This week at College we have an intensive week of classes on Issues in Biblical Counselling. Our lecturer is Ed Welch, Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. Welch's experience and grace really show through in what he says, and I am finding the lectures both helpful and challenging. Hence, I think it is appropriate to blog some of the things that I'm learning. Four points for today:
i) Victims are God's specialty.
ii) Whenever I say "mine" I am demonstrating my affinity with the Devil. (It struck me that Tolkien understood this ever so well.)
iii) Biblical themes are a fruitful source of counsel. For example, we could relate the wilderness journey to someone with a drinking problem. In the wilderness, when people are faced with temptation, they invariably fail. But Jesus went into the wilderness in order to face temptation and say "No" to it on my behalf.
iv) Suffering can have five different causes. I can suffer because of me, because of you, because of Adam, because of Satan, or because of God. We must not become "specialists" in any one of these causes, since a particular time of grief can have more than one.
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