Thesis
Biblical counseling is fundamentally the work of realigning misplaced hopes back to God, who alone is the proper object of hope and the source of regenerative spiritual life.
Series
—
Type
Topical
Tone
didacticpastoral
Method
canonicalapplicatory
What's in this sermon
The shape of the argument
27 units across exposition, application, illustration, theological claim, and conclusion. The pastor's argument is built from these moving parts.
Pastoral correction · unit #14
"Applies the theology of hope to counseling practice: the primary qualification for biblical counseling is being a person rich in hope through repeated cycles of sin, forgiveness, and redemption. Instructs counselors to lavishly give hope early and often, particularly to those who have abandoned hope itself. Roots hopefulness in being born again to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3), having Paul's testimony of redemption despite sin, and understanding that God's faithfulness exceeds our faithfulness."
Proverbs 10:28 | 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 | 1 John 2:28-3:3 | Romans 5:1-5 | Genesis 3:6 | Job 19:10 | 1 Peter 1:3 | 1 Timothy 1 (Paul's testimony) | Hebrews (don't put trust in money, for he has promised 'I will never leave you nor forsake you') | 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 | Matthew (removing the plank from one's own eye) | Luke 7:47 (he who has been forgiven much loves much - paraphrased) | Luke 7:47 | Matthew 11:28 | Psalm 46 | Psalm 34 | Hebrews 12:11
Illustrations· 6
Hope as Lendinganalogy · unit #1
— Provides an analogy for how hope-giving works: it's like lending money—you can only give what you have, and the person in need comes to borrow from your reserve.
The Pastor's Hope Misalignmentpersonal story · unit #4
— Uses the pastor's own hypothetical experience to illustrate the hope-misalignment cycle: shifting hope from the Lord to one's own pastoral efforts leads to spiritual exhaustion, increased susceptibility to sin, eventual crisis, and God's gracious use of suffering to realign hope.
Learning False Promises from Foodpersonal story · unit #9
— Uses the pastor's own Baptist upbringing and relationship with food to illustrate how we learn false promises about objects—that food promises comfort, happiness, or reward—associations taught by culture rather than reality. Invites congregational participation to surface common cultural lies.
When Discomfort Becomes a False Compasspersonal story · unit #11
— Illustrates a particularly subtle form of misplaced hope: believing that discomfort itself is a compass for righteousness, leading someone to create unnecessary problems. Demonstrates how false promises can be inverted (comfort = good becomes discomfort = good) while remaining equally false.
The Melting Iceberg of Selfishnesspersonal story · unit #16
— Illustrates gradual, imperceptible transformation through sustained gospel exposure. A woman deeply convicted of her selfishness experienced no dramatic deliverance but discovered after years of gospel preaching that the iceberg of selfishness had slowly melted through repeated, faithful exposure to the Word. Demonstrates that hopefulness includes trusting God for slow transformation.
The Pizza Party Promisepersonal story · unit #18
— Illustrates the nature of biblical hope (expectation of good based on God's promises) through the boys' response to winning a pizza party: genuine anticipation that affects their hearts, attitudes, and conversations—not just intellectual assent but lived expectation that shapes behavior and emotion.
Theological claims· 7
The entire counseling process is about getting hopes realigned to the Lord, and when hope is properly placed, it functions as a regenerative engine producing joy, purity, and renewal. unit #2
God has designed a gracious system where misaligned hopes lead to self-inflicted suffering, which produces endurance, then character, then hope, bringing people back into proper alignment. unit #3
All biblical counseling, whether addressing recent crises or lifelong patterns, is fundamentally about getting hopes realigned to God. unit #5
Hope is downstream of a promise—people attach hopes to objects and circumstances that appear to promise fulfillment of their desires, a pattern rooted in the fall. unit #7
When people's misplaced hopes repeatedly fail, they often abandon hope itself rather than examining what they placed their hope in, creating a defense mechanism that prevents progress because they cannot move forward without hope. unit #13
The key to being helpful as a counselor is being hopeful, and hopefulness is the product of having been forgiven much and experiencing both dramatic and gradual transformation through God's Word. unit #15
Counselors must resist placing hope in any created thing—health, wisdom, programs, community—and instead hope in the Lord alone for the person they are helping. unit #21
Quotations· 3
"distinguish between hopes that are ill-founded and vain and hopes that have a sure foundation. The range of ill-founded hopes is as wide as the human capacity for self-deception. It is vain to place one's hope in military might, in one's own wisdom or righteousness, in riches, or even in the temple or the law of Moses. All of these are inadequate basis of hope. And indeed, for the unrighteous person who trusts in such thing, there is no hope. Thus, the majority of scriptural references to hope elucidate the only true foundation of hope, God. In this, there is a remarkable continuity between the Old and New Testaments."
