Several ministries are offering a free class in Pastoral Counseling on Wednesday evenings in Prince William County, Virginia, beginning April 17, 2013, from 7:00 to 9:30 pm.
The class is open to all members of the Body of Christ from local churches (not just “pastors”!), and likely will run about twelve weeks.
To give some idea of the type of counseling we will be teaching others to do, I’ve reprinted below a blog about one session I had with a deeply troubled man last year.
For most Christians, the greatest struggle is not resisting sin but in being willing to let go of our hurts. More than sin, we allow our hurts to define us, and find it difficult to leave the familiarity of our pain for the unfamiliarity of a truly new life in Christ. Even among Christians, few risk the grace of confession, forgiveness and repentance to become whole and complete in Him.
Really, it’s not that difficult…
Here’s a story of one man’s journey: Getting to Simple.
Confronting the Error of Hyper-Grace, by Michael Brown:
“The biblical message of grace is wonderful, glorious and life-transforming. We can’t live without it for one second of our lives. But there is a message being preached today in the name of a new grace reformation, mixing powerful truth with dangerous error. I call it hyper-grace…”
Marianne and I have never recommended a movie on our blog, but yesterday we went on a date and saw the new movie, Les Miserables.
Twenty or so years ago I saw the Broadway play in New York, and it was powerful. But the movie is … amazing.
I was hesitant to go to the movie, because I expected the original Christian themes of redemptive grace and forgiveness in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel to be watered down, if not eliminated. After all, that’s the way of Hollywood. They take culture created by Christians and bastardize it.
Real people want real answers and real freedom from real issues – not just the tidy platitudes of half truths.
Maybe that’s what has shaped my strong reaction to hyper grace, which is really half grace: It cannot offer real freedom from real issues because it seeks the grace of God’s affirming love and presence, but not the grace of His transforming truth and rule.
So much of our “theology” (and we all have “theology”!) is forged these days by hurts.
The Bible has been used as a club to beat us into conformity, so we reject its plenary authority.
Our need for mercy has been abused, so we latch onto a concept of grace that excludes the Lord’s occasional rebuke and discipline.
We have suffered from authoritarian leadership or a controlling church, so we become autonomous and discount the need for healthy, accountable community.
We realize that some pet doctrines were wrong, so we seek a purely existential Jesus and cringe at objective truth.
In our fellowships, we have found that balance and maturity comes from a two step process: We must fully expose our hurts to the Lord, and then explicitly offer to turn them – and the associated beliefs our hurts have caused us to hold about ourselves, the Lord and others – over to Him. This involves confession, and often even forgiveness (both giving and receiving).
Only when we take possession of our hurts by fully and transparently owning up to them as we expose them to the Lord, can we then release them to Jesus.
When we are willing to do this, time and again I have seen Him give something wonderful in return – wholeness and freedom!
In that wholeness and freedom, we finally start to know His fulness and can embrace all that He’s provided for us to find authentic life in Him.
The choice is always ours.
Bondage or freedom?
Hurt or life?
Us and our “stuff”, or Christ and His magnificence?
This is a fifty-five minute teaching I shared with about thirty men, based on hundreds of pastoral counseling sessions where God showed up and brought freedom and healing from deep hurts – including abuse, abandonment and so much more.
My blog is a feeble attempt to upload a lifetime of service to the King of Kings. I believe this audio teaching, however, captures better than anything I’ve written some of the most significant things I’ve learned as I’ve walked with folks to those ugly places of bondage and hurt in their lives. When we get there, and they exposed their hurts and lies to the Lord, He brings His loving, healing truth.
In this talk, I also share some of my own very personal story about my own places of hurt, which I had to expose to Lord so He could then bring wholeness to me.
You may think you know me from my writings, but this captures my heart in ways that a written blog never can.
If this resonates with you, I also recommend my related blog, God Shows Up.
The more I minister to folks, the more I realize how simple it is.
And the more I realize how hard it is to get to simple.
A Healing Hug from Jesus
This morning, I met with a man who loves the Lord but has had re-occurring bouts with drug addiction. He’s now serving time in the local jail and part of an indigenous church we’ve planted there.
Jesus the Shepherd
He was carrying lots of guilt and shame from things in his past. He was confused, because he couldn’t shake the weight of those sins.
I simply invited him to confess and expose to the Lord the sins and the burdens that were weighing him down – openly and fully.
He did so.
I then simply invited him to ask the Lord to forgive him – in his own words and in his own way.
He did so.
Then, I simply asked him to bundle up all the guilt, all the shame, and all the confusion he had been carrying and lift it up in his spirit as he gave it to the Lord - and to tell me when the Lord took it.
He did so…
… and he was free.
I then just sat back and simply stayed quiet as the Lord came and ministered to him.
