As people who are growing in their understanding of the Scriptures, and because we are not 'all-knowing', we see things through a glass, and darkly, at that. Our vision of reality is very small and limited. If we are growing spiritually, and in our knowledge of the Scriptures, we expand our horizon. We have a more complete worldview.
But we do see only in part. And that can affect our ministering to people as we seek to counsel them. For example, we might see a person who always seems to be angry. Our temptation would be to counsel him about anger. We would make sure that he knows anger is a sin against God (unless it is a righteous anger). We would make sure that he understands, from Scripture, his sin against God, and his need to repent. Now does he need to repent? Is his anger really a sin against God? Yes, and there will be a time, be it a long way away or just around the corner, that we can deal with that sin. But what if we find out that this man lives in a home where his wife is abusing him with words all the time? What if we find out that she is pressuring him to do two or three jobs in order to make her happy? What if we find out the she is calling the police on him almost daily? Now that doesn't give him an excuse to become angry, but it is a valid reason that has to be made known, in order for the man to repent and work through his sin of anger.
I remember hearing about a man, who while in his house heard a man outside who was acting frantically. He was yelling out some kind of gibberish. He looked like a madman. I'm not sure if the man in the house called the cops or not, but, the frantic man was confronted. What was happening was, that the frantic man didn't speak English very well, and he was trying to find his lost dog and was calling the dog's name out loud, hoping the dog would hear. The man in the house did not have the bigger picture. He had a slice of what was going on, but in that slice, he built a false understanding of what was really going on.
One more type of situation that could happen. Let's say that you get to know a person who was raised in a home where she saw Satanic rituals being practiced. What if that person saw people being given up in human sacrifices to Satan? What if she experienced Satanic Ritual Abuse and saw many powers of darkness at work with her own eyes? What if she learned all through her life, that the devil was the one who was the creator, and the devil was the one who was sovereign over every person's life? How would this person see the greatness of God? If she saw the greatness of Satan in the manifestations that she experienced during her life time, how do we help her to see the 'Bigger Picture' of reality? How will we help her to see the greatness of God? (I know it is God's work in her heart that will help her see God's greatness). If we just tell her of God's greatness and expect her to believe it, we might have problems down the road. We have to understand the why of her struggles.
We need to be patient with people and find out where they are coming from, before we give them instruction and advice. They will be willing to listen to us, but we need to have a bigger picture of who they are before we can understand how to properly minister to them.
