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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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Passion defines what’s important to me, especially as I relate to others. Journeying reality sees what’s going on in another person, taking a deeper look below the waterline. Vision is where the other person is, pursuing what might be in their future, what the spirit is doing. Reframing involves asking questions to see the story of the soul, of relationships – how they relate to and with others. As people share, understanding how this image bearer has capacities including the ultimate one for God. The overarching in-process dynamic is wisdom, which is part of all the above and reveals a better way of seeing into another person.
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Passion what’s going on inside me; Wisdom what’s going on inside another; journeying reality what the person I’m caring for is sharing; vision what this person could experience if they wanted God more than anything else; reframing looking at the story of their soul in context of key relationships; categories of understanding thoughts that are a guide to knowing how to move ahead.
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Passion is the true emotion for both parties in the soul care situation. The feelings that may or may not be spoken.
• What wisdom that will guide me in the process of providing soul care?
• Am I being aware of my own shortfalls and readily turning to God for His provisions.
• Can I not jump into fixing the superficial issue?
• Will I be willing to see God’s goodness in the other person and not be afraid to journey down the path together. -
Passions are holy or unholy things that rule within us.
Wisdom is using the power of the spirit to speak truth, in a loving way.
Journeying Reality is where you are, right now, in this moment.
Vision is remembering that no matter where the person is on their journey, they bear the image of God. Thinking about what God is doing inside of them.
Re-framing is the transition from flesh dynamics to Spirit dynamics.
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How might your experiences in the cycle of spiritual growth help you provide more effective SoulCare?
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The cycle draws me out of myself, and draw near to God, and hence in drawing nearer to God who is able, SoulCare is effective not in eliminating the problems, but turning the person to see a larger story than ourselves, a larger Person who is able to provide, a greater purpose to live for – a better hope.
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The Cycle will help me gage my place to allow the spirit to keep me focused on what it is doing rather than where I am and not pull that place into the process, I will be able to see where I am and progress to the place where I need to be to venture into the soul of both the person involved and myself. It is a useful lens to check the state of my soul, for it is a cycle that repeats itself on all of our Spiritual journey’s
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As you’ve journeyed through the cycle, and hopefully gained wisdom and insight, it can help you see where the other person is. That will help you to pray and seek the Spirit more effectively. As you listen to the Spirit and His wisdom, you will be able to lean in with the person more effectively.
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I realize that I can do nothing without God, in my brokenness, I am in need of repentance. In my daily walk with God, on this path of my spiritual journey I learn to rely on God more, and to put my trust in God, and not in others, and then I do not have to worry about impressing others, or pleasing them. The five phases of the Cycle of Spiritual Growth, is brokenness, repentance, abandonment, confidence and release. Also Dr. Larry Crabb talks about and shares the three mistakes to avoid in Soul Care: Retreat, Advise, Empathize. We all are fallen image-bearers of God, we need to depend more and more on God and not on ourselves.
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It helps me to realize how broken I am, my need for repentance and that I only grow as I abandon the idea that I can do anything without God. Having my confidence in Him and not myself will equip me to journey with people and release myself from trying to please them or me.
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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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Retreat back to our comfort zone. We bring the other person to where we are ‘secure,’ rather than journeying with the person at his/her crossroad with Jesus.
Advise as a “band-aid” solution. Often times, it portray a “expert” posture that we have the answers, when in fact we don’t have a clue how to move forward.
Empathizing to convey a “I understand” stance to the other person, when we aren’t ready to work through our interior world, and understand the other person’s interior world, and what the Spirit is doing in both our lives. Personal emotional responses (grief) is incomparable.I retreat when I sensed this is going to be a super ‘hot potato” and when I can’t envision how to help the other person. The retreat is driven by fear of being stuck in a ‘sticky’ dependency. It’s a risk I have to take if I desire to involve in Soulcare – “a drowning man holds on to a straw.” Healthy boundaries, and always directing the person to Christ who is able, not me.
Predispose: I have been stalked.
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Retreating, advising and empathizing are all common mistakes while attempting to provide soulcare, but none of these methods truly care for the soul of the other person or direct them back to God. Instead, these responses keep the focus on the problem. I am personally the most likely to empathize. I want to make the other person feel good, and I want to resolve the problem by caring for the individual. I feel like it is important to empathize, but it is also important to keep going and to uncover what is really going on in their soul rather than staying in that place of empathy.
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Your not relying on Brokenness, Repentance, Abandonment, Confidence to achieve Release, to allow the Holy Sprit to move and keep and accept the realization this is to big for me but what is in me from accepting Christ as my savior is released and will go to work on both of us. Predisposes, I used to rely on life experiences that have helped me see different Journeying Reality’s and I relied on them to piece a soul story together but you can not do this for each person is different and solely unique, you need to Journey into their story, be curious of the red dot, not impose other’s history into someone else’s unique story and place.
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When we focus on these three things we are not depending on the Spirit – we are focused on fixing the problem or getting away from it. When I don’t know how to engage – I think I lean towards empathy – because it’s easy. When I am feeling competent, I lean towards advise – giving people the “to-do” list. These are rooted in my own junk – my wanting to help so that I am needed or valued. Or my pride that wants people to think I’m wise.
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Retreating just makes a person feel more abandoned and less likely to share their issues with someone. It can cause them to be more self reliant (lost) and less aware of their need for total dependence on God.
Advising is just rearrange behavior based on limited information and partial perspectives. It is outside in help. They need the Holy Spirit to guide them from the inside out. There are no recipes or prescriptions that soul care provides to fix people or problems.
Empathy agrees with the issue, but does nothing more. It’s like patting the back of someone with a paper cut or bullet wound.
In the past, I would say that I tend to retreat when I feel like I can’t help or the hole becomes too deep for me to see the light in the person’s life. I have to be VERY mindful NOT to give advice. Part of my job is to provide resources. I have to realize that most people don’t want advice, they just want a listening ear. Beyond that, they need the Lord. I struggle with that.
I think I am predisposed in that area because “it feels ” like the right thing to do. I want people to feel better, do better and find hope after talking to me. I really need to work to take ‘me’ out of the equation and be a lesser light to guide them to Jesus.