— one author (unit #6)
"a concept involving trustful action... trustful anticipation particularly with reference to the fulfillment of the promises of god"
— unstated theological source (unit #19)
"biblical hope is the expectation of good that is based on the promises of god"
— unstated theological source (unit #19)
Read it
Full transcript
37,252 characters27 units~41 min reading time
0 · Sets the frame for the entire teaching: establishes the central concern (what to do in a first counseling conversation) and immediately gives the answer (give hope)
If you've got the sheet, I do need people to read scriptures today. And, of course, you can prepare in advance. It would be wonderful. Read loudly. That would be great. Thank you for being here. If you were to take any counseling training course through any of the major organizations that do equipping, basically everybody agrees that the most important thing to do at the beginning of a counseling relationship is to give hope. What I'm going to do is assume that you don't know, like, essentially, let's just talk about the first conversation. That is literally the conversation, not in a formal sense, although it could be where someone comes to you formally and says, I would like counseling. But you're just talking to someone who's going through some stuff, you know. What's the thing you do? What's the thing you should do that you want to make sure you do in that first conversation? And so let's keep this super informal, although all the rules apply for formal too. And the thing you would want to do is you'd want to give that person hope.
1 · Provides an analogy for how hope-giving works: it's like lending money—you can only give what you have, and the person in need comes to borrow from your reserve
You would want to essentially lend them as if it were money. You want to essentially lend them some of your hope. This is the way to think about it. I come to you and say, hey, do you have $20? I don't have $20. Can I borrow $20? And if you have $20, you give me the $20. This is exactly what is going on when someone confides in you they're struggling in some way. They need help. They need you to give them hope. They need you to give them some of your hope. And that means, of course, that you have to have hope ready, which we'll talk about toward the end.
2 · Advances the controlling theological claim of the sermon: the entire counseling process is fundamentally about hope redistribution—getting hopes properly aligned back to the Lord
But what do you do that first time someone shares? I'm struggling. Whether it's in a formal context or informal. You can't do everything. What do you do? Well, everybody would agree on this. Everybody that's good at this would agree that it's a matter of giving someone hope. Now, I believe that the entire counseling experience, the whole crisis that a person is going through is just about getting hope back where it should be. It's just about hope redistribution. I'm not a big redistribution of wealth guy, but I'm a big redistribution of hope guy. I actually think the whole counseling process is just about getting people, getting their hopes realigned. This is a pretty ancient thought. Augustine would have agreed with me. He just would have said love and not hope. But I think we're kind of talking about the same thing. To get your hopes in order, to get your loves in order. This is really what counseling is. So let's look at these three verses on our handout. My first contention is before we start talking about hope, and we're going to define it, and we're really going to think about it more deeply than perhaps commonly do. Our first contention is that those who are properly hoping in the Lord would probably never wind up in need of encouragement or care. I think that's true. I just think that means we don't. Most of us aren't properly hoping in the Lord because we all feel a discouragement and so on and so forth. But let me see if I can make that case. Can someone read Proverbs 10, 28? Okay, so what I want you to see is that if you have your hope situation squared away, you're going to be getting fuel from the Lord. And what we see in Proverbs 10, 28 is that hope produces, if you have right hopes, it produces joy. All right. And how about 1 John 2, 28 through 3, 3? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And then 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18. Thank you. Okay, so there we have hope renewing day by day. So the argument is, is that when we have our hope in the Lord, we have an internal engine of joy. We have an internal purifying kind of sense that kind of cleans things up. And we have an internal renewal system in some respects. So I would argue that hope is actually kind of a regenerative thing. It actually is meant to give us energy, to keep us pressing forward. It's like an engine.
