressive environment in case you have missed this story let me tell you a little more details she was beaten by her husband repeatedly he's a very angry man he even raped her uh he does not Prov provide for the family and as a church we helped her escape from that environment a movie could be made about this story a movie it has so many dramatic elements to it and then she came with her four children to live
in our home as a safe house I would like to show you how to use Isaiah 26: 3 to 5 with a person like this the problem is not a deficiency in scripture the problem is are not knowing how to creatively apply scripture to people's lives listen to these verses again read uh most of what I'm going to give you this evening is not in your notes so if you want to use this in the future would be good to take some notes this there are some general principles that I keep in mind when I'm
helping people that have gone through domestic abuse uh or other traumatic events uh remember these people are having nightmares they're having panic attacks they may be having flashbacks to the event they may have severe anger problems so here are the general principles that I keep in mind I want to creatively apply scripture in context I mentioned to you this morning Romans chapter 8 do you remember the context it's about Nero no wonder Paul talks so much about intense suffering in Romans 8 he gives them principles to apply to their lives living under Nero rule another
passage is Psalm 62 and I'm just trying to demonstrate to you that I have an abundance of passages of scripture that I can go to in Psalm 62 we read this about David people have betrayed him people are oppressing him people have lied to him uh we wonder about what is the context well do you remember that his son absolum led a revolt against him uh his own King King Saul wanted to kill him with a spear one of David's main leaders was a man named ayop lead leaders of D David leaders yes was a
a hopel that's a mouthful no wonder he talks about being betrayed in Psalm 62 there were people that wanted to kill him he lived a traumatic life so that Psalm tells you how do you deal with trauma another way to think about it would be how do you have good mental health when you're living in traumatic times you have to remember the context so these passages of scripture come alive in Isaiah 26 it's the Assyrians and I told you this morning what they would do to their slaves they probably would have killed your spouse in
front of your eyes maybe killed your children they would have robbed all of your homes and then they LED some away into captivity it was horrible what they did to people uh I've studied the chronology of the book of Isaiah and it's about right at this chapter that the Assyrian captivity was going to take place that makes this passage of scripture come alive it makes it an amazing passage of scripture it is promising that you can have perfect peace uh this sounds impossible how do you have perfect peace while living in traumatic events events so
I first of my general principles is I want to help people creatively apply scripture here's the second General principle I have to help people build new habits they are in very bad habits allowing their mind to control them this passage of scripture talks about having a disciplined mind uh people that are having nightmares or flashbacks their mind often is out of [Music] control the idea of habits is very clear in the Bible uh the founder of the modern biblical counseling movement was a man named J Adams ads and he talked about DH habituation and rehabitation
where do you hear the idea of habits in the Bible Ephesians 4 is one place you have to put off the old man be being renewed in the spirit of your mind and I'm giving you the the the way the Greek reads there so put off the old man woman be being renewed in the spirit of your mind be being continually and put on the new man in other words build a whole new way of life that's talking about habits The Book of Proverbs talks about habits a Proverbs says things like this there is a
way that seems right unto a man the word way in Hebrew is talking about ruts in a road um ruts tire tracks in a road people can develop very bad tracks the way they're living their life and the Book of Proverbs is about building whole new ways of life I want to help people with habits not just behavioral habits but thinking habits what do you do when you have that intrusive thought they need to be building routines into their life to develop or to to attack those intrusive thoughts break this sentence break the sentence please
they need to be developing new habits to attack those bad habits of thinking in their mind so that's the second General principle the third principle is I want to teach them to be worshippers uh music is a powerful tool I'm going to explain to you how I use music in counseling in a few minutes I want to teach them to have a vigorous prayer life that's one of the things you see in Psalm 62 with David when he is being attacked he runs to the Lord and he does not say this I go spend time
in prayer that's not what he says he says I pour out my heart to God I want to teach people how to vigorously pray how how do you lament how do you pour your heart out to God remember we are designed as humans to be in relationship with God we are not designed to try to live life independently when David was under stress he turned to relationship with God another part of this life of worship is learning to trust God trust is a worship word trust is a worship word uh Isaiah 26 tells us what
it means to trust God if you have never read the book trusting in God by Jerry Bridges you really need to read that book uh the title The subtitle of the book is very important the title is trus in God the subtitle is even when life hurts if someone said to me uh what the five top books every Christian should read that would be one of them I need to help people learn to trust God even in times of intense stress the last General principle is we always give homework counseling is only maybe for an
hour or an hour and a half what that means is a person has 168 and a half hours left in the week there is nothing magical about the hour of counseling change happens out in real life so I need to give them homework to help them live their real life they need to build new habits out in real life some might argue and say there's nothing in the Bible about giving homework I actually believe the principles are there for example James chapter 1 be doers of the word not hearers only I want to help people
