(Recently someone who attended a Christ Life Seminar at CrossLife wrote me asking if it was necessary to work through the woundedness of their past before they would be ready to counsel and help others. I am posting my response, hoping it will be helpful to others, as it was to this person.)
Their Question:
“I am getting ready to "unpack the boxes of wounded memories... Do we need to be completely at peace with everything to help others?”
My response:
“It is true we are a “work in progress” and Christ is sanctifying us (1 Peter 1:2).
It is also a fact that many counselors enter the counseling “profession" due to their own codependent issues that are yet unresolved, not realizing it.
Although we are always being renewed in our minds (Romans 12:2), it is most helpful to have worked through the deeper woundedness of our hearts. Our greatest effectiveness is having personally encountered God working through our lives, more than, “the knowledge we have of Him." Christ is the means of helping people not our training. Our spiritual journey is preparation for ministry that is most valuable.
See “unpacking the boxes” as “counseling” God is doing in you which will be your "on the job training."
Our motto at CrossLife is that “...that others may live!" God has made it clear to me that although He is always about others; the first "other" is me! I cannot touch someone else's life in a “Christian way” unless I have first encountered Christ for myself and allowed for His expression through me. Otherwise, it is just religious performance and we have far too much of that in “behavioral counseling” today.
Christianity is real and real Christian disciples share what they know through participation with Christ not just what they know intellectually about Christ. We do not know through learning (2 Timothy 3:7) “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth,” but through His abiding presence in us. “that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:7).
This is why our identity in Christ is central to understanding not only who we are but how we were designed to function as human beings. An effective disciple of Christ cannot be “stuck” on him/her self but must be working from Christ as his point of reference! Self-orientation and self-focus is antithetical to the "love by which we are to serve one another." Instead of being self-oriented, divine love is unselfish and other-oriented.
True discipleship is a call into an intimate spiritual transformation by relationship with Christ. As we choose to participate in Him intentionally, relationally, and spiritually through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit (Roman 8:9) we are not only transformed but equipped for ministry but transformed by His love. The apostle Paul testified of this in 2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:1a, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. Therefore, since we have this ministry…”
This is the divine order of true Christian ministry, personal convent relationship in Christ. The most powerful ministry is not taught but caught. As we almost "unconsciously," spontaneously live our lives, people see Jesus (John 12:21). They see Jesus not because we are trying to minister to them but because, that is who we are, Christ-ones. True Disciples of Christ are made! Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
It is not what we know or do but what He is doing in us, as us and through us. Paul writes in Philippians 2:13 “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”
Whenever we are experiencing a lack of peace in our hearts, God is greater. We are admonished in Colossians 3:15 “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called...”
I would encourage you, that whatever God is surfacing in your heart is a loving invitation from Him that you might experience a greater level of freedom in Christ, and as a result you would be able to share with others more effectively. Jesus invited us to Himself in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
