Mike: 00:07

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. Hello. Hello. Hello. We are

Shauna: 00:20

Yo. Back. We're technically not in studio. We're at the conference.

Mike: 00:23

Our studio is mobile. We're at the twenty twenty called to council conference that is several months overdue, but we are here.

Shauna: 00:30

Yes. And livestream is working well. Praise the lord. That's exciting.

Mike: 00:34

Yes. It is. That's very good.

Shauna: 00:36

Whoever listens to this and is tuning in, thank you. Thank you for sticking with us. It's been so good so far. Right?

Mike: 00:43

Yeah. It really has.

Shauna: 00:44

Especially the panel discussion since I let it. Yeah. And I didn't yeah. That was embarrassing.

Mike: 00:49

What? Your little joke on how many books that Elise has published

Shauna: 00:52

in any Was that a successful joke, or was it a fail?

Mike: 00:55

The fact that you stalled out on it Yeah. Like, how many books?

Shauna: 00:58

I was committed to the joke, but, like

Mike: 01:00

At the expense of the fail?

Shauna: 01:02

Oh gosh. So nerve racking. The fact that I was even sitting next to her was, like, incredibly intimidating.

Mike: 01:08

Did you feel like, Lee, you're among your peers,

Shauna: 01:10

you know, mentors? Here's what I've noticed, though, man. She is she's just teaching back to back. And just, obviously, as a woman of the word, to have women who model that for us is such an encouragement and a blessing. So, obviously, we love her as an ABC partner, but it's just been just awesome just watching her lead out and just all the truth.

Shauna: 01:31

Man, she's not shying away. She is she's hitting us, ain't she, with the gospel and being real? She's very transparent, and so it's been pretty cool. But, anyway, enough of all that. Watch all the videos back, and we, at this point, have covered the counseling through the Psalms.

Shauna: 01:46

And so we invited John Henderson.

Mike: 01:48

Yeah. John, long overdue. Yeah. So here on this microphone.

Shauna: 01:51

Yeah. We asked him the first conference, by the way, everybody, in 02/2019, and he was like, you passed the torch to Lee. You're like, oh, Lee can talk about depression because he's on the track with you.

John: 02:01

Oh, I can't I just can't remember. We were trying to talk. Have I been on this thing before? Or maybe that was the

Mike: 02:06

one shot. You were in the room, but you were not on the mic.

Shauna: 02:08

Yeah. Yeah. So this is your first one. So we're thankful to have you. I'm sure no one's everybody's familiar with you that's listening.

Shauna: 02:15

John's the author of the Quip to Counsel book. He's also on the board member of the biblical counseling coalition. And what else do you want people to know?

John: 02:22

And also board member here with ABC. Councilors. Yeah. Yeah. Regular tender here.

John: 02:27

Lead pastor

Mike: 02:28

in Arkansas.

John: 02:28

So associate pastor at University Baptist Church Yep. In Fayetteville, Arkansas overseeing the counseling family ministries there of the church. And, yeah, pretty new to that position in the last month. Before that, was at Delray Baptist Church in Northern Virginia in Alexandria serving over the counseling and equipping and care ministries there at Delray. So Nice.

John: 02:45

Good to be here with

Mike: 02:46

you.

Shauna: 02:46

That's awesome. We had our pre conference this year. Has ABC ever had a pre conference? I was trying to think about that.

John: 02:51

There was a time yes. In the past, we had different pre conference times. Yep.

Shauna: 02:56

Okay. We have. I wasn't for sure, but that was one of the things when I joined the ABC team. I was like, we need to have a pre conference because, man, when you check-in these three days, you just wanna glean and learn as much as you possibly can. But one of the things that I always wanted to really learn more when I left some of these counseling conferences was how can I just give me some scripture, give me some nuggets of how to use the word in the actual counseling room?

Shauna: 03:16

And so when we were talking through, like, what book of the Bible would be great to launch a pre conference for the ABC, it was the Psalms, obviously. Right? And lamenting just obviously filled with emotions, and, obviously, there's just so much fruit at the end of the day. And so John, Elise, and Lee Lewis led us out this morning and get walking us through certain scriptures and revealing the truth, but then obviously how to apply it to our life and use it in the counseling room. But going into that, as we tied it in, knowing that this was coming up, obviously, initially in April, but now here we are in September, ABC wanted to create a resource to put in your hands because at the end of the day, there's 150 Psalms.

