Every seasoned counselor is painfully aware that not all counseling is successful, at least in terms of all counselees learning to trust and obey the Lord in the here-and-now. Discouragement can easily be allowed to take root when those we have prayed for and pointed to Christ continue living for themselves, rather than “for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15). There are times when, despite intervention, a marriage becomes another divorce statistic—with all the heartache and hardship that comes with it. There are times when prodigal children suppress the truth in a vain attempt to find satisfaction in the fleeting pleasures of this world. Perhaps in your conversations there was much sorrow expressed over sin (or at least the consequences thereof), yet time would reveal that sorrow was merely worldly and not a godly sorrow that leads to repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10-12).
If counseling success was based upon seeing all our counselees walk with Christ in sincerity, then we would frequently feel like failures. While it is altogether prudent to prayerfully evaluate our counseling when our counselees fail to look to and follow Christ,1Jay Adams, Helps for Counselors: A Mini-Manual for Christian Counseling, “Fifty Failure Factors,” (Baker, 2006), 7-8. it is also vitally important to remember that the success of counseling is not in how many we graduate in godliness. Success for the counselor means faithfully proclaiming Christ through His all-sufficient Word in a manner worthy of our calling (Colossians 1:28-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). If we have faithfully proclaimed Christ in our counseling and our counselees reject God’s Word, they are first and foremost rejecting Christ, not us. Our response should be to continue to entrust ourselves, as well as those we counsel, to the One Who is always faithful (1 Corinthians 10:13; Colossians 4:2).
As counselors, how do we seek to be faithful? Paul sums up it well in Colossians 1:28-29, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” We are faithful in counseling when we proclaim Christ, and we do so utterly dependent upon His work within and through us. We point everyone to Christ, so that those apart from Christ may be saved “by grace through faith” in Christ (Ephesians 2:8) and so that those in Christ may “so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith” (Colossians 2:6). Yet helping others become “established in the faith” is easier said than done, right?
Success in biblical counseling is pursued in light of Hebrews 12:1-3. The account of the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11 is given to encourage believers to likewise live by faith in Christ. In Galatians 2:20, Paul writes that “the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We counsel in part because we long to see others live by faith in the Son of God. We long to see others join us in looking to Christ, following Christ, and therefore becoming more like Christ. Yet in this world, even believers can sometimes find themselves spinning their wheels in the mud, getting stuck in the same old ruts of destructive thoughts and being captivated by things that hinder growth in godliness. What hindrances or sins do you and those you counsel face in being a disciple and in making disciples?
Consider the Hindrances to Faithfulness
Hebrews 12:1 says, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely…” What “weights” and “sins” tend to hinder us and those we counsel from following Christ (Philippians 3:8, 13)? Whatever “every weight” and “sin” may be, the calling is clear: It is to be laid aside so that we can “run with endurance the race that is set” before us. Using the metaphor of running here, I recall with disgust my junior year in high school. As a devoted cross-country runner, I had a good shot at winning the state title. The day of the state championship was a cold one, so rather than thinking about the race ahead, I sought the comfort of the moment and left on a long-sleeve cotton turtleneck and some gloves. Hundreds of runners lined up, and shortly after the starting gun went off, I was at the front of the pack. Yet within minutes of the race starting, I began suffocating in my own body heat. I threw off my favorite gloves in effort to release some body heat, but my racing jersey was over the turtleneck and I couldn’t take it off while running. While I managed to place with honorable mention upon the podium, I believe that overdressing very likely cost me the title of a state champion. Carrying this over to running the Christian race, we are called to “lay aside” or “put off” anything that would hinder us running the race set before us. In the cultural Christianity of America today, there are many “weights” that hinder believers from following Christ.
