Here is a simple reason for doing Biblical counseling: In order for some people to be helped, someone has to remove the baggage that was put on them throughout their lives. The average person just needs to hear the Gospel and have a Biblical understanding of who God is, what sin is, what sin has done to them and their relationship to God, what God must do about sin, and what God has done to take care of our sin problem. The average Joe can get this. It can make sense to him.
But there are people out there that have loads of baggage on them, that will prevent them from seeing the Gospel, or being able to grasp the fact that we are sinners in need of a Savior. These people have to have the baggage taken off them before the Gospel will make sense to them. That is what Biblical counseling does. It makes it so a person who has a warped understanding of reality can come face to face with the fact that he or she is a sinful person in need of a Savior. Biblical counseling and Biblical evangelism work hand in hand to help promote the Gospel.
I am thinking of an example in the Bible that describes this scenario. In Mark 5, there is a man who has been possessed by a demon (or many demons). His life, as far as he can tell, is completely gone. He will live the rest of his life in horror if nothing comes about to change his circumstance. He lived in the cemeteries and no one could do anything to help him. He was completely hopeless. And the worst part of his story is that after he died, he would face God in judgment and spend eternity in hell. But God...God came on the scene and delivered the man. The demons were made to leave. The man was now able to get a grasp on the Gospel. Jesus came to the rescue. Now, this man not only was demon free, but now he was a servant of the True and Living God! The baggage came off him and now he can clearly see God!
We can be used of God to 'take the baggage off' people too. We can minister the Gospel to them, and they will have a clear view of God. They will see their need for salvation, and see how horrible their sin is before a holy God.
If a person has been victimized by others, he will see the terrible sin of what someone else did to him or her. It will be hard for a person to see her own sin, because the other person's sin is so much greater in their eyes. Plus, people who are victimized by others, will take the blame for the other person's sin against them. It is the nature of being victimized. That's why those who do the victimizing think they are getting away with it. God sees the sin of the victimizer, and He will deal with it. But we have to help those who have been destroyed by others. We have to help them work through their victimization so they can properly see their own sin before God, and therefore will be able to deal with their sin properly through the Cross.
Here are two web sites that offer information on Biblical counseling:
CCEF
www.ibcd.org
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
How Would You Counsel A Person Like This?
I am going to post part of a person's testimony of how she was redeemed in a glorious way, set free and delivered from being trapped in a Satanic cult. How would you counsel a person coming into your church with such baggage? What kind of patience would be necessary to work with such a person in order for them to have all ties cut off from the effects of being part of the cult? Remember, most of these people did not choose to be born into a family of Satanic worshipers. They are fed lies from the time they are born. The lies need to be exposed and removed and replaced with the Truth of God's Word.
When I think of counseling a SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) survivor, it reminds me of how Anne Sullivan worked with Helen Keller many years until success was finally achieved. Working with an SRA survivor is not a piece of cake. It takes work and a lot of patience. We have the advantage of calling on God's name for help. We have to constantly point people to the True and Living God, and they will eventually experience the deliverance they are seeking.
Here is the url for the SRA survivor:
http://crosswalklife.com/ls.dissociative-identity-disorder.htm
I think we used to be taught that there is no such thing as the 'healing of memories'. I am not sure what that meant, or what that applied to, but it seemed to have some association with the Therapeutic Movement, which has a philosophy that is based on solving problems by using the person's ego as the foundation for their help, rather than the Scriptures. Perhaps this thinking of the 'healing of memories' has to do with the fact that SRA survivors were just starting to tell their stories, and those who heard their stories thought they were making them up. Well, since there are more and more of these bizarre stories surfacing, there must be something to it. The only other alternative would be that these SRA survivors are plotting something like a conspiracy, which really doesn't make any sense. So their stories of having terrible memories must be true, and we need to listen to them in order to help them get well.
God is bigger than any of their difficulties, and there is nothing too hard for Him. 'With God, all things are possible..' even recovering from SRA, which includes dealing with the humility and shame from rapes, electroshocking, threatenings for telling on the cult and their shameful acts, having to take vows in order to survive the cult, and the list goes on and on. It is unbelievable stuff that takes place in a home where SRA is active. And the most difficult part is, these people keep it so well hidden (the word for occult) that no one on the outside even has a clue they are doing these things. Let's pray for God to expose the works of darkness and let's minister with love and patience to these people who are trying to come out of this.