Shauna: 03:50

So three pre conference sessions just isn't gonna be enough. And quite honestly, it's only gonna get us hungry for more. So I came up with the idea of creating a booklet here that and asked a lot of ministry partners to say, hey, could you just take a Psalms and write in this particular template? What is the Psalms, right? Kind of the overall thought process here in that Psalms.

Shauna: 04:11

How would you use this in a counseling session and then how would you use it after the session for like homework? And I'm just I was encouraged by the outpour of our ministry partners who who submitted a a Psalms for this booklet and quite honestly, I didn't even say, hey, I want to cover all the Psalms. Some of them even wrote duplicate Psalms. But what I loved about that was the fact that now as you guys read it, when you get this book and you read it, it's so cool to see how there's actually three different people who did Psalms 21, how they took the same template, and they used the Psalms in three different ways of how to use it in the counseling room. So I wanted to leave that in there.

Shauna: 04:47

I don't wanna just do one. Let's show the versatility, just really the fruit of God's word, right, and how we can multiply use it. But, anyway, so just a few people, just those of you who like Garrett Higbee and Deepak and Jonathan Holmes. We got Brad Hambrick in here, Greg Wilson, obviously John Henderson, Amy Baker. I don't know, man.

Shauna: 05:05

There's just so many people. So Mark Shaw and a lot of our training center ministry partners. And so this is a book that you can purchase on christiancounseling.com, and it's just filled with lots of Psalms for you to not only grow as a counselor, but to know how to use the Psalms in the counseling room. So, John, now that you're on the podcast with us, what are your just obviously, you taught on Psalms this morning, and you were a huge contributor to this book. Talk to us.

John: 05:28

Yeah. Praise God for this even looking down and seeing all these Psalms and authors that have walked through various Psalms and then given us a resource to use in the counseling room. Yeah. You look across the centuries of the church, and if you were to accumulate the volume of things that have been written on the Psalms. Yeah.

John: 05:44

Not just the number of commentaries, the number of devotional, the number of sermons that have been preached. It is tens of thousands of reflections and just wisdom that are drawn. There's just something, I think, especially if there's suffering, if there's pain, if there's heartache, if there's broken relationships, if there's confusion about the world in which we live, there just the things that counseling tends to start with that brings people for ministry. The Psalms just seems to jump straight into it without a warm up. Just open into the Psalms and you can just begin in any number of them and see, okay, what this author of this Psalm is crying out is the thing that I feel.

John: 06:23

This is the thing that I'm thinking. This is what I'm facing. And then what's so beautiful about it, and it's to God, and it's from God. And so there's the psalms just naturally models for us a godwardness to our prayers, a godwardness to our thinking, our godwardness to what we do with suffering and pain. And so, therefore, it's natural that it would fit in the thinking of every biblical counselor.

John: 06:46

A growing familiarity with the Psalms, delight in the Psalms, application of the Psalms, and just learning how to go into the Psalms with those who seek counseling and care from us. Yeah, I'm super encouraged by this resource. Really thankful

Shauna: 06:59

for it. Yeah. Thank you for that. Michael, what are your thoughts?

John: 07:02

My initial thought is just to

Mike: 07:04

to what John's saying with the Psalms. It's like when the baby comes out of the womb just crying. Like, they just life hits that fast, and Psalms don't waste any time just talking about the reality of life. But the beautiful thing about it is right out of the gate, it has this interpretive lens in which the three of you guys this morning really alluded to that theme of struggle and even having those vulnerable moments of struggle and crying out to God, whether it's struggling in our faith or just the reality of the wicked prospering around us, just those different things. And even when John did Psalm 73, he did one of my favorite Psalms, and he brought something there that I just I hadn't seen before.

Mike: 07:40

And

John: 07:41

Was

Shauna: 07:41

that really your favorite Psalms?

Mike: 07:42

One of my favorite songs. Of them?

Shauna: 07:43

Yeah. Oh, okay.