be doers of the word um and there's many other ways that I could argue for the idea of homework now let's take these general principles and start applying them Isaiah 26 remember what we're dealing with we're dealing with severe issues maybe there are suicidal thoughts maybe there are nightmares maybe there are issues of bitterness because of how they've been hurt by others there are these thoughts that just pop into their mind mind uh we read to you this morning the one from the woman in the grocery store she was just shopping and shopping for groceries
and these thoughts started to dominate her mind and if she would not have done something about it it very easily could have turned into a panic attack right in the grocery store so what do we do let's go back to Isaiah 26 verse three talks about having a disciplined mind and the disciplined mind is trusting God we have to then ask what does it mean to trust God God I would start by helping my couns study this passage of scripture but just getting knowledge about the Bible is not enough the person has to learn how
do I apply this to my own life uh let me explain what it means to trust God this is such a common idea in the Bible that maybe we think we know what it means to trust God uh trust in God Is Not A Feeling trusting God is choosing to believe the promises of the Bible I'll stop there in spite of the circumstances going on around me let me repeat that trusting God is choosing to believe the promises of God in spite of the circumstances going on around me now that that means you're going to
have to discipline your mind because often when we are in those stressful situations the last thing we are thinking about is trusting God but when we choose to trust God the emotions respond this is how you deal with things like fear or anxiety even depression I have a steadfast mind that trusts god um steadfast disciplined mind sorry to get back in the sentence can you um I forget what I said okay just just go on then it's okay we'll go on this steadfast mind is is choosing to believe things about God sorry just got lost
is choosing to believe things about god notice what he says in the verses about why we should trust God or another way of saying that is this why is God trustworthy verse four says he is the Everlasting Rock I'm going to start with my councel by making sure they understand the passage of scripture we are studying so I'm going to give them homework to study it and we are also going to go through it during the counseling session and then I'm going to ask them questions like this what does the text of scripture mean how
does this apply to you and what can you do to apply this to your life I might also ask a question like this when would be the most difficult times for you to do what this is saying uh they're probably going to say something like this to me when I'm trying to go to sleep at night or I wake up at 2:00 in the morning with my mind with all kinds of thoughts in my mind and then I'm going to slow down and I'm going to have a conversation with them about what to do at
2 o00 in the morning how can you apply this passage of scripture when your mind is going crazy uh let me explain to you how I have applied this passage of scripture to my life I'm going to be very personal with you I'm even going to be vulnerable with you if you came to my seminar on conflict resolution you heard a little of my story I went through a severe Church conflict when I was a 30-year-old Pastor that was a long time ago now but as a 30-year-old Pastor I was overwhelmed and I was having
panic attacks I was not sleeping well at night um here's the part that's very personal I was so tense that my body was convulsing my my wife was beside me and she didn't know what to do she would just pray for me I couldn't sleep I was exhausted we were having congregational Mee meeting after congregational meeting and uh there was a group of people in the church that was telling me how horrible I was and there was another group in the church that was telling me that they were my friends and they were going to
defend me uh we had to call in an outside mediator that was very embarrassing um so what did I do to try to go to sleep uh this passage of scripture is very special to me it tells me that I need to believe that God is my rock uh that was not creative enough for me though what do I picture in my mind as I'm trying to go to sleep uh I pictured the empty tomb um called sorry because that's a rock that also reminded me that Ephesians 1 says that I have resurrection power as
I would meditate on Jesus being my rock and I would picture in my mind an empty tomb this passage of scripture came alive to me and I started to calm down and I could go to sleep that's what how I want to help my counsel I want them to be able to take a passage of scripture and creatively apply it to their own life that means they're going to have to meditate on scripture that means they're going to have to study scripture it means they're going to have to choose to believe scripture it doesn't do
any good just to quote the Bible verse to yourself you could recite this bible verse all you want but if you don't believe it it's not going to do you any good it's fighting with your soul to choose to believe it that helps your soul calm down another thing that I uh help my counselor with is singing uh let's talk about the strategy of worship uh staying with the same passage of scripture I might have them pick out a hymn that has some of these Concepts in it uh do you have the hymn A Mighty
Fortress Is Our God as they are in a time of stress I'm going to urge them to be singing that song out loud not just thinking about the words here's what singing out loud out loud does anxious people have very busy Minds their minds can exhaust them it's like my brain never stops I'm thinking about what's going to happen if this happens and what's going to happen if that happens uh for the woman that I've been describing to you her thinking was like this uh he had a strange way of being able to find her
he could find her anywhere even when she left the house and he was not supposed to know where she was we found out he was tracking her cell phone he was tracking her vehicle he was tracking her computer and so in her mind she would think I'm alone but maybe I'm not alone maybe he's just going to show up her mind would be full of fear and anxiety so we taught her to sing when you sing out loud it drowns out what's going on in your mind I call this turning Up the Volume your brain
