#62 Biblical Counseling Part 2 with Rick Thomas
The primary focus of this podcast episode revolves around the profound significance of biblical counseling, particularly as articulated by our esteemed guest, Rick Thomas from Lifeovercoffee.com. We delve into the assertion that biblical counseling is deeply rooted in scripture and church history, offering a foundation that starkly contrasts with secular counseling, which often lacks a solid grounding. The dialogue explores how such counseling empowers individuals to think like Christ amidst life's myriad challenges, emphasizing the transformative power of the Gospel in addressing the complexities of the human heart. Furthermore, we discuss the necessity of speaking the truth in love, balancing grace and conviction in our interactions. This episode invites listeners to reflect critically on the essence of biblical counseling and its relevance in contemporary Christian life.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
In part one of Biblical Counseling, we looked at how biblical counseling is rooted both in scripture and in church history, but also how secular counseling is firmly planted in midair, not rooted in anything but the word of man.
Speaker A:But how does biblical counseling cause us to think like Christ through the trials, temptations and tribulations in our lives?
Speaker B:In.
Speaker A:In part two, we explore how the Gospel speaks into the complexities of the human heart and how scripture offers more than mere advice, but freedom.
Speaker A:And how using biblical counseling calls us to speak the truth in love with both grace and conviction.
Speaker A:Join us as we take this time to stop and think about it.
Speaker B:Hello?
Speaker B:Hello?
Speaker A:Anybody home?
Speaker A:Think, McFly.
Speaker A:Think.
Speaker C:I'm thinking.
Speaker C:I'm thinking.
Speaker A:What were you thinking?
Speaker B:I'm trying to think, but nothing happens.
Speaker B:Dad, say anything now.
Speaker C:Just think about it.
Speaker C:You're listening to Stuck and Think About It, a podcast for the Christian thinker.
Speaker C:In a day when sound biblical preaching has been replaced by man centered entertainment and the church has become increasingly anti intellectual, this podcast will encourage believers to think biblically and theologically.
Speaker C:So please join me as we get ready to stop and.
Speaker C:And think about it.
Speaker A:Now, when you think about or describe addiction, I have a friend, he's also a biblical counselor.
Speaker A:Instead of using the word addiction, he used the word enslavement to sin.
Speaker A:So how would you speak to that?
Speaker B:Yeah, addiction is a, is a fine word.
Speaker B:It's a modern word, or at least an entry level word to.
Speaker B:We pretty much we're on the same page, we know what we're talking about.
Speaker B:But there is a little bit of difference between that and the word that he uses.
Speaker B:Addiction can sound like I'm a victim to something rather than I'm an active agent in doing something.
Speaker B:And so, you know, it's like what Ishmael was saying earlier, that the talking about medication, if someone said, you know, I'm addicted to this, I don't play whack a mole with them or the word police.
Speaker B:You know, let's get the wording right.
Speaker B:Okay, okay, tell me what's going on.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And so in Galatians 6:1, it says, if anyone is caught in a transgression, the word caught there is a word for addiction.
Speaker B:And it just means that, you know, it's got you, you're caught to this thing.
Speaker B:If anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual, restore them.
Speaker B:There is enslavement there.
Speaker B:This is what James was talking about in chapter one, verses 14 and 15.
Speaker B:It's the LSD passage in the King James Bible when lust is conceived, it brings sin.
Speaker B:When sin is finished, it brings forth death.
Speaker B:And so you see lust, sin and death.
Speaker B:You can see that enslavement there.
Speaker B:But James is saying that it's not something that happened to you.
Speaker B:He says it's the desires of your heart.
Speaker B:It is something that we desire.
Speaker B:And so if we desire something, it can form that caughtness, which what our culture, again, would call an addiction.
Speaker B:And again, I'm okay with that as long as we understand what's going on.
Speaker B:Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, which started with, I think with good intentions.
Speaker B:But, you know, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, and it's more of a victim mindset.
Speaker B:The Bible would actually have a different story.
Speaker B:You can be uncaught, unenslaved.
Speaker B:You can be set free from it because it's not so much of what's in the world.
Speaker B:It is what's in our hearts that crave those things.
Speaker B:And once you identify the idol of the heart and break that bondage of the heart, then you can be free and not manipulated by whatever's going on in the world.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's good.
Speaker D:So to follow up on that, how would you draw out the desires in counseling?
