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If you meet with me for counseling or any discipleship situation, you’re probably going to walk away with a few rudimentary, stick-figure sketches on blank sheets of paper. A picture is worth a thousand words. For years, I have kept a stack of printer paper on my desk, which I used to sketch spiritual concepts. A few years ago, I bought a digital tablet to show the sketches on a screen in the office and afterward zip them up to send the PDF versions to my counselees.
Jesus, the master illustrator, was accomplished in this method of teaching others. He used illustrations to take a person from the concrete and practical to the abstract and spiritual (Luke 12:27). Christ used real-life examples to communicate lofty, God-focused truths. He would draw in the sand (John 8:1-11) or point to the sky (Matthew 6:26) to make His Father’s truth come alive in the minds of His hearers. He used hair, lilies, birds, and fig trees (Matthew 21:19).
The time spent with Jesus, a master teacher, was visually stimulating and spiritually refreshing. Because every discipleship opportunity provides more information than a person can retain, it is wise to take advantage of the eye and ear gates and give them some things to take home for further review. Your goal is for the information to pass from short-term to long-term memory, aiding them to remember what they heard. A short counseling session or life over coffee with a friend will not accomplish this good aim. You want them to look, think, process, meditate, understand, remember, apply, and share with a friend. Sometimes, I would transform the sketches into an infographic and place them on our website for the benefit of our community. The infographic in this chapter is from a counseling moment with a couple who came for help.
The divided heart at the top shows the problem and implied solution of marriage—one flesh. As you can see, there is division in their one-flesh union. The diagonal arrows demonstrate the direction each person in the partnership should go. Before their marriage, they were individuals, but after they tied the knot, they began a lifelong journey toward more in-depth one-flesh-ness. The long arrow at the bottom of the page—from right to left—illustrates how the husband expects his wife to adapt to his likes and preferences rather than leading her into the mysterious one-flesh relationship, allowing both their strengths and weaknesses to assimilate into the beauty of Christ and His church. (See Ephesians 5:25-33.) The problem with a marriage that does not emulate Christ and the church is typically, though not always, the husband’s general attitude and practice that places pressure on his wife to conform to his wishes.
Of course, a wife can do similarly, especially if she has strengths that outshine her husband’s. Being the leader does not mean he’s more intelligent, mature, discerning, or further along in his relationship with Christ than his wife. Expecting your spouse to adapt to your strengths while ignoring your weaknesses rather than helping them mature according to how the Lord has gifted them will always create strife. Rather than seeing and leveraging the differences for something magnificent, a spouse may try to downgrade, ignore, or remove the differences while demanding the spouse assimilate to a marriage made in the dominating spouse’s image. Here are a few examples:
Knowing your spouse can do something better than you is a massive benefit to the marriage. Not recognizing their strengths or restricting your spouse from flexing their gifting can weaken and even kill a marriage. For example, a husband may choose to mask his weaknesses while draining the life out of her strengths. Alternatively, he could be transparent about where he fails while asking his wife to use her strengths to help him mature into ever-increasing Christlikeness. Adam was missing a rib, and Eve was the perfect person to make him whole. A key to marriage success is when two people are willing to humble themselves and have many conversations about their strengths and weaknesses.
Their goal is to make the most of their strengths while transforming their weaknesses. These ideas became apparent to me years ago as I perceived Lucia’s administrative gifting. She has the God-given gift of administration, which would make me a fool to drain that strength from her. Fanning the flame of her gifting has released me to use my strengths in other ways, which permits us to magnify God more profoundly than what either one of us could do individually. A key verse that makes a beautiful prayer along these lines is Psalm 34:3.
Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).