Mike: 07:44

The fact that my heart and flesh may fail, but he is my portion forever. It's one of my

John: 07:47

favorite

Mike: 07:48

verses. Because what it does is it just reminds me of my frailty and that he really is my portion. And the reality, which I think was your sixth point to to walk away with is, man, he is my portion that it's almost he's put it into life that these things, though I gifted you with these things, are going to fail you. It's almost like this fail safe to help us not rely on the gift, but focus on the giver. Yep.

Mike: 08:13

And and it just, it has this now Lee was saying, don't wanna use the word raw, but there is, there's this raw sense of just life and reality and brokenness that it doesn't matter what people are going through. If you read the Psalms, there's every area of brokenness in the Psalms by people that love the Lord that struggled, but it's there, which is why this is so helpful in counseling.

John: 08:34

Yeah. Yeah. Are you anxious? There's psalms that tackle that straight on. Are you despairing?

John: 08:39

Yeah. Why are you in despair, oh my soul? Hope in God. You know, the Psalm 42. And are you angry?

John: 08:45

There's psalms that just take you where you're angry. Are you confused? Are you doubting?

Mike: 08:51

It literally verbalizes what people are thinking and feeling.

John: 08:53

And that's probably one of things that's most helpful there is it gives a language and a vocabulary, putting words to what is going on. Yeah. That feels as even thinking about Psalm 77, we're just, yeah, another Psalm of Asaph where he is just in a hard place, in a weighty place. He's discouraged. He's despairing.

John: 09:11

He's not sleeping because of it. Even says, when I remember God, verse three, I moan. When I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open. This is him to the Lord, like, I'm not sleeping, and I'm pretty sure you're behind it.

John: 09:23

And he says, I'm so troubled that I cannot speak. And even just that idea of and I think we've all been there at different times where the weight is so great, the suffering so heavy, the thing we're facing so difficult, there aren't words for it. Like we feel speechless. And the Psalms are just this gift from the Lord to say, here's some words, to put words to what is going on, to give you a vocabulary for both understanding it, but also vocabulary to begin to cry out to God in a way that moves you toward him, and then prepares your heart to actually hear words from him. And what does he say in response?

John: 09:54

Where now does his word lead you so that you don't stay in anger? So you don't stay in anxiety? So you don't sit there in despair? So you don't just wallow under whatever it might be? But with his counsel, he guides us.

John: 10:06

Right? Yeah. That was Psalm 73.

Mike: 10:07

I just even you use in Psalm 77 with verse four, hold my eyelids open. I am so troubled I cannot speak. Like, when we're sitting with people and people are depressed, like, that's depressive language. And so we literally can go to this psalm specifically, that very verse, and have a conversation about depression. And we can enter into that with them.

Mike: 10:24

We may not be able to fully understand it, but to your point, there's language here where we can see that. Yeah. That sounds very depressive. Let's talk about that.

John: 10:32

And it's the spirit of the lord that is inspiring Asaph to say this. And the irony of it. I'm so troubled I can't speak because of what he's saying. But that there's something deeply comforting to someone struggling in depression with God knows what's going on. He understands this.

John: 10:51

He even has words for it. In the weight of this that drives you to speechlessness, isn't it encouraging you to know that God, like, has already given you words for that? Has already put it in his book that this is part of the human struggle, part of human life, that he's not looking at you just scratching his head going, what is wrong with you? What's happened? But rather, he very much knows exactly where you are and exactly what to do with you in the middle of it.

Mike: 11:14

And Jesus even reassured that very truth. You will struggle. There will be trial and tribulation, like, period. That is the reality of life. Not a lot of this get out of it quick, deliver me quickly, Lord sort of stuff, which is part of the trusting the process of sanctification.

Mike: 11:29

That's one of the conversation points, I think, earlier just in passing that I heard you guys talking about, which was really good. Just this reality of suffering and long suffering and just the reality of that. We don't think of God as why does God allow evil and all these things to happen? Like, he can't stand it, but he's accomplishing something through it. Like, we actually get to enter into that.

John: 11:45

Yeah. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. And so there's this comfort both personally that okay, in any dark situation, the Lord is with me. But also, that's been true for every single saint that's ever lived. Right.

