Remove the Baggage!

   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

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:

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.

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. 

How Do We Counsel Without Trying to Fix a Problem?

Here is something I learned about this past week. I think sometimes, in our zeal and desire to help other people, when they come to us with their problems, we tend to try to fix them. What else are we supposed to do anyway? What should be our perspective on this? How do we bring God into the situation? If we try to 'fix' a person's problems, how are we really helping them through their problems? Are we really learning the lesson that God is taking us through? What is God's perspective and what is the best way to counsel another person biblically?