Speak The Truth EP. 122 Pro. 22:4

Welcome to Speak the Truth. A podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church and counseling and discipleship.

Shauna: Hello?

Michael: Hello? Hello?

Shauna: Yo. Yo.

Michae: Yo. We are back. With another episode.

Shauna: Very good. I love it. And excited to talk again about counseling through ~a~ Proverbs. I think this is the fourth. One that we have done. And today we're gonna be talking through Proverbs chapter 22, verse four, which I've titled, seeking a Heart of Humility.

Shauna: I don't really like talking about pride because that's one of those things that we all really struggle with, right? Not necessarily a fun topic, but a much needed one. And we hope that at some point in every counseling session, this is something that comes up maybe not every counseling session, [00:01:00] the majority of the things if we're helping someone grow spiritually, that this is an area that we are considering.

Shauna: And so I hope the way that I have written this, In the counseling through Proverbs book that you can get through the Association of Biblical counselors@christiancounseling.com through the store. We have this one that's counseling through Proverbs. Our very first one is counseling through Psalms, and then we have two others, counseling through Old Testament narratives and one that is New Testament scriptures.

Shauna: We have tons of different authors who contribute. I'm so thankful for those who contribute to this book. And the goal of this is to. Really take a scripture verse or passage and walk through it in a way of helping us utilize this in discipleship and counseling. So what are some of the main points or parts that we would wanna point out that this scripture is revealing to us?

Shauna: What's the truth about it? And then and then just help them reflect upon that within the counseling session or over coffee. And then there's an after session assignment section, which is. The area that you [00:02:00] can give them just to help them reflect on what you had discussed or help them continue to study and reflect upon it after you meet with them.

Shauna: Cuz remember, the after session assignments are vital to the counseling process because that is their time that they are spending with the Lord. And so technically that should be more valuable than their time with you even. I've put a.

Shauna: Notes section, if you notice in the book after every submission, because my hope is that as you're doing these and even you start implementing them in your counseling sessions, you're gonna tweak it. You're gonna make it your own because God is revealing things specifically to you, maybe about your own heart and life.

Shauna: But also those that you counsel. And so you might come up with additional questions or you might not like something and you cross it out, but then you add something new. And so please take this book as just a guide just to get you started. And the goal is for you to make these your own.

Shauna: But let's talk about pride and humility today Michael. And do you wanna start us off by reading our scripture [00:03:00] verse? Yeah.

Michael: Proverbs 22, 4. The reward for humility. And fear of the Lord is rich as an honor in life. There's a lot in

Shauna: that statement. Yeah. You wanna break that down?

Shauna: You're like there's, honestly, there's a lot that Proverbs 22 talks about, and gives words for the wise. And so there is a lot about even this chapter that you can turn into prayer. And so it's hard to obviously write at books like this cuz taking one scripture verse and trying to draw so much out of it is difficult.

Shauna: And If you are on the page, it's on page 1 29. If you wanna follow along, if you have the book with you. But I've given you other scripture passages to help draw out the point. But the overall focus that I would use this for is to really help, speak into what is God say in scripture about pride.

Shauna: So what is the truth about pride? And then what is the truth about humility? And that's how I've broken it down. But when you think about pride, it is a heart consumed with self. So [00:04:00] that's obviously as pointed as you can get of seeing this is the opposite of how we wanna live our life, right?

Shauna: Living a life of godliness a life to glorify and please the Lord is not. Prideful, right? It's not wanting to please self. We want to strive for humility, but being sinners, we obviously are gonna constantly struggle with a prideful heart. Not only is it consumed with self, but from that selfishness, there's selfish ambitions. There's arrogance that we have boasting in our own accomplishment. Ultimately, it's a worship of self, so it's dangerous. It's dangerous because it's rooted and giving glory to ourselves when the glory belongs to God alone.

Shauna: So when we seek self exaltation instead of rightly worshiping God, Our fellowship will be hindered. Pride blinds us into thinking that we have no need for God, and then our thoughts and actions become all about my happiness, my worth. My life, [00:05:00] my feelings for my benefit, and it's in my control. Like I'm the one in control of this.

Shauna: It's based off of what I'm doing. And when you think about that and the dangers of that mindset, that is not a heart that is seeking to please the Lord. It is seeking to please self. And that is something we obviously want to make war on in our own life, but obviously to help our brothers and sisters the same.