John: 11:59

The Lord has walked with every man, every woman, every believer, through every valley they've ever walked through in human history. So he knows something about the dark valleys. He knows something about the valley of the shadow of death. He knows something about the affliction. To your point, and even to know that Jesus himself walked it, like he took on human flesh.

John: 12:17

He suffered as we have suffered, but without sin. And so, he's even the one that's gone further in facing temptation to sin than any of us ever have. I mean C. S. Lewis making the point, think it's a mere Christianity that no one has no temptation to the furthest extent than Jesus.

John: 12:30

Most of us in our weakness at some point give in, and usually when you give in the temptation abates. And the more you resist, the stronger the temptation often goes.

Mike: 12:37

But doesn't the Hebrews talk about that? Like, none of us have suffered to the point of death like Jesus has.

John: 12:41

Yeah. He's gone the full all the way to the end. But he's endured temptation to the very highest and never given which means he's known temptation to a greater depth than we've ever known. And yet, he goes to the cross and suffers the penalty of sin in our place. And he suffered to the point of death for our salvation.

Mike: 12:59

Yeah. I think that's the question that the author asked. Which of us have resisted evil to the point of death?

John: 13:05

Yes. And you're striving against it. Yeah. And

Mike: 13:09

the Psalms gives us that language psalm after psalm. So, yeah, it's good.

Shauna: 13:12

Yeah. Well, I love how the book is structured because, obviously, there a lot of writers here. I've been saying the word obviously a

Mike: 13:18

lot. Obviously.

Shauna: 13:19

Yeah. Why do I do that? It's like this new I just developed this word, and then I say it all the time.

Mike: 13:24

That's just something that it's

Shauna: 13:25

so clear. But then when you say it,

Mike: 13:28

it keeps on

Shauna: 13:28

descending to other people.

Mike: 13:30

I realize it, but I'll reiterate it for your sake.

Shauna: 13:32

Okay. Yeah. You've gotta help me eliminate that word.

Mike: 13:35

Obviously.

Shauna: 13:36

Anyway

John: 13:37

That'll help. Yeah.

Shauna: 13:37

Yeah. He'll be like, Sean, you said it again. No. But what I was gonna say is the authors here, they grabbed, obviously.

John: 13:45

Oh my goodness. You gotta edit that out.

Mike: 13:47

Nope. It's staying in.

Shauna: 13:48

Oh, no. Okay. So they took a Psalms and they spoke to a particular emotion. Like you had talked about the anger, we even have one on abuse. And it's obviously very good when you're helping those that you're counseling.

Shauna: 14:00

But one of the other things that I love, I mentioned in our panel earlier that Lee actually wrote his in the form of prayer and Brad Hamrick took it another route and where he took his Psalms and he wrote it out for them. And so you can actually see the Psalms being written out as a prayer. And so I think that's one of the things that we're really missing is those that I'm counseling. And so hopefully it can be encouragement that those who are listening right now is how are we when we're in the counseling session, not just giving them prayer as a homework, but almost teaching them in the session. One, the beauty of the Psalms of how what y'all just spoke to how you can relate, how you can understand it, putting words to maybe words you you don't have, but then teaching them not only the truth from the scripture, but then how are we turning that into a prayer, especially in the scriptures that's just just being in awe of the lord and being reminded of who he is.

Shauna: 14:44

And truthfully, we shouldn't Or even worship.

John: 14:46

Shouldn't have to work hard at that. Yeah. Since the Psalms are prayers. Right. These are

Shauna: 14:50

In hymns and yeah.

John: 14:51

Framed very much that way. Yeah. Yes. They certainly hymns of worship. But even in our worship, they're a kind of prayer set to music.

John: 14:58

They're things we're saying to god and about god. And, yes, Psalm 56 verse one, be gracious to me, oh god, for man tramples on me.

Shauna: 15:06

And just You don't have to rewrite that.

John: 15:07

There you go. That. You just sometimes it's just how do you take those words and that's what you utter to God all day long. An attacker oppresses me. My enemies trample on me all day long for many attack me proudly.

John: 15:20

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. And even sometimes in saying that and crying that out to God is we realize, oh, I need to believe that. I need to live from that very kind of posture with the Lord. In God whose word I praise, in God I trust. I shall not be afraid.

