EP. 124 CTP W/Pete Potloff

Mike: Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church in counseling and discipleship. Hello, hello, hello. We are back with another episode of Speak the Truth, and we are going to be continuing our series, Counseling Through Proverbs.

And in Counseling Through Proverbs, as many of you know, that we've been having contributors on the podcast as our special guests. And I have with me today, A special guest, a friend from the other side of the country, Pete Potluff. Pete, how are you doing brother?

Pete Potloff: I'm doing great. It's great to be with you, Michael.

Mike: Absolutely. And actually I was just talking with Pete before I hit the record button here and just kind of talking about a few things, but just also reminiscing on back in 2019 and I'll actually put it in the show notes, the episode that, we had Pete on back in 2019 and things have changed for you since 2019, haven't they?

Pete Potloff: Yeah, a lot has changed. I feel like my whole time here at Salem Heights has been just one big morphing story that God is writing, which has been fun. It's been stretching, but it's been a great opportunity for me to see Him work through the things that He calls me into. So yeah, it's been exciting. I'm currently serving as the Executive Pastor here at Salem Heights, and one of my privileges is I get to oversee our Biblical counseling ministry and the team that...

Kind of carries that out day

Mike: to day. Yes, exactly. And so, Pete, you've been at Salem Heights Church for, since what 1999 or something like that?

Pete Potloff: Yeah, I actually started attending in college as a college student and attended for many years. Had a different profession prior to joining the church staff.

I was in Christian education for 15 years. And then the church invited me to join the staff. In 2015, I just finished my eighth year and it's blown by it.

Mike: It definitely has. I know. Speaking to that point since 2019, when I met you, a lot has passed and it's gone by really fast. so we have you and your contribution is.

For those of you just to, just to tag it in the book is page 37, wisdom when you've been wronged. And you, you've got tagged here, Proverbs 4, 20 through 27 do you want to read that for us, Pete?

Pete Potloff: Absolutely. It says here, starting in verse 20, my son, pay attention to my words, listen closely to my saying, don't lose sight of them, keep them within your heart for they are life to those who find them and health to the one whose whole body.

Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life. Don't let your mouth speak dishonestly, and don't let your lips talk deviously. Let your eyes look forward, fix your gaze straight ahead. Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established. Don't turn to the right or to the left.

Keep your feet away from evil.

Mike: So with that text, and as you guys have known since these counseling through series, the purpose of these books have been to help the counselors with basically having scripture and using these as assignments or growth plans, if you will. In session and out of session.

And that's what Pete has done here. So Pete, would you just walk us through how you would use this in a counseling session?

Pete Potloff: Absolutely. You know, this when I was invited to participate in this project and contribute to the Proverbs resource this was the first passage that came to mind. And it really kind of comes out of a personal season in my life where I had gone through a transition and a job that I had.

I really felt like I had been wrong, and there was a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, it was very disorienting, and I went and saw a pastor friend of mine, and I was, again, I was not really thinking rightly, but I had gone to him, and I was hoping to hear from him support for the injustice that had happened towards me, and support for the way that I was thinking.

This was the text that he took me to and he just simply said, I want to encourage you right now when everything is seeming to kind of be falling apart and you're feeling blindsided, I want to encourage you to guard your heart. And so the, the important thing that I would want to start with the Counselees, oftentimes when they come to us there is some sort of pain.

There's some sort of source of suffering, something that oftentimes is connected to other people. And. Whether it be parenting, spouses inter family dynamics, work environment, and oftentimes there are people that are coming to counselors to have their, their position, their perspective validated.

But one of the things that stands out to me from this is that we have a choice. We have a choice to either guard our heart or to allow the feelings that we're feeling from that pain, control how we respond to it. And I'm reminded as I look at this text in verse 20, it just says, pay attention to my words.

