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Why is it a mistake to focus on retreating, advising, or empathizing while attempting to provide SoulCare? Which of these three mistakes are you personally more likely to make as you attempt to engage in SoulCare? What do you think predisposes you to make that mistake?
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30 Replies
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Retreating, advising, and empathizing while attempting to provide SoulCare all place the emphasis on “removing the symptoms” for either the one who is providing the SoulCare or for the one who is receiving it. Retreating shuts down the ability of the Spirit to move through you. You effectively put a wall up between yourself and the one who needs the SoulCare because you’re confused, puzzled, disgusted, etc. and feel the need to reframe the situation in ways that you can handle. Advising places the emphasis on your own ability to glean from worldly or biblical wisdom and apply it to this particular situation. This only serves to make a person reliant upon your own wisdom and the world’s answers instead of those of the Spirit working in their lives. Empathy, though it is important in SoulCare, can lead to it becoming the emphasis of the interaction. The person leaves feeling very validated and loved by you, but it doesn’t lead to the overall vision of SoulCare, which is that they will have an appetite for God that is greater than any other appetite.
I am most likely to make the advising mistake, and have made it in the past. I do a lot of reading and I am constantly learning. As an educator and minister by training, with spiritual gifts that tend to lead me to teaching/shepherding roles in the church and with others, I can easily try to understand a journeying reality with my own eyes, analyze the situation, and put together a fairly comprehensive plan for better health and wholeness. There’s only one problem with that…..that goal of moving to a healthier space is a short sighted view of the vision God has for all of us. It comes from my own brain and not from a space of recognizing my own brokenness and need for my appetite for God to be greater than any other appetite.
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All are flesh. Retreating is for my own comfort. Advising is for my own comfort. Empathizing is for my own comfort.
I’m personally likely to engage in any of those 3 depending on the personality of the other person. A dominating or angry person makes me want to retreat, especially if they rant or do monologues. Probably because I struggle w people pleasing and don’t want to interrupt them, yet I find this intolerable. Redefining someone’s struggle in terms I can handle is totally for my own comfort.
Empathy comes naturally to me, so I’m probably most likely to lean on this.
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They are all mistakes because they all say “I can do something to help here in my own strength,” and that is simply not true. In ourselves we can do nothing, we need the Spirit to do the work in them and in us! I think I probably most often have thought (prior to these course) that I could bring “good biblibal advice,” I see the folly in this now, but I still have to be honest and will sometimes think as I meet with others that I might have something to offer. Fortunately for them, I have learned to listen to the Spirit when he gently says “not now Rebecca!” I believe the reason I am disposed to this is that I really want to help and want to think that there is somethig I can do, but when I am being completely honest I KNOW there is nothing in ME that is good except Christ in me. So allowing Him to do the work is my best course of action.
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When I am retreating I am focused on my own comfort zone and am backing away from what makes me uncomfortable. Our focus should be in what the Spirit is guiding us to do and say and our comfort is not a factor. Advising is me giving an opinion even when taken from a scripture, if the Lord didn’t lead you to use that scripture and in how to lead the other person I to a deeper understanding of Christ with it, you shouldn’t be using it. Waiting on the Holy Spirit to guide. Empathy is good and necessary but when that is all we have to offer it is not soul care. I think I am more prone to advising because I have been doing that with scripture for a long time
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Retreating: As Dr. Crabb explains, “You’re really moving into your own comfort zone and you’re away from moving toward SoulCare.”
Advising: This is not SoulCare. It’s “rearranging behavior” as Dr. Crabb describes.
Empathizing: It’s not the substance of SoulCare and opens the door to many more topics.
Of the 3 mistakes, I am more likely to stumble into retreat. What predisposes me in this case is first I’m very introverted. So getting a conversation out of me in the first place is a goal!…lol. Then, as Dr. Crabb as admitted himself, a lot of times I feel like maybe the person should be talking to someone else. Though the Lord has used me in ministry for many years, it doesn’t stop those feelings from surfacing.