John: 15:37

What can flesh do to me? Even the author of Hebrews is gonna quote that in Hebrews 13 and as just if what can man do to me if God is for us and with us. And so that's part of what I mean by you go to a lot of the Psalms and shouldn't have to work hard for these to be our prayers. It's it's listening carefully enough to the people we're serving. It's hearing their story and thinking it through in a way that we see the connection to the particular specific Psalms that seem the most sensible, most fitting for them.

John: 16:02

And as we go to that Psalm, it's how do we perhaps walk through it a verse at a time, but then also how do we then encourage others, okay, this your prayer now. Let's stop and just say these things to the Lord. Ask these things of the Lord. Confess these things to the Lord, whatever it might be.

Mike: 16:18

Like using that to actually draw to draw yourself to be being drawn to him instead of continuing to push yourself further away. Because it seems like that's what happens a lot of times, and I can't remember who mentioned it earlier. But it's when we're when we're struggling with something, we tend to isolate from the Lord first and foremost, and then obviously horizontally as well with others. But this allows people to realize when in in counseling that, man, this is where you can actually see this person struggled with the very thing that you are, but here's the difference. They're actually taking that to the Lord, and you haven't.

Mike: 16:49

You can see how these people engaged with the Lord. And that's the beautiful thing is a lot of people just don't know how to engage with scripture. They feel like it's this ethereal spiritual thing when it's so practical and so full of reality in life. They just simply need to see it.

John: 17:02

And to your point, there's just certain conditions under which we tend to run from the Lord rather than from to him. And one of them, and perhaps the most common is just when we've sinned. Yeah. Or when we've Get

Mike: 17:12

that Genesis three mode where

John: 17:13

we So, to think about Psalm 130, where the psalmist is gonna cry out to the Lord from that very place of being trapped and caught in his sinfulness. And he says, out of the depth I cry to you, oh Lord. And if we read down through the rest of that psalm, we realize, okay, those depths are the depths of sin. He says, Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy.

John: 17:35

There's the first tip-off of some of what he's talking about. He's asking for mercy. If you, oh lord, should mark iniquities, oh lord, who could stand? He's just confessing this to god. Lord, if you were to keep track of all my sins in such a way and ask me to give an account, I wouldn't be able to bear it.

John: 17:49

I wouldn't be able to survive it. Because I wait for the he says, but there is forgiveness with you, verse four, that you may be feared. So even there, we see he's

Mike: 17:57

That's such a huge coming to statement.

John: 17:59

God. Yes. From a place of self awareness of sin. Not I'm gonna run away, clean up, come back when I'm presentable, and then talk to God. But in perhaps my worst conceivable condition, as someone who is trapped in sinfulness, I'm gonna actually come to him then, cry out to him then from those depths, from the bottom of that ocean.

John: 18:20

I'm gonna cry that he would deliver it because if he were to leave me to this, if he were to count this against me, I wouldn't survive. But there's forgiveness with him. So that he would be feared and revered and worshiped. And so he's gonna go on and talk about I wait for the Lord, my soul waits. In his word I hope.

John: 18:35

What's he waiting on? He's waiting on forgiveness, redemption, God's mercy, God's

Mike: 18:39

grace And

John: 18:40

the whole consummation of it. And all that. And he knows it's coming. He trusts in this God, because he's even gonna turn at the end of Psalm one thirty and call all of us, oh Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forever. So all of you saints, hope in him.

John: 18:51

Don't hope in anything the world offers. Don't hope in your own efforts. And so to your point, even in the worst possible moments, when all of thing in us wants to run away from him, the psalm says, no. Run to him. Run to him with these words.

Mike: 19:04

There's nothing you can go and accomplish to get yourself prepared and ready to come back to him because he actually holds forgiveness. It's his ability to offer. Yes. Whatever Not yours.

John: 19:12

Whatever fig trees you're about to sew together Yep. Or fig leaves, they're gonna shrivel up by the end of the day. Whatever tree you think you're gonna hide behind, it's not gonna be wide enough. But praise God, you you don't need either of those things. Either a tree, that tree, or big leaves, but you need him.

