What is discipleship? …how do you do it? …why does it matter? Counseling Solutions |  |
- What is discipleship? …how do you do it? …why does it matter?
- Mind Mapping Christian Maturity: you know you’re mature when…
- Mind Mapping Insecure Husband & Critical Wife – a case study
| What is discipleship? …how do you do it? …why does it matter? Posted: 24 Oct 2011 09:05 PM PDT 
The aim in all of my counseling sessions is to teach or equip a person to be like Jesus Christ–in every context of his/her life. This is the essence of what the term disciple means. A disciple is a learner and follower of another. Therefore, as a Christian who counsels for a living, it is my job to help people to learn how to follow Christ. Basically, I am a discipler, not a counselor. I use the word counseling mostly for marketing purposes. Our Christian culture understands the term and that is what they are looking for. However, I am not pro counseling. I am pro discipleship. Counseling is typically a point in time ministry, while discipleship is a way of life. However, there is nothing that is done in the counseling office that cannot and should not be done in a discipleship context. I think to split hairs by nuancing the two terms is unnecessary and, quite frankly, a waste of time. The church, in too many ways, has bought into our culture’s worldview regarding change. Many Christians do not know how to help people to change without integrating the ways of the culture into the change process. There is a temptation among some Christians, in an effort to appear smart and sophisticated, to hide the Bible under the desk, so to speak, while exhibiting a broad ability to espouse the disorders of our culture. All of that rigmarole adds weeks and months to the discipleship process. It takes a long time in my counseling office to untangle the integrated Christian’s mind from their accepted views on secular pop-psychology. In the end, if you’re a good counselor, you’re going to take them back to Christ and you’re going to make appeals for the individual to follow Christ, which is what discipleship accomplishes. Go get JesusLet me put it this way: if you carefully disciple a person–or in modern football parlance, coached them up, in the ways of Jesus, then there would be little place for counseling. It is not my goal in life to fulfill the counseling vision or mission for any church or organization. My aim is to equip Christians to be like Christ, so they will be able to equip other Christians to be like Christ. This has always been called discipleship.
It makes my brain tired to try to think about the differences between counseling and discipleship and then try to promote them as being different, as though it makes a difference to do so. Any Christian counselor or discipler is trying to get a person to trust God, or to live for Jesus, or to be mature in their faith, or whatever other synonymous descriptor you want to use. We are helping Christians to think like Christians, act like Christians, smell like Christians, walk like Christians, talk like Christians, love like Christians, serve like Christians, while helping them to teach others to do the same thing. Promoting counseling or communicating counseling in such a way that it leaves a person thinking that there is a two-tiered system in the body of Christ is not wise. A two-tiered system is when you think that there are those who can counsel and those who can’t or those who need counseling and those who do not.
From here on out I’m going to use the word discipleship. For the record and so you know, anytime I use the word counseling, I’m thinking about discipleship. This is the way I have always thought about the word counseling.[1] What is discipleship?I told my co-counseling partner that I do discipleship and she told me that she thought discipleship was teaching someone about the Bible. Ever since she said that, I have been reflecting on her understanding of the term discipleship. Her comment opened up a vista in my thinking about why there is so much sanctification failure in the church. She does not have a clear picture of what discipleship means. She would see discipleship primarily as a ministry to teach people about the Bible. While that is true, it is only partially true. The word discipleship connotes much more than that. This also explains why there is such an emphasis at her church on teaching people the Bible. They have a lot of Bible studies and lots of contexts where people are learning about the Bible. This can be confusing, in addition to being an inadequate practice. Now, before you comment on that last paragraph, think about it for a minute–or two. To learn the Bible without applying the Bible can be dangerous (1 Corinthians 8:1-2). Mary’s primary understanding and interpretation of the word discipleship is that we are to:
All of these things are fantastic. All of these things are necessary. All of these things are correct. Every disciple must be well-schooled in the Bible, but being a master of the Bible is not enough. We must be mastered by the Bible. Today, I told a counselee that he needed to become a master of the Bible and that he needed to let the Bible master him. “If you do not have both, then you will not be able to live a life that replicates the Savior. He was the Word; He understood the Word; and He lived according to the Word.” Discipleship has two big parts:
