“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.” Some phrases trip off the tongue very easily, yet so often fail to deliver the reassurance we intend.
“Don’t worry, God’s in charge” is a closely related Christian alternative. God is, of course, in charge. But how often those words fail to speak to anxious ears.
Of the many qualities worthy of note in the Christian life, surely one of the most underrated must be perseverance.
Perseverance isn’t showy. It’s not a quality to raise the temperature or quicken the pulse. Perseverance is one of those things that just presses on in the background. New things get noticed. Exciting fresh initiatives draw praise. But perseverance? It’s a quality that only seems to get noticed when it disappears.
Every now and again in pastoral ministry we come across something unfamiliar. And in such circumstances our response, sometimes, is simply to retreat.
Partly that might be driven by a godly concern that, out of ignorance, we will say or do something that proves unhelpful. There may also be elements of a concern that is rather less godly – that of appearing ignorant or looking foolish.
Appalling abuses of power in Christian circles sit within a broader suspicion of power and authority. Some speak of a crisis in recruitment to pastoral ministry. Seeing the demands of leadership, and those who fail, perhaps it is no surprise that people aren’t clamouring to join up.
Jesus famously declared: ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Mark 2:17).
It raises an interesting question about our churches – perhaps you have come across it before – ‘Which do our churches most resemble: a group of people waiting for a job interview or those waiting in a doctor’s surgery?’
In recent years transparency has become a value of increasing importance. In relation to safeguarding, transparency guards against abuse. Where abuse in church settings has come to light, a lack of transparency in leadership is often one of the factors that allows the abuse to persist. Making transparency a key value in church life guards against this.
Moreover, there are good theological reasons for transparency. The apostle Paul urges the Ephesian Christians to ‘have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them’ (Eph.5:11). This echoes a comment in John’s Gospel that ‘whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God’ (John 3:21).
Preaching and talking are different. But although we know that, sometimes we seem to forget.
Most of us listen to sermons on a regular basis, and if we’ve been a Christian for any length of time, our sermon count will be in the hundreds, if not thousands. Maybe it is unsurprising then that, perhaps without quite realising it, preaching mode can begin to feature in our conversations about Jesus. And that can be deeply unhelpful.
The concept, and the seriousness, of neglect is well known. Neglected children suffer huge harm.
But there are other forms of neglect. Ones that we may have done less thinking about. Spiritual neglect would be one example – and this is a neglect that can also do damage, both to us and to others.
There are many forms of loss. Some happen abruptly – a sudden death, an acute illness. Other loss is more gradual – the progressive disability of a chronic disease, the deepening alienation of a loveless marriage. Some losses have no blame associated with them – they just happen – but sometimes we carry the pain of knowing that we are responsible for a loss.
We describe this as regret and it can be one of the bitterest experiences. Hebrews recalls the agonies of Esau, ‘who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights’, but later ‘even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done’ (Heb.12:16-17).
September, it seems, often brings even more of a ‘fresh start’ feel than the beginning of a new calendar year.
We love the sense of new possibilities, new resolutions and new challenges. Aware of things not accomplished in the year that is past, it’s exciting to consider how we might tackle those challenges in new ways. We love anticipating the new things God will lead us into and the new opportunities God will provide.
There’s a lot of deceit in the Bible. Not, of course, from God. He never deceives but only ever speaks the truth. It’s we who are vulnerable to, or guilty of, deceit.
Sometimes we are deceived by others. Jesus warned us saying: ‘Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, “I am he”, and, “The time is near”. Do not follow them (Luke 21:8).
Over the past nine years, more than 1,200 people have taken one or more of the training courses offered by Biblical Counselling UK (BCUK).
People’s motives for taking these courses vary. Those involved in church leadership, or with a pastoral care role in their church, often take the courses to develop their ability to care for others. Many others have no formal role in the local church, but frequently find themselves walking alongside a brother or sister in Christ. They take these courses simply to be better friends. Still others come from a background in the caring professions (therapists, doctors, mental health workers, etc.) and are looking for a Biblical perspective to set alongside their professional training.
Some things are unthinkable. We just can’t conceive of them happening. And sometimes that’s a problem.
As, for instance, in situations too awful for us to bear. This is what happens in trauma when someone experiences something unspeakably terrible. And because they have no words for it, it isn’t integrated into their lives. Unlike a normal memory that is processed and understood, a traumatic experience remains unprocessed – raw and disturbing. I recently heard it vividly described as being like ‘a foreign body in the psyche’.
We like things to be clear. When we ask questions, we want definite answers.
When faced with puzzles – pastoral or personal – we crave unambiguous solutions. It is an understandable desire. Uncertainty is uncomfortable – it unbalances us, and we don’t like that. Clear, definite answers restore our sense of order and calm.
All those who seek to engage with the struggles and sufferings of others know the importance of emotional connection. And while feeling compassion or sympathy or empathy for another person certainly doesn’t mean we jettison Biblical standards, what it does mean is that we seek to enter into the emotional experience of another person.
