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 continuing our series counseling through Proverbs.

And as every episode has proved, we have a special guest with us a contributor in the book itself. And I've got with us Emily Dempster,

Emily Dempster is at Salem Heights church in Salem, Oregon,

Emily. How are you?

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on.

Yes. Yes, indeed. Emily, could you share with our listeners a little bit about yourself who you are, how long you've been doing this, and why you made the contribution of, what'd you choose, Proverbs 13, 20?

Sure, I'm up here in Salem, Oregon, and get the opportunity to direct a Biblical Counseling and Training Ministry for the Association of Biblical Counselors. We We get to run Equip2Council classes here at our church for our own church and for the community and have had the opportunity to train people from over 50 different churches in the Northwest over the last eight years doing Equip2Council training and then have had the opportunity to help other churches in our area launch training ministries or counseling ministries or both in their.

their church in a two to three hour radius around Salem. So we're super thankful to be on the ground doing the work of training and counseling. We have a large counseling ministry where we provide free biblical counseling to the community and to our church members and have a team of about 35 lay counselors helping us do that and so very thankful for supportive church pastors.

leadership team here to just support our ministry financially so that we're able to do the work that we do and this has been an opportunity to write for some of these counseling through books and including this Proverbs one and I went ahead and picked Proverbs 1320. Which says, the one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.

And my intention in writing this proverb was to talk about friendship. And there are so many different proverbs on friendships, and I ended up using several of those in this lesson. Because probably I picked it first for myself when... I was asked to write this, I was actually going through a struggle in a personal friendship and really trying to weigh out what was good about this friendship and what wasn't good, but also thinking about a lot of women that I work with that struggle in the realm of friendship and oftentimes I have a woman come into the counseling room and she struggle with a friend, or she is in drama with some friends in her life.

And it, it's interesting because I feel like with so many of the questions that we're probably answering in this Proverbs Counseling Through book it's a wisdom kind of question. Is this Is it, they're asking me, should I be, should I stay friends with this person, or is this a good friendship?

And I want to say, what I want to say is, based on their stories probably not, just based on the things they're telling me. Sometimes probably, yeah, it is a good friendship, but I want them to come to that conclusion themselves. I don't want me to just be an advice giver and saying based on what you sound, it doesn't sound like this person is a good friend to you.

And so over the years, I've, I've thought about the Proverbs and all of the things that says about a harmful friendship or a healthy friendship. And I've worked through that with people in counseling sessions, but I'd never written out anything just formally about it. So this Writing for this book just gave me a chance to put that into into an actual lesson to use in the counseling session with women that come in and are struggling in their friendship.

That's good. It's really good. So how would you. Use this or how did you, and you talked about applying it to yourself a little bit there. But how would you apply this in session to a CEE who's struggling finding wisdom in who they're around? What are they listening to? How are they guarding their hearts around the people and that they're engaging with, and sort of those dynamics as it relates to friendship.

How would you use this in session?

Yeah. So what I, what I did, and this. So I think you could expand on this was I have a list of proverbs on harmful friendships first and those Those proverbs list things like friends with an angry person and how his ways entangle your ways and so that, that would be harmful to you.

Someone that's dishonest or gossiping, someone that repeats the same wrongdoing like a pattern of the same kinds of wrongdoings or hurtful ways, someone that's dishonest or participates in gossip about you and talking about you to other, other people. And so I would work through those lists of, of different harmful friendships.

And so if you don't have the book along with you I have a list of, of those in the book there. Proverbs 22, 24 through 25 Proverbs 24, 21 through 22 and on. Just helping them come up with characteristics of a harmful friendship and maybe help them to list those out and talk about those or identify those things in their friendships that kind of match that list in progress. And then go through the flip side of that, of what does a healthy friendship look like? And we see a list in here in the book, Proverbs 17, 17, a friend loves at all times and a brother is born with adversity, right?

Someone that loves you through all the stuff, who sticks through, Thick and thin, through tough stuff, adversity, things that are going in your life, they're sticking by you. Another 1824, a man of many companions may come to ruin, but there's a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Like somebody that is like a, a brother or a sister That no matter what happens, they're still there.