The discipler is a teacher who not only teaches a person about the Bible and what the Bible means, but the discipler teaches a person how to practically apply the Word of God to their lives. My former professor, Stuart Scott at The Master’s College, gave me a quick and helpful definition of the word wisdom: He said it is knowledge applied. The wise man knows how to apply the knowledge of God’s Word to his life. The knowledgeable confused personConnie came to counseling with her husband last year. Her husband was flirting with another woman at his work. Connie is a regular attender at her weekly Bible study. Russ is faithful to his Wednesday night men’s meeting. There have even been times when they were called upon to lead their respective studies. In addition to their weekly Bible studies, they have been attending the same Sunday school class for 17 years. They also host a Bible study group for some of the teens in their church. I asked Connie how she had been responding to Russ’ flirtations with another woman. She said she would spend time studying her Bible. I felt sad in my soul when she said that. These two people have been immersed in various Bible studies for over two decades. In some ways, they are considered pillars of the church. The problem was that they were not complete disciples. They were not complete followers of Christ. A disciple learns and follows. They had spent nearly twenty years learning, but when it came time to apply, they were confused, hurt, angry, and broken. They did not know how to follow Christ through their situational difficulty. They knew the Word of God, but it was nearly innocuous in their time of need. In fact, Russ did not just start flirting recently. You don’t “fall into flirtations” with other people (Proverbs 6:25). Flirting begins in the heart and carves out a trail over a long period of time, before it ever gets to the harlots house (Matthew 5:28). The seeds of adultery have been festering in Russ’ heart for many years, the same number of years that he had been studying his Bible (Matthew 15:19). Connie and Russ were asked to go to counseling, as though counseling was something that their discipleship classes and contexts could not offer. Up to that point in their marriage, those contexts were inadequate. Customized discipleshipIf all of our Bible studying does not fortify us for our time of suffering, regardless of what that suffering is, then there is something wrong with how we study the Bible or how the church provides contexts for our people to study the Bible. In the most recent past of our church history, discipleship has been more about studying the Bible and then when all hell breaks loose in a marriage or family, it’s time for counseling. Our discipleship understanding and discipleship processes and practices should be just as much preventative as academic.[2] My appeal to any Bible study group is to make your time together personal and applicable to what the real people in the group are going through. Too many times a group will go through Peacemakers or some other excellent book and talk about the case studies and illustrations in the book, but never really talk about the nitty-gritty of the lives of the people who are in the room and struggling with various issues. They may have chatted-up what “Millard and Marge” from the case study in the book should do, but never be any closer to solving the real-life situations in the lives of the people in the group. To study and apply are not mutually exclusive or segregated activities. The Savior taught and applied, taught and applied, and taught and applied.[3] It is somewhat rare for me to teach people about the Bible when they come for counseling. Most of the people I counsel have been to more Bible studies than they can possibly recount. In fact, most of them are in small groups too. However, the reason they are in my office is because they have never been trained on how to take God’s authoritative, sufficient, and infallible Word and practically apply it to their lives. What they get in counseling is the Word of God customized to their specific lives. The Bible is made relevant for them. The sad thing about this is that they have to wait until some heinous sin comes knocking on their door before they come knocking on my door. We can do better than this. The church has everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We just need to know how to re-establish our contexts and practices so the people of God can be equipped, not just in Bible knowledge, but in how to make specific, hard, challenging, and relevant application to their lives. Coming SoonI’ve recently finished a 90-page, 26,000 word book called Small Group Life: Envision-Equip-Experience. I plan to have it published on Kindle, Nook and a PDF download in November. This will be a free giveaway to anyone who wants it, with the hope that it will be distributed widely.[4] I will also be setting up a Small Group Leader Training Page on my website, with the hope of helping Christians around the world to create better contexts where God’s Word can be more practically applied to the lives of His children. Self-Paced Study TrainingIf you’re interested in learning how to disciple from a seasoned counselor, take a look at our two-year, self-paced study course that is customized to each student in our program. Click I want to learn more. Our training is built around who the person is, what they know, and what they need in order to be effective disciplers for Jesus Christ.
