Religion Isn't Working Anymore

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to Become A Competent Biblical Counselor.

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Dr. Dave Jones, and today's episode is entitled, Religion Isnt Working Anymore.

[00:00:33] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very unusual title, isn't it?

[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_00]: But this episode is something different in that I am speaking today to those people

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: who really truly want to become a Biblical Counselor.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: They are really committed to wanting to take on this ministry and respond to the leading

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_00]: of the Holy Spirit to become a Biblical Counselor.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Something that I want to bring attention to is the fact that there are very, very few

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: of us actually counseling Biblically.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to prepare you for what you might expect in a world that is not used to Biblical

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Counseling.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: They understand what Christian Counseling is, but when you tell somebody that you are

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: a Biblical Counseling, as I have experienced many, many times, you just get these blank

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: looks.

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_00]: People have no idea what you're talking about.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And just get used to that, because that will happen to you if it hasn't happened already.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, I want to make reference to a song that's entitled, Religion Isnt Working

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Anymore, and it's sung by a man by the name of Joseph Habedank, H-A-B-E-B-E, D-A-N-K,

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Habedank.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: You can hear it on YouTube.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I encourage you to listen to it, but I want to read you the lyrics of that song.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the basis that I'm using for this broadcast.

[00:02:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Religion isn't working anymore every single Sunday, just like the one before, because

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_00]: religion isn't working anymore.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Religion sure ain't never satisfied.

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I've crossed the T's and I've dotted all the I's, and still I feel so empty walking

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_00]: out the door because religion isn't working anymore.

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Religion never set nobody free.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00]: It's always made a prisoner out of me.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm done with checking boxes.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm tired of skipping score because religion isn't working anymore.

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to know my blessed Savior and love Him like I've never loved before.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to feel the power of the resurrected Lord because religion isn't working anymore.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Just give me Jesus.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't need the smoke in the mirrors.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't need the show.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Just give me Jesus.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I need His living water to wash over my soul because religion isn't working anymore.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I think we can look over the past and determine maybe 40, 50, 60, however many years you want to go back.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Things were different in the church.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_00]: When we had problems, we went to the church.

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_00]: The churches nowadays have become more and more secular.

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_00]: We get the bands, we get the smoke, we get the mirrors, we get the show, we get entertained when we go to church.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Religion isn't working anymore because we're not getting religion.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I was in seminary, I had this idea that I would love to stand outside of a church

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_00]: after Sunday morning service with a clipboard.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Very innocently, prayerfully caring, asked people,

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: how did you like the sermon today?

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_00]: What did you learn today?

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_00]: What was the title of the sermon? Did you get that?

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you have something that you can take with you today that you can use on Thursday?

[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Did you have a blessed moment with something that was said in the church today that you were blessed by as a result of being in church?

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: That you would not have gotten had you stayed at home or had you not paid attention to what was happening in the church.

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_00]: But we become secularized.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember growing up in church where we sang the hymnals.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, we don't sing those blessed religious biblical songs anymore.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: We have bands with drums and guitars and big screens that put the words up on the screens that we've never heard of before.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And we watch people entertain us through those songs.

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And I've always thought too that the importance of singing is the message in the songs.

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_00]: There are sometimes when I'll go to a church to visit a church and the music is so raucous, so loud, so extreme.

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I will just have to get up and I'll walk out and I'll stand into the lobby until it says time as the pastor comes up and starts preaching.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Then I'll go back in.

