What to Do When They Don't Know What to Do

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Become a Competent Biblical Counselor. My name is Dr. Dave Jones, and today's episode is entitled, What to Do When They Don't Know What to Do. And we're going to be looking at 2 Timothy 4, verse 2, where it says, Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all suffering and doctrine. Let's take a moment and look at that verse real quickly. The first three words, preach the word. Earlier in another episode, we spoke about the importance of Paul's use of language and looking at various words as commands. Well, there it is. There's another example. Paul is saying, well, when you get around to it, or when it's convenient, or on Thursday afternoon, no, he says, preach the word. He also says, be instant in season and out of season. What does that mean? When the Holy Spirit is talking to you and convicting you and convincing you that he has set up a situation to where he needs you to preach the word to someone he resent to you, you need to do it. Not when it's convenient, you need to do it in season and out of season. Also, it gives instruction with respect to, again, commands with how to counsel. And those are the words reprove, rebuke, exhort with all suffering and doctrine. You have the right biblically to exhort and tell people that what they're doing is incorrect. What they're doing is a sin. What they're doing, they need to stop doing, they need to confess their sin, they need to repent. And that's the whole crux of biblical counseling. But let's go on and talk about what to do when they don't know what to do. The they happens to do, happens to be with people who are hurting. I get phone calls from people all over the country. Morning, noon, night, Sunday afternoon, whatever. I get calls because people are hurting and they want help. And it's a shame that they can't necessarily get the help from the church that they would hope for. But anyway, they come to a biblical counselor to try to get hope. I get phone calls from men who call and say, I want to be a better husband and a better father, but I just don't know what to do. Or pastors who call and say, you know what, I've been in the ministry for a while, and I think that I'm just not getting across what I should, and I feel that maybe God doesn't want me in in the ministry anymore, and I just don't know what to do. And women and uh young people and teenagers, so many people, they just don't know what to do. So there's a concept that I want to talk with you about today in this episode. It has to do with a horizontal influence instead of the vertical influence. The horizontal influence is that many times the people who call for difficulties with their lives are getting information or getting confused about what they are hearing and learning from other people or from other sources from a horizontal point of view. And what I'm referencing here is that we have so much emphasis on the fact that people are doing what they do because of the lady down the street that they have a relationship with. She says, Well, try this and try that. Or some college professor or somebody else that they know in their world that says, Well, you're doing this wrong, you should try this, you should take this medication, you should do this. And after a while, people just don't know what to do because the results that they're getting from their near and dear friends are just not working. Then we have the other problem, the big, huge problem that I want to capitalize on today, and that has to have to do with the news media. How many times are people watching the news media and getting their way of life from what's happening in the news? People get depressed, people get sad, people get fearful, they get discouraged, they lose hope for what they are listening to on the news media. Well then here's another. How about social media? Large percentage of people now get their news from social media. And so my point today is the fact that a lot of times when people come to church, they are hurting, they're looking for hope. They want to get away from all that garbage they've listened to for the past six days and hoping that they can come to church and get a different point of view from the vertical. What should my relationship be to God? What does God want me to do with this? Why is God putting this, putting me through this? Why is God allowing this to happen? And so there's a tremendous amount of confusion. So there are a lot of people that you can help in the process of becoming a biblical counselor, and just sitting and asking them to begin with, tell me about your world. Who is in your world? What kind of people are in your world? What are you what are you doing in your world? What kind of music are you listening to in your world? What kind of advice are you getting from your friends? And if you're getting advice from your friends that you don't necessarily agree with, maybe you should just look at getting some different friends. And also what kind of social media activity are you involved? And does it really bother you? Are you spending too much time on it? Are you dependent upon what social media interaction is? What is your world like? And a lot of times you can sit there and just listen to people go on and on and on about what their world is like, the people in their world, the music in their world, the books that they read, the things that they do, and it's all horizontal because they do what they do because that's what everybody else is doing, and everybody wants to be involved with the crowd because everybody seems to think that's the way that we've got to live our life. But what about the vertical? Somehow, even Christians are so wrapped up in this kind of garbage that they're living their life with that they fail to see life from God's point of view. Who does God want you to listen to? What does God want you to do? What music does God want you to listen to? What news sources did God want you to get involved with? This is what you as a biblical counselor can do is to redirect people from what they are doing now that's very sinful and very harmful to one that's more vertical and promise fulfilling. Let me share some things from Johan Hari's