EXPERIENCING GOD
THROUGH COUNSELLING
The book of Ecclesiastes
begins with the teacher stating that “everything is meaningless”.
How encouraging can anyone get? I recall reading this passage
during my teenage years and I always thought that perhaps this
teacher lacked some insights to the possibilities and excitement
that life has to offer. Why work so hard, if life is meaningless?
It bothered me until one day during a youth camp, the speaker
shared with some 60 teenagers on the Cost of Discipleship. The
passage was from Matthew Chapter 16: 24-28, and there it talks
about counting our cost, taking up the cross and making a choice
to follow Jesus. This was well and fine, made a lot of sense,
but I was more intrigued with the following verse 25 that says:
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for me will find it.” It jumped
right out at me, and suddenly I began to understand what the
teacher in Ecclesiastes was saying. I became convinced that
much of what we seek in life is greatly temporal and myopic.
Our careers, fame, fortune and wealth come with the price of
letting us be in control of our lives and decisions. This control
allows us to be the master of our earthly destiny, but in essence,
it shuts God out from the very centre of our lives. It’s
no wonder that the teacher ended the book of Ecclesiastes by
stressing in Chapter 12:13 to “fear God and keep His commandments”.
In sum, I can only conclude that God desires holiness from his
people. It seems that the book of Ecclesiastes is also right
about the seasons of time. Perhaps what must happen will happen,
and it is indeed a great honour and blessing for me to be able
to, yet again, bring to you WCCA 2008: Experiencing God Through
Counselling.
As WCCA evolves, we are able to look back and identify a pattern.
In 2004, the emphasis was on the Biblical foundation as a solid
framework to Christian counselling. In 2006, the message was
that the life of the Christian counsellor must be yielded and
in touch with our loving God. In this conference, we feel that
it is an important reminder to all Christian counsellors that
God’s agenda for healing is not just to recover or to
get better, but to know Him more intimately by experiencing
His love, grace and mercy in our deepest struggles and hurts.
As Christian counsellors, our challenge is not just to bring
our clients to wellness. We have the responsibility of facilitating
the experience of God in their lives. Meeting God at the points
of our needs allows the Holy Spirit to do the deepest work of
change in our lives. Indeed, one of the key goals is to bring
our clients to experience God and to be more Christ-like.
With this backdrop, we find
ourselves transcending the need to make sense of pain and suffering
as we shift our focus from the problem to the hope that we have
in Christ. The process of experiencing God in our journey far
outweighs the pain that we go through. That is why the Psalmist
could say in Psalm 23:4
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
Again in the book of James, this apparently “sadistic”
notion crops up in chapter 1 verse 2, which tell us to “consider
it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds”.
Incredulous as it sound, the Bible actually advocates suffering
so that God may do His work in us (James 1:3).
We trust and pray that
WCCA 2008 will be an enriching experience for all. May each
of us have a special encounter with God and may His love transform
us to be the light and salt of the world through our calling
as people helpers.
Danny Ng
Chairperson
WCCA 2008 Organizing Committee
