Effective Biblical Counseling
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Effective Biblical Counseling

Larry Crabb

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eBook - ePub

Effective Biblical Counseling

Larry Crabb

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About This Book

In Effective Biblical Counseling, Gold Medallion Award-winning author Dr. Larry Crabb presents a model of counseling that can be gracefully integrated into the functioning of the local church. He asserts that counseling is simply a relationship between people who care and that its goal is to free people to better worship and serve God. This book will show you how to help people achieve obedience and character growth in their lives, and establish a sense of personal worth and security along the way. Dr. Crabb says, "I believe that God has ordained the local church to be his primary instrument to tend to his people's aches and pains. In writing this book I have tried to be of practical help to Christians who want to be more effective in ministering to their suffering brothers and sisters."

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Information

Publisher
Zondervan
Year
2014
ISBN
9780310515883
Part I
A Few Preliminaries
1. The Goal of Counseling: What Are We Trying to Do?
2. Christianity and Psychology: Enemies or Allies?
Chapter 1
The Goal of Counseling: What Are We Trying to Do?
Are We Really Being Selfish?
Listen to what might be a typical conversation between a client and a Christian counselor:
Client: “I am so frustrated. I feel like I’m going to explode. There must be some way to calm down. If one more thing goes wrong, I’m going to go crazy.”
Counselor: “Sounds like you’re feeling pretty desperate.”
Client: “I really am desperate. Even though I am a Christian and I do believe the Bible, nothing is working. I’ve tried praying, confessing, giving, repenting, everything. There must be an answer in God but I can’t find it.”
Counselor: “I share your convictions that the Lord can bring peace. Let’s look to see what may be blocking His work in your life.”
Counseling at this point might follow one of many avenues, depending on the theoretical persuasions of the counselor, the nature of the relationship with the client, and a host of other factors. Whatever direction counseling may take, think carefully for a moment about the goal. What is the client ultimately asking for? What is he hoping will happen above all else as a result of his counseling? As I listen to many patients and introspect about my own goals when struggling with a personal problem, it seems to me that the usual objective so passionately desired is fundamentally self-centered: “I want to feel good” or “I want to be happy.”
Now there is nothing wrong in wanting to be happy. An obsessive preoccupation with “my happiness,” however, often obscures our understanding of the biblical route to deep, abiding joy. The Lord has told us that there are pleasures forever at His right hand. If we desire those pleasures, we must learn what it means to be at God’s right hand. Paul tells us that Christ has been exalted to God’s right hand (Eph. 1:20). It follows naturally that the more I abide in Christ, the more I will enjoy the pleasures available in fellowship with God. If I am to experience true happiness, I must desire above all else to become more like the Lord, to live in subjection to the Father’s will as He did.
Many of us place top priority not on becoming Christlike in the middle of our problems but on finding happiness. I want to be happy but the paradoxical truth is that I will never be happy if I am concerned primarily with becoming happy. My overriding goal must be in every circumstance to respond biblically, to put the Lord first, to seek to behave as He would want me to. The wonderful truth is that as we devote all our energies to the task of becoming what Christ wants us to be, He fills us with joy unspeakable and a peace far surpassing what the world offers. I must firmly and consciously by an act of my will reject the goal of becoming happy and adopt the goal of becoming more like the Lord. The result will be happiness for me as I learn to dwell at God’s right hand in fellowship with Christ. Our modern emphasis on personal wholeness, human potential, and the freedom to be ourselves has quietly shifted us away from a burning concern for becoming more like the Lord to a more primary interest in our development as persons that, we are implicitly promised, will lead to our happiness.
Look at the titles of so many Christian books today: The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life; Be All You Can Be; All We’re Meant to Be; The Total Woman; The Fulfilled Woman. Many contain excellent and truly biblical concepts, but their message, whether defined or implied, sometimes directs us more toward concern with self-expression and less toward an interest in conformity to Christ’s image. The Bible, however, teaches that if I will obediently abide in truth in order to become more like God and thus make Him known, the by-product will be my eventual happiness. But neither the goal of the Christian life nor the goal of Christian counseling is an individual’s happiness. Trying to find happiness is something like trying to fall asleep. As long as you consciously and zealously try to grasp it, it never comes.
Paul said it was his ambition (goal) not to become happy but to please God at every moment. What a transforming thought! When I drive my car to work and someone cuts me off, when my kids act up during church, when the dishwasher breaks—my primary responsibility is to please God! In Hebrews 13:15–16, we are told that believer-priests (all of us are priests) have a twofold function: (1) to offer the sacrifice of worship to God and (2) to offer the sacrifice of service for others. If I want to please God at every moment, I must be centrally occupied with worship and service. It seems to me that a seriously neglected truth in most Christian counseling efforts is this: the basic biblical reason for wanting to solve your personal problem should be that you want to enter into a deeper relationship with God, to more effectively please Him through worship and service.
Personally rewarding dividends are provided in abundance. Paul was greatly strengthened in his afflictions by the prospect of heaven. He looked forward to the wonderful rest and undisturbed joy he is this moment experiencing. I presume he has been having a great time for the last two thousand years getting to know the Lord better and enjoying chats with Peter, Luther, and my grandparents among others. He is supremely happy. But personal happiness must be seen as a by-product, not a goal. I am to glorify1 God and, as I do so, I will enjoy Him. I must not rewrite the Westminster Shorter Catechism to read that I am to glorify God in order to enjoy Him. That goal of happiness is forever elusive regardless of one’s strategy. The by-product of happiness is wonderfully available to those whose goal is to please God at every moment.