After several minutes of watching the Lord’s peace and calm engulf him, I asked what had happened. (I always love asking folks to tell me what happens when the Lord meets them!)
He said the Lord had been hugging him.
I smiled, because I knew that Jesus had just brought profound healing to him, and had lifted from his life the pain that kept driving him back to drugs. He now was on the road to recovery.
The Challenge of Simple
I didn’t need to have the answers, or the cure, or even figure out the problems in this precious man’s life.
I just needed to get to simple, which for this brother meant walking with him to the place where he could confess, seek forgiveness, and trustingly turn his burdens over to Jesus.
And like He always does, Jesus showed up.
That’s the Jesus I know. He heals the brokenhearted, delivers those captured by sin, and brings liberty to the oppressed.
Yes, it’s simple to walk with folks to the place where Jesus is waiting to meet them.
But I would be misleading you if I said it was simple to learn how to minister in simplicity.
There was so much religion that God had to burn out of me. So much performance-based crap, and feeling it was all up to me.
It took years. But once I finally made it to simple, then His grace started shining through.
If you have a heart to minister, I urge you to get to simple.
When you do, you too will be amazed at what God can do.
~ Jim
For a related blog, see God Shows Up.
For the religious, the road to grace is the toughest journey they’ll ever face.
For me, this certainly has been the case. And although the road to grace has been a wonderful journey, there have been many bumps and detours along the way. But slowly, I’m finally starting to find my way forward.
It’s Jesus in me and Jesus through me, so that it becomes possible to have Jesus in us and Jesus through us.
So much of my life over the last five years has been about the Lord reducing me to that simple truth.
On Tuesday evening, I understood how Jesus felt when his disciples finally “got it” and reported back, after He sent them out to minister on their own for the first time, that the sick were healed and darkness conquered. In His joy, the Lord said He saw Satan fall from Heaven because of them.
On Tuesday I’m teaching and mentoring a class of students on how to minister in the areas of confession, forgiveness and repentance. After seven weeks of foundation laying, the students this week started doing ministry sessions on their own and – wow! – it was amazing what God did through them that evening.
I will be teaching a semester-long Christian counseling class beginning next Tuesday, September 6th, through early December. We will be meeting every Tuesday evening at my home just south of Manassas, Virginia, from 7:00 to 9:15 pm.
The course is being offered through Emmanuel Christian Institute, in conjunction with Fulcrum Ministries, for a very modest $200 (this fee goes to ECI for much appreciated administrative support, not me!).
My spiritual DNA — the way God put me together — makes me instinctively encourage others to give away what God has given them. Sharing God’s blessings is a key component to spiritual growth, I’ve found.
I often teach and minister in a faith-based dorm at the local jail. Rather than me “leading” this Friday, however, I took a seat among them and let the men bless each other by sharing what God is showing them and doing in their lives.
Some rose to sing songs they wrote to the Lord, some read and commented on short passages of scripture that had become alive to them, while others gave testimony to how God is now healing and making them whole men.
One brother read a poem he wrote about dealing with the issues of his heart and finding healing through confession, repentance and forgiveness. I’ve seen tremendous peace and maturity emerge over the last couple of months as he’s been totally transparent with the Lord — even though it’s sometimes hard and painful to expose those secret and hidden places to Him.
The more pastoral counseling I do, the more I realize how often people deal with life’s traumas, hurts and disappointments by suppressing their hearts and their spirits. Instead of being healthy, integrated people, they numb out or otherwise retreat exclusively into the realm of their minds — i.e., their analytical logic and reason.
They are alive, but hardly living.
I’ve also come to realize how God created our hearts and spirits to be equally vital aspects, along with our minds, of the whole, complete individuals He wants us to be.
Becoming integrated, healthy individuals requires that we stop the oppression of our hearts and spirits that happens when we make them subservient to our logic and reason.
Recorded before a group of men in the local jail, this 55 minute audio teaching explains how we find peace and freedom when we allow God, through authentic Biblical confession, repentance and forgiveness, to change what we think, believe and perceive. That, in turn, allows us to know the righteousness, peace and joy that comes from finding and doing His will — which is what the Kingdom of God is all about.
This teaching arises from hundreds of intense pastoral counseling sessions through Fulcrum Ministries. In those sessions, I’ve seen how God uses Biblically authentic confession, repentance and forgiveness to bring quick resolution and lasting freedom from the lies, hurts and deceptions we carry from life’s circumstances — including routine disappointments to extreme situations like sexual abuse, occult ritual practices, childhood abandonment and many other life-crippling situations.
A friend posted this short video on Facebook and it’s too precious, timely and relevant to pass up. As you listen, may God mercifully and lovingly wound you in order to heal you.
It’s by Paul Washer, who I first mentioned in a blog back in March (see God Is Not Passive). His burden for the Church touched my heart then, and continues to do so now.