book, Stolen Focus. In this, he's talking about the amount of messages that we get throughout the day, whether it's from our friends, our news, or whatever. And he began to wonder what the message is that we absorb from social media. And how does it compare to the message that we absorb from other sources? So he first thought of Twitter. He says, when you first log into the site, it doesn't matter whether you're Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or Bubba the Love Sponge. You are absorbing a message through the medium and it's sending it out to your followers. What is the message? Well, according to Twitter, he says, the first message that you receive is that you should not focus on any one thing for very long. The world can and should be understood in short, simple statements of 280 characters. Second, the world should be interpreted and confidently understood very quickly. Third, what matters most is whether people immediately agree with or applaud your short, simple, speedy statements. Then how about Facebook? What's the message in that medium? First, your life exists to be displayed to other people, and you should be aiming every day to show your friends, edited highlights of your life. Second, what matters is whether people immediately like these edited and carefully selected highlights that you spend your life crafting. Third, somebody is your friend. If you regularly look at their edited highlight reels and they look at yours, this is what friendship means. And how about Instagram? First, it matters how you look outside. Second, what matters is how you look on the outside. Third, what matters is how you look on the outside. Fourth, you get my point. What matters is whether people like how you look on the outside. I don't mean this glibly or sarcastically. That really is the message the site offers. So there, I think all of these ideas are wrong. Let's think about Twitter. Very few things worth saying can be explained in 280 characters. The same goes for Instagram. I like looking at pretty people like everyone else. But to think that life is primarily about these surfaces is a recipe for unhappiness. Facebook too. It's not friendship to pour jealousy over another person's photos and boasts and complaints and to expect them to do the same for you. These are all the things Facebook will often drain you of by dominating your time with hollow parodies of friendship. So I don't agree with the messages in the medium of social media. I think they primarily feed the uglier and shallower parts of my nature. I like the person I become when I read a lot of books. I dislike the person I become when I spend a lot of time on social media. Let me share with you another finding from research done by the University of Pennsylvania. They say that for the first time researchers say Facebook can cause depression. Spending too much time on social media sites like Facebook is making people more than just miserable. It may also be making them depressed. A new study conducted by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania has shown for the first time a causal link between time spent on social media and depression and loneliness. They concluded that those who drastically cut back get that. The word is not eliminate, the words are cut back. Their use of sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat often saw a marked improvement in their mood and in how they felt about their lives. It was striking, the professor said, what we found over the course of three weeks, get that, three weeks, was the rates of depression and loneliness went down significantly for people who limited their social media use. The key takeaways for me on this research is the fact that they had people cut back on their use of social media. And in three weeks is a pretty good time where their attitudes and behaviors changed significantly. Those are huge, huge words. Also, the research went on to conclude it's possible, even likely, that lonely and depressed people use sites like Facebook more because they are seeking social connections. The new study suggests that Facebook, Instagram, and others aren't just popular with the lonely and depressed, they're also making people more lonely and more depressed. Folks, we've got a lot of these people in the church. We have a lot of people that are on social media. And the point is not to totally eliminate social media per se, but if you're absorbed, if you're addicted, if you rely upon it, if it's something that you have to live your life with and for every day, no wonder you're lonely, no wonder you're depressed, no wonder you're discouraged, no wonder you're fearful. That's where you come in by asking those very simple questions. What news do you get? Where do you get it from? And how often are you on social media? There's the horizontal. Now, very quickly now, the response to that could be, regardless of how much time that they're on it, why don't you go vertical? Instead of wondering what the lady down the street has to say about how you should relate to your husband that you're fighting with, what does God want you to do? And then explain to the person what God's response should be from a biblical point of view. Or with the pastor that I had before. In fact, I've had a few pastors who call on and ask about their significance in the pastorate. What does God want you to do? Then we go through the Bible and determine what scripture is something that they should apply to their lives, pray back to God in the first person singular, and do what the scripture says they should do. These are not difficult things to do, these are not frightful things to encounter, but please let me emphasize the fact that you have people sitting with you in the pews that are struggling with life because they're on the horizontal influence. You can help them with that. That's what becoming a biblical competent counselor is all about. I hope that helps. Stay tuned for the next episodes. We're going to get into in the future, talking about depression and anxiety, and from a biblical point of view, what all those mean and what we can do about those. We have some exciting things happening, so stay tuned and we'll see you at the next episode. Have a great day.