How To Approach the Counselor: Wonderful Counselor, Part 3

If you ask any counselor what one of the biggest frustrations about their job is, at the top of the list would be that their patients don’t do what they ask them to do. I know as a pastor, I have experienced this when at times I have advised people to do certain things. Yet, for whatever reason, they choose not to heed my advice. How many of us approach Jesus, the Wonderful Counselor, the same way. We cry out and ask for help. We beg for resolution and relief. We say we’re desperate, yet we fail to respond when directed. In any counseling situation, there are a few keys.

·       Be brutally honest with the Counselor. Honesty is the key to freedom. If we can’t be honest with ourselves and with our Wonderful Counselor, there is no hope of freedom. Psalms 55:22 reminds us that we are to cast all of our cares upon the Lord. Why? Because He cares. He cares about every situation. Many times in the counseling process, we are asked a question like Jesus asked the Samaritan woman in John 4. When asked about her husband, the woman responded that she didn’t have a husband. She was honest in the literal sense because she didn’t have a husband, but she wasn’t brutally honest. She knew what He was asking, but she didn’t tell the whole story. What’s amazing is that even in her lack of brutal honesty, Jesus had a way of getting to the truth. He prophetically spoke into her situation. Jesus knew that honesty and truth was key to her freedom. Where are you not being completely and brutally honest with the Wonderful Counselor?

·       Listen to the Counselor’s voice. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Father spoke of the importance of listening to His Son’s voice. He said in Mark 9:7, “This is My Son . . . listen to Him.” Jesus reiterated this in John 10:27 as he likened us to sheep. He said, “My sheep listen to my voice . . . and they follow me.” If we are to be completely healed of every sickness (physical and spiritual), we must listen to the voice of Counselor. This is easy to do when we like what the Counselor asks of us. This is easy when we agree with the Counselor. But what about the times when he asks us to give up something sacred and precious to us? Then what? Do we continue to listen or do we do tune him out? Where are you refusing to listen to the voice of your Counselor?

·       Do what the Counselor tells you to do.  You’ve all heard it — obedience brings the blessing. Obedience is easy when it’s easy. The true test of obedience is when what we’re asked to do what is hard. It’s hard when we are asked to do something that is uncomfortable. It’s hard when it hurts. It’s hard when we have to sacrifice what is most precious. Ask Abraham about obedience when asked to sacrifice the promised son, Isaac, on the altar. Ask Noah about obedience when he’s told to built an ark when he’s never seen rain. Ask David about obedience when, as a teenager, he faces a giant that everyone in the land fears. Ask Peter about obedience when threatened with jail and ultimately the taking of his life. Obedience in all these cases brought great freedom and great blessing. However, in Mark 10, when a man was asked to sell everything as an act of obedience, he left sad because he wasn’t willing to do what Jesus, the Wonderful Counselor, asked him to do. Where have you been disobedient to what the Counselor has asked you to do?