The Narrative of Relationship

How to Care Like Christ
Part V: The Narrative of Relationship

Blog Series Note: How to Care Like Christ equips lay people, pastors, and professional Christian counselors with the biblical knowledge and relational skills to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

Read the Bible as the Story of Relationship Initiated, Rejected, and Fought For: Genesis 1-3

If we are to use the Bible to nourish hungry souls, then we must hear the Bible’s story the way God tells it. And God tells it in story form, as a narrative of relationship. Over 75% of the Bible is narrative, and the rest of the Bible involves passionate psalms, wisdom applied to life, and personal letters to real people in real life situations and relationships. The Bible is 100% relational!

The Bible begins by telling the story of relationship initiated and rejected (Genesis 1-3). After those first three chapters, the rest of the Bible tells the story of God wooing us back to Him self, all the while fighting the Evil One who wants to seduce us away from our first love. Ever since Genesis 3, life is a battle for our love—the ageless question of who captures our heart—Christ or Satan.

Our biblical ministry is sterile and dead if we see the Bible as a textbook. But if we read and use the Bible as the story of the battle to win our hearts, then our counseling comes alive.

Relate God’s Truth to Human Relationships through Trialogues: Matthew 18:20

But what does this mean? Does dispensing God’s Word mean that we tell our counselees and parishioners to “take two Scriptures and call us in the morning”? Does it mean that life is so simple that it consists of a one-problem-one-verse-one-solution formula? No. Nor does it mean we make the Bible relevant. The Bible is relevant. We have to work hard to make it boring and irrelevant. We need to learn to use the Bible in relationally relevant ways.

Soul physicians do so by mastering the art of the trialogue. In a monologue, I talk to you, teach you, or preach to you. In a dialogue, the two of us converse back and forth. However, in a trialogue, you and I engage a third party in our interaction—the Holy Spirit by way of His inspired Word. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20, KJV). Counseling is a powerful trialogue interaction about God’s Word between three people—a counselor, a counselee, and the Wonderful Counselor.

We take the specific issue the person is struggling against, and with them we explore together specific biblical passages and specific biblical principles that relate God’s truth to their life. In preaching (the pulpit ministry of the Word), we “bomb the shores.” It’s like a shotgun because we have to share in a monologue truth to 100s of different people. But in counseling (the personal ministry of the Word), we engage in “hand-to-hand combat.” It’s like a rifle because we can zero in with one person, talking back and forth about how our friend might apply various Scriptures and biblical principles to personal issues.

So What in Your Relationships? So What in Your Ministry?

So what? What difference should nourishing the hungry soul with God’s Word make? In how you live and in how you minister, what difference could it make if you:

*Feasted on and helped others to feast on God’s Word?

*Made truth and love kiss as you ministered to hurting and hardened people?

*Read and shared the Bible as the story of the battle for our hearts?

*Related God’s truth to human relationships through trialogues—personally relating truth to life?

The Rest of the Story

*Return tomorrow when we explore how to nourish the spiritual hunger of the soul.

*For the full story, feel free to visit: http://bit.ly/7vaE

Nourish the Hunger of the Soul

How to Care Like Christ
Part IV: Nourish the Hunger of the Soul

Blog Series Note: How to Care Like Christ equips lay people, pastors, and professional Christian counselors with the biblical knowledge and relational skills to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

Preventative Medicine—God’s Word (Matthew 4:4)

Doctoring the body does not begin with the treatment of illness, but with preventive maintenance of health. Knowing how to keep the body healthy requires that we understand what the body needs. What diet? What nutrients?

So it is with doctoring the soul. What does the soul need? What nutrients? Jesus reminds us in Matthew 4:4 that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Our souls need the Bread of Life, the Word of Life. What are the implications of this for biblical counseling?

Feast on the Word of God: Coram Deo Sola Scriptura—Colossians 2:3-10; 2 Peter 1:3

We nourish the Word-hunger of our soul by feasting on the Word of God. Martin Luther called this living coram Deo sola scriptura: face-to-face with God by Scripture alone. Deo is Latin for God; coram is Latin for in the presence of, face-to-face with, sola means alone, and Scriptura is Scripture. Luther used this phrase to illustrate that we live and breathe with reference to God every second in every situation. Luther perceived all of life as a story of personal encounter with God, that the deepest questions in the human soul are God questions, and that we find our deepest answers in God’s Word.

Paul sends the same message when he insists that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Therefore, we must not let anyone take us captive through worldly philosophy which depends on human reason instead of upon Christ (Colossians 2:3-10). Peter echoes Paul when he reminds us that in Christ we have all things that pertain unto life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). The Word of God is profound—it deeply addresses the real life issues of real people in a really messy world! That’s why biblical counselors join their spiritual friends in feasting on God’s Word for daily existence.

Make Truth and Love Kiss: Philippians 1:9-10; Ephesians 4:15; 1 Thessalonians 2:8

As we minister God’s Word to people’s suffering and sin, we must make truth and love kiss. We need to make Philippians 1:9-10 our spiritual friendship prayer. “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best.”

Love is not enough. Truth is not enough. Love and truth must kiss. When our love abounds in depth of insight, we are able to discern what is best for our lives and for the lives of our spiritual friends.