3 · Introduces the mechanics of spiritual decline: misaligned hopes drain spiritual energy like a phantom battery drain, leading to increased temptation, spiritual dullness, and eventual crisis
And false hope, I would argue, is sort of like what happens when you have an old car that has like a phantom battery drain on it. And what that means is, is that if you just kind of don't start it every single day and so forth, you're running a highly inefficient system and your battery is going to go dead. And you're like, well, how did this go dead? It's like, well, you've been draining yourself for a long time. When our hopes aren't properly aligned, instead of being regenerative and sort of feeling energy and joy and renewal, that comes from hoping properly, when our hopes are improper, we start to get tired. We start to lose energy. And one of the things that that will do as we get tired is we start to become more susceptible to additional temptations. And it's kind of a cascading effect. So you've got your hopes misaligned. You're weakening. You don't have a lot of encouragement. The inner dynamo isn't really working like it ought to. You become more susceptible to additional temptations. You start doing dumb things. And usually what will happen, and maybe the reason why someone would talk to you, is there's some kind of a crash that happens. You could trace all of that back, perhaps, to some kind of a hope misalignment. Instead of their hopes being proper, and they were getting energy and joy, their hopes were improper, and they were wearing down. As they're wearing down, they're looking for dopamine band-aids and whatever else. They become spiritually dumber. It's just a thing. I've been there many times. And the thing that will eventually get me to talk to someone or get most people to talk to someone is there's usually some kind of train wreck where you're like, okay, things have gotten bad enough for me to now be open to talking to somebody. Now, my contention is that that is the world as God has designed it. What I just described is why the curse exists, why there's friction in the world, why there's entropy, why the second law of thermodynamics, so on and so forth. My contention is that God has created a system where when your hopes get misaligned and you start losing energy, it will lead to a moment of self-inflicted suffering, typically, and that that suffering will actually teach you to recalibrate your hopes. So I get that from Romans 5, 1 through 5, which I'll read. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we obtain peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him, we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
4 · Uses the pastor's own hypothetical experience to illustrate the hope-misalignment cycle: shifting hope from the Lord to one's own pastoral efforts leads to spiritual exhaustion, increased susceptibility to sin, eventual crisis, and God's gracious use of suffering to realign hope
So let me see if I can just make this really personal, and I'll use myself as a case study. This is on the fly, so I won't be able to get super specific, but let's just say, slowly over time, I'm a pastor, right? So let's just use that. Over time, I am no longer hoping in the Lord to care for my church, but I'm hoping in my own efforts, or I'm hoping in some plan I have, you know? So I've got a hope misalignment there, and it's very subtle, you know? There was never a moment when God dropped a sign down from heaven so I would know that I had done this. I just have done this, and so now I'm off of the regenerative, life-giving track, and I'm starting to have some kind of a battery drain. My hopes are misaligned. I'm starting to get tired. The joy isn't there, and I don't know that the reason for that is because my hopes are messed up. I'm not aware of this yet. Well, in this state, I start getting testier and testier, you know, because what I don't realize at the time is I'm trying to do this myself and so on and so forth. And so now I become more susceptible. Maybe I'm just, like, ungrateful. And so, like, the temptation to go, like, binge on some McDonald's or to yell at someone or something like that starts to creep in, you know? Things I know are wrong, but, like, my defenses are down a little bit because my hopes aren't right and I'm getting tired. Well, that's kind of low-grade stuff. Really no one's going to notice. But if I keep on that trajectory, eventually I'll do something that will really force me to have a hard experience. I'll be in a suffering moment, a self-inflicted suffering moment. And Paul says here, and this is suffering of all kinds, whether you caused it or God just has decided that, hey, you have cancer. However this plays out, suffering, Paul says, endurance produces character and character produces hope. So what I think God is doing, essentially, is he's created a system that even when our hopes get misaligned, the machine starts to slowly break down. We crash into a tree. We're suffering. We're suffering self-inflicted often. And we start dealing with this. Well, just getting out of the situation we caused ourself will actually wind up producing, because of the Lord and his kindness, it'll produce endurance and that'll produce character. And that character will produce hope. And now we're back into hope realignment.
5 · Synthesizes the central argument: all counseling is fundamentally hope realignment work, distinguishing biblical counseling from therapy by its goal of completion rather than perpetual introspection
That's my argument that the whole counseling experience, from before the person even knows they have a problem, to, oh, my goodness, I have a problem, to what you're doing in their life with them, is it's just all about getting these hopes set in the right places. And when you're done, you're done. There's a really, this is the difference between biblical counseling and therapy. Like, we're not trying to find problems so we can bill your insurance. Just, we really kind of would like you to be done with the problem, and we don't want to be done with you and so forth. But we have no motivation to keep you navel-gazing and staring deep into your own neurosis. We just want to help you as much as we can and hopefully get the hopes all stacked back up. Mixed feelings about chiropractors, but I don't think it's that off to think of a vertebrae and to think about this idea of just getting everything back to where it needs to go. And God can do that for us. We might have gone a long time, though, with our hopes misaligned. And we might actually have hopes that have never really been properly aligned. And so there's this constant drain. I don't think that a lot of people know how much they hope in pleasing other people. Because you can go a long time without crashing your car with that particular sin. You know, you can go a long time without creating some kind of massive self-inflicted thing. But it'll happen. Usually it'll happen when you can't please somebody that you're really trying to please. That was my experience. But you can go, you know, a good chunk of your life not realizing that that hope is misaligned. One of your major kind of hopes in life is to win friends and influence people. That's a survival strategy for you. And you haven't given that to the Lord like you need to. So sometimes counseling can be a deep thing because we're dealing with 20 years of things. We're dealing with people who learned certain behaviors from their parents, so on and so forth. But I would argue that in the end of the day, all we're really doing is we're just dealing with hope. That's all we're doing.