Speaker D:So when you're in a counseling session, how would you use that time, whether it's an hour, 30 minutes, to see what that desire is?
Speaker D:Whether are they desiring something godly or not?
Speaker D:Because like you said, it's the LSD method, the lust, sin and death.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, first of all, I counseled two hours and no, no, no less, because obvious, there's a lot to accomplish.
Speaker B:The other reason is I went to public school, not private school.
Speaker B:So I'm kind of dumber than most people and it takes me a while to get to where we're going.
Speaker B:No offense for all of you who went to public school, I did too.
Speaker B:I totally get it.
Speaker A:We're there.
Speaker B:There are people who are more sophisticated, much smarter.
Speaker B:These private schoolboys, they can counsel in 55 minutes and just move them in and out.
Speaker B:But I counsel for two hours, and it would take a while, multiple counseling sessions, just to give you an idea of the process.
Speaker B:But what I'm trying to do is to identify root cause or the idol of the heart.
Speaker B:For example, a person could struggle with shame.
Speaker B:So in Ephesians 4:22, Paul says, Put off your former manner of life.
Speaker B:So this person had a past life, a former manner of life.
Speaker B:Let's say that they were reared by an authoritarian, angry dad, for example.
Speaker B:And so this dad was critical, he was devaluing.
Speaker B:And so the person just got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and feeling that shame and insignificance and devalued.
Speaker B:And then let's say they started drinking alcohol as an escape, a way of just getting away from their horrid past.
Speaker B:And then the alcohol become now alcohol.
Speaker B:Now it's got them.
Speaker B:They're caught in this alcoholic addiction.
Speaker B:Let's say what I want to do is go back to why did you start that in the first place?
Speaker B:And as you begin to unpack it into individual, you'll find these things that they're masking, they're trying to cover up, trying to escape from it makes them feel better, feel better because of what.
Speaker B:And in this case that I'm illustrating, they have this huge sense of shame.
Speaker B:And so they use these mechanisms to try to offset that.
Speaker B:And of course, those things, again, they capture them.
Speaker B:And so I just asked them questions.
Speaker B:Tell me about your life.
Speaker B:When did you start drinking?
Speaker B:Why did you start.
Speaker B:Tell me about your childhood, tell me about your relationship with your dad, et cetera.
Speaker B:And so there's a comprehensive battery of questions that you're asking because you're trying to understand the person.
Speaker B:And so as you begin to understand, then you start seeing root causes.
Speaker B:They made this decision because of this.
Speaker B:And so, I mean, you know, I smoked pot because I was just so angry.
Speaker B:Part of it was anger, part of it was rebellion, part of it was a sense of shame because my father was abusive.
Speaker B:Part of it was just not having anybody to lead me.
Speaker B:And so I just went with the group, etc.
Speaker B:There's multiple reasons.
Speaker B:But what I'm trying to do, it's not so much primarily about the drug, the alcohol, whatever the addiction is, that's a secondary issue.
Speaker B:But I'm trying to understand root cause.
Speaker B:And then as we, then we begin to work on those things and bring a biblical perspective into it, and then as they begin to experience that internal transformation.
Speaker B:Now, again, there is behavioral modification.
Speaker B:As I mentioned earlier, in Matthew 5, 29, cut off your right hand, pluck out your eye.
Speaker B:And so, you know, don't go to the liquor store, you know, don't buy the beer, don't hang out with so and so, don't go to the bar.
Speaker B:I mean, you don't put yourself in a position to where your heart is.
Speaker B:Like, I just want that.
Speaker B:So there has to be some behavioral modifying things that they do.
Speaker B:But as they're doing that, they're also bringing death to those sins of the heart, those ruling motives of the heart.
Speaker B:And as those begin to Go away.
Speaker B:Then that pull of, you know, there could be some future date where they could go in a bar, for example, and there'd just be no temptation whatsoever because they're truly transformed from the inside out.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker A:So I.
Speaker A:I read an article recently that you wrote as far as why biblical counseling should not be disconnected from the local church.
Speaker A:So can.
Speaker A:Can you mention that as well?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:One of my favorite theologians is Hillary Clinton, and she said that.
Speaker B:She said it takes a village.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I believe that we would say it differently.
Speaker B:It takes.
Speaker B:It takes a body Biblical counseling.