Now it's easy to quote scripture you know, how we can trust God in the moments of uncertainty, but to, to really say, pay attention is to try to push aside the feeling to think clearly at what is actually being said. What is actually being encouraged here from the word of [00:06:00] God? I'm reminded of what it tells us in Romans chapter 6 about the fact that we do have a choice we have a choice to either be a slave to the flesh, slave to sin, and the Bible is clear on what that leads to.

If we try to deal with our pain, deal with injustice, deal with slander, deal with whatever is causing us that we feel personally offended by, we choose to deal with that out of our flesh. The Bible is clear that leads to It leads to more harm. It leads to more disunity. It leads to death. But yet we have the opportunity to be a slave to Christ, a slave to the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit.

And that's not oppressive like the flesh is. It's actually freeing because we can trust the Lord with the outcome. We can trust the Lord for His provision. And so the, the best place to start with that is to, in those moments when we're thinking a lot of thoughts, and we're thinking about what's going on in our hearts to actually let the Lord inform what's going on and what the [00:07:00] source of that pain is and why it hurts and how we should respond to it in a way that not only glorifies God, but is actually going to help us process through that rightly.

So leading a counselee through this passage, I would really want to kind of let 20, verse 23 be the hinge point of guard your heart above all else for it is the source of life. And just start out by talking about, you know, what is the heart and how, you know, there's, we often refer to this in Christianity, but it's obviously more than that organ that pumps life sustaining blood throughout our body, but it's actually the reference to the heart in scripture is oftentimes referring to that spiritual spot in us where our thoughts, feelings, and actions are cultivated.

And so, once you kind of understand when he's saying guard your heart, which I talk, what do you think that means? What do you think that means? How can our hearts be impacted by these external circumstances? And how can [00:08:00] the things around us impact the way we feel? And, and start to unpack that with the counselee.

So that's kind of how I would start it. And then, would move into just the idea of how do we, how do we guard our heart? What does he mean when he says guard your heart? What comes to mind? For me, I, I think of places like Ephesians 6 and putting on the armor of God. There's this proactive position we can take that I think can help a counselee even beyond the current circumstance we're helping them with.

And moving forward, there's going to be other times where we might be offended, we might be wrong. We might actually be the victim of injustice. But what if we were proactively on guard all the time so that when that stuff happened, we responded rightly from the get go rather than have to go retroactively.

And so we talk about guarding up in a spiritual sense. Oftentimes, I love what it says in Ephesians 6, too, that a lot of the conflict that leads us hurting or [00:09:00] that can cause us to feel like we've been wrong it's more than just a battle between flesh and blood, it's a spiritual battle, and it's trying to unpack the dynamics of spiritual warfare.

But then just to take them to Philippians 4, and a great passage that talks about not only should we arm her up. to guard our heart, but we need to pray up and this idea of in the moments in the Philippian four passage speaking the moments of anxiety and fear, but to take that to the Lord. And it makes this awesome statement in verse seven, where it says that the peace of God, a supernatural peace that surpasses all of our human understanding will guard our heart and our minds in Christ Jesus.

And so when we. We take that pain and we take that injustice to the Lord, and we choose to not respond to it out of the flesh, but the Bible promises us that the Lord will begin to replace that pain with His peace. And it's a peace that [00:10:00] actually guards our heart, our feelings, and it guards our minds of how we think and how we perceive.

And so, when we go to the Lord first, rather than just dwell on our feelings or respond out of our feelings, the Spirit of God actually helps us understand why we're feeling that we're feeling. Amen. And why we're thinking what we're thinking, and how to think rightly, and how to process those feelings in the best way.

And so, the encouragement is to be proactive in our guarding, but if that, maybe we got caught off guard and we're really suffering, how do we begin to guard our hearts through that process? And he outlines many things here in this little section of Proverbs chapter 4. It says, pay attention to my words, listen closely to my saying.