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| Mind Mapping Christian Maturity: you know you’re mature when… Posted: 28 Sep 2011 09:05 PM PDT 
When will I know I’m done with counseling? What are you looking for? What are your expectations for me? These are some of the more common questions that I get when a person first meets with me for counseling. These questions are excellent and need to be answered in a definitive, but practical way. The good news is that the Bible does not leave us in a lurch, but gives us real answers that satisfy. To help us think about what the “end” looks like, I’ve developed a Mind Map, which is part of a training exercise I provide for the folks on our Membership Site. You can get your copy of the Mind Map by clicking Christian Maturity. These concepts are not just good ideas that apply to counselees, but they are concepts that apply to every Christian. If you are a Christian, then you should read this, assess yourself, and make whatever changes you need, in order to continue the process of maturing in Christ. Counselees are not the only people who need help. All Christians need help. Honestly, I kinda despise the word counselee. Personally, I do not use the term unless I’m writing to a broader audience, like this article. Our organization is called The Counseling Solutions Group, but that is more of a marketing perspective than anything else. If I called our organization “Discipleship Solutions,” it would not resonate with the current cultural mindset, those who are looking for help through counseling. I never refer to my “counselees” as counselees. They are my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, who come to me for help (John 15:15).[1] And what do I do for them? I disciple them by teaching them what the Bible says about being like Christ, the goal of all counseling and discipleship. They may come through the door as counselees, but my goal is to send them out as Christlike disciple-makers. That’s my calling. It is yours too. The following Mind Map will help you unpack the process to Christian maturity, while also envisioning you on how to sustain a life of Christian maturity. Before you begin, may I appeal to you to pray, asking God to help you to see where you need to change, grow, and serve like Jesus. Perhaps it would be better to read this article with your spouse or close friend, asking them to speak into your life according to what is written here. Will you do that? Will you ask your spouse or close friend?
Breaking down the mapThe Gospel - All counseling or discipleship, whatever you want to call it, must begin with the Gospel. Remember, I’m coming from a Christian worldview, speaking to Christians, about how to best glorify God as Christians. Therefore, there is only one starting point and that is the Gospel. The Gospel or good news is Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah from the Old Testament, who came to live among the Jewish nation 2000 years ago. Eventually Christ died, according to the divine purposes of God, on a cross in order to pay the debt for sin. He became a ransom for sin. No person has the ability to live out a sustained life of Christian maturity without coming to terms with the person and work of Jesus Christ. The only proper way to come to terms with Him is by being regenerated by Him. This is what we call being born from above or being born again. Have you been born again?
Spirit cooperation - If you are born again, then the Holy Spirit has come to you and is living in you, in order to guide and sustain you throughout your life. The Spirit will do many things for you, such as illuminate your mind to the Word of God so that you can understand it and grow thereby. (See John 17:17; 1 Corinthians 2:14; 1 Peter 2:2-3) You can choose to quench or grieve the Holy Spirit by living in sin (1 Thessalonians 5:19; Ephesians 4:30). However, you have the option to cooperate with the Holy Spirit and if you do, you will grow in grace and in knowledge of Jesus Christ, so that you can imitate Him by your life (2 Peter 3:18; Ephesians 5:1; 1 Corinthians 11:1). Means of grace - A means of grace is analogous to a vehicle, a means that takes you from one place to another place. God provides several gracious means or contexts that we can participate in so that we can grow into Christian maturity. Most local churches provide these various means of grace. In the Mind Map I have listed nine means of grace, which you can find on the lower, left hand side of the Map:
It is important to note that these contexts are not passive contexts. They are contexts in which you engage God and others, while being engaged by God and others. It won’t do just to show up on Sunday morning at your local church and expect that you are going to mature in Christ. You will not. It does not work that way. Christianity is not a passive experience. It is full-on engagement with God and with others. I have never counseled a person on an on-going basis who is actively participating in these contexts of grace. If they are cooperating with the Spirit of God at this level, they have the means they need to change (2 Peter 1:3). You’ll note that I call these contexts “acts of worship.” They represent nine ways in which we can actively worship God by pursuing Him and others (Matthew 25:40).