John: 19:25

And that's the beautiful thing because that's what's happening. Elise mentioned it

Mike: 19:28

with the proto Euangelian earlier in the podcast, but the reality is they hid from their own works, right, that they could actually hide themselves and cover up themselves. But God went to them and said, where are you? And the reality of that is he offered to clean them. Then in Isaiah six as well, just this reality of you there's nothing we can do to fix it. Nothing.

Mike: 19:48

And that's what's beautiful about the Psalms. It's just in which, by the way, John, just the fact that I'm sitting here with Logos and you're just flipping your bible is awesome.

John: 19:54

Like, you got all these Psalms

Mike: 19:55

just in the back catalog, man. I'm impressed. I love it. But, no, just seriously, though, it's just the Psalms are just unbelievably rich with forgiveness and mercy and grace, and we think that we always find that in the New Testament. It's just interesting.

Mike: 20:07

And I even see that in churches where they spend so much time in the New Testament, and they they just sleep on the reality of the Old Testament and how much soul work is actually done in the Old Testament for the saints.

John: 20:18

Yep. Just Yeah. They're all looking to the same thing we are. Yeah. They're looking to to the promise of a messiah, to a savior who's gonna, to the seed of woman who's gonna crush the serpent's head from Genesis three to to that one that God is gonna provide as a sacrifice.

John: 20:35

And all the sacrifices, all the offerings, all the it's all anticipated. Yeah. His coming. Even what happens there in the garden in Genesis three, where God's gonna strip their fig leaves away and cover them in the animal in the skin of an animal.

Mike: 20:47

His work, not theirs.

John: 20:48

Yeah. You don't get the skin of an animal without killing an animal. Yep. And so it's not the fur. He's not shearing a sheath.

John: 20:54

It's the skin. Yeah. So blood is shed that day. Yeah. It's just not theirs.

John: 20:59

Yeah. Something dies, but it's just not them.

Mike: 21:01

Yeah. Some blood was shed in order to cover you.

John: 21:04

And so, was and that's gonna echo all the way through the Old Testament. Yep. That's just anticipating his coming. They're all looking to it, waiting for it. Even things that David is going say in Psalm 51, to your point of just grace throughout the Old Testament, where he is going say things like, Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgression, my sin is ever before me.

John: 21:24

Against you have I sinned. He's gonna say things like purge me. Let me hear joy and gladness. Hide your face from my sins. Blot out all my iniquities.

John: 21:32

Create in me a clean heart. Renew a right spirit in me. These are things he's saying a thousand years before Jesus comes, but there's no way this is gonna happen by anyone other than the sun taking on flesh and doing it for him. And so,

Mike: 21:44

yeah, there's yeah. That's very sanctifying language right there.

John: 21:47

Yeah. We could go all day. Right? In the old testament seeing how grace, mercy, gospel, and it's all building.

Mike: 21:53

And that's applied to that's applied theology. He's calling on God to apply that to his soul.

John: 21:58

And it's the only thing he's hoping in at this point.

Mike: 22:01

Because he's got nothing left to to lean on. I just

Shauna: 22:04

I feel like after this podcast that everybody's gonna move to Arkansas so they can be under your leadership do that. And learn from you.

John: 22:10

Bless your church.

Shauna: 22:11

My husband's totally man crushing right now.

Mike: 22:13

I just I love getting on the podcast and just talking Scripture.

John: 22:17

Truth. And

Mike: 22:18

just yeah. It's so edifying.

Shauna: 22:19

That's good. We need more of these podcasts. I even wonder if we should do a podcast where Psalms have some of these that you know, some of these authors who wrote this and just walk us through why they chose this scripture and then

Mike: 22:30

Have a psalm series?

Shauna: 22:31

Yeah. Verbally talk about how they would use it in a counseling room. It's really good. I love it.

John: 22:38

Yeah. God didn't put it in here for no reason.

Shauna: 22:40

Of course.

John: 22:41

Like he yeah. He oh, he just Hey.

Shauna: 22:43

That one worked there. That's right.

John: 22:45

He and I think we're meant to learn a lot about what we need by what he puts in here. Yep. And a lot about what we need to hear by what he decided to reveal and put in the content of scripture. And he knows who he's dealing with. He knows we can't really be trusted to come up with our own stuff.

John: 23:02

He knows that he's gotta give us the best words to use, and he's kinda, yeah, just taking time and thinking through God's word applied to life, always worthwhile.

