Counseling Sessions With God
Do you ever find yourself stuck? Your thoughts are unsettling, and it’s difficult to pinpoint the cause. You would like to release your burdens to the Lord, but you need more clarity to know what those burdens are, to understand the exact nature of what’s troubling you.
I have stumbled onto a tool that has been very helpful when I get stuck. I have named this tool my “Counseling Session With God,” and here’s why. As a counselor for the past twenty-five years, I have a lot of experience with how counseling sessions flow. The client comes in, shares his/or her presenting issue, talks for a while, then expects the counselor to sum things up, and offer clarity regarding what was presented.
With this pattern in mind, I idle down in my Divine Counselor’s office, under a tree, beside a rock, in my office, anywhere in the universe will do since He owns it all. Then I put my pen to the paper and write out what is consuming my thoughts. I am the kind of person whose mind can run 1,000 miles a minute, but as I simmer down, I can get in touch with the deeper layers of what I’m thinking and feeling. If I am seriously troubled, I simply start with what I am feeling right now in this moment, just as a client would do in my office. Writing is better than talking because it slows me down and fine-tunes my focus. As I write, I ask the Lord to speak into my life.
I write until the issue crystallizes. Sometimes that happens in a few lines. Other times it takes a few pages. But I find as I slow down enough to write, I can better hear the Lords “gentle whisper.”
A pastor friend of mine explains that God often speaks to us as, “an interruption of thought.” As I quiet myself, my mental commotion dies down, and a crystal clear thought dispels all the others. When God is trying to get my attention, it’s not just some random interruption. It’s a clear succinct thought that provides peace and offers help. The wisdom and clarity presented are far beyond my ability to conjure up in that moment, leaving me more convinced that ever that the message is divinely inspired.
As that clarity comes, I write down those words just as I have written my thoughts and feelings, but I’ll highlight the current words of wisdom. I may need to keep writing to finish getting my feelings out, but I can come back later to those words of insight for the answers that I am seeking. I will read and re-read the counsel they offer me.
Please understand, I am not one of those people who claim, “I do whatever the voices in my head tell me to do!” The interruption of thought is uncluttered by confusion and unencumbered by fear, and it possesses a power to bring peace, and an assurance that it is the Truth. The old saints of the church would often call that one’s “Inner Witness” referring to the voice of God in each of us who follows Him, or the presence of the Holy Spirit seeking to guide us from within.
The Inner Witness, God’s gentle whisper, or a Divine interruption of thought are all ways we seek to wrap words around the what defies explanation, God speaking to us. It is something more easily experienced than explained, but we can always check the validity of the message by God’s Word. He won’t contradict Himself. So the crazy-eyed guy on TV who says God told me to kill a certain person, clearly didn’t hear from God.
God can’t go against His nature, and that nature is represented in the person of Christ who as He walked the earth, loved sinners, encouraged saints, and died to prove it. Even if my counsel that day from the Lord is corrective, it never comes from a place of anger or disgust. It’s helpful and uplifting for me and for the people in my life.
My counseling sessions with God have supplied me with answers as straightforward as, “Let go of your offence. That person doesn’t mean to hurt you,” to as specific as, “Now is not a good time to make major purchases.” Sometimes it’s a reminder of what I already know, that God has a plan, and that He can be trusted to take care of my problems no matter how troubling they seem.