6 · Transitions to defining hope by first distinguishing true from false hope
Not to skip ahead because I don't want to skip ahead. But I put at the end here, as cheesily as possible, biblical counselors are hope dealers. Not dope dealers. We're hope dealers. I put a Z at the end of dealers because that's how we talk on the streets. That's really all we're doing. Sarah found it. She's like, oh my goodness. I tried to find like graffiti clip art that said hope dealers, but I couldn't. No one's done that yet. Yeah. Yeah, a dollar sign. Yeah. All right. My argument is that God has the cataclysm at the end of this cycle to throw us back into the Romans 5 cycle. And we start working our way back and getting all of our ducks back in a row. And then we have another good stretch until something else. But God is good. All right. To understand hope, I think one of the things we need to do is we need to understand what false hope is. So let's think about that. Understanding hope at the beginning of first page. True versus false hope is a major concern of the Lord. The biblical writers distinguish, one author puts it, distinguish between hopes that are ill-founded and vain and hopes that have a sure foundation. The range of ill-founded hopes is as wide as the human capacity for self-deception. It is vain to place one's hope in military might, in one's own wisdom or righteousness, in riches, or even in the temple or the law of Moses. All of these are inadequate basis of hope. And indeed, for the unrighteous person who trusts in such thing, there is no hope. Thus, the majority of scriptural references to hope elucidate the only true foundation of hope, God. In this, there is a remarkable continuity between the Old and New Testaments.
7 · Introduces the crucial concept of hope mechanics: hope is downstream of a promise
So actually, when you really read the Bible with a view to hope, you'll see that God is just talking about this constantly. But he doesn't always use the word hope. He'll say trust, lean not, these ideas. Now, I want to talk about the mechanics of hope for a minute. Because hope has something to do with promises. And I want us to talk about this so it soaks in. Hope is downstream of a promise. Let's break this down into a few components. Firstly, people want certain things. Sometimes those are physical things. Sometimes those are emotional things. We've all been created with a series of needs and appetites and so on and so forth. Secondly, in a twist of God's creation, and this could be traced to Genesis 3 and also Romans 1, people, objects, circumstances seem to make promises to give us things we desire. Okay? Okay?
8 · Expositionally unpacks Genesis 3:6 to demonstrate the mechanics of misplaced hope: Eve believed the fruit promised wisdom—a promise the serpent made, not the fruit itself
So someone read Genesis 3.6. Okay. Okay. So, Okay. Okay. So let's break this down. Try to figure this out. Is the tree telling Eve, eat me, I'm good? Kind of, right? It looks attractive. It's communicating visually. But there's one thing, there's one desire here that Eve is believing about the tree, right? What is that? The fruit has the ability to make one wise. That's not, the tree's not saying that. The serpent's saying that. So sometimes, sometimes we can learn the wrong lesson about an object. And, but we can believe that that's the lesson.
9 · Uses the pastor's own Baptist upbringing and relationship with food to illustrate how we learn false promises about objects—that food promises comfort, happiness, or reward—associations taught by culture rather than reality
I've made a commitment to myself when I've prepared these counseling conversations to be extremely vulnerable. Because I want you to see that. I don't want you to, but I want you to think about this. Here's an example of something vulnerable. I grew up in Baptist, mid-Missouri Baptist culture. So what does food actually say to me that's true, but then what does, what have I been potentially taught about food that isn't actually what food promises? Say, say some things. Say some things out loud. What kind of bad Baptist Midwestern lessons about food that aren't really true, but what kind of things? Clean my plate. What else? Comfort. Make me happy. Better. That's very Baptist. Yeah. They're like, they're like, don't dance, don't drink, but type 2 diabetes is A-OK. Yeah. Yeah. So those aren't true messages, but you can be taught. There's a verse in 1 Peter that we've been redeemed from the feudal ways of our ancestors. People teach us things, and so then we get associations with certain objects or certain things or certain circumstances, and those just become like, they appear to present messages to us.
