Some time ago I counseled a church member who felt trapped in a cold, nonsupportive marriage to an alcoholic husband. She had come feeling hopeless, looking for comfort and suggestions. I tried to help her sort the options, hoping to open up some new ways of thinking about her problem.
“Do you think marriage counseling might help?” I asked.
“Oh no. My husband would never go,” she answered.
“Have you thought about a trial separation?”
“I have no way to support myself, and we can’t afford two homes.”
“Have you ever been to an Al Anon meeting?” I pressed.
“I couldn’t bear the embarrassment of going to a public meeting like that.”
For every new avenue I tried to travel, she had a quick detour.
Years of living with emotional barrenness had made her rigid. Despair had become such a constant condition of her life that she could no longer see beyond the pain. Finally, she apologized for taking up my time and began to gather up her purse and her wet tissues. I felt so inadequate. I had been unable to give her the comfort of even a glimmer of hope. Other than providing her the catharsis of telling a sympathetic human being about her plight, I felt I had accomplished nothing toward changing either her life or her attitude of helpless despair.
I asked if we could pray together before she left. Sitting on the edge of her chair, she obviously expected this to be a short and formal conclusion to our time together. But as I began to pray, I sensed her relaxing for the first time.
I suddenly realized we had never talked about her spiritual life. What an oversight! What had this long-term problem done to her relationship with Christ? Had her misery made her unable to formulate any but the most rote prayers for deliverance? And how long had it been since she had felt the forgiveness and loving acceptance of the Lord?
I prayed for God’s comfort to surround her and his peace to fill her. I prayed slowly and left spaces of silence, hoping to allow her to feel God’s presence as deeply as she was able. When I finished the prayer, she was weeping again.
“I think I had forgotten that God can work in my life,” she said. “I haven’t been able to pray in such a long time.”
My friend’s problem was by no means solved, buts somehow the act of prayer had opened her heart a little. Somehow it had lowered the defensive barriers that served as a protection from the pain of many years. Often, I’ve discovered, prayer has become the most productive and comforting part of a counseling session, the means by which God enters into a difficult human problem.
The Uniqueness of Pastoral Counseling
As I considered the profound effects of prayer in counseling, I wondered if I needed to redefine my role as pastoral counselor. Had I let the secular definitions and forms of counseling set the rules by which I guided those who came to me? Instead of a therapist, were they really seeking a pastor, a spiritual guide?
I had learned techniques of guiding people to psychological maturity with models similar to those used by secular counselors, and I felt reasonably proficient with them. Yet often I felt I had missed the mark in a counseling session, that I had been more of a professional and less of a pastor. Perhaps I had undervalued what I as a pastor am specifically called to do for people-to pray for them and with them.
As I thought back over many of the people I had counseled, I realized there were particular situations in which my counseling techniques were not achieving what the time of prayer was. These situations involved relational logjams, difficult decisions, anxiety about family members, anger and frustration about things done to them, and the inability to forgive. Attitudes and hardened hearts appeared to be a large part of the problem.
Many times prayer cut through the difficulties that pragmatic and problem-oriented forms of counseling only stumbled over.
As objective observers, we’re often more able than counselees to see where healing is needed and that healing is possible. Frequently a sense of hopelessness overcomes people faced with a crisis and prevents them from dealing with it.
A young couple came to me separately, both in panic because they had experienced their first serious argument. They were terrified that their marriage was doomed. “I don’t see how things can ever be the same again after the things we said,” moaned the young husband. “She’ll never be able to forgive me, and probably God can’t either.”
He needed to pray not only for forgiveness (which in his saner moments he truly understood), but also to thank God for his wife and his marriage and for God’s power to heal the rift between them. That second part of the prayer needed my formulation, because he couldn’t see past his own fear to God’s love and power. After I prayed with him, he left my office in much better shape than when he came in.
Of course, this isn’t always the case. Prayer is no magic formula that causes problems to vanish. Some deep wounds in lives and personalities need long-term, sensitive care. I can never consider prayer a Band-Aid to patch a deep hurt, nor is it an easy way to disclaim responsibility and end an uncomfortable or unproductive counseling relationship. Yet as I thought about the effect of prayer on some cases, I couldn’t escape the fact that it was often the prayer that opened someone to healing.
I once listened for nearly an hour to words of anger and bitterness from a woman who had been abandoned and divorced by her husband of twenty years. She knew in her mind that the anger would destroy her, yet I couldn’t advise or argue her into peace, even by the words of Jesus from the Scriptures. She had tried to pray, but every time she tried, she found herself hardening her heart to hold on to her anger.
“I don’t really want to stop being angry,” she finally confessed, “and that frightens me the most! Would you pray for me? I think I’ve forgotten how to pray.”