Don’t be fooled. To play church is to be stunted in your relationship with Christ and others. Playing church is to invite dysfunction. If you are not actively pursuing God and others through these various means of grace, then I appeal to you to repent. Let God rule your life. Jump in and cooperate with God. If you will do this, then you will change and your relationships will change. Humility or prideThe tension that is in all our souls is whether or not we will submit to God or exercise our own will over the various situations in our lives. Did you know that when you refuse to walk in humility, the greatest deterrent in your life is God Almighty? James 4:6 is clear: God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Which will it be? Are there areas of pride in your life? Are you still holding on to things that you do not want to let go? Many times the relational conflicts that we experience between ourselves and others is not because of others, but because God is the One resisting us. We can be duped into thinking that my opponent is my spouse or some other human, when it is really God who is resisting me because I am being proud. If you are proud, then your main problem is with God, not with someone else. He is the Resistance for the proud person. But if you will humble yourself before God Almighty, then something radical will begin to happen: He will give you empowering grace. Only at that point can you change. Through these contexts or means of grace, God begins to affect you at the level of your heart. You begin to change. The Gospel is now actively alive in you and humility begins to replace your pride. Humility becomes the primary condition of your heart, which allows you to mature–He gives grace to the humble. Three components of changeThe stage of your heart is now set. You are pursuing humility, while resisting pride and God is working for you and not resisting you. The conditions are right for you to mature in Christ. As you see on the Mind Map, there are three elements in the process of Christian maturity:
I want to change - This order is significant. You cannot grow until you change. Therefore, the first order of business is to change, which is what the Bible calls repentance. Do you want to change? Repent. Simple. That is how it works. There is no other way. To repent simply means to change from one way of thinking and behaving to another way of thinking or behaving. If you choose to change (repent), then you will grow. Does this make sense to you? Awesome. It has been said that the Christian life is a life of repentance and on-going repenting.[2] This should be good news for the believer. We can change. The unbeliever cannot do what we can do. We can change because we have the Gospel. We have the power of Christ working in us. Repentance is not a discouraging concept for the believer. It is the door through which we walk in order to grow in Christ. Sometimes the word repentance has gotten a bad rap. That should never be. It is the Christian’s primary weapon when it comes to changing. You can click on this video called The Doctrine of Repentance to see how I have unpacked the various elements of repentance. I want to grow - Are you repenting daily to God and to others? If so, guess what? You’re going to grow–mature in Christ. You have no other option. The repenting Christian is a changing, growing, maturing Christian. And what do we mature into? There is only one option, one goal, one person to become: you become like Christ. If you are daily living out repentance in your life, then Jesus Christ will begin to take shape in you. If you continue to walk out repentance, He will not only take shape in you, but you will begin to act like Him. You will become Christlike. Though there are many ways of describing what it means to be Christlike from the Scriptures, I like Galatians 5:22-23. The fruit of the Spirit begins to take root in the heart of the repenting Christian. And the more you repent, the more the old ways and habits will be turned aside and new ways and habits will begin to control your heart. In time, it will become how you are characterized. The fruit of the Spirit becomes character qualities of the heart, before they become behaviors in our life (Luke 6:45). The fruit testHere are the fruit that the Spirit gives to us. Scroll through this list and ask yourself at each element how that particular manifestation is working out in your life. How are you doing? Write out your answers to these questions:
How did you do? Is Christ being formed in you? If so, you’re well on your way to Christian maturity. If not, then you may be immature and need to go back to the “I want to change” step and figure out what is wrong. Are there some things in your life that need repentance? Perhaps you may need to enlist the help of others, though it has been my experience that most Christians know what they are doing or not doing. Nevertheless, whatever the problem is, you need to make the appropriate changes so Christ (fruit of the Spirit) can be formed in you. I want to serve - You know you are Christlike when the primary default of your heart is to serve others (Mark 10:45). There was a unique quality about Jesus: He was not about Himself. He was all about others, particularly His Father and us (Romans 5:8). He could not have made this more clear when He said,
This was Jesus’ job description while He was on earth. It is the litmus test that reveals if there is a true understanding and application of the Gospel (Christ) in a person’s life. This is the absolute height of Christian maturity. If you’re living for God and others more than anything else, then you’ve hit the Jesus gear and the grace of God is empowering you for the glory of God and the benefit of others. If your desire is still more about you rather than God and others, then you need to go back to the Gospel and see what it is that you do not understand and/or are unwilling to apply to your life. If you are stuck as to what that is, then I appeal to you to get some help. God has provided us with everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). I do believe that if you are actively pursuing God and others in the various means of grace that are available for you, as noted on the lower left hand side of the Map, and you are actively living out repentance before God and others, lower right hand side of the Map, then there is nothing that should hinder you from being a mature Christian. Go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). A practical homework assignment to apply what you have learned
If you are regularly helping people who want to change, use this article and assignment in your training, counseling, or discipling. Make copies and use often.
