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Lesson OneHoly Tension: Leading People Toward the Cycle of Spiritual Movement3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson TwoFour Kinds of Conversations: Provoking the Right Kind of Tension3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson ThreeThe Rhythm of SoulCare: Four Movements3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson FourThe Doctrine of First and Second Things: Beginning to Understand Radical Dependence on Supernatural Resources for Supernatural Living3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson FiveNew Covenant Provisions: Entering Tension that the Spirit Creates and Resolves3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson SixNew Covenant Community: What the Spirit Makes Possible3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson SevenSafety and Excitement: What Makes Someone Willing to be Known and Explored3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson EightThe Purity of Self-Awareness: Encouraging Trust in Another3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson NineDiscernment: Building Confidence in the Process of Discovery3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson TenReleasing What Is Alive: Touching the Soul with Power3 Activities1 Assessment
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Course Wrap-UpCourse Completion1 Activity1 Assessment
Participants 165
Discussion Questions
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Briefly review what role each of the following topics plays in SoulCare: passion, wisdom, journeying reality, vision, reframing, and categories of understanding.
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Passions are what is in me, what is driving me, the motives. Wisdom is what guides me. Journeying reality helps build wisdom and it is what is being experienced now. Vision is seeing what could be. Reframing is changing how they relate to things that have happened in the past, what is happening with you in the current time, and how they relate to God. The categories are things they have spoken about that will help you make sense out of what they are telling you.
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It’s important to know what I am feeling inside of me, what my attitudes are so that I can honestly face them and bring them to God in repentance. I also need to see what feelings, attitudes are in the other person and what is going on in their soul (wisdom). Their circumstances that has brought them conflict, grief, tension, difficulty is their journeying reality, what is happening in their life in their journey as a follower of Christ. When I have a clear view of God’s will for them as His child who has a deep relationship with Him as their first and foremost desire that is my vision for them. I need to sort through their feelings etc in exploring their relationships (reframing) and according to categories of understanding such as capacity to desire, perceive, etc and their foolishness, in doing things their way,
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Passion: Motives. What we’re really trying to accomplish.
Wisdom: understanding to move in certain directions within the conversation.
Journeying reality: what is the person experiencing right now?
Vision: That their appetite for God becomes stronger than any other appetite.
Reframing: moving from the journeying reality into the larger topic of the story of the soul, the story of their relationships.
Categories of understanding: listening to people’s stories, making sense out of the stories they tell. Understanding people bear the image of God and have capacities for relationship. We are thirsty, but depraved and not aware of our thirst for God. As a fallen people, thinking has become foolish and we have a wrong understanding of how life works. Humanity is volitional and chooses to negative, ungodly action in pursuit of a goal. We have the capacity to feel, long, thirst, think, and choose.
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If I am going to be effective in SoulCare, there must a passion inside of me that wants to see people set free from Satan’s bondage. This will take wisdom from God. I must draw on the supernatural power of the Spirit to lead and guide me. Journeying reality will help to about what’s really going on a person’s interior world, what are they thinking. As a SoulCare provider we must have vision. What is the Spirit of God up to; where is the Spirit leading? Reframing will help in how I relate to a person, what’s going on inside of me and them.
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These categories are very different than expertise and techniques and training. My wife and I have been counselors for 25 years, and we have pushed against the title of being ‘clinicians’. As we are aware of our own ruling passions, we realize we truly are dependent on the Spirit to move with His wisdom.
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How might your experiences in the cycle of spiritual growth help you provide more effective SoulCare?
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I’ve seen during my times of teaching Bible Study and Sunday School how going through these SoulCare Foundation courses has made me even more conscious to humble myself before the Lord and let Him take the reigns every time I go before His people. I’ve seen a significant difference in the presentation and reaction to what is being received since making sure I understand I’m broken, have repented (repeatedly), choose to abandon myself and reach for a Christ-like character, and have confidence that God has all that is needed. These are the experiences I’ve had, which I believe will help me provide more effective SoulCare.
