SIX UNAVOIDABLE FACTS: Part 3
by Tony Rozendaal
This is the second of a series of devotionals discussing counseling in the local church. Dr. Timothy Lane of The Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF) teaches that there are “Six Unavoidable Facts.”
Someone had a problem in your church this week.
We have everything we need in the gospel to help that person (2 Peter 1:3).
People seek help first from friends, family members, or pastors before professionals.
That person either got no help, bad help, or biblical gospel-centered help.
If people don’t get meaningful help, they will go elsewhere.
Whatever help a person receives, it will be used to help others!
In our first devotional we considered what it means to have everything in the gospel to help people who are having a problem, even if (or perhaps especially if) that person is my own self. In this devotional, I want to begin by taking a closer look at fact #3: People seek help first from friends, family members, or pastors before professionals.
Do people come to you with their problems? If they do, how do you react? Why should you have to take their problems on when you have problems of your own?
This then leads us to consider fact #4, restated here as What sort of response do you have to their problems?
Galatians 6:1-5 - Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5 For each will have to bear his own load.
This scripture sounds a little bit self-contradictory. v2 tells us to Bear one another’s burdens, but v5 says each will have to bear his own load. To understand this, look at the second part of verse 2, and so fulfill the law of Christ. I believe that Paul is referring here to Christ’s second commandment, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 24:37-40) When a Christian brother or sister comes to us with a burden, we cannot turn away from them in an uncaring manner. To do so is to fail to love them as we love ourselves.
If someone does come to us with a problem, what is our reaction? This is very important. There are a number of responses we can have that arise out of our “old nature.” We often start “fixing” other people’s problems without understanding the heart of the issue. This reduces their problem to something that can be remedied by applying the correct actions. If we are not careful, this carries the connotation that the person made a mistake or is in error in their thinking. In short, we can become judgmental (Matthew 7:3-5). In the Galatians passage above, the last part of verse 1 and verse 3 contain warnings. When we are trying to help someone who is suffering, if we think that their choices have brought their problems on themselves, it is easy to begin to think of ourselves as especially blessed or wise. To be part of the body of Christ is to learn to listen to others in a non-judgmental way and to prayerfully consider what may be at issue in their life.
When we apply remedies to another person’s problem, we often miss the real issue. There is a heart issues that lie behind the situation. A simple example of this is the problem of bullying which has gathered much attention in the national media in recent years. To tell a bully to stop his actions usually has little effect, or has the effect of teaching the bully how to be more skilled in hiding their actions. The heart issue is often a sense of powerlessness that the bully has in some area of their life. When we determine where a bully feels powerless in his/her own life and take steps to address that issue, we may have a better chance to alleviate the situation.
The easy way to conclude this would be to list a number of actions that we should take when someone in the body of Christ comes to us with a burden that they are carrying. However, that would defeat the purpose of the main point we are trying to make. The proper response is to help them to carry the burden, to direct them to that place where their relationship with Jesus results in an “easy yoke and a light burden” (Matthew 11:30). Start by listening to that person, pray with them and for them, and make yourself available to them. And pray for yourself, that God will enable you to understand what the heart issue is that results in the burden that they have, so that eventually you can speak to that heart issue in their life.
Photo by Joeri Römer on Unsplash