Paul is excited. It is as if he says, “I’m praying that your love very much exceedingly spills over!” The word he uses for “abound” relates to the word used for the abundance remaining after Christ fed the 5,000. It speaks of liberality, lavishness, overabundance, and spoiling. Don’t you want to spoil others with Christ’s love?

You can if you do it in full knowledge and depth of insight. “Full knowledge” pictures noticing attentively, discerning, fully perceiving, observing, and discovering. That’s what God calls soul physicians to do: diligently dig to uncover the buried treasure of truth contained in God’s Word.

“Depth of insight” suggests the experiential use of wisdom—knowledge applied to life. Don’t you long to share Christ’s changeless truth to change people’s lives?

The Rest of the Story

*Return tomorrow when we explore how to nourish the spiritual hunger of the soul.

*For the full story, feel free to visit: http://bit.ly/7vaE

Soul Physician's Desk Reference Manual

How to Care Like Christ
Part III: The Soul Physician’s Desk Reference (SPDR) Manual

Blog Series Note: How to Care Like Christ seeks to equip lay people, pastors, and professional Christian counselors with the biblical knowledge and relational skills to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

Two books are standard in any physician’s office: The Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) and The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy (Merck). Both are considered “Bibles of medical knowledge and practice.”

With its 3,223 pages of prescription drugs, the annually updated PDR is the most comprehensive, widely used drug reference available. It details the usage, warnings, and precautions for more than 4,000 prescription drugs.

Merck is the most widely used medical text in the world. It provides the latest information on the vast expanse of human diseases, disorders, and injuries, as well as their symptoms and treatments. Intended for physicians, it is still useful for the layperson. As one sage has commented, “It is a must for everyone in a human body.”

If the PDR and Merck are the Old Testament and New Testament for physicians treating the body, then the Bible is God’s final, authoritative word for physicians treating the soul. It is the Soul Physician’s Desk Reference (SPDR) manual for dispensing grace. It’s “a must for anyone who is a soul.” God’s Word provides not only the latest, but also the eternal, enduring information on the soul’s design and disease, as well as its care and cure.

What do we discover as we read the pages of the Soul Physician’s Desk Reference (SPDR)? We learn what makes biblical counseling biblical. We learn our Great Physician’s authoritative truth about how to:

1. Nourish the Hunger of the Soul: Preventive Medicine—God’s Word
2. Know the Creator of the Soul: The Great Physician—The Trinity
3. Examine the Spiritual Anatomy of the Soul: People—Creation
4. Diagnose the Fallen Condition of the Soul: Problems—Fall
5. Prescribe God’s Cure for the Soul: Solutions—Redemption
6. Envision the Final Healing of the Soul: Home—Glorification
7. Dispense God’s Care for the Soul: Spiritual Friends—Sanctification

These seven biblical categories are essential for seeing the life of the soul through the lens of Scripture. We will examine them meticulously, as a med-school student examines the skeletal structure of the human body.

The Rest of the Story

*Return tomorrow when we explore how to nourish the spiritual hunger of the soul.

*For the full story, feel free to visit: http://bit.ly/7vaE

How to Care Like Christ

How to Care Like Christ
Introduction: What to Do After the Hug

What do you do after the hug? Or, if you’re a guy, what do you do after the fist bump and the grunt!

Whether you’re a pastor in local church ministry or a lay person sipping coffee with a hurting friend at Starbucks or McDonalds, you know what I’m talking about. We can hug. We can care. We can sense our friend’s pain over ongoing suffering and their frustration over besetting sins. But sometimes we struggle, don’t we, to know what to do next? In fact, knowing what to do after the hug can feel like a maze, like we’re lost without a GPS.

That’s why we want to learn together what to do after the hug. We want to see how the Bible is our GPS: God’s Positioning System! We can learn how to use the Bible accurately, powerfully, and lovingly. We can learn how to speak the truth in love. We can learn how to change lives with Christ's changeless truth. We can learn how to care like Christ.

How do I know that we can? Because the Apostle Paul says so in Romans 15:14. Like him, I am convinced that you are full of goodness (Christlike character), complete in knowledge (biblical content), and competent to counsel (relational competency) one another (Christian community). Through How to Care Like Christ we will grow together in character, content, competency, and community.

In another letter to another group of struggling Christians, Paul provides our framework for people-helping. “I loved you so much that I gave you not only the Scripture but also my own soul because you were dear to me” (1 Thessalonians 2:8). Between saying he loves them and saying they were dear to him, Paul sandwiches Scripture and soul, truth and love. We wrap our purpose around these two themes: Scripture/truth and soul/love.

My Scripture/truth goal is to equip you to become a soul physician who offers your parishioners, your counselees, and your spiritual friends Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed biblical counseling and spiritual formation that changes their lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

The world says, “All we need is love.” They downplay any need for absolute truth. They dismiss any thought that we need God-inspired insight for living. And in our day, even the church minimizes truth. I had a church ask me, “Could you just breeze through this truth part and focus almost all your time on the practical how-to part?” As if God’s Word is impractical? We must learn to think like Christ—to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

My soul/love goal is to equip you to become a spiritual friend who cares like Christ as you offer others sustaining empathy, healing encouragement, reconciling enlightenment, and guiding empowerment. Some Christians say, “All you need is truth. Just preach the Word.” But God’s Word says we are to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). We must learn to love like Christ—to care like Christ.

Let the journey begin!