Speaker B:If it's disconnected from the local church, it would be like a medical doctor on a battlefield doing triage with a black bag.
Speaker B:And he's very limited.
Speaker B:There's 168 hours in a week.
Speaker B:And, you know, as I said to Ishmael, is that if I counsel for two hours, that sounds long, and I guess in one sense it is, but it's two hours competing against 166 hours.
Speaker B:And so you could imagine, you know, Phil, you meet with me for two hours for all of your problems, and we won't get into those in the podcast, but I'm sure the list, it'll.
Speaker A:Be long, six hours at least.
Speaker B:We have.
Speaker B:We have a witness.
Speaker B:The list would be long, as mine is, too.
Speaker B:So imagine two hours in a safe space to where you can talk and have this interaction.
Speaker B:That's fantastic.
Speaker B:But then you go back into the chaos of your world, whatever that may be.
Speaker B:So it's two competing against 166 hours.
Speaker B:That's really impossible.
Speaker B:And so what we need is actually a hospital, and that hospital is the local church.
Speaker B:And so what I try to do with folks that I serve, I want to give them a view of the.
Speaker B:A high view of the local church.
Speaker B:And so you need to immerse yourself in God's word.
Speaker B:We need to start cranking up a prayer life.
Speaker B:You need to be listening to preaching.
Speaker B:You need to be taking notes.
Speaker B:If you have small groups, get inside the small group, but don't be a dead sea where you're receiving all these wonderful things.
Speaker B:You also need to be serving as well and doing biblical counseling.
Speaker B:And then I want to connect you with a friend in the local church.
Speaker B: And so Paul said in: Speaker B:And so when I meet someone for counseling, 100 times out of 100, they have bad companions in their life.
Speaker B:That creates feeders that help perpetuate the very problem that they're in.
Speaker B:And so I want them to begin to remove these bad companions and start inserting good companions.
Speaker B:And of course, this central good companion, it all flows out of the local church.
Speaker B:Because what I want to happen sometime in the future, want to stop counseling them.
Speaker B:I don't want to be their life coach.
Speaker B:And so I want to go away.
Speaker B:What I would tell a counselee, I never want to see you again.
Speaker B:Now, in order for that to happen, it's one or two things.
Speaker B:One, you never sin again as long as you live.
Speaker B:Okay, well, what?
Speaker A:Not happening.
Speaker B:All right, so what is option two?
Speaker B:Option two is to immerse yourself in a local church where you're benefiting from the body and you're pouring into the body.
Speaker B:It would be exceptional for me to have a counselee who has all of these good companions in their life.
Speaker B:That would be an exception because almost every single counselee doesn't have that kind of connectivity to the local church.
Speaker B:They're out there doing whatever they're doing, hanging with the wrong people, looking at the wrong stuff on the Internet, doing, going to the wrong places, so forth and so on.
Speaker B:And so it has to be more than biblical counseling, like on a battlefield using a black bag, doing triage.
Speaker B:They need to have a comprehensive view of what transformation looks like, including the environment in which they live.
Speaker B:And the local church has to be primary because it was in the New Testament.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:And we are to sympathize with people as opposed to empathize with people.
Speaker A:As I read one of my favorite articles that you've written, and I've taught that in my health classes.
Speaker A:And I am actually.
Speaker A:Not only did I go to the public school system, but I'm actually a teacher in the public school system.
Speaker A:So I teach physical education and health.
Speaker A:So I must need more counseling than most.
Speaker A:So can you just.
Speaker A:I know, I know.
Speaker A:The article kind of hits everything.
Speaker A:And I encourage everybody to go check out the article on the destructive power of empathy.
Speaker A:I believe I.
Speaker A:I may have messed up the title, but the difference between empathy and, and.
Speaker A:And sympathy.
Speaker B:Yeah, and that, that.
Speaker B:No, that's it.
Speaker B:And if you just type sympathy in the search feature@lifeovercoffee.com you will find the entire article that you're referring to.
Speaker B:I also have a one hour webinar on it.
Speaker B:And again, these resources are free and so they're not hidden behind anything.
Speaker B:It is.
Speaker B:It is really that simple.
Speaker B:It's like walking into a store and just picking up something.
Speaker B:It is really that simple.
Speaker B:But if you type sympathy in, you can get a full article and also a webinar.