10 · Draws the congregation into identifying objects and circumstances that falsely promise fulfillment: money, work, beauty, physical appearance, social success, having children, losing weight
Can we think of another object or another circumstance like that? Yeah. What? OK. I'm going to get a stool, so talk. How does that? How does that? What message does it bring? OK. OK. And who's teaching that to us? OK. OK. Yeah. Yeah. What else? OK. Identity. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I mean, one of the ones that I'm thankful for in some respect, but it was not the right exact message was like, I was taught how to like be extremely sensitive to the room and like fit in. Don't impose. Don't impose. Understand your place. You know, I actually think that's not a terrible thing. But there were messages about social situations that weren't necessarily about like the truth. They were just a little off. Or maybe the reason why you would want to do that. It's a classic one for most unbelieving families is just like go to college, you know, get a good job, you know, all that stuff. That's what success is for a lot of parents that teach their kids. so you're understanding maybe we need to do two two let's do two or three more other things that that are like this yeah like we're looking for things that promise maybe they don't promise but we've been told that they promise certain things we're looking for things that people hope in like car like work like what beauty yeah beauty yeah how you look yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so what what i'm trying to draw your attention to is that the mechanics of hope are an object and a promise make sense um but object needs to be you need to keep that more loose because it's not just a thing it can be circumstances um if you are having trouble having kids like that becomes one of these things right um if you want to lose weight like you can really think your life is oh my oh my goodness like i can't my life would be amazing if i was x pounds smaller it's like yeah that's you there's a promise that you've attached to this state of being so hope has to do with i'm saying objects very generally but it can be circumstances relationships whatever and a promise and that's that's i want you to understand that because if we're going to help people get their hopes realigned those are the things we're paying attention to and it's like okay there's a lot of cloudy thinking a lot of times and people need that they need to say these things out loud so that and then they sort of need to say them out loud a few times and then and then you have a conversation with them like the why do you think this equals this
11 · Illustrates a particularly subtle form of misplaced hope: believing that discomfort itself is a compass for righteousness, leading someone to create unnecessary problems
i had someone the other day and i didn't bring this up in the sermon because it'd be kind of a confusing point but i had someone the other day assure me that they knew they were doing the right thing because of how uncomfortable they were and so that person was like essentially arguing that like discomfort is a compass in the same way i was saying the other way in the sermon which we do that too some of us actually cause problems when we're comfortable because we we use the compass our compass is upside down sarah's pointing at me anyway uh so this person was like no no you don't understand like i know this is the right thing because i don't want to do it because it's painful it's difficult well somewhere along for them you know the message has been difficulty equals righteousness which would really be a bummer to be married to that person because just when you're relaxing on the couch they've got to cause a problem
12 · Reinforces that Genesis 3:6 is the archetypal pattern for understanding hope mechanics, showing that the same pattern appears throughout Scripture (e
okay so that's that's key we're gonna go we're gonna go back to this over the next months but if you you got to understand the mechanics of hope um and it works i think if you study genesis 3 6 you will get most of the way there and then you can actually notice that like that pattern shows up in a lot of other places um first john uh the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes the pride of life like that's that's just a reformulation of genesis 3 it's and those are all like hopes those are all desires okay before we get into helping someone one of the things that i've noticed that seems to be worth discussing is that sometimes people will go numb uh let me just read this to you i wrote this the other day when when misplaced hopes fail people will feel weary undone uprooted someone look at job 19 10 real quick job 19 10 this is the most poetically true statement about someone who has lost hope that i've heard i've read so job is complaining like he is he's lost all hope when he's a he's a tree that's been pulled out of the ground when someone loses hope they're kind of rootless they're not getting the nutrients this is my whole argument about hope that it's a life-giving thing um and when you don't have it or when your hopes have been crushed if you feel really off really off
13 · Diagnoses a particularly difficult counseling scenario: people who have experienced repeated broken hopes sometimes abandon hope itself as a defense mechanism, preferring to blame hope rather than examine the objects of their hope
