If I were in front of a group of people and I asked, “How many of you are under the care of a psychiatrist?”, no one would want to raise their hand. If I asked them, “How many of you are in counseling?”, some people might raise their hand.
Counseling helps people understand that we are in a broken world.Counseling has had a bad connotation, but it is discipleship, helping one another and bearing one another’s burdens. Counseling is encouragement. We need to recover the positive aspect of what counseling really is. We all need it from time to time. We all need somebody to sit down and talk to and say, “Here are my struggles. This is my private world, this is my public world, and this is what I’m really wrestling and struggling with. I need some insight and encouragement. I need some help here.” If people would do this early on, we would see people’s lives changed by the Gospel, with good counselling.
People hold things in too long. They are embarrassed by their sin. We don’t talk about sin enough, and we don’t talk about sin with each other enough. Counseling helps people understand that we are in a broken world. We long for the new heavens and new earth, but even here, God’s word is applicable, and we can find rest. We can do soul care. David is lamenting about his life and he says, “I look to my right. I look to my left. There’s no refuge. There is no one who cares for my soul.” Counseling is caring for the soul of another person.
