Sermon Archive
Who is Your Counselor
 Who’s Your Counselor?
  
How many of you have ever given advice, guidance, suggestions, recommendations, to someone else? Then you are a counselor. If you’re a husband or a wife, you are a counselor. If you’re a mom or a dad, then you are a counselor. If you are a teenager, you are a counselor. If you are a friend you are a counselor. If you’re a brother or a sister, a Sunday school teacher or a youth worker you are a counselor. Do you realize that you give and receive counsel every day? Much of life is about giving and receiving counsel.
 
The book of Proverbs divides all counsel in two ways: 1)The way of the wise  and 2)The way of the fool. The question is this: Is the counsel you give the way of the wise or the way of the fool?
 
Two important truths to understand:
1. All of us are people in need of change! For example, how many of you lived conflict free last year, last month, last week or the last few days? We are people in need of help, in need of counsel.
 
2. God has called us all to be instruments of change in His hands. You and I are part of what God is doing. You and I are people involved in the personal ministry of changing hearts and changing lives.
 
So let me ask you what does the Bible say about being an instrument of change, a counselor, in the life of someone else? This answer is found in Gen. where it gives us truth about creation, the fall, and redemption.
 
I. The Creation of Human Kind   Genesis 1
 
God, after he had created Adam and Eve, talked to them. Why is that important? Think about this: these are perfect people, living in a perfect environment and God did NOT think they could live life without His council. God comes to these people and explains to them what life is all about. Our need for council is NOT rooted in the rebellion and fall of mankind; it is rooted in being human.                                      Human beings need the counsel that comes from God in order to do life with God in God’s way.
 
Adam and Eve were NEVER created to figure life out on their own. To try to live apart from God’s council is like trying to drive a pontoon down the highway. Pontoons are a wonderful creation, but they were not made to drive on the highway.   
 
So God comes to Adam & Eve and He begins to counsel them.
Why? Because of these three things about human beings:
 
1st – Humans are Revelation Receivers.You & I have the ability to speak sounds that hit our ears and then our brain assembles them to make sense out of them. We were given this ability so we can hear and know other humans. Even more importantly, we were given this ability to hear God. We have been given the capacity to receive God’s revelation, God’s counsel. We are revelation receivers! Remember this: we were never meant to figure out life by ourselves.
 
2nd – Human beings are Interpreters. Hear this: Human beings do NOT live their lives based on the facts of their experience, but based on their interpretation of the facts. You and I do NOT live life based on the facts of our experience. We live our lives based on our interpretation of the facts. That principle is vitally important! We are all observing life and making interpretation.
 
Ill. My nephew, Kent, was observing his little sister who was still in diapers. Her diaper was loose and falling down in the back. As she waddled along the content of her diaper was falling out behind her. Kent, who was very young himself, made this observation and interpretation of his sister. He said, “Kim is a manure spreader!” Kim was not a real manure spreader, she was a toddler, but to her older brother she was a manure spreader. He was seeing life and making an interpretation.
 
3rd – Human beings are worshippers. Worship is not just a religious activity we do on Sunday morning.
Worship is part of our identity. We ARE worshippers! One of the great theologians, Bob Dylan sang: “You got to serve someone.” We are always living in the service of something or someone.
 
We all WANT to be the center of the universe. We WANT life to go our way, WHEN we want it, HOW we want it and WHERE we want it. Our ultimate idol is the self!
 
God comes and speaks to Adam and Eve because they need His counsel. They need Him to make accurate interpretations. They need to know that they were made to worship Him and if they are not worshipping Him, they will be enslaved to other things.
 
We were created with a need for daily counsel, NOT because there is sin in the world, it’s because we are human beings. We were never meant to live independent lives. We were meant to be dependant on God’s counsel. All of this leads us to Genesis 3.
 
II. The Fall of Human Kind   Genesis 3
 
In Gen. 3 something significant happened. Do you know what that was? Satan, represented as a serpent, comes and has a conversation with Eve. He talks to her; he asks her questions and he counsels her. What’s going on between the serpent and Eve?
 