Do not lose sight of them. He goes on and, and so first he starts by saying, focus on me, focus on my word. Let that truth be the defining distinctive in your life. Let [00:11:00] my truth be what even defines what's going on in your life. And then he gives us some practical things in verse 24. It says, don't let your mouth speak dishonestly.

How often when we are wronged, do we want to respond with a defense of ourselves or potentially even slander the person that's hurting us because. We want to expose them or we want to cause them to feel the pain that we feel. He says, don't do that. Don't let your mouth speak dishonestly, but fix your eyes straight ahead.

And I love what it says here in verse 26 is that it says, carefully consider the path for your feet. But I think what this acknowledges is that when we've been wronged, there's a process we have to walk through. We don't want to just call the council leader, just try to ignore it, you know, turn the other cheek, take the high road in a way that is like just trying to ignore.

Sometimes we actually need to be called into action to say, no, this is wrong and we have to stop that. But we shouldn't [00:12:00] do that process or walk this out quickly, flippantly, which I think is kind of part of our human nature is that we want to walk through pain. We want to get away from pain as quickly as possible.

Sometimes we might take short cuts or try to expedite that, but he's saying, walk carefully. You know, it's going to take a season of time. We're going to have to continue to process through these emotions, and sometimes you're going to feel like you're doing pretty good and something's going to trigger you and take you right back into that place of frustration or anger or despair.

So again, every day walk carefully, make sure you're thinking about truth, make sure that you're focused on me, and make sure that you are, step after step, continuing to trust me. And in that you're going to actually find that peace that's going to guard your heart. And so that's kind of what I would want to walk them through is.

Is be able to take them from this passage and talk about what does it mean to guard our heart and how, what kind of an instruction here do we see [00:13:00] as a way to do that, some practical ways that we can guard our heart when we're feeling we've

Mike: been wronged. Yeah, that's good, man. You know what's interesting about...

This, which is obviously thematically speaking the whole point of Proverbs, right, is just wisdom and that juxtaposition between wisdom and folly and what's funny when we're wrong to your point about the flesh is oftentimes it's our perception of what you know and what we believe is wrong and like it wasn't legitimately wrong and it actually reminds me of Proverbs 1911.

Where in Proverbs 19 11 good sense makes one slow to anger and I'm reading from the ESV good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook an offense and what I, what I find, what I find interesting about what you've done here in, the purpose of Proverbs four and you know, the father's call to the Sunday, like, Hey man, consider this is, Truth exposes [00:14:00] everything, right?

Like if, if I feel wronged in something and, and I just, you know, quickly compulsively respond to something, cause I feel like I've been hurt or wronged. Well, was it legitimate or was it just my perception, right? Was my, was my pride Hit against, you know, like what, what was the offense? And so we don't, to your point, we don't really consider the offense oftentimes because there is, you know, there's a difference between like black and white sin, right?

And then there's the offense. And so wisdom, wisdom lives in the gray. And, and I think that's another way of what Proverbs 4 is doing here is, you know, putting the onus back on the person who feels like they've been wronged. And so what you've done here is just, cause obviously to your point, when we've got a counselee and.

They're dealing with all of these things, they don't trust people because they've been hurt, you know, and all of these things, and it just, it, they, they haven't guarded their hearts, and now they're resentful, they don't trust, they're, you know what I mean, [00:15:00] and so there's a lot of unpacking there, and so to take them to these verses to put sort of the onus back on the person, cause to your point, it's like when a person is wrong, they immediately turn into a victim.

Right. Right. And

Pete Potloff: I think that's what my friend was trying to encourage me with in my circumstance. I think this is what the text is calling us to is, it's not saying that the, the issue that's causing the, the, the tension, the struggle, the pain is not important to deal with. But before you can get to that, you got to guard your heart.

You got to make sure that you're stepping with me because you're not going to perceive rightly, respond rightly, unless you're letting me guide you through this because the emotion of the pain. Can oftentimes cloud our judgment, and again, if it's rooted in the flesh, it could, it could respond in a way that is actually harmful and not right.