They're always in, always in your life. Proverbs 22, 11 just talks about that a good friend is someone that has a pure heart, that's gracious in their speech, and that even a king would have as a friend. So we're looking for those qualities. And then 27, 9, just the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.

So what is What are the words that your friend is saying? What kind of counsel are they giving you? Is it, is it through a biblical lens or is it through just their own their own selfishness or, or their own wisdom? And so helping that person to see like God actually does have something to say about friendships.

We can, we can see what could be harmful and what then is healthy and we can look at your particular relationship through the lens of both of

those. Yeah, that's really good. And what I appreciate what you've done here, Emily, is in setting up that juxtaposition between harmful friendships and healthy friendships.

And what's funny, obviously, is, as we know, within the book of Proverbs is, it, this idea of descriptive versus prescriptive. Sometimes we can read it like it's formulaic. When it's not, but it also in the way that you've set this up, it demonstrates patterns. So in other words, to one of the points you made a minute ago was you're not telling the person what they ought to do.

You're not telling your counselee like, yeah, that sounds like that's not a good friend and you need to do this. It's more like leading them. Engaging in these scripture verses, letting scripture speak for itself to show them the patterns and then asking them questions based off that what are those relationships look like?

Because, and I think the way that you introduced this topic, Emily, with your own personal scenario was a lot of us have had friendships or even currently having friendships where. They got stuff going on, and as a brother, like you mentioned Proverbs 17, 17, where they're struggling, but they've become embittered, and they're creating conflict in their relationships.

Well, a good friend is going to confront that, right? You're engaging. What does it mean to be a good friend? But then also, as a good friend, and, and being around, because the text, like you said, the one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm. So it's like, how are you suffering, and are some of your friends, and it's not like you can't forgive them.

You can forgive them, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to stay around them, and the frequency and duration of your friendship, and the dynamic of it so you're, you're helping them identify what all of that looks like, and then you're Leading them to reach that conclusion themselves, in a sense.

I think that's a good point. You could use this as an opposite with yourself or with somebody else, too. Are you being a good friend? Are you a harmful friend? Maybe we see that coming up in our counseling sessions where somebody has relationships with, with somebody else. And you can, you hear in their stories that they're telling you it doesn't seem...

As if you're, you're actually a good friend yourself, like you're participating in gossip or dishonesty, or you're repeating wrongdoing, a pattern of repeating wrongdoing in that relationship, or you're angry you're getting angry at that friend, you're passive aggressive a lot. So maybe you could use it with somebody in that way too as a.

We're listen their stories and you're, you're seeing as a counselor wow, they have these relationships in their life, but they're actually, they really don't know what it's like to be a good friend.I was thinking about this other day as a counselor and just this person sitting across from you and they're like, if, if they wanna be there, they, they, they want your advice.

They wanna hear from you. You're, that's a lot of power that you can have and feel like I could just. And this person might listen to me and say, but you're right Michael. We want them to actually let the word of God be what shapes their mind and convicts them and brings them to those conclusions rather than us saying, sounds like you got a real bad friend there.

They're not good to you and you should You know, move on. We want them to get to that place themselves. It's going to be so much more of a value to take ourselves off of that and, and allow them to come to those conclusions themselves, whether it's about themselves or about a friendship that they have.

Yeah, that's good. So it's more about leading, when we respond, it's more questions and not comments or statements. And then that way it allows them to think and ponder. Cause the word of God is pretty much already doing the teaching. And it's just, it's on us to lead, but this is good because I think a lot of us, even as Christians, right?

One of the. The earlier Proverbs that we talked about in the episode with your friend and brother in Christ, who's actually in ministry with you at Salem Heights, Pete Potluff. And my boss, your boss, I wasn't going to say it and I'm just kidding, but yes, yes, no. You guys are doing awesome ministry together.

But to that point though, contextually speaking, there's friendships that they do terminate on different levels. And so I think a lot of us as Christians, we don't, we have this sort of general sort of idea of what friendship is supposed to look like without really considering, maybe the context in which that, that relationship is in.

So there's a lot of different dynamics. And so this is actually a really important topic. And I think as as brothers and sisters in Christ and Christian Koinonia and community, it's very difficult to understand what is true. biblical friendship look like? Like, how do I demonstrate wisdom and how do I confront and at what point do I confront?