Here is an excerpt of a person's testimony of coming out of darkness into God's marvelous light:
When I think of counseling a SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) survivor, it reminds me of how Anne Sullivan worked with Helen Keller many years until success was finally achieved. Working with an SRA survivor is not a piece of cake. It takes work and a lot of patience. We have the advantage of calling on God's name for help. We have to constantly point people to the True and Living God, and they will eventually experience the deliverance they are seeking.
Here is the url for the SRA survivor:
http://crosswalklife.com/ls.dissociative-identity-disorder.htm
I think we used to be taught that there is no such thing as the 'healing of memories'. I am not sure what that meant, or what that applied to, but it seemed to have some association with the Therapeutic Movement, which has a philosophy that is based on solving problems by using the person's ego as the foundation for their help, rather than the Scriptures. Perhaps this thinking of the 'healing of memories' has to do with the fact that SRA survivors were just starting to tell their stories, and those who heard their stories thought they were making them up. Well, since there are more and more of these bizarre stories surfacing, there must be something to it. The only other alternative would be that these SRA survivors are plotting something like a conspiracy, which really doesn't make any sense. So their stories of having terrible memories must be true, and we need to listen to them in order to help them get well.
God is bigger than any of their difficulties, and there is nothing too hard for Him. 'With God, all things are possible..' even recovering from SRA, which includes dealing with the humility and shame from rapes, electroshocking, threatenings for telling on the cult and their shameful acts, having to take vows in order to survive the cult, and the list goes on and on. It is unbelievable stuff that takes place in a home where SRA is active. And the most difficult part is, these people keep it so well hidden (the word for occult) that no one on the outside even has a clue they are doing these things. Let's pray for God to expose the works of darkness and let's minister with love and patience to these people who are trying to come out of this.
Here is an excerpt of a person's testimony of coming out of darkness into God's marvelous light:
TESTIMONY:
I've known suffering for 47 years. After surviving 3 abortion attempts by my mother, I was born dead, strangled by the very cord of life. After resuscitation, I was left stone deaf. But my mother's mother hounded heaven for my hearing. When I was 9 months old, my praying grandmother called my mother to check my ears; God told her they were healed. I've had perfect hearing ever since. What a life God saved me from once again! My young parents consequently believed in Jesus and redemption started in my generation.
But -- the lingering curses of sexual abuse, satanic loyalties, rituals and incest came down through the generations on my father's side and assaulted my soul from birth to 18 years old. My paternal grandparents secretly schooled me in satanism since I was one year old. My tiny heart was unable to contain the pain; I began to dissociate over and over, in order to survive. I ran away from home by the age of 4--and got a mile away when I was 6. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt at 14, Jesus reached out to me, offering His gift of unconditional love and salvation. I understood my sin and my need for His forgiveness and salvation--but not His Lordship.
I've known suffering for 47 years. After surviving 3 abortion attempts by my mother, I was born dead, strangled by the very cord of life. After resuscitation, I was left stone deaf. But my mother's mother hounded heaven for my hearing. When I was 9 months old, my praying grandmother called my mother to check my ears; God told her they were healed. I've had perfect hearing ever since. What a life God saved me from once again! My young parents consequently believed in Jesus and redemption started in my generation.
But -- the lingering curses of sexual abuse, satanic loyalties, rituals and incest came down through the generations on my father's side and assaulted my soul from birth to 18 years old. My paternal grandparents secretly schooled me in satanism since I was one year old. My tiny heart was unable to contain the pain; I began to dissociate over and over, in order to survive. I ran away from home by the age of 4--and got a mile away when I was 6. After an unsuccessful suicide attempt at 14, Jesus reached out to me, offering His gift of unconditional love and salvation. I understood my sin and my need for His forgiveness and salvation--but not His Lordship.