Speaker B:And so the question that you're asking, because we are a leadership development ministry and we're teaching Christians how to do discipleship or biblical counseling, we have an online school.
Speaker B:And so there is a sophistication, there's a technicalness to it.
Speaker B:And so at that level, leadership development, we get into some of the minutia just to help understand.
Speaker B:I say that because it doesn't matter if you say empathy or sympathy or addiction or whatever, as long as we know what we're talking about and that we're able to walk people to a better way of thinking about things.
Speaker B:And so I wouldn't, as I mentioned earlier, I don't want people, you know, to come away with wordsmithing and word police and whack a mole if I don't say the right word.
Speaker B:However, because of what our ministry is, it's not a superficial ministry.
Speaker B:It really gets into the technicalities of psychology, as I've already defined earlier, the study of God's word.
Speaker B:And so these are the finer points when it comes to sympathy and empathy.
Speaker B:Those are two different words.
Speaker B:They're really not related to each other.
Speaker B:Empathy is a new word.
Speaker B:Over the past, you know, 75 years, the word has always been sympathy.
Speaker B:The word empathy comes from our ever evolving culture, as the language does.
Speaker B:And again, it doesn't matter if you say one or the other, as long as you know.
Speaker B:Now, here's the difference.
Speaker B:As you study those words from an etymological perspective, you find that two, they do have two different roots.
Speaker B:And the best way of describing this, as I say in the article and the webinar, is that they hang on two different prepositions.
Speaker B:Sympathy comes out of the preposition with W, I, t, h.
Speaker B:And empathy comes out of the preposition in I, n.
Speaker B:And the illustration that I use is that of a lifeguard, is that when you're helping someone, the last thing you would ever do is to jump in the water to try to rescue them.
Speaker B:What you want to be is you want to be with them, you want to be above them.
Speaker B:You want to, like in Psalm 40, you want to reach down and pull them out.
Speaker B:And where this can become a problem is that many times you can be manipulated by the person who is suffering.
Speaker B:And you don't understand me.
Speaker B:You haven't had my experience.
Speaker B:Now I understand what they're saying.
Speaker B:And we do have some understanding with what they're going through because we're all cut from the same Adamic cloth.
Speaker B:However, if a person really sticks to that, you can't help me because you haven't walked a mile in my shoes.
Speaker B:Well, then they just disqualified Christ because he didn't smoke pot, he never been married, he never had a child, he never.
Speaker B:So many things.
Speaker B:And so it's not a requirement that our life mirror.
Speaker B:Otherwise we would have to be omniscient because there's 8 billion different people in the world.
Speaker B:And the amount of knowledge and understanding and experience that we would have to have to be in their story becomes really problematic.
Speaker B:But because the Bible is more sophisticated than that, we all have these common problems.
Speaker B:You struggle with anger, I struggle with anger.
Speaker B:Fear.
Speaker B:I struggle with fear.
Speaker B:I struggle with suffering.
Speaker B:I struggle with self righteousness.
Speaker B:We have commonalities, and so it's not that we have to mirror everybody's life or step into their story, but we can be with them and we can give them sound counsel and we can pull them out.
Speaker B:Now, the thing about sympathy is one of many things, is that it takes a lot of courage because sometimes there are some difficult things that we have to say to people.
Speaker B:And if we are empathetic, well, I don't want to hurt them, I don't want to say anything wrong because they're suffering.
Speaker B:Now, that's true.
Speaker B:But compassion without courage is not compassion at all.
Speaker B:It's mercy run amok.
Speaker B:Courage without compassion is harsh and unkind.
Speaker B:And so there is a balancing here of both courage and compassion.
Speaker B:Empathy doesn't have courage.
Speaker B:It is more on the compassionate side.
Speaker B:And that's where the counselor will drown with the counselee if they're not careful.
Speaker B:And so having courage and compassion.
Speaker B:And so one of the reasons, which I didn't say earlier, except that I do counsel for two hours, all of my counseling sessions are two hours.
Speaker B:But one of those reasons is because I'm trying to build a relational bridge to that person.
Speaker B:I know that I have some very difficult things to say to that individual.
Speaker B:But you don't say that in the first five minutes that you meet them because that relational bridge will collapse.
Speaker B:And so I spend a lot of time building this relational bridge because I know sometime in the future I've got to truck some very heavy truth across because I want to help them.
