{"id":27667,"date":"2020-08-24T13:37:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T13:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/2020\/08\/24\/wonderful-counselor\/"},"modified":"2020-08-24T13:37:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T13:37:00","slug":"wonderful-counselor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/wonderful-counselor\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonderful Counselor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My Dear Shepherds,<\/p>\n\n<p>Some years ago one of my elders visited me. He came right out with it, &ldquo;Lee, you&rsquo;re depressed and you&rsquo;re angry and you need to do something about it.&rdquo; So I summoned the courage to see a counselor where I came to realize that I lived in fear of what I thought of as <em>the mess<\/em>, the confounding and loaded situations I often had to face as a pastor. A simmering counseling situation, board tension, a lost sheep, a critic who must be faced, or just knowing that Euodia and Syntyche are at it again. <em>The mess<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n<p>Pastors aren&rsquo;t neutral arbiters or consultants in the problems facing us. They suck us in. They affect our own souls. We need God&rsquo;s counsel, not only to help others but to guard our own hearts. David, a good shepherd, prayed for God&rsquo;s protection in Psalm 16: &ldquo;Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.&rdquo; To bolster his faith, David then <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preachingtoday.com\/skills\/2020\/august\/splendid-friends.html\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">catalogued sources<\/a> of God-given protection including this part of his prayer:<\/p>\n\n<p><em>I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; <\/em><\/p>\n\n<p><em>even at night my heart instructs me. <\/em><\/p>\n\n<p><em>I keep my eyes always on the Lord. <\/em><\/p>\n\n<p><em>With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. <\/em>(Psalm 16:7-8)<\/p>\n\n<p>We might assume this means that I ask God what to do about a problem and then he tells me, but actually it doesn&rsquo;t always work like that, does it? The counselor I saw often just sat and waited, inviting me to surface what I was missing, to sort out and to own what to do or how to think. God the counselor does that, too. A lot of the time he simply listens. And God&rsquo;s listening is welcoming and weighty.<\/p>\n\n<p>When God is silent during my prayers I&rsquo;m not talking to myself. Knowing he is listening invites me to think more deeply. There with him, I realize more. The toll the mess is taking on my own heart emerges. The requirements of love come into focus. I begin to see how to move from mere moralism to God&rsquo;s grace. Scripture comes to my mind. Sometimes the quiet waiting just forces me to settle down. In all this, God isn&rsquo;t really silent, of course. His Spirit speaks without making a sound.<\/p>\n\n<p>&ldquo;Even at night my heart instructs me.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s surprising, because generally my heart can be so unreliable. But the sense here is that God&rsquo;s counsel takes root in my heart not only when I pray but even when I sleep. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the usual sorting process of our dreams, infusing our thoughts with his clarity and wisdom.<\/p>\n\n<p>The problems of our church and our people can become like those virtual reality headsets, so absorbing and vivid we can&rsquo;t see what&rsquo;s really true. So in prayer we resolve, &ldquo;I keep my eyes always on the Lord.&rdquo; That is not easy, which is exactly why we pray it.<\/p>\n\n<p>I remember a terribly difficult night when I was summoned into the middle of a toxic marriage brouhaha. It took a toll on me. I slipped into depression. At one point, as I was struggling in prayer, I cried out angrily to the Lord, &ldquo;Where were you?! When I stood there and absorbed all that venom, where were you?!&rdquo; And in the quiet I heard him say, just as clear as could be, &ldquo;I was right by your side the whole time.&rdquo; Then he added, &ldquo;And you did well.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>And that is why &ldquo;I will praise the Lord, who counsels me.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>(Next week, we&rsquo;ll think more on how the Lord speaks when he counsels us.)<\/p>\n\n<p>Be ye glad!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Dear Shepherds, Some years ago one of my elders visited me. He came right out with it, &ldquo;Lee, you&rsquo;re depressed and you&rsquo;re angry and you need to do something about it.&rdquo; So I summoned the courage to see a counselor where I came to realize that I lived in fear of what I thought <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/wonderful-counselor\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":27669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2277],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3778,5024],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-27667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-lee-eclov","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-devotions","tax_ctp_tags-soul-of-the-preacher"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wonderful Counselor - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My Dear Shepherds, Some years ago one of my elders visited me. He came right out with it, &ldquo;Lee, you&rsquo;re depressed and you&rsquo;re angry and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/wonderful-counselor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Wonderful Counselor - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My Dear Shepherds, Some years ago one of my elders visited me. 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