Have you ever tried to help someone who did not want help? It is a task well nigh impossible. A person who does not see his need is liable to resent you for trying to help.
Take the young couple on their honeymoon. After thirty minutes of fruitless searching they have still not found the restaurant that was their intended destination. The young bride sweetly suggests stopping for directions. He bristles. They plough on for another twenty minutes, the wife now pleading for the hapless husband to get help!
When I finally did stop at a convenience store to ask directions, the kid behind the counter hurt my pride but saved my marriage by giving me the directions I could have had earlier in the evening if I had but asked. I didn’t get directions until I asked! Once I came to my wit’s end, I found my way.
Sometimes we try to help people by getting to the root of the problem when they have no heart to want help. There is a difference between counseling that seeks to find problems and counseling that seeks to resolve problems. Isn’t resolution what any counselor is after in the first place?
If Bible help for real and sometimes complex problems is the need, then what is the answer? Is the answer found in a counselor’s skill to ask all the right questions? Or is help found in giving Bible answers to a sinner asking questions because Spirit-led, Bible preaching has convicted his heart?
Preaching does not run counter to counseling, it is the very reason for it. And no worthy counsel is ever in competition with Bible preaching. To the contrary, counseling is a vital complement to preaching.
On the Day of Pentecost, Peter boldly declared Jesus Christ to the very people who had crucified Christ. Peter’s authority was the Bible, which he clearly taught with the intent to persuade these sinners of their need and God’s provision.
Peter was not there merely to discuss Jesus or to discern their need with his own intellectual skill. As the religious Christ-rejecters later observed, he was a fisherman. But he skillfully wielded the Word of God, which Hebrews 4:12 tells us is “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Bible preaching is more powerful than my incisive questions when it comes to discovering the root problem in another person’s heart. When God’s Spirit convicted these sinners on the Day of Pentecost, they were the ones asking the questions. They begged, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”
Now, bring in the counselors! You can help people who want it. And people want help when we unleash an all-powerful Book in the strength of an all-knowing God Who then puts His finger on the problem. Declaring God’s Word to people cuts to the heart of the matter in a way that my questions and reason never could.
“And I brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” II Corinthians 2:1-5