Speaker B:And so that two hour framework, there's multiple reasons that I do that, but one of those is I want to be sympathetic.
Speaker B:I know I'll have some difficult things to say, more than likely, but I want to build that relationship with them.
Speaker B:I counseled a teenager many years ago and he came in.
Speaker B:His mother sent him in.
Speaker B:So I.
Speaker B:I knew he did not want to be there.
Speaker B:He knew that it was three against one.
Speaker B:It's dad, mom, and this man I've never seen before in my life is against me.
Speaker B:And as soon as I sit down, because he's a Christian counselor, he's going to ram the Bible down my throat.
Speaker B:So I knew all of those things before he ever walked in the door or assumed those things.
Speaker B:And so we met for two hours.
Speaker B:And at the end of two hours, he asked me, he said, Mr.
Speaker B:Thomas, he said, are you ever going to talk about Jesus?
Speaker B:And I said, no, I hadn't planned on it.
Speaker B:We spent the entire two hours shooting the breeze.
Speaker B:We talked about everything but God, but the Bible, but the church.
Speaker B:There was nothing really religious about our conversation at all.
Speaker B:What I was doing was building a relational bridge.
Speaker B:And so finally, after two hours, because he came in like this, basically, and then after two hours, he said, Mr.
Speaker B:Thomas, are you going to, like, say anything about Jesus at all?
Speaker B:And I said, well, no, I.
Speaker B:I hadn't planned on it, but, I mean, if you want to talk about Jesus, we can.
Speaker B:And all the other counseling sessions were about Jesus, about the Bible.
Speaker B:He ended up inviting me over to his home.
Speaker B:I was in his room playing video games, and his parents were there, and.
Speaker B:And we became friends during that season in our life.
Speaker B:And so again, we have to be careful, but there has to be not just discernment and reading the room of the person being pneumatic, walking in the spirit, but understanding the individual that's before us.
Speaker B:But when it comes to being sympathetic, we want to make sure Jesus was a very courageous soul.
Speaker B:And so he wasn't manipulated by a person or manipulated by whatever problems that they were.
Speaker B:He was not empathetic to where he would just, you know, so the rich young ruler would come to him and say, you know, Jesus said, sell everything you have.
Speaker B:Come, follow me.
Speaker B:He said, well, I don't want to do that.
Speaker B:And then Jesus, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:Jesus said, I'm sorry.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:Oh, man.
Speaker B:That was.
Speaker B:Yeah, man came in off the top rope there.
Speaker B:Sorry about that.
Speaker B:Listen, you can keep a couple things if you want.
Speaker B:We can probably work this out.
Speaker B:I didn't mean to offend you.
Speaker B:Empath empathy can move down that path.
Speaker B:And so, again, Jesus was never unkind, harsh, sinful that way to anyone.
Speaker B:But, yeah, he did have a backbone.
Speaker B:And so it was.
Speaker B:Sympathy actually encompasses more of the character traits that you really want to possess when you're helping yeah, he did that.
Speaker A:With the woman at the well.
Speaker A:First he built that relational bridge when he said, you know, can I have some water?
Speaker A:And then he presented himself as the living water.
Speaker A:Go call your husband.
Speaker A:He dealt with her sin, then he revealed himself to her.
Speaker A:So I, I think we see that all over and perhaps we could look through that lens at a lot of conversations that Jesus had with others.
Speaker A:Now what happens?
Speaker A:I just want to ask you two more questions before we switch gears.
Speaker A:When you speak to.
Speaker A:I'm sure you've had conversations with secular counselors and they're now sizing you up as a biblical counselor.
Speaker A:What, what is that kind of conversation like?
Speaker B:Well, I mean, it could be all over the board.
Speaker B: ated and look at what I do is: Speaker B:But that's a lack of understanding.
Speaker B:The Bible is simple to where a five year old can get saved.
Speaker B:But, but it's, but it's also complex to where you spend the rest of your life studying it and you feel like you're getting dumber and dumber in some ways because it just keeps unfolding.
Speaker B:And so it's one of the most, it is the most profound book that's ever been written.
Speaker B:But because we're, we're scientific now, supposedly we're intelligent.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Right, yeah, we're scientific now.
Speaker B:We're intelligent.
Speaker B:The Bible, it's a man in sandals wearing a toga and it just.
Speaker B:And parchments.