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| Mind Mapping Insecure Husband & Critical Wife – a case study Posted: 27 Sep 2011 09:05 PM PDT 
They have three teenaged children, boy, boy, girl. They attend a Reformed church in town. Both Paul and Judie are active members in their church. And…they do not like each other. Judie is a nag and Paul is insecure. It doesn’t matter who fired the first shot; the reality of the situation is that they are hardly in love and have been doing marriage-by-rote for a long time. It is not that they can’t stand each other. If you asked them on a good day, they would tell you that they are in love. That’s what they periodically put on their Facebook status updates. If you don’t look too deep into their marriage and don’t ask too many probing questions, you would not know they have this low-grade anger and unforgiveness that runs under the surface of their lives. In many ways they are representative of a million couples who name the name of Christ. They are under-discipled. They entered into the church, plugged into the ministries they wanted to plug into and no hard questions were ever asked. The problem with this kind of pragmatic approach to church ministry is that the accumulative effect of unresolved sin in people can destroy marriages, families, and pockets of the local church…not to mention the defaming of God’s name. Per usual or as these things tend to go, Paul got caught in sin. Interestingly enough Judie did not want out of the marriage. She wanted him to get help because of “how this might look at church.” They came to counseling. During one of our counseling sessions I built a Mind Map of their problems, as we were talking.[1] You can download the entire Mind Map from that counseling session HERE. It is also the Mind Map that you see in this article.[2]
Breaking down the Mind MapIdolatry Cluster - In the upper left hand section of the MM you will notice an idolatry cluster. This is how Paul generally rolls. Notice the series of “I need to be…significant, appreciated, respected, loved,” etc. All of these cravings are essentially the same. It is seven ways to say the same thing. The reason I put seven of them on the map was for Paul to see, because all of them did not resonate equally with him. I have found through the years that it is best to communicate in synonyms. I could have asked, “Do you desire to be honored?” Maybe he would have said, “No.” Therefore, I said the same thing, seven different ways. Paul said that all of them were desires that he wished his wife would meet for him. Unfortunately for Paul, these unmet desires had escalated in his heart to demands. It was even more unfortunate that his wife would not see this, choosing rather to be stubborn and not build up her husband, but tenaciously harboring and exercising a critical spirit toward him. Paul had unwittingly set his wife up to be “god” in his life. I told him,
Un-cooperating god - The bad news for Paul is that his god was not cooperating. She was not only refusing to meet his cravings, but she was tearing him down by her critical spirit. It is one thing to be on fire, but exponentially worse when gas is thrown onto your burning body. Paul was on fire and out-of-focus. Rather than aligning his mind to the truths of the Gospel, he was putting the fire out through ungodly means.