Shauna: 23:12

Yeah. Good. John, a lot of pastors obviously listen to speak the truth. And so what kind of encouragement do you have to them for soul care within the local church? Any thoughts or tips or sense of urgency?

Shauna: 23:26

Anything that you want to say to them to encourage them? And I have pastors who reach out to me just as the executive director of ABC where they know counseling, biblical counseling needs to be within the church, and yet their church continues to send them out to counseling ministries outside of the church. They're trying to figure out how to communicate this to the elders to continue to try to change the culture of the church, how to equip leaders, which obviously the certification pathway is a good way to start your Equip to Counsel book on that. But what type of encouragement can we give the pastors out there who are listening that yeah. They're like, amen to a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, Psalms.

Shauna: 24:01

But just the fact that you've been in this type of ministry for so long, right, even from Denton Bible here in Texas to where you're at now, what kind of encouragement could we give them?

John: 24:10

Certainly, I think to as many of the pastors that are out there are probably faithful to the scriptures, love to preach, love to teach, love to open up the word and expound it to groups. And I think it's, and maybe many do prioritize it, but whether they do or don't, just to value then the other ministry of the word, and that is the ministry of the word in conversation. That is, I think most pastors value discipleship, but then something starts to happen when that discipleship faces real suffering. Like now that person being discipled shares about abuse they've endured, They share about ways they're abusing drugs or alcohol or food. They start talking about ways they're blowing up at their kids in scary ways to them.

John: 24:49

They start talking about desires for death or suicide or depression or intense anxiety or panic that get they into. It's something about when those types of topics now move into the discipleship conversation, that the instinct is, oh, this isn't actually what discipleship's for, or this isn't something necessarily that the Word of God is about. So, the first encouragement I would give is just to realize that all the personal ministry of the word and the word itself is about all those being human struggles. And so, that's one thing to realize, that what life is about, the Bible's about. And what the Bible's about is what life most needs to be about.

John: 25:22

But then the second thing is to realize it takes time to both personally learn to really see the gospel connected to every detail of life, to see the word of God applied to every detail of life. It takes time to learn how to shape a conversation with the word of God, to learn how to listen well, to ask good questions, to get to the what's really going on in people's lives. It takes time to learn how to then draw that into the scripture and make that connection to the gospel. It takes time to, okay, not just have a one off meeting where you give them some truth, but how do I actually plan a conversation that may last twelve weeks, thirteen weeks, fourteen weeks, fifteen weeks? It takes time to sow those kinds of seeds into the culture of a congregation to help the members of the body of Christ see that it's not just for pastors and elders to care about that kind of ministry of the word, but for every member of the body of Christ.

John: 26:13

But just to start sowing those seeds, to start seeing the connection in those kinds of conversations, to seeing the relevance and the power and the sweetness of God's word in every possible burden of life. And then to commit to praying and studying and practicing and teaching and training and equipping the saints to do that very work of ministry, to realize that's a big part of what churches are for. So I love when in Ephesians four when it talks about God giving apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastor, teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. What he's gonna go on to say is in Ephesians four fifteen is, but speaking the truth in love, let us grow up in all aspects into him who is our head, and that is Christ.

Mike: 26:51

And what is verse 13, we're all called to maturity, all to attain to the level

John: 26:54

of maturity? And so, very work of ministry that pastors are there to equip, and the very thing that they've all been called to attain to, is the art of speaking the truth in love, which is just another way of saying biblical counseling. The art of ministering God's word, God's grace, God's gospel, God's promises in the various trials of human life and struggles of human life. And so there's a lot we could say, but those would be a few things.

Shauna: 27:19

That's huge.

Mike: 27:19

That's a

Shauna: 27:20

huge encouragement.

Mike: 27:21

And it's funny about that because I I think that's part some of my wrestle in my in my current position is trying to go beyond this instructional stuff that we we reduce discipleship to and focus more on, which I think is where a lot of that lives, what you're talking about, the relational aspect of it. Because I guess one thing

John: 27:38

to responsive to the trials of life.

Mike: 27:40

Right. It's like you get your instructional in the pulpit, which is great, but then it's like, what does that look like after fellowship meal or coffee on a day or whatever to encourage them and be in relationship and you find out what's going on in their life. And I don't know if I can get involved in that. I don't let me let me get you to somebody else.