One of the greatest weights and sins that hinder us from following Christ is the all-too-common love of self! Our culture tells us that one of greatest problems is that we don’t love ourselves enough. Yet is that the message of the Bible? Or does the love of self actually hinder us from following Christ? To love oneself is to make much of oneself; it is to live for oneself. It is equated with selfish ambition, which James 3:16 says leads to “disorder and every vile practice.” Is the problem really that we don’t love ourselves enough? Or is the problem that we love ourselves too much? Matthew 22:37-39 says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We already love ourselves; we naturally look after our own interests. The calling is to love God foremost and then love our neighbor as we already love ourselves. Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” We tend to be controlled by the love of ourselves, but the Gospel frees us from that. As 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 says, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
Another “weight” or “hindrance” that keeps many from running the race God calls us to is busyness. Todd Fink, in his book Biblical Discipleship, writes that, “Today, we have unprecedented distractions pulling us away from Christ. We’re now faced with countless impulses and stimuli from things like sports, social media, texting, phone calls, emails, internet, TV, magazines, billboards, friends, work, entertainment, and on and on. People have a hard time focusing on God because they are ‘on’ and connected all the time.” In giving statistics from TV viewing in 2015, he reports that the…
- Average time spent watching TV per day is 5 hours and 11 minutes
- Number of 30 second TV commercials seen in a year by an average child is 16,0002Todd Fink, Biblical Discipleship, 20-22.
Fink continues, “I fear we’ve become ‘lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God’… Many Christians say they don’t have time for discipleship because they are too busy, yet they have plenty of time for all their other activities. Why is this so? The stats show that it’s because many Christians are saying no to Christ and discipleship and are saying yes to their own desires and plans. Putting God first is sacrificed or eliminated, while other activities are kept intact and prioritized.”3Todd Fink, Biblical Discipleship, 24, 29. We have to continually guard against busyness in our own lives, and encourage those we are discipling to be good stewards of the time God has given them (Ephesians 5:15-16).
In counseling, I’ve had numerous people say they are Christians and affirm that God’s Word has the answers to their problems. After meeting with them, I give them some Scriptures to interact with between our meetings. Frequently, someone will come back and I’ll ask them what they learned from the Scriptures and they’ll tell me they just didn’t have time to look at it. I’ve learned not to be okay with this answer, so I’ll ask them questions like: “How many hours of TV did you watch yesterday?” In most cases, it wasn’t that they didn’t have time to be a disciple of Christ but rather that they simply valued other things more. God calls us to put Him first and give Him our best (Matthew 6:33; 1 Corinthians 10:31), but if we lose sight of His calling to run the race set before us, we’ll find ourselves with nothing to give God but our leftovers—if there are any.
In addition to “every weight” that would hinder us from following Christ, there is also the “sin which clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1, ESV) or “so easily entangles us” (NASB). That’s why Hebrews 3:13 said, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Believers are exhorted throughout Scripture to guard against sin, to expose sin, to put sin to death (Colossians 3:5-10). John Owen exhorted: “Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin… His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls.” When we entertain sin, we harden ourselves to God and become double-minded. If we are entangled in sin, we cannot run the race to which God has called us. Rather, we will live in misery and invite not the blessing of God upon us, but His discipline (Hebrews 12:5-11).
So what does it mean to live by faith? Like a runner fixed on the finish line, we make it our ambition to please God in every aspect of our lives (2 Corinthians 5:9). In several writings of Paul, the metaphor of running is used for the Christian life. The Christian life is a race that we are to encourage each other in. It is like a marathon. We enter the race when we become a believer, a disciple of Christ. Yet that is only the beginning. We are to persevere by grace through faith in running the race until God calls us home. In 1 Corinthians 9:24-26, Paul writes “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air.”
For those familiar with running a long-distance race, there is more to it than Nike’s slogan of “Just do it.” You eat a strict diet, you maintain a low percentage of body fat, you have daily running schedule, you stretch, and you do cross-training exercises to strengthen the entirety of your body. If such diligent training and focus is true for an athlete, then what is the implication for the Christian life? Certainly, it doesn’t involve a lazy chair. Rather the race we are called to run involves encouraging one another in the spiritual disciplines, working out our salvation with fear and trembling as we run the race that God has set before us for the price that is imperishable (Philippians 2:12-13; 1 Timothy 4:7-8; 1 Corinthians 9:25). If we are to live unto Christ, we must look unto Him!
Consider the Faithful One
What difference does looking to Christ make in daily life? Hebrews 12:2 says, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Being faithful, whether as the counselor or the one being counseled, necessitates looking to the only One Who has walked this earth in perfect faithfulness. Christ exemplified faithfulness to the Father in perfect love and obedience (John 15:10). Hebrews 12:2-3, therefore, exhorts us to look “to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” By God’s grace, continue looking to Jesus while encouraging those you counsel to do the same. Because God is faithful, be faithful, “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
This blog was originally posted at CBCD. View the original post here.