is very loud so you have to do something that's even louder people will think you are very spiritual because you're singing all the time but they don't know that you're really a very anxious person sing out loud it can drown out what's going on in your mind here's another thing that singing out loud does we all would agree that we need to worship more so you are worshiping scripture says that worship is an everyday activity so learn to sing the third thing that singing out loud does is this if you are singing out loud you
are and singing A Hymn you are repeating truth to yourself I would have them pick out songs that relate to these verses that we're studying A Mighty Fortress Is Our God maybe you have this hymn on Christ the solid rock I stand uh that is a great hymn to sing when you're in times of chronic stress do do you have that himy yeah now we do do do you sing that himym yeah some Churches still sing that himym good I'm seeing some heads yes turn with me back to Philippians chapter 4 I hope you're getting
the idea of how to use the Bible creatively uh of course I would have my counsel memorize these verses uh I want to help them get into patterns new habits I might say something to them like this three times a day I want you to recite this verse to yourself each time you have intrusive thoughts I want you to recite this verse to yourself and then I want you to tell your soul that you believe it your soul will put up a fight your soul will say say no you don't believe that and you're going
to have to talk back to your soul and say yes I do that's choosing to trust God in addition to reciting the verse and telling yourself you believe it three times a day I want you to sing this hymn trying to help them develop new patterns in their life instead of just believing what's going on in their mind your mind and your soul is not always your best friend your inner person is not your best friend we cannot believe everything that our inner person tells us I have to do what Isaiah 26 says and that
is have a steadfast mind listen to Philippians 48 you could read that please I have had people say this to me I don't know what to do with these thoughts they just keep popping up in my mind so I could help them develop a list of things to think about from Philippians 48 and every time those thoughts come into your mind pull out your list from Philippians 48 uh you should be hearing that this takes work a person is going to have to be disciplined but if there willing to do work and be disciplined their
thinking can change let's talk about nightmares for just a moment uh nightmares just happen people that have been through traumatic events have horrible dreams uh there is no magic pill to help with nightmares the secular World talks about this there is no pill you can take to stop nightmares maybe you can take a sleeping pill to help you calm down but people still have nightmares so what do you do uh listen closely at night we are vulnerable so it's important with what we do during the day I'm vulnerable at night so I have to work
on my thinking during the day I also have to work on how do I get myself ready to go to sleep watching a war movie is not a good way to get ready to go to sleep watching the news is not a good way to get ready to go to sleep especially if you are already an anxious person uh I talk to people about their sleep habits uh we call this sleep hygiene uh what are good habits to get yourself ready for sleep if you are an anxious person uh how about uh reading some soothing
Psalms as you're getting ready to go to sleep how about listening to some nice soft worship music as you're getting ready to go to sleep how about reciting verses of scripture in your mind as you're trying to calm down and go to sleep there are all kinds of things that you can do during the day to help you during the night uh truthfully there's not a lot we can do about nightmares during the night so we have to work on these things during the day I also want to teach my counes how to lament uh
let me demonstrate this for you by going back to Isaiah 26 lament is crying out to God about your circumstances in life it might sound like this Lord you promised that I could have perfect peace but my mind is out of control Lord would you please help me Trust You Lord I want to trust in you forever Lord part of me believes that you are the Everlasting Rock but because of the horrible circumstances I'm having a hard time believing this would you please help me Lord does that sound like the Psalms uh it sounds like
you're being like David I want to be like David he wasn't perfect but that's how I want to pray I want to learn to pray like David prayed in the Psalms not weak prayers vigorous prayers I want to teach people how to pour their hearts out to God this helps the soul calm down I hope I'm giving you enough ideas to help you be creative on your own you can pray and say Lord how do I help a person apply scripture to their life and then just think in creative ways so I'm done with that
section of notes finally I bet you thought I would never finish so let's go back to talk about point two that was all point one in the outline where are we in our seven principles let me review them very quickly because I only have 10 minutes to finish the rest and I'm going to do it every celing system has a source of authority every counseling system has a problem they're trying to solve once they decide what the problem is they come up with a solution then to carry out that solution they have methodologies uh you
heard me uh talk about the psychologies I did not say psychology there is no such thing as just psychology there are hundreds of psychologies they do not agree with each other on these seven points they they write articles against each other they try to prove that their way of doing psychology is better than the other way and I am trying to prove to you that biblical counseling is better than any of them the fifth um criteria for a counseling system is this and this is the next point in your notes every counseling system has support
systems in trauma Theory it's pretty much the world as I've mentioned before this is the latest fad right now our support system is amazing we believe in the local church the local church is amazing uh one of the things that we desire to do in our local church is this uh we want to help the one another passages of scripture come alive have you ever studied the one another passages they're all through the New Testament the phrase one another is used 102 times in the New Testament we are told to love one another over 20
