Dale Johnson: I’m joined again by Brent Osterberg. He has served as a pastor at Living Hope Bible Church in Mansfield, Texas since 2015. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Sam Houston State University, an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a D.Min. in Expository Preaching from The Master’s Seminary. He’s been an ACBC-certified counselor since 2009 and he serves with the Center for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship there in the Fort Worth area. He’s been married to Keri for 20 years and they have three children.
Brent, I am looking forward to our discussion today. We introduced the topic of scrupulosity, we talked about how to identify some of these sinful patterns within a person, you shared a little bit about your story as well. We identified even some of the things that we treasure, the heart idols, we would describe them as, that are tendencies of folks who struggle with this obsessive and compulsive response. We’ve dissected that well and you helped us to think through that. I want us today to focus on how we respond to that. So we’re helping the counselor and the counselee to think through scrupulosity in a very particular way. I’m looking forward to our discussion as we get practical in our response here.
Brent Osterberg: I am glad to be part of this conversation. In order to address some of the practical help that’s needed for counselors and counselees when it comes to scrupulous fear, one of the things that I’d first say is that whenever someone is choosing to relieve their obsessiveness with a compulsion, then there is a self-trust there. Not only is there a self-trust in the compulsion, but there’s a self-trust in the ability of a person to assess their own heart. It’s kind of a double self-trust in that regard, but the person that struggles in this way, they need to trust God’s comprehensive knowledge and care of their lives.
A wonderful text to take your counselees to who are really tormented by these obsessive intrusive thoughts is Psalm 139. David’s very clear about God’s knowledge of him: “You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.” He knows it through and through, but we don’t. Listent to his comprehensive care, he moves on to verse 5, “You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” There’s this sense in which He’s got our back and He’s got our front. Even if you’re uncertain of whether or not you’ve sinned in a certain way, God is taking care of you as His child. He lays His hand upon you. It’s an expression of reassurance from God. We need to turn to Him, trusting Him to be that One that we need.
One of the prayers that I’ve often prayed to the Lord, seeking to trust Him in moments of scrupulous fear is to pray along with Jehoshaphat from 2 Chronicles 20:12. He says, “O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” I pray that often. I don’t know what to do right now God, but my eyes are on You. And then the very act of looking to Him instead of looking within yourself is an act of faith. The person that is turning from self to the Lord’s comprehensive care will find much hope.
We’ve got to trust in the finished work of Christ on the cross. There’s this desire for perfection or our version of perfection and religious OCD or scrupulosity, but we need to turn to Jesus Christ who actually was perfect for us and His perfect sacrifice on the cross is what we stand in, in what He achieved for us there. I’m thinking of Hebrews 10 that tells us, “Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” We trust Him to be the one who perfects us, not ourselves.
I would also say too, there’s several things we could get at here, but the person who is choosing to ritualistically or ceremonially confess sin, it’s just a mindless act that they choose as a compulsion to deal with their obsessiveness. It’s just repeating prayers of confession, memorized prayers, not really thinking about them. There has been, by Michael Emlet and others, a call to relate to God. Forsake ritualism, an actual relating to God. Our brother, Heath Lambert, has a wonderful chapter in his book Finally Free and fighting lust with a dynamic relationship to Jesus. I think that’s the best chapter in the whole entire book because it could be applied to any sin you’re dealing with, relating to God instead of operating this formulaic kind of way that doesn’t have any sense of hope added to it. If you were to read the Psalms like reading Psalm:119, some of the stanzas there, you would see the psalmist relate to God. He praises God, he makes requests of God, he tells God of the righteous choices he’s made for Him, etc. It’s not just this one-sided kind of repetition, a recitation of things. It is a true relationship and there is definite relief, real relief in that for the person who’s struggling in these ways.
Dale Johnson: As you were describing that, I am just thinking that ritualistic type of confession and repentance it’s hard for us to say we don’t want to encourage people to confess and repent. That’s very biblical. But that type of ritualistic approach is very me-centered. It’s focused on me accomplishing some sort of work to calm the fears in my own heart versus focusing on the God of repentance, the God of forgiveness, the God of grace.
Now scrupulosity, as you’ve alluded to already, is quite a hopeless state. You feel very bound in these obsessions, these compulsions and wanting to be clean but feeling often very unclean and downcast. That hopelessness is very real and controlling in so many ways and so many attempts to provide hope in some way, and often driven by motives that are driven by the self, although they are religious in nature, driven by the self. I want you to talk a little bit about particular hopes that you give to those who feel trapped in this type of darkness, this type of sin pattern. Give us some of the angles that you go at to provide hope. I know you’ve just mentioned a couple of those and maybe a few more.
Brent Osterberg: I would offer them the hope of doing what feels wrong in the moment to their flesh. When we’re struggling with obsessiveness, what feels right is to engage in our compulsion, whatever that may be. If it’s morbid introspective, what feels right is to sit there and stew and look inwardly, like Lloyd Jones talks about, a morbid introspection, as dissecting your soul and laying it out there on the table to examine. That’s what feels right, but we need to do the opposite. We need to do what might feel wrong to our flesh which is turning from self to Him actively, not just in a prayer, even though prayers are absolutely necessary. But I find, Dale, that I can use prayer as a way to continue in my morbid introspection. I think I’m doing something holy, but it’s just repeating the same prayers over and over and over again, and I’m still thinking, I’m still dissecting my soul in that way. I haven’t really turned in faith to the Lord with those prayers. So sometimes I’ve got to be very clear with a confession, a request. But then do the next thing that God would have me do. That might be going in the other room and playing with my kids, so that I’m trusting Him with that fear.