Shortly after, when I was confronted with my grandfather's sexual desire, I spoke from the heart of a child: "Jesus lives in my heart now. You can't do this anymore." He never touched me again. (I thought he was such a powerful man -- but it only took that one "no" from a child to keep his hands off of me.) But the sibling incest continued until each of us girls left home.
You can read the rest of this story at the above URL. Please realize that these people are all around us. Hidden but there. They need help. We are God's agents to help them. Let's be faithful to God and follow His calling to love and help these people. If the church doesn't help, they will either go back to the cult or they will commit suicide. That is the only alternatives they know. Let's pray that God help us to be the church.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Dealing With Those Who Have Been Victimized
As I research Biblical counseling, I realize that there are some people with situations that are not so easy to deal with. It is not as easy as telling them that they need to repent and put their trust in the Lord. There are some people who are so broken that you don't know if they will ever be repaired. Here is something that David Powlison said in one of his sessions on Psychiatric Disorders: "We are dealing with things that are so broken and there is
no promise at all that we will make it all better."
There are two different types of people we deal with in counseling. The first group are people who are people who are generally not ensnared in the complexity of sin that would keep them from understanding and responding to the Gospel. The second group is the group of those who have been victimized. Before I go too much further, I already know the stigma that goes with this. We think that people who are 'victims' are those who are presenting a 'victim' mentality. Yes, I think they generally do, but there is a bigger picture we have to look at. That is what I am going to cover on this blog.
I would like to start by saying a few things. All of us are victims, in one sense. We are victims of our sin, and the sins of others. I used to think of myself as a victim. I came from a pretty average home. We went to church, so we really were fairly moral people. Although my parents didn't talk about sin or the Bible, they had many of the principles down, possibly because those principles were put into them. I had a dad who was very quiet and didn't talk much at all to his family members. Throughout my school years, I was quiet and the other kids bullied me around. The only way I responded was to them was by crying. So, as I grew up, I was affected by the way other people treated me. I came to Christ and responded to the Gospel at about the age of 16, and I thought, as a young adult, that there were too many things that were wrong in my childhood, that made it so I couldn't overcome certain things. Without realizing it, I had a 'victim' mentality. But like I said before, we are all victims of some things, but realistically speaking, I was not a victim of anything that was too difficult to work through.
But there are people who have such complex difficulties that really are not their fault. There are people with medical conditions that affect their thinking. There are people who are schizophrenic and hear voices. There are women who were raped many times during their childhood. Do you think it is as easy to say to a rape victim, 'Just forget what was done to you when you were little. Concentrate on the Lord and it will be ok."? Her life and her whole way of thinking has been shaped by those traumatic events in her early life. Our job is to help her learn to renew her mind and learn the truths of who God is and what He is like. There is no five-step plan for doing this. It takes time and patience. It takes a lot of work. There are many things for the rape victim to overcome. If we expect her to just come out of her shell and stop distrusting God, we are losing the battle with her. Yes, the goal ultimately will be for her to be delivered and set free from everything that Satan put into her to hold her down and keep her from understanding and believing the Gospel, but it is how we go about doing that.
Some people have such complex problems, and if you listen to their stories, you will find some very interesting things. For example, did you know that there are adults who were victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse? Do you realize what the ramifications are for a person who has come out of this horror? Some day I will have to post a message just on Satanic Ritual Abuse. It would be an understatement to say that SRA is bad. It is bad in such a way that the person who is coming out of it had strong Satanic holds on him or her that have to be broken, through deliverance, and much Biblical counseling. You will have to walk a such a person through many seasons of healing and deliverance. These people have been victimized and need help. Many, if not most, have no clue of what their families are involved in, or why they need to be set free. Let me be more specific on this issue. Children that are born into families who practice Satanic Ritual Abuse are trained or conditioned to do what the parents or perpetrators want them to do or be. If the parent wants the child to never show emotion, the parent will put electrodes on the child and shock him or her as soon as the child shows emotions. Imagine living a childhood where you were always being shocked when you did something that displeased an authority figure. This process is called 'Conditioning'. We do it with out pets all the time (not in a cruel way). For example, if the dog goes out at 9 pm every night, and gets a cookie every time he comes back in, he is conditioned to know that a cookie will be in his mouth when he comes in from his nightly outing! Some of the conditioning that Satanic Ritual Abusers do involves using rape. Not only are the SRA people into sexual perversion, but they also know that if they continually rape a little girl, they will fracture her mind and create a situation where the child will basically blank out, and during the trauma, she will create personalities with her subconscience mind that will be aware of what goes on during the trauma. The ritual abusers know that if they fracture her mind, they will basically have her as a slave the rest of her life. After they are gone, the little girl, who becomes a woman, will normally gravitate toward a perpetrator. She is told that she will need a perpetrator the rest of her life to survive. Her life now depends upon a perpetrator, of whom she will be his slave. She has been conditioned to believe this lie, and now she won't be able to get free from it unless there are compassionate people who can reach her. It will take much time, perhaps years, before she can 'get it'. Her whole thinking pattern has to be reshaped with the Truth. Unless that successfully happens, she will not ever be free. Her understanding of the Gospel will always be clouded and twisted.