John: 27:54

Yeah. Because it's fascinating that if we were to really look at the proportions of Jesus' ministry, how much of it was preaching and teaching to groups?

Mike: 28:01

Very little. Maybe 20%.

John: 28:03

Yeah. Versus how much? Yeah. The 80% that was ministry and conversation. It was receiving the particular concerns and burdens and struggles and questions

Shauna: 28:13

Very point.

John: 28:14

Of the leper.

Mike: 28:15

That's where that knuckleheadedness lived, I think. They were talking about her said that. Yeah. No. Elise said it.

Shauna: 28:20

Oh, we're knuckleheads.

Mike: 28:21

We don't need that knucklehead or that knucklehead. He just chooses to use the knuckleheads. And if you look

John: 28:25

at the disciples, man, they were knuckleheads.

Mike: 28:28

Yeah. They were. But he spent most of his time just just talking truth to him and just showing them what this looks like.

John: 28:34

Yep. Three years every day with him. Yeah. Hearing everything he's saying, being around him, watching his ministry, and after three, it's still not understanding the cross has to happen. Wow.

John: 28:45

And we would be no different. Yeah. And it's a great statement even on the graciousness and the patience and compassion of Jesus Christ. He heard what they were thinking. Was like All the time.

John: 28:55

Yeah. He knew what they were feeling. Yeah. Like he saw into the hearts. And I just wanna go, why wasn't he the grumpiest guy that ever lived?

Shauna: 29:01

Exactly.

Mike: 29:01

Alright. This just curmudgeon of a savior.

Shauna: 29:03

How frustrated you would be with us.

John: 29:07

To just his patience and his kindness and his mercy. That, yeah, these are the men and the women he's gonna take along. These are the ones he's gonna use to build his church. These are the ones he's come to to redeem. Then just that he was and he's not ashamed to call them brothers.

John: 29:21

What a statement that is. That he would look at us Yeah. And go, not ashamed to identify with us, to call us brothers and sisters, to say, this is my family. Yeah. You think of that image of, are there members of your family you might Yeah.

John: 29:33

Not be too quick to own publicly.

Mike: 29:36

That you don't even you like maybe see him once a year because you're

John: 29:38

just so embarrassed to be around him. And yeah and here's Jesus that says, yeah, I'm not ashamed to call them family. Yeah. And so, even, yeah, in all, it's in all those conversations, in all those one on one interactions are one to small groups that we really even see the wisdom and the faithfulness of Christ and his word in conversation. And then Paul and the other apostle, they're just gonna pick that up.

John: 30:01

And Mhmm. And all the pages to follow, we're gonna see that in action. Their understanding of what it meant to go out and make disciples. There was preaching and teaching, but there was also just the ministry of the word and face to face conversation.

Mike: 30:12

Yeah. Was like it was all discipleship, but there was those intentional formal moments and those informal moments. And most of discipling happens in those informal moments.

John: 30:21

And even when Paul writes to the Corinthians in first Corinthians, he's responding to fires, to like relational

Mike: 30:27

He calls them saints at the beginning.

John: 30:28

And he's gonna yeah. He's praying for them. He loves them. Calls them saints that God loves you. You're redeemed.

John: 30:33

And yet, you got drunkenness at the Lord's Supper. You got fighting over

Mike: 30:37

We couldn't even imagine that in our church today. What?

Shauna: 30:39

Yeah.

John: 30:40

There's yeah. There's one man has his father's wife. There's sexual immorality that even impresses the surrounding Greco Roman world. It's so outrageous.

Shauna: 30:49

And

John: 30:51

and, yeah, yeah, this is who Paul is interacting with. This is who's gonna go visit. And so, the Bible is not allergic to the struggles of human life, and to the worst of our burdens, in fact, moves toward us with real hope, with real grace. Yeah. That's encouraging.

Shauna: 31:06

That's so good. John, thank you for joining us today on the podcast. We need to have you on more often. So we need to call you in. Obviously.

Shauna: 31:14

Obviously. Yes. Thank you guys for tuning in to speak the truth.

Mike: 31:19

We will see you next time.