He wants me to be others-minded. He wants me to serve others like Christ served me and so I am going to go wash the dishes for my wife. I’m going to go in the other room and I’m not going to pray about my problem anymore and start praying for other people. I’m going to sit there and I’m going to praise God, not make a request, praise Him for who He is and that’s all I’m going to do. That’s an act of turning. It’s an active faith that is showing itself in things that might feel wrong in the moment, but that’s not trusting what our heart is feeling, but trusting what God has revealed. That’s what we do as biblical counselors.
I remember my son Justin when I was teaching him to ride his bike. What felt right to him whenever he started to feel his bike tip was to put his feet off of the pedals and try to balance himself on the ground, but I said, “No, when you feel like you’re tipping a little bit, what you actually need to do is the opposite which is to keep pedaling.” That’s similar to what we’re talking about here today when it comes to turning actively to God and that’s something that John Piper really hit on in a podcast of his when he says, “The only reason we need to look inward,” speaking of introspection, “is to know better what to look to Christ for.” We look to Christ. We look in, so we can look to Christ and then we act on who He is what He’s called us to and the realities that He has given us, the promises that are His in His love. That’s hope-giving.
I would also say that one of the things that has been very helpful for me is to find people in your life, whether it’s your counselor or your pastor or it’s a more mature brother or sister in the church, people who aren’t struggling the same way as you are, and they’re godly, they speak the truth in love to you, and they’re reasonable. Our fears are often unreasonable. We tend to think because we had the thought or we have the desire, that we must be guilty of this sin. It’s been very helpful for me to talk to my wife and talk to my fellow pastor here at my church and run things by him and say, “This is the way I’m feeling, tell me, how do you read that as somebody who is godly and reasonable? I’ve found that to be tremendously hope-giving because in my unreasonableness and in my head, I’m choosing to believe things that don’t make sense and it’s helpful to have somebody say, “No, you shouldn’t be thinking that.” I would say this: immerse yourself in all of Scripture. Not just the imperatives, not just the holiness and the justice of God, not just the portions of Scripture that are going to be provoking us to see our sins or even potential sins, but turn to the promises, turn to the indicatives, turn to all of the attributes of God. We have to relate to God based on all that He’s revealed, not just these texts that tend to lead us into this obsessive fear whenever we’re reading in a fleshly manner.
Dale Johnson: So helpful, Brent. We’ve worked through identifying some of the key characteristics. This week, we’ve been looking through a biblical response and some of the treasures in Scripture that we need to swim in when we are tempted in these particular ways. Even as you’re talking, I’m thinking: the evil one is so good in his allurement and his enticement of us. Sometimes it’s not these massive cliffs of sin that we want to jump off into sometimes he entices us by good things, religious types of things that we think manufacture some way that we become holy ourselves. We have a tendency to fall for it, but you’re anchoring us in these hopeful truths that the Lord has given based on His character and based on His gospel that are treasures for us. I love the wisdom that you were giving about find somebody godly and reasonable who can help speak truth of the Scriptures into you in a moment where you feel unreasonable.
Let’s close out with some resources. You’ve written a booklet on this with ACBC, Our Truth in Love resources, as a part of our Biblical Solutions series. It’s entitled “Scrupulosity” and you can find that on our website. I think that’s a really helpful resource to work you full circle through the things that we talked about last week and this week. I want to turn it over to you on some of the helpful resources, the things that you found may be most helpful that are out there in literature that might be helpful to some others.
Brent Osterberg: Keith mentioned last year in his podcast that there’s a little booklet by Michael Emlet on OCD, which is very helpful. But he’s also got a couple of lectures I would point you to; you can find those on CCEF’s website. There’s two different lectures he’s done in two different conferences on this in particular. One book that I would recommend, there’s not a whole lot written from a biblical counseling perspective on this, but this has to deal with introspection in particular. It’s a book called “Think Again: Relief from the Burden of Introspection.” It’s by Jared Mellinger. I’ve read through it like a couple of times now and it is gold indeed. I recommend that highly, the New Growth Press put that out. There’s not a whole lot written on this from a biblical counseling perspective, but that definitely is vocal and gospel-centered. You can go to the CBCD.org. It’s the Center for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship, which is here in DFW and we’ve done at least one podcast on this. There’s four different lectures that Keith Palmer and I did at our local conferences on different issues related to scrupulosity that you can find there and also some articles on it as well. Finally, there’s a message from David Powlison on introspection called “In the Last Analysis” that you can find online as well. Those are all going to be very helpful resources.
Dale Johnson: This is great brother, really helpful in the ways in which you help us identify appropriately, see the beauty of Scripture in helping us to deal with these types of issues and then alerting us to some of the other resources that are out there. Brother, this has been great. Very very helpful.
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