a pretty common response for a person who has a bunch of broken hopes is to abandon hope in general so my argument is is that one of the uh survival techniques that people have is to just go numb um i think it gets you know clinically true also so what i will find sometimes with someone who has had all their hopes stacked wrong is that their defense mechanism involves abandoning hope itself because that's actually less indicting on them than the reality which was you just got your hopes wrong you just put your you just listened to the wrong things you you valued the wrong things you just if you you know five minutes of being honest with yourself you'd probably be fine but you'll play these games and one of the games people will play is um they could simply reevaluate the objects that they place their hope in but instead they develop a negative attitude toward hope itself it's as if out of some effort of self-preservation they would prefer to lose hope in hope rather than to just critically evaluate the things they place their hope in this makes sense to some degree from an earthly perspective if you're if you're just really walking in the flesh maybe you're not a christian at all or maybe maybe you're just really you're in a down period you know think about it this way just from a logical perspective you hope in nine different things and all of them fail you're like what's the common denominator well you but you won't see that because you're a sinner uh it's hope is the common denominator because at some point you you lose hope but you get your heart broken enough and you start thinking the problem was love the problem the problem wasn't you know the people i was loving the ways i was loving or anything problems love same with hope right and uh so what what you'll find is that some people are in this numb state this is actually a problem because until they hope again they're not going to make progress it's a rough place to be where someone is afraid to hope
14 · Applies the theology of hope to counseling practice: the primary qualification for biblical counseling is being a person rich in hope through repeated cycles of sin, forgiveness, and redemption
but this is why it is so crucial for the early transactions in a caring discipleship context to simply be you giving free hope you're you need to be rich in hope and you just need to be like not even nonplussed about it just be like here's more hope here's more hope because hope is the thing it's going to pivot this we're going to we're going to escape this by getting our hopes realigned and someone who is um abandoning hope itself you know that's rough and you're going to need to speak into that eventually uh not not not immediately immediately just give hope just give hope just give hope maybe they'll they'll think well that feels pretty good they'll also have to deal with the fact that you seem relatively okay and you're a hopeful person which you know that that helps them reevaluate but this is the main qualification i would say of being biblical counselors being a person who is who has hope because you have to have enough to give away so here's a number of uh of verses that are related to you just being a hopeful person first peter 1 3 uh having been born again we are told in first peter 1 3 we are born again to a living hope so if you're saved this is a thing you can have you can be a hopeful person first thessalonians 1 2 through 3 paul says that the thessalonians have a reputation for being hopeful people that's what you want to be you want to be you want to have a reputation for being a hopeful person that's that's a very helpful person a hopeful person is a helpful person one of the ways i would counsel you to get most optimally prepared to be a hopeful person is you need to have some version of paul's testimony in first timothy chapter 1 i was the chief of sinners but i received forgiveness so that through me the chief of sinners guide my display you need to have that story because you need to be able to say listen i was really toast and god god i didn't i didn't think i was getting out or i didn't deserve to get out or whatever whatever your version is um and god saved me and he took care of me and he restored me and so on and so forth when jesus tells us in matthew to pull the plank out of our own eye he's doing that he actually says pull the plank out of your own eye so that you may see clearly to help your brother one of the functions of someone who has lived a repentant life and they've sinned and they've dealt with it sometimes quickly sometimes slowly um they fought they fought different sins they fought different sins in different ways they've had periods of long insolence they've had quick repentance this is the product of someone who is mature what is maturity i mean one of the best ways to maybe define maturity is someone who's gone through the grace cycle a lot um this is what will make you a hopeful person is when you see god's grace to you was not in vain when you see that the mercy that he's given you when you see how hard-headed you've all you've been how how many things that you've had to deal with how many things you've had to deal with that you weren't necessarily chosen by you they were given to you by your family or your culture or whatever a person who keeps getting redeemed and keeps getting forgiven daily that's a hopeful person you know uh some time ago i don't know how many years ago i tried to start making the practice of not just asking god for forgiveness but of asking god to forgive me on account of the blood of christ and that's not from some you know charismatic superstition about the blood of christ i just want to have a conversation with god in which i understand i'm not being forgiven just because i'm i'm being forgiven because he shed his own blood for my soul what does that do for me well it makes sin feel more serious that's for sure but it also makes salvation feel far more concrete and real because as foul as i know my sin is to god i know how much he loves christ and it's far superior to the offense of my sin that's the basic math of the gospel and so uh these are the things that will make you a hopeful person is you just you just have to realize you're a butthead and that god keeps forgiving you and like that he just won't give up on you you know if you walk with him for long enough you you realize that there are just times when you've probably low-key tried to walk away from him maybe consciously maybe subconsciously and then you know you felt that that pull and you you know that wasn't you um that this is this is where hope comes from it's this i will never leave you nor forsake you kind of thing that's from hebrews why is that what the context of that is about a misplaced hope does anyone remember the misplaced hope money yep yep yep don't don't put your trust in money for he has promised i will never leave you nor forsake you so money offers a promise someone told us this maybe we reasoned it ourselves that if i have lots of this there's a promise of safety there's a promise of security status whatever um and that passage in hebrews says no that's that's not the thing that you want to hope in for that you gotta get your hopes realigned jesus is the is the reason