Speaker B:And so it's a lack of understanding.
Speaker B:And so I'm not trying to compete, just having a conversation and just try to be friends.
Speaker B:And in those types of relationships, you're really playing a long game with them and just trying to build a relationship and you're looking for a door that you can go.
Speaker B:Some are just absolutely resistant to anything that you have to say and can be arrogant.
Speaker B:Not that Christians can't be arrogant.
Speaker B:We can be arrogant too.
Speaker B:Some are curious.
Speaker B:And so it's really about being nomadic, walking in the spirit and trying to perceive, you know, what is going on here with this relationship or conversation.
Speaker B:But in that sense, it's no different from any other human that you would meet as Christians.
Speaker B:What we're looking for is that door to where we can just push one inch farther, if we can just go one inch farther with this conversation with the person.
Speaker B:And it would be the same, you know, if I were to meet a secular psychologist.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because I mean, I know some of them I have relationships with, maybe social Workers, secular psychologists in my own life.
Speaker A:And so this is helpful to be able to speak with them a little bit deeper and a little bit further.
Speaker A:Well, let me ask you.
Speaker B:It also depends on, you know, how long they've been doing what they're doing.
Speaker B:Many of them, a lot of them quit because what they eventually, if they're really paying attention as they are, they know that they're not giving solutions.
Speaker B:And if you can get a door to talk about some of the things that we're talking about here that this person cannot.
Speaker B:He can go beyond getting relief and getting his next medication, there can actually be some internal transformation.
Speaker B:And it's not unusual for a secular psychologist to actually come over to biblical counseling.
Speaker B:I have a friend.
Speaker B:Her name is Jen Chin.
Speaker A:Yes, I've just heard that name before.
Speaker A:I mean, I just heard that name for the first time.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, of course it's Dr.
Speaker B:Jen Chin.
Speaker B:And she has a Ph.D.
Speaker B:in psychology.
Speaker B:And she was going down that path, but she was paying attention to what she was doing and realized that I'm not offering solutions here.
Speaker B:We're just kicking the can down the road with the people that we meet.
Speaker B:And she was also a Christian.
Speaker B:And so that put her in a.
Speaker B:At least adjacent to a worldview that she was not opposed to, but did not understand.
Speaker B:She had bought into, you know, the scientific, materialistic model, because everybody does, basically.
Speaker B:And so she did what anyone would do out of high school who's going down that path.
Speaker B:I'll get a psychology degree, and then I'll just keep moving on, end up with a PhD.
Speaker B:But then, you know, you're 10, 15 years later, and you realize you're not really helping anybody.
Speaker B:And then you're adjacent to.
Speaker B:You're attending church meetings, you're reading your Bible.
Speaker B:And then at some point, it begins to connect.
Speaker B:You know, maybe there's something over here.
Speaker B:She began to poke around and realize there's a purer psychology born out of God's word.
Speaker B:And so then she just completely left and went and got her certification.
Speaker B:I think she got a master's in biblical counseling.
Speaker B:I've interviewed her a couple of times, but that would be an illustration.
Speaker B:I also went to school in my master's program with some folks who had done the same thing.
Speaker B:They're 45 years old.
Speaker B:They're tired of doing this thing that doesn't really help anybody.
Speaker B:And then they learn that there is this thing called biblical counseling, and they switch over.
Speaker B:And now we're sitting in class together, you know, 25 years ago, getting a Master's in biblical counseling.
Speaker B:So that's not unusual.
Speaker B:So you can have those who are open and then you could, you know, just have people who are hardcore.
Speaker B:But that's more than hardcore.
Speaker B:There's a deeper issue.
Speaker B:They're alienated from God, they reject God, they're hostile to God.
Speaker B:So there's no way they would be open to anything that I would have to say.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I heard the illustration, maybe it came from Jen Chin of sort of somebody driving around a racetrack and then they kind of stop at the, they stop at the pit stop.
Speaker A:And the people in the pit stop, they kind of change the tires and give them a tune up and then they're back.
Speaker A:Or they kind of continue to circle the racetrack, hence the secular counselor.
Speaker A:And so they, when they, when they get their tires changed, they feel good for the time they got some new tires, so to speak, but they wear out quickly as opposed to the biblical counselor that gets them to actually leave that racetrack.
Speaker A:Onto freedom.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, it's a great illustration, but it really stirs up my inner redneck.