Yeah.

Mike: I agree with [00:16:00] you. It's like the flesh, you know, anytime I always hear, you know, the flesh and how the flesh responds when we talk about that as Christians, it reminds me of going to the doctor and when they do those physical checkups and they, you know, they bonk your, your, you know, your knee cap in those areas and you have that knee jerk reaction to stuff like that's what the flesh does.

Yeah. And so, go ahead. I

Pete Potloff: agree. I agree. And I think that, why I think this is an important one to be ready for is we do live in a day and age where it does. It seems like every, every time you turn on the news, you look on social media, you read a blog post, like, Victim mentality is something that is just kind of, I think, accepted.

It's so quick to go there. And again, there's a lot of sin, and there's a lot of things that do impact us that we have been victimized by as other people. But I think there's a newness of life that we have in Christ that allows us to be able [00:17:00] to see ourselves as His child first. And understanding His provision as a child is greater than the offense.

And so. I'm really just trying to help the person think rightly about where they're at, where their heart is at. But I'm also wanting to help them see that they have a choice on how they allow this to impact them. They don't have to be defined by it. They don't have to be held down by it. And I love this idea that we see in 2 Corinthians chapter 10 where it just talks about taking every thought captive and just, I'm not going to let the, the feeling be the things that impact my thinking.

I'm going to, I'm not going to, and I'm not going to justify even a little bit of bitterness or anger because a little bit left in there is going to grow. It's going to, it's going to be like yeast. It's going to. It's going to double in size quickly if we don't just get rid of it and move it all out.

Mike: Yeah, yeah, that's good. so you kind of, position this in, at least the first part of it in session as far as the counseling [00:18:00] piece is concerned. So how would you, you know, when working with a counselee who's wrestling with that and clearly hasn't guarded their heart and, they're kind of positioned in that victim mentality and they're struggling with bitterness, resentment towards.

people in life in general and all of those all of those things that happen when people don't guard their hearts. Right. as far as after session, how would you walk through this particular lesson for after session? Yeah, I think

Pete Potloff: what I would do is just give them some assignments that really try to validate.

The fact that, I, I want to understand, like, I'm not saying you're wrong for feeling pain, but can we, can we work on a discovery process of trying to process what you're actually feeling and why you're feeling that way? And so, rather than saying just stop it, stop feeling bad, stop feeling like the victim, that's not that big a deal, which would be terrible counseling is actually take a time for them to Be more thoughtful about it.[00:19:00]

Because again, the pain, sometimes we can't even articulate the pain. We just know that there's pain and so we're just responding out of instinct. So one of the things that I would encourage them to do is, is I want them to begin to proactively again keep that guard up throughout the process of healing and the best place to start is, is to be in God's Word.

And so I'd give them a collection of scriptures. That they could read that would allow them to kind of go a little beyond Proverbs chapter 4. In addition to that and I'll get back to that in just a second, some of the scriptures I would suggest that are kind of tied to this topic, but I'd also love for them to just spend time journaling.

And in writing out, like, the specific ways they felt they've been wrong, again, moving beyond the feeling and actually defining what the feeling is. Why am I so bothered by this? Because like you were saying, Michael, I think that process can be very helpful to go like, is this actually something that I should be offended over?

Has, have I actually been wrong? Because it could be that maybe they, there's [00:20:00] been plenty of times where God has used people in my life, to actually poke on a blind spot that is actually something that is actually a good gift from God to bring to light so that I can grow, but I have felt attacked or I felt like they don't, you know, it's been too harsh or it hasn't been right.

And I would even say in the situation that I started at my, my own personal story where I had gone to my pastor friend hurting after something that kind of blindsided me, looking back at it now, I actually think the Lord. Was using that and orchestrating some things that have brought me to the place that I am today.