15 · Synthesizes the qualifications for being a hope-giving counselor: hopefulness comes from being someone who has experienced much forgiveness and therefore loves and hopes much
so the the big the big thing i want you to see is that your key to being helpful is to be hopeful and your hopefulness is really just a function of you being one of those people he who has been forgiven much loves much he who has forgiven much hopes much it's the same it's the same idea um another way to think about this is have you ever had the word of god make a dramatic difference in your life quickly and then also have you ever had the word of god make a dramatic difference in your life almost imperceptibly over a period of time
16 · Illustrates gradual, imperceptible transformation through sustained gospel exposure
like i have a friend who's a little older than me and she is just i love this woman and uh she she um i think i've told you this story before she had a period of time where she just realized that she was very selfish this is when she was maybe in her 30s and she just was like always calculating every situation every opportunity by you know herself and she just really was convicted she just wasn't loving she's very selfish and and she lived with kind of a lot of shame over this because it was pretty she realized it was pretty bad and um she'd pray about it so on and so forth but she was going to a gospel preaching church a church that really to be honest like probably only preaches the gospel i think they maybe fail sometimes to preach the whole counsel of god's word but point is very gospel preachy church and she told me that you know like three or four years into going to this church every sunday and going to the bible studies and doing all the things you do she realized that this iceberg of selfishness just wasn't like it was it was maybe still there but it was it had melted a lot and she realized that she had never really done anything she'd prayed about it but she's like how many times do you think when i would hear the gospel a little bit of that iceberg got chipped away without me knowing it and time and time again so just a person who has had different experiences with sins somewhere like or different experiences with the word of god sometimes the word of god is just like boom you're different and then but there's all this other sense that you have to have this hope of like constant exposure over a long period of time changes things this is how you become a hopeful person
17 · Pivots from the counselor's internal qualification (being hopeful) to the counselor's external action (giving hope in the initial conversation)
so that's just you being hopeful now let's talk about you giving hope and this would be within mind of that initial conversation
18 · Illustrates the nature of biblical hope (expectation of good based on God's promises) through the boys' response to winning a pizza party: genuine anticipation that affects their hearts, attitudes, and conversations—not just intellectual assent but lived expectation that shapes behavior and emotion
and i'm at the bottom of page three there's two good definitions of hope biblical hope is the expectation of good that is based on the promises of god so uh yeah we're okay i have to make sure that the boys aren't here when i talk about this i had the boys do a scavenger hunt and the end prize it took me forever to get it done because i kept forgetting but uh the end prize was uh a pizza party now some boys i think the i think the kangish boys they just like literally tried today i don't know if they've really been sweating this or not william you know he's been in and out you know the coen boys had been all in for for like a year anyway they figured it out today and they were like well what is it i walked them through the clues and i explained what the clues were i was like this basically means that whoever did this gets a free pizza party on me and they were like all jumping and hugging each other and and so i have to coordinate with all you because you have to feed your kids pizza now but uh but but what's beautiful about the gospel amongst other things is like you know there's the parable that jesus tells of the the guy who went to work in the morning and the guy who went to work at night and and the the pizza party guy gets to decide who gets the pizza and i'm like they're all in no anyway uh having that sense of i'm gonna have pizza party they're gonna talk about this they're gonna annoy their parents about this they're gonna have pizza party it's funny because we put those two words together and it's like what are they what what does pizza party mean it that everybody has some sense of like what a pizza it's just pizza right it's pizza with a festive attitude you know you know but these kids these boys are all excited about having a pizza party and they're gonna talk about it and then it's gonna be the next thing they're gonna bug me about until we get the pizza party figured out and uh anyway i'm thinking about taking one for the team i was thinking about um pulling the submit card and making ang take all of them to uh chuck e cheese like honey sorry anyway but no they have this thing they're looking forward to and it's affect it will affect their heart it will affect their attitude so on and so forth
19 · Expounds two formal definitions of biblical hope: (1) expectation of good based on God's promises, and (2) trustful anticipation regarding the fulfillment of God's promises
