Among my responsibilities as an elder\/pastor within a local church is meeting with people to offer counsel and guidance. I have never lost the wonder of being given so sobering a privilege\u2014to listen to people as they share their deep sorrows or ask their big questions and to then attempt to bring the Word of God to bear in wisdom, comfort, and direction.<\/p>\n
I recently spent some time pondering the situations that seem to arise on a regular basis. While some circumstances are entirely unique, many more have a number of similarities between them. And as I pondered these, I realized that the most common counsel I offer is this: Stop thinking in terms of \u201cshould\u201d and \u201cought\u201d and start thinking in terms of \u201cwise\u201d and \u201cwant.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Christians meet trials and difficulties or when they come to hard decisions or forks in the road, they naturally want to know \u201cHow do I please God in this situation?\u201d This is a wonderful instinct and a very good question to ask. Christians should always be concerned to do what God commands and to avoid what God forbids. I love to hear, \u201cI want<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Among my responsibilities as an elder\/pastor within a local church is meeting with people to offer counsel and guidance. I have never lost the wonder of being given so sobering a privilege\u2014to listen to people as they share their deep sorrows or ask their big questions and to then attempt to bring the Word of God to bear in wisdom, comfort, and direction.See AlsoCounsel for the Church: Following the Biblical Model for Invisible PastorsCounsel for CouplesMinistering the Master\u2019s Way<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":79756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303],"class_list":["post-79745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/lightstock_477070_medium_tim_challies-1-1.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79745"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79757,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79745\/revisions\/79757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}