Hear this: For the first time in human history; another counselor enters the scene! Think again about what he does. He takes the exact same set of facts and gives them a dramatically different interpretation! What a significant moment in history!
 
Here’s what you learn. You learn that there is more than one counselor in this world. If you are Adam and Eve and you listen to the advice of this new counselor – I say this reverently – you would be stupid to obey God’s counsel, because this new counselor says that God is withholding vital information from them. God is restricting them and so listening to God’s counsel is foolish.
 
Don’t ever think that the counsel you give and receive is unimportant. Counseling is often about right and wrong. It’s about true and false. It’s about good and bad. It’s about what’s healthy and unhealthy. The counsel you give, gives moral shape to a persons life. 
 
This is a sad moment in human history. In this moment for the first time ever, all the competition for the hearts and minds of people begins!
 
One of the commonalities of human beings is this; we are confused, because we no longer hear just ONE counselor, we hear thousands of counselors each and every day! Counsel comes from TV, radio, I-pods, text messages, twitter and friends. All these counselors are telling you how to do life. They are telling us what to do, what to believe and what NOT to believe.   And it gets difficult to know what is right and wrong.   All of those counselors compete for one thing – our HEARTS! The control of our heart is vital, because what we think and what we desire will set the course of our lives.
 
Adam and Eve did the unthinkable, they disobeyed God, they rejected His counsel and the world has never been the same. They disobeyed God because they followed bad counsel. That leads us to our third point about the redemption of human kind.
 
III. The Redemption of Human Kind
 
Have you ever thought this: Why does a believer need counsel? We have the Holy Spirit. We have the Bible. We have our Bible study group. Why do we need to be counseled? Hebrews 3:12-13 gives us the answer: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.  But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
 
What’s the warning here? The warning is against turning away, a falling away from God which results in rejecting God and his counsel.
“See to it that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away, from the living God …..so that none of you may be hardened…...”  
 
Do you see the progression? I first give in to sin and it is followed by unbelief and I begin to turn away from God’s counsel in the Bible. As I turn away from the Bible I lose my spiritual guidance manual and then my heart becomes hardened.
 
How could that ever happen? Look again at v13: “Hardened by sins deceitfulness.” Sin is by its very nature is deceitful. And guess who it deceives first? Me! I have no problem seeing the sin in my wife, children, co-workers, and fellow church members. But I get very surprised when mine sin is pointed out.
 
The Bible tells us that Christ, on the cross, broke the power of sin, but remember – the presence and influence of sin still remains in us.   And as long as sin influences us there will be times of spiritual blindness for all of us.
 
Here is the most significant aspect of spiritual blindness; we tend to be blind to our own blindness. We think we SEE clearly when we really don’t. We think we KNOW when we really don’t. We are BLIND to our BLINDNESS.
 
So we are told in Heb 3:12-13 to “..encourage everyone daily, as long as it is called today. So that … you may NOT be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”   We need the help of, the counsel of, one another how often? “Daily.” Our blindness is so pervasive and so significant that we literally need one another “everyday.”
 
He’s saying that personal and spiritual INSIGHT or counsel is the product of the church community – you don’t get it just by yourself. (repeat) Because of that, we need two character qualities.
 
First we need the loving courage of honesty.
Many times we SEE one another better than we SEE ourselves but we are afraid of misunderstandings, we are afraid of losing relationships and we say nothing or we trim the truth.
And often if we speak the truth we don’t speak it in love. Truth not spoken in love ceases to be truth because it is shared through an agenda. We need the loving courage of honesty to give counsel to one another.
 
Second we need the humility of approachability.
We need to be willing to receive the counsel God is giving us. We need to admit we need counsel, ask for counsel and then receive counsel in a humble way.
 
Do we need help? Yes! We are human beings. We were never meant to live independent lives. We live in a world of tremendous confusion. We have all kinds of counsel seeking to influence the thoughts and desires of our hearts. We tend to be spiritually blind and we need the insight of God’s counsel in the Bible and the counsel we find within the Christian community.
 
So let me ask you, are you getting counsel from God through the Bible on a daily or regular basis? Are you involved in a group with other growing Christians, both giving and receiving counsel? If not, why not?