Speaker B:I mean, you know that I'm from the South.
Speaker B:The three R's down here are racing, wrestling, and religion.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:I'll have to talk to Jen and have her come up with another illustration because she's kicking against my nascar.
Speaker B:I love my racing, but if I could set my prejudices aside for just a moment, and it will only be for a moment, that is really a great illustration because, I mean, that's what it is.
Speaker B:I would just never use that illustration because it sounds like NASCAR is just like going around in circles for 500 miles and taking constant left turns.
Speaker B:I don't that kind of, that kind of hurt, but it's a great illustration.
Speaker A:Well, you know, we have a healer named Jesus.
Speaker A:You should meet Rick Thomas.
Speaker A:He'll counsel you on that.
Speaker B:That was an excellent review.
Speaker A:Praise God.
Speaker A:Well, let me ask you this one final thing.
Speaker A:So as far as your ministry, you offer counseling training.
Speaker A:Do you offer degrees?
Speaker A:If somebody wanted to actually become a biblical counselor?
Speaker A:Well, what is that like?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:What we do, we don't counsel people.
Speaker B:That's what I have done, you know, for 20 plus years when we started this ministry.
Speaker B:Actually, this ministry started out as a counseling organization.
Speaker B:I plan to counsel until I meet Jesus.
Speaker B:But then over time, people started asking, well, you know, how would you do this?
Speaker B:How would you do that?
Speaker B:And so our ministry started out as a counseling ministry has evolved from working with counselees to working with counselors.
Speaker B:If I could put it in that Language.
Speaker B:We do not offer degrees.
Speaker B:And part the reason we brand our ministry life over coffee is because we're trying to deprofessionalize what we do.
Speaker B:I don't want to communicate a message of the haves and the have nots, those who have a master's degree or those that have certification and those who do not in the church.
Speaker B:And so as you look behind me, there's no degrees, there's no certificates, there's no ordination, there's nothing.
Speaker B:All of those things are in a file cabinet.
Speaker B:I'm not even sure where they are.
Speaker B:My wife Lucia puts those in the file cabinet.
Speaker B:I don't put them on the wall.
Speaker B:And I do that intentionally because I don't want to communicate that message.
Speaker B:And so we brand our ministry life, life over coffee.
Speaker B:And so it's kind of like these cars that have these skins on them, you know, these advertisements.
Speaker B:And so what you see when you come to our ministry is life over coffee.
Speaker B:If you get inside the car, what you will see is discipleship.
Speaker B:If you pop the hood and get under the hood, you're going to see hardcore biblical counseling.
Speaker B:But we don't.
Speaker B:I don't use the word biblical counseling.
Speaker B:I don't use the word counselor.
Speaker B:Counselee, Jesus says, I now call you friends.
Speaker B:I call my.
Speaker B:What people would call counselees.
Speaker B:They're just my friends.
Speaker B:They're brothers and sisters in Christ.
Speaker B:My message is everybody in the church gets to play.
Speaker B:Christianity is not a spectator sport.
Speaker B:But if we start communicating certification or degrees, I'm not opposed to those things necessarily.
Speaker B:But we don't talk about them because everybody can't get certification for the time that's involved to do it.
Speaker B:Everybody can't get a master's degree.
Speaker B:Even more time, more intense.
Speaker B:And so it's like, oh, well, then I can't help anybody.
Speaker B:Okay?
Speaker B:That's not the message that we want to communicate.
Speaker B:And so we don't offer degrees, we don't offer certification.
Speaker B:What we offer is to take an individual where they are and to help them to grow up into the best discipler maker that they can possibly be.
Speaker B:And so it's more about how can I be most effective in God's kingdom?
Speaker B:How can I be equipped to it, rather than necessarily being certified or necessarily having a degree, because it also communicates a bad message.
Speaker B:There's a lot of certified biblical counselors that couldn't counsel themselves out of a paper bag.
Speaker B:And so certification is not.
Speaker B:Is not the goal.
Speaker B:It's actually being equipped into the best person that you can be and so each person who comes to us is trained uniquely according to their gifting.
Speaker B:And, and so everybody has, has different capacities.
Speaker B:And so here are.
Speaker B:This is a shameless plug, really.
Speaker B:But so here, here are two of our tumblers.
Speaker B:Here are two people, and they have two different capacities.