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By humbling myself before God and be broken, repent of my self-centeredness and self-reliance and coming to total self-abandonment to God will be allowing myself to be used by God. I do not put in my own wisdom of how I think things should be done but just be listening and attentive to God for his leading and just obeying. Like what Dr Crabb said, I would hope that but I know I cannot do it. So I just have to pray that God will take control of my will and let me desires what he desires.
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My experience in spiritual growth helps me provide soul care as I completely lay aside all my self thoughts and ambitions and allow The Hoky Spirit to bring me to a place of surrebder and brokenness before Him. Being open to hear Him , and follow His direction so I can be released to bring out what He placed deep with me and be effective in stirring the appetite of another to see their deepest need for God.
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When I realize how self-centered I am, even when I propose to help others, I become broken before God. When I repent, I am also expressing that I long instead to become other-centered. When I abandon myself to the resources and work of the Holy Spirit, I cease to rely on flesh dynamics to get what I want for a better life. The Holy Spirit himself will give me a new sense of confidence that comes from him, and not the flesh. I can rejoice when I see the Spirit release life from me to the other person whom I’m offering SoulCare to. Now I am providing really effective SoulCare according to the agenda of God for this person, and by the power of God moving in this person.
#SoulCare
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I believe that as I rely on the power of Christ I will begin to experience a spiritual power to enter another person’s battle and allow the Spirit of God to work through me to provide soul care to that person.
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Why is it a mistake to focus on retreating, advising, or empathizing while attempting to provide SoulCare? Which of these three mistakes are you personally more likely to make as you attempt to engage in SoulCare? What do you think predisposes you to make that mistake?
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To retreat means to give up on helping the seeker; advising usually comes from our own experience and wisdom of what we think is the case and how we can fix it but all these are wrong. I would think empathizing is good but not enough. That person must come to a point to let the Holy Spirit work in their lives. For me, I have made all these mistakes in my attempts for SoulCare. What predisposes me to make these mistakes is that I am eager to help but my help comes from me, instead of me being used by God to minister to the person.
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It is a mistake to focus on retreating, advising, or empathizing while attempting soul care.Soul care is allowing The Holy Spirit to work through me in allowing the other person to have a hunger and thirst fo God above the circumstances of his/her life.To retreat is backing away from what I may not understand, or what overwhelms me. To give advise is attempting to solve by giving solution I think may work to make things better. To empathize, which is wonderful to show my feelings of care for this other person, but I need to allow The Holy Spirit to move with wisdom and seeing that person open up speak to bring him /her to the reality of the need for soul care.
I’m predisposed from experience to back away after learning of the situation and feeling that I wasn’t capable of handling the matter. This is a mistake in not depending completely on The Holy Spirit to guide me with wisdom.
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Retreating, because you find the problem larger than you can handle, is a cop-out because you do not rely on the resources of the Holy Spirit instead. Moreover, the person will sense either that you don’t care or that he must be a hopeless case.
Advising too early before exploring the person doesn’t help because your advice is often based on your presumptions. Moreover, asking him to follow your smart-aleck advice causes him not to rely on the Holy Spirit himself.
Empathizing merely makes the person feel better because you are there for him. But what is more essential is for him to know that God is there for him. Empathy given too early may also block the realization of his own sin in this matter.
I might be prone to advise too early. This may be partly due to the male inclination to fix problems and partly due to a desire for control (because having advice means that I know what to do and I have everything under control).
#SoulCare
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These common mistakes prevent us from getting to the core problem of each one of us, on deepest longing and desire for God. These mistakes and many other mistakes prevent us from providing effective Soul Care.
I think, given any given situation, I might make one of these three mistakes. Even since starting this course, I have become more aware of these pitfalls and try to avarice them by replacing them with things I have already started to learn and better understand how to apply. My most frequent mistake of the three, I believe, is Empathy. I know empathy is good, not bad, but I also understand better that empathy is a start…not a solution, to providing Soul Care.
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I tend to empathize and I can see this a a mistake because I’m essentially wanting that person to feel like they are okay – since I understand where they are coming from, then they are okay where they are. This is the opposite of helping them have a hunger for God and to see how much they want and need Him. They need that hunger more than they need to feel “okay”.