Now could I say still, I wish they would have done that a little bit differently or they could have done it differently. I probably still have to work through that. But actually, you know, hindsight. Yeah, that really hurt. That wasn't great. But it actually, God used it. He was, it was, God was in that and He, He used that for good.

And so what, I'd have them do some journaling, [00:21:00] like coming back I'm trying to articulate beyond just the manifestation of what these feelings are making me think or how they're making me want to respond, but what am I actually feeling and what is that specifically tied to? Then I would just encourage them to continue to read through Proverbs chapter 4, this section 20 27, and just have them answer questions like, why is it important that you guard your heart?

But sometimes we're more focused on resolving the injustice than actually what we have, what we should be doing personally. So you know, I'll guard, you know, I don't want to guard my heart. I just want that person to be held accountable. But why, why, why would it be important that this father says to his son, I want you to guard your heart above all else before rectifying the issue, before, you know, justices is actually maybe resolved.

Why is he saying above all else guard your heart? Take time to, to walk through that. And then ask them, what are some words [00:22:00] of truth in God's words that can help you guard your heart against these feelings and emotions? Where else in scripture is there a verse or a passage that, when you're starting to feel these feelings or emotions, you can dwell on those things and allow those things, those scriptures, those truths, to help fight against those feelings and desires.

I think this is what is, is helpful in Philippians 4, 8, where he says, He goes on to say, he gives a long list of, these are the things that we should be thinking about. Things that are true and lovely and a good report. I dwell on those things. And so what are those passages? I think it's sometimes we get caught up in our emotions and we can respond in a sinful way because we're not ready for those moments.

And so having some scriptures that we've already kind of dedicated to memory or we have them outlined in our Bible so we know where to find them. It would be a great place to respond, and I think this is what we see in Christ in Luke chapter 4 when [00:23:00] he's sent out into the wilderness and he's tempted he, you know, he is, he is physically fatigued.

I'm sure there's an emotional fatigue, there's obviously this distance, this isolation, and then Satan comes and tries to tempt them, and in all those temptations, how does he respond? He responds with the Word of God. And so what, I would encourage them maybe to read through that story and ask themselves like what can they learn from that story of how Christ used scripture to guard against simple temptation.

And then finally, I would just encourage them to continue to think about how whenever we're wrong... Our loving Heavenly Father hasn't left us to just fix this on our own. I love kind of how it says in Galatians, about in regards to our salvation, this like, this question of like, did you start your salvation by your own strength?

The question is, it's rhetorical. Obviously you haven't. It's like, so why do [00:24:00] you think that you're been left to your own devices, your own strength to carry out your salvation? That's not how it works. God doesn't need you to add anything or to help him with that. And so the same is true when we've been wronged sometimes we actually are not taking advantage of the fact that we don't have to walk through that pain and that struggle by ourselves.

And so continuing to draw them to consider the Holy Spirit's help in that. So encouraging them to read passages like Galatians 5, 16 26, and asking them to think about the Holy Spirit and what role does the Holy Spirit play in guarding our hearts? How does he help us? And then get more specific, in their situation, what would it look like to follow the Spirit rather than the desires of the flesh?

So those are some of the things that I would encourage them to do, journaling, to try to get more specific on what the source of the pain is, to try to identify, is this something that I truly should be, that I've actually been wronged by? And then [00:25:00] to think about how to use scripture. To fight off those feelings of injustice or to help us act rightly in those moments.

And then how can we rely on the Holy Spirit to help us think rightly and to guard our hearts in the process.

Mike: Yeah, that's good, man. That's really good. Well, thank you for your contribution Pete And I look forward to more of your contributions as these ABC resources continue to come I know there will be more coming and Look forward to your contributions man, but thank you, brother.

I appreciate your time. Thank you for your ministry. And for those of you who are listening and who have been using these resources I pray that in using Pete's contribution, that it would be an encouragement to you and a good resource to your counselees.

Thank you for listening to speak the truth and we will talk to you next time.