We know that it matters. It is such a blessing when others feel our pain. But we also know that it costs. It is one thing to recognise and acknowledge the pain of others, quite another to enter into it so that we feel it with the other person. That asks much more of us. So why do it? Here are four quick reasons.
The greater part of wisdom, I was once told, consists in the ability to hold complementary truths together.
It’s an observation worthy of reflection: that wisdom is not so much a matter simply of becoming increasingly more familiar with truth or even more adept at applying it, but that wisdom concerns a growing ability to hold together those truths that stand in some kind of tension with one another.
Many will be familiar with the phrase: love
covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8),
but what exactly does it mean?
Surely in the unfolding story of the Bible,
sin is the problem. How can it be right to
overlook
it? Good counselling and good
ministry must mean helping people identify
their sin, combat their sin, repent of their
sin and put on godliness instead. If sin is
the problem and finding grace the solution,
then won’t covering sin over simply bury the
problem and leave it unresolved?
When Christians fall out, you’d hope they would be good at putting things back together. Reconciliation ought to be one of our strong suits.
Our God not only ‘reconciled us to Himself through Christ’, He also ‘gave us the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5:18). As ambassadors for Christ, we are to implore others: ‘be reconciled to God’ (2 Cor. 5:20). Our interpersonal relationships ought to reflect that.
Restriction is a key part of our new vocabulary. We are restricted in our activities, in our social gatherings, restricted in our travel, and even restricted in church.
There is so much that we cannot do, and the experience is tiring, irritating and not a little disorientating. We know there is ministry to be done, but we just can’t get to do it. We know there are friends to encourage, but we have such limited access to them. We know there is a Lord to be worshipped, but we can’t even sing His praises. It is all so frustrating. When good things are out of reach, frustration is appropriate.
Sorry, so the song tells us, seems to be the hardest word. But is it really? At one level, ‘sorry’ is not at all hard to say. Turn a corner and bump into someone and the word ‘sorry’ is out of our mouths in an instant. But there is so much more to sorry than that.
You might think we Christians would be good at sorry. We have lots of practice. Saying sorry in the words of a confession is a regular feature of Sunday worship. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer is really big on it – having worshippers declare that they are ‘heartily sorry’. But, despite all that, sorry really is a hard word to say. Because we struggle to say it from the heart.
Waiting for lockdown to end. Waiting for schools to restart. Waiting for government announcements. Waiting for church to meet in person. Waiting for the next parcel to be delivered.
The emergence of coronavirus and the subsequent pandemic has ushered in a very strange period of history. From extreme restrictions on travel to profound limitations on social contact, we have entered a new world where reduction of risk and prevention of contamination seem paramount.
But when a government official invites us all to be a bit more OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) with our social distancing and handwashing, I can’t help wondering how that sounds to those who really struggle that way. For them reduction of risk and prevention of contamination may have been a life-dominating concern for years. Are they irritated by such casual reference to their difficulties? Or affirmed because people finally see just how dangerous the world really is?
Jesus spoke frequently about the problems of hypocrisy – not least in the Sermon on the Mount. ‘Watch out’, he said, ‘for false prophets, they come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves’ (Matt. 7:15).
It’s a strident and sobering warning. But the question that’s been bothering me recently is this: what, exactly, are we to understand about the self-awareness of such wolves? Do they know that they are really wolves disguised in sheep’s clothing? Or can they sometimes be self-deceived, such that they believe they actually are sheep?
Grumbling gets strong critique in the pages of Scripture. As the people of God make their way through the wilderness to the Promised Land, grumbling is the failing into which they most regularly fall.
Chapters 11-14 of Numbers charts the terrible progress of the people’s moaning and wailing as it builds toward a disastrous climax. In Chapter 11 the people complain about hardships in general (Num. 11:1) before making dietary concerns the specific focus for their complaint (Num. 11:4-6). In the next chapter Miriam and Aaron grumble about being overlooked as leaders, declaring it profoundly unfair that Moses gets such special treatment (Num. 12:1-2). Finally in Chapter 14, after the report of the ‘spies’, ‘all the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron’ (Num. 14:2), wishing they had died in Egypt or in the wilderness, rather than continue in what they are persuaded is an entirely hopeless redemption plan.
The author Ed Welch describes emotions as the language of the heart.
You can see his point. When we share our deepest longings or admit our darkest fears, we speak emotionally. Or at least we should. It’s much harder to connect with, or even understand, someone who only communicates with us in cognitive terms. It’s so much harder to sense what really matters to them.
David Powlison, Executive Director of CCEF (The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation) died in June.
For many decades God had used him to provide both a rigorously theological and a deeply pastoral foundation for the biblical counselling movement. As I reflect on his life and ministry, three things stand out.
