Psychology in Biblical Counseling | The Kenwood Institute Podcast Episode 17

I have a couple of questions before we get into our topic for today.

Number one, uh, when you guys were answering my cold open question, you just, uh, I've just suddenly became very discouraged.

How do you not get discouraged when that's what you're dealing with all the time? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think when you consider the fact that you have this opportunity to come into these situations of people that are dealing with either... sin, you know, with pornography or broken relationships, and you have the opportunity to open God's word with them and help them to grow, to be more like Jesus.

And so I think on one hand, it's that opportunity to minister and to point them to Christ and to see change.

When the change occurs, man, there's celebration, there's rejoicing.

But in the midst of it, I think you've got to look towards that gospel hope, because it's in that gospel hope that ultimately you're trying to encourage them in as well so that they do in fact change.

So in the moment, yeah, you can get discouraged, but that's only if you are staying in the realization of the struggle and not seeing the hope that is in front of them.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, I mean, I just don't get discouraged often because I just know we're sinners and we all need Christ.

We all need to grow in our sanctification.

It's sad to see, like, it seems like most men struggle with pornography, but it's encouraging to see men trying to break free from pornography.

the bondage of pornography, if you wanna call it that.

And then it's encouraging to see them like lean on the local church.

Like most of the guys I've counseled here at Kenwood have gone to an elder, gone to other men in the small group that they're in, and those guys hold them accountable.

And it oftentimes reveals in other men's heart, oh, I have other struggles that aren't, you know, this particular type of sin.

So I'm encouraged just to see men fight it, overcome it.

And even if it's a long battle, It's a good battle.

It's worth fighting.

So I'd rather see men confessing their sins and fighting than to basically look around and go, oh, most of these guys probably are, but don't want to do anything about it.

Yeah.

And that's the thing about a healthy church environment.

And we talked about a little bit last time we met, but when you're in a healthy church, like that should be the norm, right? And part of our discipleship is that guys are seeing, hey, I'm being called to account to be obedient to scripture.

So I want to, I want to help people.

Not only do I as a counselor want to help them bring those things out, but as a normal pattern of a healthy church, that should be going on organically from the ground up.