This week’s blog is sponsored by Insight Counseling, providing counsel, care, and training in the grace and power of Christ. Click here to find out more.
Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:2-3)
I recently planted shrubs to create a little healthy privacy between neighbors’ yards (Prov. 25:17), and I had to find some very different types of plants that would grow under the same conditions of light, water, and temperature. Only time will tell if they can grow side by side and flourish together for the desired result. These growing plants are very much like the qualities God intends to cultivate in us. He often makes surprising pairings that serve as a sign that gospel growth is present. He pairs humility and strength (Matt. 5:5), scarcity and contentment (Phil. 4:12), pain and joy (Heb. 12:2), as well as many others, to draw our hearts to the kind of growth that is uniquely Spirit-driven.
True gospel growth never gives us the sense that we are able to withstand more and more with less and less difficulty. Rather, it expands our awareness that we need “every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” in times and places we never even knew before.
Deuteronomy 8 does just the same thing as God reminds His people that the twin fruits He intends to produce from their wilderness journey are resilience and dependence. He granted them a humbling hunger that often took them to the brink of destruction, ultimately producing a strength and perseverance in them that would endure. However, the trial wasn’t pushing them to dig deeper into themselves and their inner resolve but to make them more aware of their utter dependence on God and His mercy. True gospel growth never gives us the sense that we are able to withstand more and more with less and less difficulty. Rather, it expands our awareness that we need “every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” in times and places we never even knew before.
Biblical counseling, like most counseling, begins with a sense that a person needs greater strength and resilience to navigate the challenges of life well. I once had a woman yell two minutes into our first meeting, “I need coping skills!” She was right. She wanted the first shrub of resilience to grow, but the willingness to cultivate the fruit of dependence on God—the ultimate coping skill—was not there yet.
Both Christians and non-Christians are beginning to question the growing dependence on counseling in a culture that sometimes lacks resilience. Though this is a worthy question to address, Scripture gives us the path to that deeper strength. Often a season of biblically based reflection on how to grow both resilience and dependence can be critically helpful. Many questions can be unanswered heading into that season. Why has this challenge affected me so much? What does it look like to depend on God? Do I even want to get stronger and more dependent on him? Why do other people think this is affecting me more than I do? These questions and others can lead us to the very place and person who is the “rock who is higher than I” (Ps. 61:2).
Insight would love to help be a guide to “The Guide” and witness growth only He offers.