I prayed. Eventually she would need serious counseling to work out her anger and find a way to remake her life, but at this point in her journey, she first needed to reestablish her sense of God’s continuing love for her. Fortunately, she understood this need, and thus her request for me to pray for her until she could once again pray for herself.
This woman’s intuitive understanding of her own need reminded me again of the importance of keeping my pastoral function in the forefront of my counseling.
The Power of Prayer
Prayer is powerful. All of us would readily agree. Yet don’t we sometimes speak of prayer and counseling as if they were separate activities with different goals? We counsel, and then we pray that the counseling works. I’m growing to see prayer and counseling as two strands within the single fabric of God’s work. It’s my job to weave the two together.
Most counseling problems we face involve a large element of wounded spirit caused by a damaged relationship with God. This prevents some people from fully receiving God’s love or having healthy relationships with other people.
In all of us reside guilt and anger, sometimes growing out of past experiences and the imperfect child-raising practices of our parents. Many people project the human imperfections of their parents onto God. Many blame God for the trouble in their lives, believing God is giving them trouble as a punishment for some unremembered wrong of the past. More often than not, people don’t realize consciously that they hold these attitudes, but their lives and relationships are infected by them anyway.
George was a hard-working leader of the church who came to me because his extensive church activity was becoming a source of tension at home. As we talked, I sensed a drivenness in his attitude, a fear that he must never let up. He wanted “things to be done right.” He didn’t enjoy relaxing with his family; he tried to avoid “nonproductive activity” because he was sure God was displeased with “less than our best.”
The church had become not a sanctuary of solace but an arena of inner tension. His service grew not out of love but out of an unconscious fear of God as a harsh, demanding authority figure. He seemed to feel God was looking for some reason to deny him the fruits of Christ’s sacrifice.
His fear and guilt were deeply embedded in his personality and would not be eliminated by any simple or short-term counseling, nor by some quick prayer techniques. George was not the kind of guy I could just look in the eye and say, “George, relax. God loves you and created you to enjoy him!”
One thing did, however, begin to break down his fear of God: praying before the loving Creator-Redeemer. Had I tried to tell him he demanded more of himself than God did, I surely would have invited his contempt for “sentimental pastors who peddle cheap grace.” So I asked if I might pray for him.
I wanted my prayer to make George aware that he was in the presence of a loving Father who cares for him and delights in him just as he is, a unique and valued person. In formulating the prayer, I wanted to express for George his unspoken-perhaps even unconscious-plea. My words would be addressed to God, but they would also reflect the needs of that person sitting across from me. In this case I concentrated on God’s grace, which demands nothing but to be received and accepted. I hoped George would relax and just enjoy being a child of God for a few moments.
When we finished, George’s eyes were moist as he said in his characteristically low-key way, “It’s nice to have someone else pray for me.” George’s problem certainly didn’t end there. Lifelong attitudes don’t disappear easily. He still needed counseling to find the roots of his drivenness and deal with them. But he also needed to learn how to pray, knowing God’s love for him as well as God’s call.
It took many months of both counseling and prayer before I could sense any relaxation of George’s tension, and I don’t know whether listening or prayer helped him most. I suspect it was a combination of the two.
Preparing for Prayer
One sure way to undercut prayer is to forget that the prayer is addressed to God and not to the counselee. All of us have heard manipulative sermons disguised as prayers: “Lord, you know that Joe here has caused his own problems. Help him to shape up before he wrecks his marriage.” Moralizing or problem-solving statements in prayer obstruct the effect of placing the problems into the hands of God. Only actual prayer, growing out of the pastor’s own soul and informed by the understanding gained during the counseling session, can be truly effective.
Likewise, my prayer needs the mental endorsement of the one with whom I’m praying. Only as long as my words actually reflect the prayers from deep within the soul of that person will he or she give consent to my words. If I misread the situation radically, the person will simply shut it out. He or she might listen to the prayer but will not pray it.
Prayer that’s effective demands prior thought and personal preparation during the course of the counseling session itself. I need to do two things: understand clearly what counselees would pray if only they could, and develop a receptive climate in which they will feel safe enough to open themselves to God.
Experience has taught me not to hurry to the prayer prematurely. One time I met with a young couple whose baby had been stillborn. The husband was concerned that his wife seemed unable to get over her depression. Aha! I thought. A situation needing prayer. So after I had heard the basic facts, I suggested we pray. I prayed and the husband prayed, but the wife didn’t. When we finished, she said, both to me and to her husband, “You just don’t understand how I feel.”
Truly I did not. I had missed her need to express anger toward God for what had happened. She couldn’t open herself to God’s healing until she had been given the chance to vent her anger. I should have encouraged her to talk about these feelings before we prayed. That experience taught me the importance of timing, of preparing for the pastoral prayer through careful listening.
