Howard Eyrich, MA, ThM, DMin.
(Part I of IV)
Introduction
Let me begin with a short illustration of a case study. I received an email from a gentleman (hereafter, John) last spring. He said, “The pastor said I need to see you.” He previously emailed the pastor, and the pastor had emailed him back, recommending that he see one of our other pastors on staff. The other pastor met with him. After listening for a while, he walked him through the gospel. Subsequently, he showed up at my office.
His wife had served him with divorce papers, and he was utterly shocked. He had no idea this was coming. Again, I listened for about 30 minutes. Then, I began to ask him some questions. One of the questions was about their church and Sunday School attendance. The conversation went like this:
John: Well, we’re here about twice a month regularly.
Me: Okay. Is that attendance Sunday School and Church?
John: Well, if we come, we usually come to both.
Me (That’s good, but not)
John: He continued, except in hunting season.
Me: Well, what’s hunting season like?
John: Well, I usually only make it once a month during hunting season.
Me: Okay, let me run you through that. Tell me if I heard you correctly: On Monday, you get up and go to work during hunting season, right?
John: Yeah.
Me: And what time do you get home?
John: Usually around six.
Me: What happens then?
John: Usually, my wife gets home an hour before me, so she has dinner ready, and we sit down to eat.
Me: After dinner, what happens?
John: Well, I go lie down on the couch and watch television, and she cleans up, and then she sits down with me.
Me: Okay, what happens on Tuesday?
We went through the whole week that way. The conversation continued like this:
Me: But hunting season is different; you get off at about three instead of five on Friday afternoon.
John: Yeah.
Me: And what do you do then?
John: I get in a pickup truck with my buddy and head south to Alabama.
Me: And what do you do on the way?
John: Well, what do you mean, what do we do?
Me: What do you do when driving down there with your buddy?
John: We talk about things of interest to us.
Me: When you get there, what do you do?
John: We cook a couple of steaks, and we eat. We take turns cleaning up.
Me: Then, at about five in the morning, you’re out on the stand, right?
John: Yeah.
Me: At about nine-thirty, if nobody has shot anything, you come back in, and you have an excellent big breakfast, right?
John: Yeah.
Me: Then you can take a nap, right? You’re heading back out on the stand about two-thirty or around three.
John: Yeah.
Me: On Sunday, you’re back up on the stand early in the morning, and you’re probably heading home around two or three in the afternoon, right?
John: Yeah.
Me: What happened Monday?
I took him through the whole month that way. When we got to the weekend, when he didn’t go hunting, our conversation continued like this:
Me: Okay, what happened on Saturday morning this week?
John: Well, I do everything around the house that I don’t get done the rest of the month.
Me: And you go to Church on Sunday?
John: Yeah, we go to Church on Sunday.
He was kind of excited about that. At that moment, the light went on. He started to understand where I was going. I gave him some homework. He was to read Greg Gilbert’s booklet, “What is the Gospel?” Another assignment was to sit down that week and write a letter to his wife explaining what he realized through our meeting. Come Wednesday night, he was trying to write the letter. He couldn’t get it written. He said, “At about 9:30, I just stopped, tears running down my cheeks. I just said, ‘God, I can’t do this. I can’t write this. I need your help.’ I started writing about 10 minutes later, and everything flowed.” Then he went to bed. At four o’clock, he woke up, sat up straight in bed, and shouted, “I got saved last night!”
Some folks wouldn’t think he got saved because he didn’t use the right words or follow the correct procedure, but he did get saved. At five o’clock, he picked up the phone. He called his wife, who had not answered his calls until then. She was on a business trip a thousand miles away. I think she thought something had happened to their daughter, so she answered. When she answered, he said, “I got saved last night! I got saved last night!” The following week, they were both in my office. She said, “The minute he told me he got saved, all of my anger disappeared.”
I’ve seen him only three or four times over the last three or four months, plus some emails. They were selling a house and buying a home. One day, he emailed me, “We’re selling and buying a house. It’s a little rough. Can you help me?” I sent him an email with four or five things to consider about communication while going through this process. When I was in church the following Sunday, he winked at me, smiled, and hurried down the hallway.
Marriage Is All About Theology
Folks, this is all about theology. The counseling we do is all about theology. Yes, having a methodology is helpful, but methodology minus theology equals failure. Keep that in mind as we think about this topic.
I. Design and Creation of Marriage: God’s Declaration and God’s Pedagogy
God’s declaration in Genesis 2:18 is, “It is not good for Man to be alone. I will make a helper fit for him.” God looks down from heaven on His creation. Everything was good, and then He says, “It is not good that Man is alone. Let us make a helper (helpmate) for him.”
Then God has some beautiful pedagogy—some excellent teaching methodology—because the next thing in Genesis 2 is not the creation of Eve. The next thing in Genesis 2 is an assignment to name the animals. I always have a little comedy when discussing it with people in a counseling session. I will say, “The next thing that God did was get on the back on the stallion and round up all the animals and told Adam to get a dozen #2 pencils, a stack of yellow pads, and a milking stool, and sit at the mountain’s crevice because He would bring all these animals that He had created to Adam so that Adam could name them.
Whatever Adam named them, that is what the animals were called.” What do you think Adam realized when he completed this task? Most likely, it was something like this: “There is not another like me.”
God taught Adam a good counseling principle. You can tell people what they need, but it works much better if you help them see what they need. That’s what God did with Adam. He helped him know what he needed by showing him what he needed.
To be continued next week