times but there's also show Hospitality to one another because kind to one another pray for one another serve one another be careful not to bite and devour one another uh there are 10 negative one anothers in the new test like the one I just quoted I would urge you to study the one and another passages the lady that I described to you said this I asked her what has been your biggest help during this trauma biggest help she said my church my church my church we have something that the secular world does not have if
we take one another Ministry seriously it has not just been the counselors that have come around her but she's part of a women's uh Women's small group in our church and the Women's small group has surrounded her there have been people in the church that have given her financial gifts uh there is a man in the church that owns uh a automobile dealership and when we found out that her car was being tracked he helped her without the husband knowing it she went and traded in in her car and he was the dealer was very
kind to her and got her into a brand new car our church has ministered to this woman in a very intense way there have been numerous Court hearings and our counselors have gone with her to court uh one of our counselors was actually threatened by the husband this has been a team effort to help this woman that's the one anothers of the New Testament let's go on to the last outline quickly every counseling system has a view of the role of the counselor uh cognitive behavioral therapy has a different view than others if you are
trained in cognitive behavioral therapy you are trained to be a coach sorry just translation like a football coach um the view of a counselor in EMDR is different in each counseling system there's a different idea of what the counselor is supposed to do let's think about what it means to be a Biblical counselor what are we to be like with our Council I am to be kind because Jesus was kind I'm to be gentle I'm going I need to be patient especially if someone is going through trauma if uh you are an impatient person you
are going to have to ask the Lord to help you change if you are going to work with people going through stress you have to be patient there may be times during the counseling where they're just crying uh we always have kleenexes on our counseling Tables by the way a lot of crying goes on uh you're going to have to be patient uh these are people that are having a hard time just making it through life you're going to need to be gentle uh and of course you're going to need to know the Bible you
see these things in your notes you're going to have to be thorough uh you will need to do a lot of data Gathering about what has happened with this this woman we have documented everything uh the part of the reason why we have documented everything is because it was needed for court there were issues of like this uh who is going to get custody of the children so we had to have documentation that on this date he did this and on this date he threatened her by saying this we leave our feelings out of it
we just give the facts counselors have to do a lot of data Gathering uh I give you an example in my notes of what I do to do thorough data Gathering I may ask them to tell me the story of their life tell me about your life in fiveyear increments what were the most important things of those five years what caused you the most sadness during those five years you get to know your counsel lead I also have in the notes asking questions like this how is this impacting them emotionally how is this impacting them
intellectually how is this impacting you spiritually what are you thinking about God right now what are you worrying about how are you sleeping I want to be thorough in my data gathering with people going through chronic stress not only what do you think about God but what are you thinking about yourself you should you will hear things like this I'm a failure um this wouldn't have happened to me if I wouldn't have done this I need to know those things to be a well-informed Biblical counselor uh I'd like to conclude by talking about the importance
of a certification process certific uh we have a formal certification process in many places in the the world uh our process is important because we are mentoring people to be counselors let me tell you what this is not about this is not about getting a piece of paper at the end of the process it's about being disciplined uh think about a soldier being trained for the [Music] military would a soldier be trained for the military if they just sat in a classroom and learned about being a soldier what do you think would they be prepared
uh I am not deceived at all about this conference this week I'm not deceived just because you have listened to hours and hours of lectures does not mean you are equipped just as you're training a soldier they have to learn how to shoot a rifle I don't want to train people just to learn about counseling I want to train people to actually counsel the product is not sitting and listening to lectures the product is can you actually sit down with an individual and have a conversation and counsel people so in our training process we make
people practice and we watch them and give them feedback this is part of the certification process again we are not just training about counseling we are training counselors I am leaving your country on Saturday but I have some prayer requests on my heart one of them is that the Lord would raise up biblical counselors but another one of my prayer requests is that you would have a certification process a disciplined process where you can be mentored to actually know how to counsel people break sentence a disciplined process where you learn how to actually counsel people
the last point is apologetics I don't even need to talk more about this that's what all my messages have been about I have been telling you about other counseling systems and teaching you how to evaluate them and I have been defending a Biblical counseling system you can take these seven categories and you can read read a book and evaluate the book you can listen to a theory in the world and you can take these seven areas and evaluate the theory now I've done all that I can do the rest is up to you you have
to decide whether you will be disciplined and actually do this I can promise you that if you will apply these principles that Ephesians chapter 4 will be true in your life that you will grow to maturity and you will not be tossed back and forth by every wave of Doctrine trauma theory is not the the last counseling theory that is going to come on into the world there are always new theories this one is going to pass away but the Bible is never going to pass [Music] away