Shauna: Michael, any thoughts on that? In

Michael: counseling, obviously realizing that pride is always embedded in a person's thoughts, feelings, and actions, right? It's always present in a lot of different ways, but I think what's helpful to the counselee that the counselor would do with this is that in it, you have setting it up to just really set the stage with pride and understanding how it manifests itself.

Michael: And like you said, with the my statements, also showing. The reality of humility and what it looks like because part of the Christian faith and being conformed in the image of [00:06:00] Christ, the process of sanctification is taking off pride in putting on humility and I think oftentimes, As Christian human beings, we don't realize, again, the extent of pride.

Michael: And so I think this would be a good tool to use, obviously, depending on what the counselor is working with the counselee in. But I definitely think the way that you have this set up, just again, the juxtaposition between pride and humility is actually really good and really well articulated.

Shauna: Awesome. Let's work through some of that. I have it in the two sections. What reveal the truth about pride? So help your counselee see in scripture, like what does the Lord say about pride and how that's a danger to them. And then obviously, like Michael just mentioned, the renewal part.

Shauna: We wanna say also then on the flip side and really what's most important too, is what God reveals about humility and how are we. Seeking that and praying about that in our lives. And I have certain points that are listed here in the book that will hopefully help you in guiding them through.

Shauna: This is not an exhaustive list, by the way, so there's gonna [00:07:00] be so much more scriptures that you can add to this that you might, points that you also feel will be important. But a couple are pride is an abomination to the Lord. Pride makes one hopeless. It comes before disgrace. Pride goes before destruction.

Shauna: Pride causes calamity. Pride is wicked and sinful. So a major consequence of pride is a hardened heart. It creates self delusion that makes us overly confident in our own ability, which in turn makes us unteachable and hinders our maturity. As a believer, we're not gonna want that, right?

Shauna: That's something that we don't want in our life. And so we can't be ignorant about it existing. We have to realize this . We need to make war on this because a hardened heart will shift blame to other people and take no ownership and wrongdoing, which will never allow us to walk in true repentance.

Shauna: And so that's something we obviously would want to encourage our counselees to take ownership [00:08:00] of the areas that they have sinned against God and against others and walk through confession and repentance on that. The heart is rebellious and God's righteous judgment will be revealed against such sin, and I've given scripture to reference that in Romans two, five.

Shauna: So to me, at times there could be people who hear the word. Pride and they have this simple thought about it. But I think if you take time within a counseling session or in even your community groups and talking through the weight of what pride is and how it manifests in our lives and how it's a hindrance to our growth in the Lord, it hinders our maturity and it's all about self and all these things.

Shauna: Let them sit in the weight of what that is, but then we can move towards what does scripture say? What does The truth reveal about humility. And so I've listed all the scriptures here of a few points that I have written out is the humble will be exalted by the Lord. Humility comes before honor.

Shauna: Humility is rewarded by God. With Rich's honor and life, which is the scripture that Michael read for us at the beginning. In Proverbs 22:4, the Lord lifts up the humble. The Lord leads the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. Wisdom comes from humility, or wisdom comes with humility.

Shauna: I guess we could use from or with but here specifically in Proverbs 11:2, wisdom comes with humility. An outcome of humility is a loving heart. So versus the prideful, hardened heart, humility is a loving heart. It's selfless. It's a selfless attribute that counts others more significant than ourselves.

Shauna: And we put the interest of others before our own. We have a willingness to sacrifice for. The good of others. Humility will produce fruit that acknowledges our sin before the Lord. And so think about that. It's acknowledging our sin, not saying we're sinless. Humility is saying, I am a [00:10:00] sinner and I acknowledge that before the Lord and I receive God's grace with the heart of gratitude.

Shauna: Like I'm incredibly grateful for the grace. That God has given me, the fact that I'm able to do anything is not through my own ability, but God's ability through me. That's a complete heart shift on the motive behind what we do each day. Humility allows us to likewise offer grace and forgiveness to others.

Shauna: Because we recognize and appreciate what God has done for us. That's real. That's a really important quality that we would want to be praying for specifically. Any thoughts on those, Michael?

Michael: No. I think this is creating that solid juxtaposition that we need in contrast where we're dying to self, we're dying to the prideful heart.

