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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 184
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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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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The role of passion is to be curious about what is happening in the other person’s life; whereas wisdom is the knowledge of what to do to be helpful for that person. Journeying reality helps us to know what is the presenting issues that they are facing now. Vision is the image of what that person may become, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Reframing refers to turning the direction of that person from finding solutions to finding God in the whole situation. Categories of understanding refers to what the root problem is, the flesh dynamics.
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Passion is what is going on inside of me as I turn my chair towards the other person. What are my thoughts and feelings as this person is sharing with me their story.
Wisdom. As this person opens up to me, what going on inside their heart. Allowing room for The Holy Spirit to go deeper into the person to bring them to hunger and thirst for God more than the circumstance of their situation.
Journeying reality brings the person from where they are coming from in life, all the family history, and their story as it is now to moving them to a place to open up to talk and wanting to relate to God.
Vision is seeing the reality of what God wants to do in greater measure for this person made in the image of God.
Reframing moving from journeying reality of what is affecting them to move to a larger topic ,which is the need of the soul to relate to God and relating to others.
Categories of understanding , what is the passion in me as I speak to be able to let wisdom stir and maneuver the appetite for soul care. To be broken before God so He can bring the person to repentance to turn towards Him. Abandoning all self to God’s provision. Having confidence in The Holy Spirit’s power to release what is most alive in me to the other person developing an appetite for God above all.
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Passion concerns what is in your heart as you listen to the other person. These thoughts, emotions and motives direct your focus. Hopefully you long for a vision for this person to hunger for God, that is larger than yourself.
Wisdom concerns what is in the other person’s heart. Hopefully you are wise enough to delve below the presenting problem into the internal world of the other person.
Journeying reality is Dr Crabb’s term for presenting problem. He doesn’t like to fix people’s problems. Instead, he sees the problem as the current reality in the person’s life, and he wants to journey with the person through that.
Vision is something larger than the presenting problem. It looks at how this person is an image-bearer, though a corrupted one, of God.
Reframing is to change the focus from just fixing a problem, to exploring what is in the person’s internal world, particularly how he relates to God and people.
Categories of understanding helps us ask the right questions and classify the data we get, as we explore the person’s internal world. We keep probing how this person, as an image-bearer of God, has the capacity to desire to relate, to perceive, to choose and to feel.
#SoulCare
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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 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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The cycle of spiritual growth growth helps me to make a more inside look of myself and enables me to depend more on the Spirit of God in order to provide effective SoulCare
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My own experiences in the cycle of spiritual growth help me see my interior world more clearly. It allows me to identify and acknowledge where I am at in that moment, quickly, so I can move through the phases to free me to turn my curious focus on what is going on for the person requiring SoulCare.
As brokenness is the first step is in this cycle, in the journey of SoulCare I will be looking to see where the person is expressing brokenness. Because it is part of my own experience, I will recognise it when I see it happening. When that that is expressed it might just be where the Spirit wants to move in that person’s life. Then I will look for other phases of Spiritual Growth and hopefully move where the Spirit is moving. -
Having experience the five phases of spiritual growth, I found it easy to relate to the lecture. Because I know what it feels like to be broken, to go before God in repentance and the struggle of letting go, abandoning me for more of him; I better understand what going on in me. Because I know what it feels like, I have these experiences that will enable me through the power and leading of the Holy Spirit to have the confidence in God working through me to help someone else, as He has helped me.
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They bring me back to humility and dependence on the Spirit in providing Soulcare.
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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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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”.
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Those are mistakes of SoulCare. We will end up wanting achieve without depending on the Spirit of God. When we don’t depend on the Spirit , people we are providing SoulCare will still remain with no appetite for God and may seek solution elsewhere other than God.
Retreat is what I am likely to face. Sometimes people I met are poverty stricken. They come with issues of no food, no money, no job and mostly I feel overwhelmed by their situations. -
It is a mistake to focus on retreating if we feel a bit overwhelmed by what the other person is sharing, advising, or empathising in SoulCare as we can do these in our own strength. If we retreat, we are looking after ourselves and not trusting the Holy Spirit to come through. Advising is fixing the presenting issue in our own strength, rather than going beneath, looking at deeper issues and trusting the Holy Spirit to move. We also ask the other person to carry out our advice in their own strength. It is too easy and may often fail. We need to journey with the person, be a presence for them, and listen for what they are experiencing and where the Spirit is moving. However, empathy can be a good thing if it builds trust and opens the door for true SoulCare to take place.
I am more likely to empathise, as it is easy. It can be just making appropriate noises at the right time, which is not what SoulCare is all about. I do it because I want the person to feel heard and to know I agree that things are hard for them. I want them to trust me and open up to me in the hopes I can help them.
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It is a mistake because it’s like putting a band aid on a gunshot wound. It does not address the root cause, will not correct the problem and does not lead to the passion of wanting God more than anything else. The mistake I am more likely to make is advise. In my conversations with others and their issues, there has been the urge to advise based on my past experiences with similar situations. Also, it has been most typical for those I’ve dealt with to follow the discussion with the question, “what do you think I should do?”
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It is easy to empathize with someone because the other person might like that. I am often tempted to feel good about myself by being able to give someone some advice that would make them change for the better. The problem with all of these mistakes is that I’m making it about me and not more interested in God’s glory and what he’s up to.