biblical hope is the expectation of good that is based on the promises of god but that expectation of good is not static it actually does stuff to you it warms you up it gives you joy it produces purity it it and so on and so forth another way of talking about is a concept involving trustful action biblical hope is a concept involving trustful anticipation particularly with reference to the fulfillment of the promises of god anticipation is a massive part of essentially all of the important things that we do anticipation is a part of eating good meals it's a part of sex it's i mean it's anticipation is a function it's a it's a part of god's plan for enjoyment and it's actually a very important part of god's plan for enjoyment so when you give people biblical hope you're getting them back into this beautiful experience of being a human being underneath the hand of a beautiful lavish kind god and you're getting them back into this rhythm of walking with a god who promises to do good to them and promises to bless them and promises to take care of them and promises to forgive them and so on and so forth so you can see how like man if i can get somebody back into this things things get sweet
20 · Gives concrete instruction for the initial counseling conversation: assume every struggle is fundamentally about hope, and have hope for them in the Lord—not hope in the person's abilities, odds, or natural resilience, but hope in God's faithfulness to them
so we're talking about first five minutes of talking to someone who's just struggling here's what i want you to do i want you to assume this is a conversation about hope ultimately that's what the lord's doing however they however the person presents it let's just assume for the for the next year at least that we're mostly just talking about hopes and what do you do what do you do when you talk to somebody have hope for them not hope in them not hoping their odds not hoping well you'll figure it out not hopes in hoping well you know most people are okay after this hope have hope for them in the lord model
21 · Enumerates a catalog of false hopes that counselors must resist: the person's health, the counselor's wisdom, programs, books, friendship, community, intelligence
i'm not looking to your health i'm not looking to my smartness i'm not looking to a program i'm not looking to a book i'm not looking to objects and taking promises and believing promises that they present i'm not even looking to friendship or community because that's the it's one of the idols of younger people they think community will do too much for them and they get super disappointed but community is beautiful but subordinated get our hopes aligned not hoping in community not hoping in the church not hoping in not hoping in their smarts you're smarts so on hope in the lord for them
22 · Advises memorizing a go-to hope-giving verse for use in counseling
and this is why having maybe a go-to verse this is where we'll end we'll have time for questions this is why having a go-to verse might be good so just to memorize a hope-giving verse um i think matthew 11 28 is pretty great coming to me all who are weary and burdened and i will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn from me now what i like about this this promise is that it is not a quick fix and it implies what is true that is that you'll have to work it's funny because jesus says are you tired are you weary let me give you some work uh because work's not optional that's just part of how we we just that's just life we're going to do stuff we're just going to take effort so i like this one because it's like you will this this will work but you're going to have to work and we'll do that together but i honestly think sometimes people are are despairing of hope because they've been told for too long that you know you just have to like repent and it'll get better or just have to confess and it'll get better or whatever and they think it's going to be quick and a lot of times it's not it's not super quick it's not super long either but it takes work
23 · Recommends additional hope-giving verses for specific counseling scenarios: Psalm 34 for people experiencing brokenhearted moments, Psalm 46 for those facing trouble and needing assurance of God's presence
um i like psalm 34 a lot for uh and for a lot of people that are really just really run up against it really rough moment in life the lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit psalm 46 god is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble
24 · Recommends Hebrews 12:11 for counseling people who recognize their own sin and are experiencing the consequences
and hebrews 12 11 can be very powerful if the person already understands that they screwed up uh hebrews 12 11 can be really helpful in that situation because you're just helping them remember that their screw up is uh going to have some consequences we're going to walk through those consequences together but that no discipline um all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness now what we know about our mechanics of hope conversation is is that that promise that expectation of good brings immediate good so someone who believes hebrews 12 11 i'm being disciplined i i sinned i made some bad choices and the consequences of those choices are a part of my life right now and it kind of stinks um but and god is allowing me to experience discipline not not because he's mad at me but but because he is aiming to get me back in that romans 5 one through five loop and he's going to let this discipline yield a peaceful fruit of righteousness
25 · Provides specific language for giving hope in the first formal counseling session: promise that if they submit to the Lord, they will look back on this crisis as something God used to accelerate their growth and will be thankful
and so what i will do like on the first session this isn't the first comfort like the first five minute conversation but the first hour conversation i'll just say something like i i promise you this if you'll submit to the lord obey him do what he's calling us to do you'll look back at this not as an unfortunate event but you'll look at this as a event that god used to accelerate your growth in him and you will be thankful at the end that you went through this uh that's just me giving hope right
26 · Closes the teaching and opens for questions, signaling the formal instructional portion of the session is complete
okay so that's some stuff about hope any questions you
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# Providence Community Church
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