Paul’s secondary thirst quencher is why they were in counseling. The critical wife - I’m not sure if most wives really understand how detrimental a critical spirit is to a husband. The power of the wife is in her tongue. In a matter of seconds she can build him up or tear him down. She has the strength to do this.[3] Guys are not as strong as the American egotistical image would like for us to believe. Guys are sinners too and they have weak egos. Though the critical wife is not the cause of Paul’s sin, she can compound his pre-existing challenge to reorient his mind to the Gospel. In the case of Judie, she has unresolved hostility toward her husband. There are many things in 21-years of marriage that she has not come to terms with. Some of them are her fault, while some belong to Paul. Rather than dealing with the problems like a mature Christian, on occasion she says hurtful things to Paul. Her bitterness comes out through the cutting harshness of her tongue. Sin is a context for grace - When Judie is unkind to Paul, he has a choice. Though he may be temporarily hurt by her words, he has the choice of sulking in his sinful desires or realigning his heart to the Gospel. The bottom section of the Mind Map, in yellow and green, highlight this. Paul typically chooses one of three options:
Typically, Paul will sulk when his idols are not stroked by his wife. Then he will respond in anger. If his wife will acquiesce, then everything is pushed back down to their normal low-grade anger and un-forgivneess marriage that they present to the unsuspecting. Of course, there is never resolution through this sinful process because the Gospel is never authentically and practically applied to their marriage. Paul and Judie do not know how to do this. Go get JesusThe center section of the Mind Map (in red) is the solution to this marriage mess. Neither Paul nor Judie are living according to the inheritance that was given to them through the Gospel. The Gospel says - There is nothing anyone can say or do to Paul that is worse than what the Gospel has already declared about Paul. The Gospel says that Paul stunk. He wreaked to the core. He was the worst of the worst. Paul was a lowdown, dirty, rotten sinner, without hope of ever being rescued. He was declared guilty by God and was assured of eternal torment in hell. Paul was a helpless, hopeless wretch of a person. That is one of the many declarations that the Gospel makes about us. Too bad Paul cannot fully grasp this. His craving for reputation mutes this Gospel declaration. He does not, cannot, will not see that the pathway to freedom is found by cognitively grasping his totally depraved ruination before God Almighty. The Gospel says – If Paul could grasp this kind of counter-intuitive thinking and own it as his own, then the insults of others would not gain the crippling access that it already has in his mind. I asked him,
The answer to the question is that the truths of the Gospel do not resonate with Paul. He has an intellectual understanding of the Gospel, but he does not have an authentic, experiential application of the Gospel. I’m not saying that Paul is not a Christian. I am saying, minimally, that the Gospel has not affected him the way it should biblically affect Christians. The Gospel says – The ironic thing about Paul’s cravings is that he already possesses, as a Christian, all of the things that he craves from his wife. Because he is “in Christ,” all the longings of his soul are being satisfied. This is another declaration of the Gospel. Rather than resting in this declaration of the Gospel, Paul is reaching for the fruit that can never satisfy. His insatiable longings for approval are only satiated in Christ alone. Paul needs to repent to the core of his being. He needs to clearly identify what these sinful longings are and fling himself on God’s mercy seat. Furthermore, he needs to invite a few trusted friends into his life so he can walk them through his sin and how it works out in his life. He needs to hold them accountable for holding him accountable. Paul needs to be spiritually aggressive in order to neutralize and kill the sin that has gripped him for so long. His sin has sinfully caught him and he should not be satisfied with rote praying or cursory repentance.
The Gospel asks – “Why doesn’t my maturing relationship with Christ satisfy and even trump my sinful cravings?” This is a real question that must be asked of Paul. He has a worship disorder. To date, he has been out-of-focus, blaming part of his sin on his wife, his upbringing, and other things. He has not fully owned his sin. This is one of the more common side effects of insecure people. They already feel insecure, so to own personal sin is to push them further down into their insecurity. To appease them by not speaking the truth to their lives is Gospel-short-sightedness. The Gospel is near Paul; it is at the door of his heart and knocking. My appeal to him would be to open his eyes to the reality of the situation. It’s time to stop blaming and to start owning. It’s not his wife, though she needs to repent too. It is Paul who needs divine intervention. My hope and prayer is that he will ask the Spirit to help him to discern the brokenness as outlined in this Mind Map and to engage the community of faith to help him overcome his sin for the glory of God.
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