Godly Counsel Is Our Job Too

Today’s reading: 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

My reaction was quite normal the day a new friend asked me to talk to his emotionally disturbed daughter. The 19-year-old woman had just returned home from two months of living on the streets of Dallas with gang members and prostitutes. The experience had been traumatic for her, and she had not said a single word in 10 days of living with her father again. Neither of them had money for good counseling and, even if they had, I’m not sure they would have known where to find it.

My friend was distraught over his daughter’s silence. He had no idea what to make of it. He desperately wanted her to talk to him, to acknowledge that she felt the love he was sending to her and to share with him her fears — and even her dreams for a new life.

“I don’t know how to help her if she won’t talk to me,” he said. “She just sits silently in her room all day. She eats what I put in front of her, but never while I’m in the room. And she never responds when I ask what she wants to eat.”

I had met this friend less than a month before through a ministry project, and I knew him to be an honest man, deeply devoted to Bible study and prayer. And I knew that, behind God, his next next priority in life was his daughter.

But I didn’t think I knew him well enough to accept his plea that I talk to her.

“I’m not a counselor,” I told him. “I have no idea what to say. I’m sure she wouldn’t talk to me either. And I might even do something to frighten her even more deeply.”

“That’s what everyone says,” he replied. “No one wants to help.”

“Look, it’s not that I don’t want to help. It’s that I don’t know how to help.”

“Just ask God to help you and go in there and console her,” he said. “She needs to hear someone else besides me talking to her about God. Even if she doesn’t respond, she will definitely be hearing.”

I chickened out.

I referred my friend to some good counseling clinics — all of which, I was fairly certain, had a lengthy waiting list or would not serve him and his daughter for one reason or another.

There are other people who are trained to deal with this sort of thing, I figured. It’s their job. Even if they can’t, or won’t, do it.

As I say, my response seems very reasonable at first glance.  I would definitely have been getting in over my head by talking to this deeply troubled young woman.

But then, if I wouldn’t talk to her, who would?

Guilt took me back to my friend’s apartment about 3 weeks after his request, and I was prepared with some uplifiting scripture to share with the daughter during a visit. But the two had moved away several days before in the middle of the night. The landlord didn’t know where they’d gone. My guess is I’ll never see either of them again.

Clearly, I blew it.

Today’s reading tells us that God offers us consolation so that we may be able to offer it to others.

In other words,  consoling is our duty under God! It’s not something that we can simply leave to counselors. Or doctors. Or pastors. Or anyone. It’s something we just have to do when called to do it — in the same way that God never fails to offer it to us.

I think of my friend and his daughter often when I hear others mention troubles in their lives: marital strife, economic worries, or even sickness.

When I hear these stories, my first urge is to simply  recommend “experts”  these people can consult who will help them to feel better.

But then I remember that consolation is my job too. So I always ask God to give me the right words to say. (And I never say simply, “I will be praying for you.)

It’s amazing how often Gods words, through me, lead to healing for my friends who need consoling.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though. It’s right there in the Bible.

Thanks be to God for the gift of consoling. May I always remember to use that gift.