You may not be a trained counselor, but you’ll probably have someone come to you for counsel. Throughout your life, you’ll meet people who are hurting and need help. So what should you do first?
- Ask people about their story and listen. Set down your theological formula and simply enter into people’s pain. When we begin listening to people with an agenda in mind – showing them their sin, giving them advice, etc. – we are off on two fronts. One, we are prevented from fully engaging and better understanding what their struggle is actually like. And two, we are skipping out on the biblical command to obtain wisdom before giving counsel.
If we set down our ideas of how a person is “supposed to” be counseled and just listen to where they’re at, it will better position us to care for them in the way that they actually need. - Validate and enter into their pain. Making people feel like their emotions are wrong is never helpful. When someone shares their hurt with you, resist the temptation to respond with fix-it statements like “Well, God is still in control” or “Maybe the person who hurt you was having a bad day.”
It’s not that those things aren’t true, but what people need first when they’re in pain is to feel validated.
Instead, respond with statements that acknowledge the hurt they’ve expressed and imagine what it would be like to feel what they’re expressing. Say things like “That is really hard, I’m sorry you’re going through that,” or “It really does hurt when someone says something like that, I’m sorry it made you feel invaluable. That’s really painful.” - Pray for wisdom and guidance when counseling others. Engaging people always requires sensitivity because no one struggles in the same way, nor are all people in need of the same type of counsel.