And if they don't really seem to respond, then I'm still going to love them, but I'm not really going to do life with them, in a sense. So there's a lot of different dynamics there. And so that's really good, Emily, the way that you've positioned this and kind of the correlations and the distinctions between the two and how you can find the patterns.

as a result of that. How would you encourage them after session with these assignments?

I think taking time to Take what we worked through, those scriptures, and maybe even encourage them to find a few more Proverbs. There's a lot more that speak to friendship and come back with some some more healthy add to their list and harmful things in a friendship to add to their list, and and then if it is with a specific person, then giving them time to reflect and look at elements of their own friendship that, and be able to, to write out for themselves what.

What is maybe harmful in this friendship and what is healthy, if there is anything healthy. a lot of people don't have a, have a good example. They didn't grow up with a good example of what healthy friendships look like. Maybe their, their family had a lot of chaos and or maybe their, Their mom didn't have friends, and so they didn't witness that.

I was, I'm really thankful. My mom is a wonderful friend. She's always had wonderful friends and good friendships. And so I had this model to watch, but I, I think a lot of women don't, don't have that. So getting them to think about their own friendships and actually write things down and articulate, these things are going on in my friendships, and these things aren't going on in my friendship would be really helpful. People always scoff at take time, write a list, make a journal. They don't like to do it because it just, seems tedious or like I can just think of it. But if you can encourage people to actually do that exercise of writing it down it's really amazing what things God will bring to mind, but actually articulating it and then being able to come back to a session and share those things.

I'm actually seeing these things in that friendship and I'm really not seeing much of these healthy things.

Yeah, that's really good. And also too, I think even outside of, this particular topic, I think obviously is just a counseling tip and note. It's having, because literally, if you look at each one of these contributions, one of the After session assignments is to journal or to take note or record or think through.

And really what we're helping the counselees do is understand how meditation works. we're constantly thinking and we can literally have 50 thoughts within a minute, and for us to be intentional and focus and actually think through what we're feeling and thinking and put that down on paper

I think this is a very important fundamental piece to the biblical counseling process And I think the fruit of it is honestly helping our counselees focus on understanding what it means to meditate I'm gonna give you an actual meditation assignment and it's learning to take your thoughts and apply them to scripture so that's a really cool practical tip that you've given them, especially in the context of friendship.

And the way that you've posited these questions is actually,really good. I

think when they actually do it, then they're surprised with how... And what they can actually do with, I've articulated the thought, I've written it down. Now I can actually grab a hold of it and do something with it instead of, just have it be a looming thought.

Maybe they're gossipy or whatever. But when you write that down it helps you to grab it and do something, do something with that.

Yeah, like actually formulate your thought it actually challenges what you think you believe, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's good.

That's good. So any any closing thoughts, Emily, on what you how you would encourage those who are thinking through listening to this episode, just maybe if they are the counselor or they're just a brother and sister in Christ, a Christian listening to the podcast and realizing that, you know what, maybe there's some friendships that I need to evaluate.

How would you encourage them?

Yeah, I would encourage you to go to the, go to the Proverbs and really make those lists for yourself and as, if you're counseling, I think a couple times over my many years of counseling have I had somebody come in and actually the issue they wanted to work on was They feel like they have a struggle with a friend or, but it comes up so often just in other counseling situations where you end up you're, you're working through something with them and you end up that there's this voice that they're getting from somebody else that isn't.

isn't God's voice and it turns into a friendship conversation, so don't be afraid to take a turn and take a, a little turn from where you're working and then just, just say, Hey, I want to talk to you about that friend because you've told me a lot of stories about them through this process, and I want to and I'm going to think through what you're hearing from that friend and maybe what kind of a friend that is for you during this struggle or situation that you are coming in for.

So it could be that this is a detour, not maybe the main reason that somebody comes

in. Yeah, that's really good. That's really good. Emily, thank you so much for being with us on Speak the Truth. Thank you for your contribution, and we look forward to having you on the podcast again for an upcoming mini series, which we will not reveal at the moment, but I'm looking forward to that time with you then.

Super exciting. Yeah, it's great to be here today.

Alright, we'll see you guys. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.