On the other hand, there are people like me, who really aren't victims of someone else's sins against them. It didn't take months and years for me to grasp the Gospel. But there were still things that held me back from growing that had to be dealt with. There are still things I need to be set free from. I understand that there are people who really don't want to be free from their sins too. They might come in for counseling. Maybe they have low self esteem. Perhaps they are out of work. Maybe they are lazy and don't want to work. Maybe they are sick and really don't want to get well, but they are tired of being sick. Some of these people will not be benefitted from Biblical counseling. Their heart doesn't want to leave their sinful pattern. They do not want to pay the price for being well. When counseling with these people, there will always be reasons why they can't repent. They want benefits from God, but they are not willing to be changed by Him. These are the people with the 'victim mentality' that are so hard to deal with. They are not trapped by what someone else did to them necessarily, but they seemed trapped by their sin. The problem is in their heart. They are not really looking for an answer for their problem, nor are they looking for an answer for their sin. They just want an open ear to listen to their complaints. When they finish telling you their sordid life tales, they will go onto another person to tell their stories to.
So the key is to become very discerning. How do I know when I really have a victimized person or a person with a 'victim mentality'? Sometimes, it is hard to tell. You have to take time with the person and probably spend many hours listening to his story. After a while, you will be able to see some motives. You will see some inconsistencies if the person is really telling his story in order to complain. After some time, maybe a very long time, you will be able to know though. It will help you decide if you are really helping someone, or if you are just spinning your wheels. Of course, pray for wisdom and discernment with everyone you encounter in counseling. People can fool us for a while, but God is never fooled.
There are two different types of people we deal with in counseling. The first group are people who are people who are generally not ensnared in the complexity of sin that would keep them from understanding and responding to the Gospel. The second group is the group of those who have been victimized. Before I go too much further, I already know the stigma that goes with this. We think that people who are 'victims' are those who are presenting a 'victim' mentality. Yes, I think they generally do, but there is a bigger picture we have to look at. That is what I am going to cover on this blog.
I would like to start by saying a few things. All of us are victims, in one sense. We are victims of our sin, and the sins of others. I used to think of myself as a victim. I came from a pretty average home. We went to church, so we really were fairly moral people. Although my parents didn't talk about sin or the Bible, they had many of the principles down, possibly because those principles were put into them. I had a dad who was very quiet and didn't talk much at all to his family members. Throughout my school years, I was quiet and the other kids bullied me around. The only way I responded was to them was by crying. So, as I grew up, I was affected by the way other people treated me. I came to Christ and responded to the Gospel at about the age of 16, and I thought, as a young adult, that there were too many things that were wrong in my childhood, that made it so I couldn't overcome certain things. Without realizing it, I had a 'victim' mentality. But like I said before, we are all victims of some things, but realistically speaking, I was not a victim of anything that was too difficult to work through.