As the person tells his or her story, I try to listen with eyes and ears wide open, and without judgment. Many people come hesitantly, expecting my disapproval. They come because they know they’ve done something wrong. Many have built strong defenses to protect themselves against the judgment of others and of God. To find themselves accepted without judgment relaxes those defenses and may open a little crack for God’s forgiveness.
I also pray silently while I listen, consciously bringing God’s presence into the counseling situation. This helps me remember that God is at work here and I am not under the burden of “solving” anything by myself. Under my breath I may pray: Lord, thank you for joining me as we seek to minister to this person. Please help me rein in my own ego and remember that though I may be a channel of your grace, it’s only at your initiative.
Often I’m tempted to point out solutions that seem perfectly obvious to me. Yet just as often, if I wait and pray, the “obvious” also becomes clear to the counselee. When this happens, finding one’s own answer is an integral part of the person’s journey. It isn’t something imposed from without by my overzealous need to be instrumental in someone’s life.
It’s also important to listen for what needs prayer. A woman asked me to pray that her husband would become a responsible Christian and fulfill his obligations to his family. “He just refuses to come to church. Every Sunday I remind him how important it is to go as a family. I bring the printed sermons home and leave them on his chair. I point out other men who take their responsibility more seriously. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but the more I try, the more stubborn he gets.”
Her anxiety had blinded her to the fact that his stubbornness was a direct result of hers. She had forgotten about her love for him in the midst of a marital power struggle that was consuming her energy and attention. When I tried to tell her God could work on her husband without her having to turn life into a battlefield, she defended herself by claiming, “I’m so afraid that if I don’t keep reminding him, he’ll slip further away from the church.”
During our time of prayer, I included prayers of thanksgiving for the love that had brought the two of them together and for the qualities in his life and character that had endeared him to her.
As the prayer ended, her anxiousness seemed drained. “I guess I’ve been concentrating so hard on converting him that I forgot what a wonderful man he is.” She decided to turn over to the Lord the problems of her husband’s spiritual life.
We’re complicated people, and in some strange sense, she fought against receiving advice from me even though she had come seeking it. But prayer created a space in which she could remember her husband is in the Lord’s care. Because of her prayer, occasioned by mine, God was able to enter into her situation and melt those barriers blocking her relationship with her husband. And now that the husband would need less defensiveness to avoid losing a power struggle, perhaps God could begin to work on him, too.
Caution: God at Work
When I offer the pastoral prayer, I try to keep two basic assumptions in mind.
Though we can point the way to God, it is God who does the healing. My job is merely to create an open space in the person’s life where God can work. If I become too involved with solving the problems with my own skills, I will probably do no more than add to the accumulated layers of errors and false solutions. The “answer” must come from within the person, and God is quite capable of dealing directly with each person. The apostle Paul was very firm about this: “We are not competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of the new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:5, 6).
God is already at work in this person’s life. Each person has a past and a future, which are known to God. I have to resist the tendency to see only that which is presently troubling.
Helen and Bob came to me upset and confused by the attitude and activities of their 15-year-old daughter, Doreen. “We used to be so close and do things together,” Helen said. “Now she spends all her time in fast-food places with her friends. I don’t like the way she dresses and wears her hair. She has become so different, and I’m afraid of what it might lead to.”
We can’t minimize the dangers that face those passing through adolescence, yet often the dangers loom so large that it’s hard for parents to remember that God is also working in the child’s life. We did talk about how to monitor Doreen’s adolescence and what signs would indicate the need for intervention. But it was clear that Helen and Bob were concerned not so much about what was happening as about what might happen. Their fear was contaminating the communication with Doreen at just the time when she needed them to be most open and receptive to her struggles to become a separate individual.
After we talked, we prayed together. I thanked God for the gift of Doreen, for her creativity, her intelligence, and her bright, happy spirit. I thanked God that she was growing into womanhood with strength and independence. I thanked God that Helen and Bob had given her courage and freedom to try new things in the security of their love and support for her. I asked God to protect her as she lived through these difficult years so that passing fads would not endanger the true person God had created her to be, so that she might emerge from this transition period strong in faith, with her character formed as God would have it be. I also prayed for Helen and Bob, that God would give them both wisdom and patience, a vigilant awareness of her progress, and the fearless love to let Doreen find her own way to Christ.
Afterward Bob thanked me. “While you prayed, I was reminded that we aren’t going through this time alone and that Doreen is God’s child, too.”
Prayer sets problems in the context of God’s presence and power. It’s easy for people to forget that God’s love and presence encompass their immediate problem; they forget they are part of a larger reality.
In prayer God has given us a unique gift to draw people to him. Pastoral prayer helps us look past the problem to the Solver of problems. It shifts the focus from self to God. When I’ve used it with humility, sensitivity, and love, I’ve found prayer opening hurt and rigid people to God’s healing. And that’s what I want to accomplish in counseling.
Nancy D. Becker is pastor of Ogden Dunes (Indiana) Community Church.
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