How to help people: sometimes you have to get really basic-someone asked me recently what’s your method of counseling other people…

Basically, if I am looking at a person in order to help them or disciple, counsel or guide them in even a small way, I ask in prayer beforehand: where are they at in their spiritual growth Lord? What are You trying to give or add into them now? How is the enemy of life (and their’s in particular) trying to block it? And how are you working redemptively in their lives to bring wholeness? What would they look like whole-i like to have a true image of what they are meant to look like. I might add, what needs to be confessed or forgiven in their life next. I ask this in prayer for people, cities and nations, and don’t counsel before i sense an answer. It’s a simple method which has worked for me. And seems to bless others.

 It allows me to partner more with God is actually giving each person or place, and not just give them my own ideas.

Jesus discerned their true needs, their real questions, before He responded or taught them. “Perceiving their hearts, He turned and said…” That priestly seeking of God for others, comes first if we really want to be helpful. This is also how ministry can become part of your true spirituality or increasing union with Christ. We get in awe after we can see what He is really up to in this person or place’s life. It perforce, forces us to appreciate and love Him more, which is “the big law” Jesus taught.

Christianity is a spirituality of increasing union with Jesus Christ and who He is, and therefore leads us into The Father and His Love for His Son. That’s its most basic spirituality—increasing union with Christ, so becoming more like Him in an embodied way, caught up in that space between Father and Son, in every area of who we are. We visit His cross, die to self, through confession and forgiveness, and move into His New Life in each area progressively as He leads us. So the ultimate goal is to be found “in Him”. That practice towards union is our daily practice.

And He is always working to form more of Himself in each of us, so we can be found more in Him on that day. Our spirituality is a progressive series of deaths to self to enter more of Himself.

As one pastor said, my basic job is to help guide people to their real questions! What’s next in Christ for them. These deeper question are found in union with Christ. And how to help someone else, requires us to ask Christ how He is forming Himself in this person, place or situation. And partner with that. This requires spiritual discernment of how He is working in their lives. It is revealed by Him in prayer. Another reason our basic practice in order to be helpful to anyone is to be praying.