But there are people who have such complex difficulties that really are not their fault. There are people with medical conditions that affect their thinking. There are people who are schizophrenic and hear voices. There are women who were raped many times during their childhood. Do you think it is as easy to say to a rape victim, 'Just forget what was done to you when you were little. Concentrate on the Lord and it will be ok."? Her life and her whole way of thinking has been shaped by those traumatic events in her early life. Our job is to help her learn to renew her mind and learn the truths of who God is and what He is like. There is no five-step plan for doing this. It takes time and patience. It takes a lot of work. There are many things for the rape victim to overcome. If we expect her to just come out of her shell and stop distrusting God, we are losing the battle with her. Yes, the goal ultimately will be for her to be delivered and set free from everything that Satan put into her to hold her down and keep her from understanding and believing the Gospel, but it is how we go about doing that.
Some people have such complex problems, and if you listen to their stories, you will find some very interesting things. For example, did you know that there are adults who were victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse? Do you realize what the ramifications are for a person who has come out of this horror? Some day I will have to post a message just on Satanic Ritual Abuse. It would be an understatement to say that SRA is bad. It is bad in such a way that the person who is coming out of it had strong Satanic holds on him or her that have to be broken, through deliverance, and much Biblical counseling. You will have to walk a such a person through many seasons of healing and deliverance. These people have been victimized and need help. Many, if not most, have no clue of what their families are involved in, or why they need to be set free. Let me be more specific on this issue. Children that are born into families who practice Satanic Ritual Abuse are trained or conditioned to do what the parents or perpetrators want them to do or be. If the parent wants the child to never show emotion, the parent will put electrodes on the child and shock him or her as soon as the child shows emotions. Imagine living a childhood where you were always being shocked when you did something that displeased an authority figure. This process is called 'Conditioning'. We do it with out pets all the time (not in a cruel way). For example, if the dog goes out at 9 pm every night, and gets a cookie every time he comes back in, he is conditioned to know that a cookie will be in his mouth when he comes in from his nightly outing! Some of the conditioning that Satanic Ritual Abusers do involves using rape. Not only are the SRA people into sexual perversion, but they also know that if they continually rape a little girl, they will fracture her mind and create a situation where the child will basically blank out, and during the trauma, she will create personalities with her subconscience mind that will be aware of what goes on during the trauma. The ritual abusers know that if they fracture her mind, they will basically have her as a slave the rest of her life. After they are gone, the little girl, who becomes a woman, will normally gravitate toward a perpetrator. She is told that she will need a perpetrator the rest of her life to survive. Her life now depends upon a perpetrator, of whom she will be his slave. She has been conditioned to believe this lie, and now she won't be able to get free from it unless there are compassionate people who can reach her. It will take much time, perhaps years, before she can 'get it'. Her whole thinking pattern has to be reshaped with the Truth. Unless that successfully happens, she will not ever be free. Her understanding of the Gospel will always be clouded and twisted.
On the other hand, there are people like me, who really aren't victims of someone else's sins against them. It didn't take months and years for me to grasp the Gospel. But there were still things that held me back from growing that had to be dealt with. There are still things I need to be set free from. I understand that there are people who really don't want to be free from their sins too. They might come in for counseling. Maybe they have low self esteem. Perhaps they are out of work. Maybe they are lazy and don't want to work. Maybe they are sick and really don't want to get well, but they are tired of being sick. Some of these people will not be benefitted from Biblical counseling. Their heart doesn't want to leave their sinful pattern. They do not want to pay the price for being well. When counseling with these people, there will always be reasons why they can't repent. They want benefits from God, but they are not willing to be changed by Him. These are the people with the 'victim mentality' that are so hard to deal with. They are not trapped by what someone else did to them necessarily, but they seemed trapped by their sin. The problem is in their heart. They are not really looking for an answer for their problem, nor are they looking for an answer for their sin. They just want an open ear to listen to their complaints. When they finish telling you their sordid life tales, they will go onto another person to tell their stories to.
So the key is to become very discerning. How do I know when I really have a victimized person or a person with a 'victim mentality'? Sometimes, it is hard to tell. You have to take time with the person and probably spend many hours listening to his story. After a while, you will be able to see some motives. You will see some inconsistencies if the person is really telling his story in order to complain. After some time, maybe a very long time, you will be able to know though. It will help you decide if you are really helping someone, or if you are just spinning your wheels. Of course, pray for wisdom and discernment with everyone you encounter in counseling. People can fool us for a while, but God is never fooled.
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