Michael: And we're taking on humility and putting on humility, and there's a process to it.

Shauna: Yeah. So pride is a difficult sin to address too. When you are talking to someone about pride a prideful heart is, even if you say, oh, I don't struggle with pride, that's prideful in itself.

Shauna: Michael. [00:11:00] And so when you have conversations with men about pride, is there any pushback on things like that? What are some of the pushback that you hear? Or what makes it difficult to talk to a guy about their pride?

Michael: Basically demonstrating their pride so they see their need for humility.

Shauna: Yeah. Yeah. And I remember reading about pride one time, and this isn't in the book, but just came to mind so you might wanna write it down, but when someone is prayerless, that's prideful. Think about that just for a minute, is if, if we're not going before the Lord we're focused on our own abilities, right?

Shauna: I got this, Lord, I don't need your help. I don't need your feedback. I don't want to talk to you. I don't need you in those ways. And so prayer is such a beautiful way of acknowledging that God is omniscient. He is all powerful and and we can, we get to go to him and we need the help of the Holy Spirit to do anything that we do here.

Shauna: As sinners in a sinful world, living with other sinful people we [00:12:00] need his strength as we are suffering for his good and and glory. And that in itself, like when we feel like, oh, we don't have time to pray, or we're scheduling it in and it's just something that we're doing.

Shauna: That in itself is prideful. And so you might need to pray about that. Lord, I'm not making this a priority in my life. Lord, give me humility in this. Help me to see more of a need for you. Help me to fall more deeply in love with you. Those are things that we not only should be praying daily in our own lives as counselors and pastors.

Shauna: The pastors that are out there listening but we should be encouraging in those that we are discipling, but it's not gonna be easy. So this is definitely not one that is gonna be an easy counseling session. When you counsel someone who doesn't believe that they need god much less you, right?

Shauna: So you are gonna have to be patient and gentle and consistent. In your approach here. So just try to create an environment that's open, that's grace filled, that is just a discussion that leads to [00:13:00] identifying areas where pride manifest in their life. You don't wanna be judgmental, obviously, and I'm not saying that.

Shauna: Any of you listening, I'm already assuming that you're not, but there are times that we can respond to certain things that could have a judgmental heart. And so we want to rightly call them out and ask questions that hopefully stirs conviction. But at times, sometimes just.

Shauna: Leading them in conversations like this, submission offers, like walking them through the scripture and some of these truths that I had mentioned before, that in itself should stir conviction. The Lord, we have to trust that the Lord is at work in their heart and their mind. And even if it wasn't revealed to them right then in the counseling session that you just continue to pray for them, that the Lord will reveal it to them afterwards.

Shauna: So pray for humility and heart renewal because we have a faithful and forgiving God . We wanna pray that in the room with them. We wanna pray for them afterwards and then obviously encourage them in helping maybe even them write a prayer out that's seeking God for humility.

Shauna: Yeah,

Michael: that's a great counselor tip. And something that you give in the lesson of after session assignment. Anytime we see, these manifestations in pride with our counselees, it's always good to give them growth assignments in that to just so finding scripture versus that, do a good job of being explicit about what humility looks like.

Michael: And where pride is found and what it looks like in our hearts and in our thoughts and in our affections and emotions, finding some scripture verses. And Shauna provides some good ones there that the counselor can give to the counselee after session and just follow up cuz these are themes. And that's the great thing about these ABC resources, specifically counseling through Proverbs, is because a lot of these are themes, right?

Michael: The ongoing theme. In Proverbs is wisdom and folly, and oftentimes in our counseling and when people are coming to us with issue specific needs and struggles and so on and so forth. Part of our goal [00:15:00] as a biblical counselor in the data gathering process of being able to find these themes and showing our counselee these patterns that are actually working against them in their maturity in Christ.

Michael: It's a reason why there's the in session and after session with this resource just to again, help the counselee realize these different patterns in their lives and how persistent they are. So to those of you who are out there and using these resources, and this is what, the fourth one.

Michael: So yeah, if you guys have ideas on some other maybe resources that you think would be helpful as far as. Is counseling through different parts of scripture or themes or different things like that. Please don't hesitate to let us know and you can email us at topics speak the truth.org and we'd love to take that feedback and turn that into some material.

Shauna: Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us on Speak The Truth.