I was a trainee GP sat in the living room of an elderly couple. They were in their 80s. I was 60 years their junior and equipped with the peculiar overconfidence that is the unique possession of the newly qualified. What I knew, but he didn’t, was that he had an inoperable stomach cancer. My task was to explain the diagnosis and tell him he was dying.
I was, of course, anticipating a difficult conversation. What I hadn’t expected was that, when we got to it, the word death would get physically stuck in my throat. I stammered and stuttered and, somehow, we muddled on through. Death, it turned out, was very much easier to talk about in a Bible study than with a man who was actually dying.
I mean really difficult. The kind that make you flinch inwardly as you see them approaching for a conversation. When I worked in general practice they wrote books about people like that – heart-sink patients they called them. The kind of person that would cause a GP to take a deep breath before ushering them into the consulting room.
There is a striking durability about New Year resolutions.
I’m not thinking, of course, of any ability to keep festive determinations, just the way people persist in making them. As one year gives way to another, huge numbers are moved to commit themselves to some kind of self-improvement project. And unlike so many of our efforts after change, these aren’t directed outwards. No blaming of circumstances or all those difficult people around us, the necessity for change focuses specifically on us. At some level, it seems, we know that things aren’t right.
At various points in the New Testament, believers are urged to live in imitation of Christ.
‘Imitate me,’ says Paul, ‘as I imitate Christ’ (1 Corinthians 11.1). Those in ministry are specifically called to shepherd the flock, and their pattern for doing so is the Chief Shepherd of the sheep (1 Peter 5.1-5).
Joni Eareckson Tada was paralysed from the neck down in a diving accident when just 17 years old.
Each year the Biblical Counselling Coalition holds a leaders’ summit – the most recent focussed on the issue of counselling and disability. Joni was this year’s guest speaker. She has written about her struggle to hold on to faith in the face of such a life-changing injury and has gone on to establish an extensive ministry focussed on disability. Several things struck me on the retreat.
One football manager was famous for his dressing room ‘hairdryer’ outbursts, and the wrath of the current US President can, according to a recent book, ‘break most hardened men and women into little pieces’. The Bible seems to notice the connection too. There may be some measure of uncertainty regarding Moses’ error when he struck the rock in Numbers 20, but most see anger at its core. There is no such debate concerning Jonah chapter 4, where first the saving of a city and then the withering of a plant both precipitate distinctly angry sulks on the part of the prophet.
From the pace at which you tell a joke to the pause before the punch line, comedians know that you get a laugh if you get the timing right. And they know that even the best jokes can be ruined by a bad delivery.
From time to time, I hear concerns about biblical counselling being too introspective.
After all, the argument goes, aren’t Christians supposed to have an outward gaze and a concern for the lost? Isn’t it all a bit self-centred to be focussing on me and my problems? The concern is worth addressing: here are three responses.
Certain things seem obvious until you stop and think about them.
Take confidentiality. It seems obvious that a good Christian friend is someone you can speak to in confidence. So that what you say stays ‘just between the two of us’. That’s someone you can trust – who doesn’t gossip and never discloses what’s been spoken in private.
I worry we have made this idolatry thing too simple.
I notice it when I hear people speaking of counselling as though it involves just three easy steps. Step one: identify problem. Step two: embark on an idol hunt to uncover whatever is taking the primary place in a person’s heart. Step three: urge person to stop loving said idol.
I was struck recently by a friend’s comment about the different sorts of people who find their way into training for ministry.
His contrast was between those with personalities at the introverted reflective end of the spectrum and the more extroverted, action orientated types. The interesting bit, though, came when he related this to the type of ministry roles each tends to pursue.
Most help seeking begins in the context of suffering.
Sometimes the suffering will be at the milder end – a job rejection or a family row; sometimes it will be severe – the tragedy of bereavement, the agony of betrayal. But usually people seek help because of something that hurts.
There was one group of people who always seemed to be on the receiving end of Jesus’s more stern rebukes.
That group was made up of those who talked a good game, but failed to live it out. For example: ‘These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me’ (Matthew 15.8). ‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean’ (Matthew 23.27).
Paul has strong things to say about involvement in church.
Those parts of the body that feel important, like hands, mustn’t go telling other bits, ‘I don’t need you!’ Nor should parts that feel insignificant, like feet, take themselves off in a sulk because they don’t feel valued. Every bit is needed. No one is redundant. Every member has a ministry.
And it’s a perfectly good way of describing what happens in Christian ministry (see this column in January en). But this month let’s start in another place – with language that is even more explicitly biblical.
To some it’s a lovely biblical word we ought to reclaim. The psalmist says ‘I will praise the Lord, who counsels me’ (Psalm 16.7); Proverbs offer us ‘sayings of counsel and knowledge’ (Proverbs 22.20) and Isaiah tells us of a Messiah who will be called ‘Wonderful Counsellor’ (Isaiah 9.6).