Speaker B:They're not the same people.
Speaker B:It's kind of like the woman with, with two copper coins, she gave everything she had, but not this much over here.
Speaker B:And so a certification or a master's degree doesn't distinguish that.
Speaker B:Actually, that's more along the lines of what Kamala Harris would teach, that equity for all.
Speaker B:Everybody gets the same thing.
Speaker B:We actually believe that God created people differently with different capacities and they have different skill sets.
Speaker B:And so it's not about getting a piece of, where everybody gets a piece of paper as though everybody is the same.
Speaker B:And then everybody says, I'm a certified biblical counselor.
Speaker B:What have they said?
Speaker B:I don't think they've said much of anything.
Speaker B:I mean, there's a lack of understanding in the difference of people.
Speaker B:And so what we do is we want to take an individual.
Speaker B:And if this person here, if we can train this person in this white tumbler up to their capacity and they're working in God's church, doing the work of discipleship, then they are bringing absolute glory to God.
Speaker B:They could be doing far more than this individual here who has a greater capacity, but he's not fulfilling that capacity.
Speaker B:And so we put every person that comes to us in a silo, not literally.
Speaker B:And then we don't do group training.
Speaker B:We train them individually according to the uniqueness of who they are.
Speaker B:And so we do have a mastermind program that they can go through.
Speaker B:It's self paced, it's 100% online.
Speaker B:You can do it anywhere from around the world, never have to leave your house, literally.
Speaker B:And you will be trained in this sophisticated understanding and application of God's word.
Speaker B:There's other levels of training that we do, but our heart is we really want to get away from fluorescent lights and tables and counselors with neckties and release the church, that every person, you can be 87 years old, you can be 17 years old, and you can be equipped to go.
Speaker B:And what we're talking about here, ultimately, we're talking about the Great Commission to go, to go and make disciples.
Speaker B:And we're moving away from the degrees and certifications because we've seen, I mean, where that has gotten us in the, in the American academic system, which you are a part of.
Speaker B:It's really just a conveyor belt Education system where everybody's put on at K5, they get off at the 12th grade and then they become a flaming success.
Speaker A:Which is not how they are, not what's happening.
Speaker B:And so, but if you take each person individually and put them on their unique conveyor belt and train them, train a child in the way that they should go and we all go in different ways.
Speaker B:And so we want to identify the uniqueness of the individual and train them accordingly.
Speaker B:The way that God is working in their life and releasing them to go work and do discipleship, that's what we do.
Speaker B:That's the shortest.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, that's a, you know, that's, that's a blessing.
Speaker A:Just to, as an illustration or personal life story, there was a young man kind of on the conveyor belt.
Speaker A:He was very angry, a very prideful young man.
Speaker A:You know, ready, shoot, aim.
Speaker A:And then I, I also teach martial arts self defense.
Speaker A:So this student came to me and other students said, you know, get rid of him, he's trouble and there's problems.
Speaker A:And I said, well, you know, a lot of that stuff is true.
Speaker A:He was born to a 14 year old mother.
Speaker A:The guys in his life were alcoholics and just not good guys.
Speaker A:And so I just took a chance and invested in him and just took someone to actually care about him.
Speaker A:And today he's in the military, he's married, he still calls me, we still have a relationship, but you know, in between I took him up to other martial arts schools, we went fishing, we went biking and it just took someone caring about him and there was real transformation that took place.
Speaker A:And then sent him to a church as well because he says, what do I do now that I'm married?
Speaker A:I said, you got to be around godly men who have good marriages.
Speaker A:You got to be around that.
Speaker A:You got to be sit under, sit under the word.
Speaker A:And so yeah, yeah, I, I fully agree with everything you shared.
Speaker A:The name of your ministry is Life Over Coffee.
Speaker A:Is that the website as well?
Speaker B:Lifeovercoffee.com that's where you find our coffee.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:So go, please check that out.
Speaker A:There are wonderful articles there I've gleaned from them.
Speaker A:I've been encouraged and convicted by them and I've used them as well to help others in, as I counsel others in pastoral counseling.
Speaker A:Well, thank you for taking this time to stop and think about it.
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Speaker C:you can also visit our website at www.stopandthinkpodcast.com this podcast is listener supported by generous people like you.
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Speaker C:Thank you for listening to Stop and Think About It.