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So we become very secular in our churches, which is unusual and unfair.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: But understand this as a biblical counselor you will continue being looked at differently.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Because you see when pastors are trained in seminars, when students go to Bible schools, they have a couple of classes in counseling.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: But primarily they are taught that it's better to send people with problems to the professionals.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: There was a time that I was reading a website of a Midwestern university Bible college in Missouri, I think it was.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_00]: They were expounding on the fact that they were biblical in their counseling approach.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And I got to looking at the resumes, at the experience of the staff, the counseling staff.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody had anything to do with biblical resourcing in their counseling.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_00]: All kinds of degrees and philosophies and concepts that they learned in these seminaries to deal with.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I remember writing to the president of that seminary and asked him to explain Colossians 2.8 in light of the counseling.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Counseling experience of the counselors and the seminary courses that he is expounding.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And I reminded him what it says in the English Standard Version of the New Testament, Colossians 2.8.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_00]: It says, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Well he wrote back a very, very long email justifying the utilization of man-made philosophies and concepts and principles and dictates.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_00]: To mention the fact that from time to time the Bible does not mention some things that are prevalent today.

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And he did all this to justify the utilization of man-made concepts and philosophies.

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to give you some examples of some experiences that I've had with churches over the past.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: There was one church that I went to and I announced the fact that I was new to the area.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I was a biblical counselor and I would like to provide any kind of experience that I had in anything that the church might need.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And free of charge, I mean that was my ministry.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And the pastor looked at me and he says, well I really don't think that we would have a need for someone like you.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well that's wonderful. That means you have a pretty good counseling ministry.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I said, how is that working out for you? And he says, well our deacons and our elders, they do all the counseling.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, okay are any of them trained? He says, well they pray with people.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well okay. So I knew right then I was barking up a tree that had no bark on it because that was how he understood counseling to be.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And then there were other churches that had counselors that had no experience at all.

[00:09:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I found one young church that had a young man who was like 22, 23 years old.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Still lived with his parents. He was single and he was one of the counselors.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00]: We had never had any experience at all in counseling but he just primarily would just listen to people and pray with them.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's confusing to the churches that you might be dealing with with respect to offering your services to alleviate the responsibility or the stress that might be placed on the leadership to take this role and to be a biblical counselor and help them.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of churches just don't understand what we are all about.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And to further my topic of religion isn't working anymore.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: There are a number of leaders in the church nowadays that are submitting themselves to the secular environment, whether it be pornography, whether it be theft, whether it be adultery, too many.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_00]: According to some reports that I want to make clear to you, there's one report that tries to explain that there's a mega church pastor who's having to be a pastor.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: His ex-wife, $12,000 per month in alimony after 33 years of marriage.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_00]: What does that say for the justification of the till death do us part responsibility and promise?

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And here's another one. It says the exclusion in the existence of clicks are the most common reasons why Americans don't want to get more involved in their churches and houses of worship.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Even though most don't report any negative experiences with the congregation, religion isn't working anymore.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So what I want to do in this episode is to give you as much encouragement as I can from a human point of view to cause you to realize that you have justification and encouragement biblically to do what you are doing

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_00]: and what you want to do in being a biblical counselor. Keep at it.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't judge yourself from what's happening in your churches or what's happening in your churches.

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_00]: You might have a real disconnect with your church and if the church just doesn't see why they need somebody like you in their church.

[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But maybe individually God has called you to do that.

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_00]: You do not need the approval of your church in order to be a biblical counselor.

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_00]: You do not have to be on their staff.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_00]: You are just doing this as a lay person who's sitting in the pews, who wants to help other people with their problems.

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And you can help them do that with scripture that you've been trained through these broadcasts to apply.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So it's just you and God.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_00]: You and God.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: What a wonderful team that is.

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And you'll never be wrong.

[00:12:05] [SPEAKER_00]: You've got so many people who are trying to use the secular concepts, but a lot of those hardly, they don't work.

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And if they don't work, why not use something that does?

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people say yeah, but I'm afraid to counsel because I don't know what I should say and what I shouldn't say and how I should say it.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Well you know what?

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_00]: The most important person in a counseling situation is the Holy Spirit.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Use your experience.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_00]: They'll give you the words to say.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_00]: They'll give you the insight to use.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Relay upon the Holy Spirit.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, I hope this works.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I hope this is something that you can count on.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't be discouraged in being a biblical counselor.

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Just don't be a Christian counselor who doesn't use scripture.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Be a biblical counselor and you'll never be wrong.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to me, blessed.