The next time you grapple with a personal problem (perhaps right now), ask yourself, “Why do I want to solve this problem?” If the honest answer is, “So I can be happy,” you are miles away from the biblical solution. What then can you do? Adopt by a conscious, definite, thunderously decisive act of the will a different goal: “I want to solve this problem in a way that will make me more like the Lord. Then I will be able to worship God more fully and serve Him more effectively.” Write it on a three-by-five card. Read it every hour. Reaffirm it regularly even though it feels rather artificial and mechanical. Pray that God will confirm it within you as you continue by an act of the will to assert it. Put your goal into practice in definite ways. Begin to worship Him by thanking Him for what disturbs you most. Look for creative ways to begin serving Him.
Christian counselors must be sensitive to the depths of selfishness resident within human nature. It is frighteningly easy to assist a person to reach a nonbiblical goal. It is our responsibility as fellow members of the body continually to remind and exhort each other to keep in view the goal of all true counseling: to free people to better worship and serve God by helping them become more like the Lord. In a word, the goal is maturity.
Spiritual and Psychological Maturity
Paul wrote in Colossians 1:28 that his verbal interaction with people (counseling?) always was designed to promote Christian maturity. Only the maturing believer is entering more deeply into the ultimate purpose of his life, namely, worship and service. Biblical counseling therefore will adopt as its major strategy the promotion of spiritual and psychological maturity. When we talk with other believers, we must always have in our minds the purpose of assisting them to become more mature so they can better please God.
Maturity involves two elements: (1) immediate obedience in specific situations and (2) long-range character growth. In order to understand what I mean by maturity and to see how these two elements contribute to its development, we first must grasp the biblical starting point in our quest for maturity. Nothing is more crucial to an effective Christian life than a clear awareness of its foundation. Christian experience begins with justification, the act by which God declares me to be acceptable. If I am to become psychologically whole and spiritually mature, I must understand clearly that my acceptability to God is not based on my behavior but rather on Jesus’ behavior (Titus 3:5). He was (and is) perfect. Because He never sinned, He never deserved to die. But He voluntarily went to the cross. His death was the punishment that my sins deserve. In His love He provided for an exchange. When I give Him my sins, He pays for them in order to justly forgive me; then He gives me the gift of His righteousness. God declares me to be righteous on the basis of what Jesus has done for me. I have been declared just. I am justified. It is a gift that God does not put in me (I am still a sinner) but that He declares is now mine. I cannot lose it. I am accepted as I am because my acceptability has nothing to do with how I am or how I was yesterday or how I will be tomorrow. It depends on Jesus’ perfection alone.
This point must not be relegated to the dry realm of theology. It is at the heart of all Christian growth and yet many who understand the doctrine of substitutionary atonement fail to see its overwhelming practical application to our lives. Our entire motivation for all our behavior hinges upon this doctrine. Efforts to please God by living as we should and resisting temptation so often are motivated by pressure. We feel some vague sense of dread compulsion spurring us on to obedience. So we obey under threat of something foreboding. Are we afraid of God’s wrath?
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Are we worried about whether we will be accepted? But our acceptance depends on the atoning work of Christ. Perhaps we fear that His love will be stopped? “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?” Nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Because we worry about these things, not really believing the Scripture, we tend to look to other Christians for confirmation of our acceptability. Their approval becomes too important, so we try to please them in order to gain their approval. At that point we begin to feel pressure from them to measure up. When we don’t satisfy what we believe are their expectations, we feel guilty and avoid them or deceive them. Fellowship is broken. When we do our best and they show disapproval or fail to praise our efforts, we get angry with them.
So much of our Christian activity is motivated by a personal desire to win someone’s approval and hence become acceptable. All the pain and problems that result from that sort of motivation are unnecessary because of the doctrine of justification by faith. I am already acceptable. I don’t need anyone’s approval. God has declared me to be OK. When I understand that even feebly, my inevitable response is, “Thank you, Lord—I want to please you.” Paul said he was constrained not by pressure to be acceptable but rather by the incomprehensible love of Christ (2 Cor. 5:14). His root motivation was love. He wanted to please God and serve men not to become acceptable but because he already was acceptable. The foundation of the entire Christian life then is a proper understanding of justification.
Someday I will be glorified. I will be in heaven. Not until then will all my imperfections be removed. What God has declared to be true, that I am totally acceptable, He one day will make true in my actual being—I will be completely free from all sinful desires, thoughts, and acts. Until that time (which we usually call glorification), God is in the process of sanctifying me, of purifying me, of slowly helping me to become more of what He already has declared me to be. He has granted me the position of acceptability. Now He instructs me to grow up to my position, to behave more and more acceptably. The motivation to do so is love. He has given me the Holy Spirit who tells me how to live and enables me to live that way. Because I am justified, my glorification is certain. I will reveal God’s character when I see Him for then I shall be like Him. But God has told me that in the time between my justification and glorification, I am to walk the path of obedience. Christian maturity involves becoming more and more like the Lord Jesus through increased obedience to the Father’s will.
Let me sketch what I’ve said so far.2
Chart 1
All who are justified will one day be glorified. Our justification (past) and glorification (future) depend entirely on God alone. But in the interim, we all have a great deal of trouble with obedience. We easily stray from the path of righteousness and do not always follow biblical patterns of behavior. Christian counseling is concerned with whether or not the client is responding obediently to whatever circumstance he is experiencing. Often in counseling it will become clear that the counselee is not responding in a biblical way to stressful circumstances. He may be under terrible strain; there may be a history that makes his present behavior perfectly understandable and natu...

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