Fruit of His counsel

If we’re the salt of the earth, we preserve the word of God. Which is why we are not to add or take from it. Instead we are to love it, Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word”. So, we are to read it, meditate on it and store it in our hearts so that your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
In a world that is growing increasingly dark, increasingly antagonistic to the gospel, we are to serve, to work, for the Lord is with us.

Prayer can be our comfort in times of trouble; a source of strength – not human strength but divine power, divine strength. So that, we can go through – not around, not over, not avoid, but through whatever it is we face. Yet, so often our prayers can sound like change this or help me with this or get me out of that; can sound like grumbling and moaning; can sound like we don’t trust God to be good.
Therefore, perhaps it is necessary that we understand the purpose of prayer…

We are admonished: stop bringing meaningless offerings! The food of our Lord God is our worship. Can we pray without worship? We can, but is it wholly pleasing and acceptable to God? We must consider then, that our prayer life is beautifully transformed when our prayer includes – worship, thanksgiving, confession, petition and intercession. Our prayers reveal our hearts…

We should enquire of the Lord’s mind, shouldn’t we? We should want to know His plans, and thoughts to fight against the sufferings and the tribulations that afflict many, to fight against the schemes and snares of the devil that plague the world. But this raises the questions: Are we asking? And, what are we asking for? Perhaps, our problem is that we don’t understand the authority given to us in the name of Jesus.

Comfort and convenience are thorns in our sides at best, or tools of the enemy at worst, that we must not be asleep too. We must open our eyes to the fact that comfort and convenience are our battle, the challenge of our particular place and time. Therefore, we need to consider where in our lives we are complacent and compromised, as we are liable to be vulnerable to one or both…

Do we look at the fruit of the systems and institutions that we engage with or that exist in our reality every day? Do we go and research them?  Do we know what they believe? Do we have eyes to distinguish their fruit? The Lord will tear down for his people anything that doesn’t bear the fruit of the kingdom. So as we dive into the history of counselling, psychotherapy and psychology, what are we to conclude about its fruit?

Counsel is the word of God; and the word of God thoroughly equips us for every good work. But if we just see counsel as useless, or ineffective, as something that only happens when things are going wrong, then we miss the point of it completely and it becomes exactly that: a useless, ineffective, vain endeavour. When we bemoan that counsel has no remedy, let’s ask for whose glory are we seeking this endeavour of counsel? Our glory? Or His glory?

We live in the information age; there is an abundance of information and noise, our world is a noisy place. Hearing is not our problem; we’re hearing all the time. But are we listening? Or are we seeking what our itching ears want to hear? And when we give counsel, are we listening to answer rather than listening to understand?

For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks… So, if we just speak or sing words, if we just say all the right things, and recite all the key verses that we memorise, and don’t connect to the meaning of those words, then who or what is in our heart? We must remember our great commission because within that is implied: go and tell them how much the Lord has done for you…

What are we distracted by? And from? And by whom? We are constantly being distracted from the very thing that can set as free: Jesus Christ, the way the truth and the life; who says it is the truth that sets us free.  It is a war. A war for your attention. For your discernment. A war for your mind. A war for your very soul…