A word that has been increasingly familiar in our American vocabulary is the word, “counselor.” We are all acquainted with counselors and counseling. The position of counselor is a very familiar occupation in our society. In the yellow page of a telephone book, you can find marriage counselors, wedding counselors, guidance counselors, drug counselors, sex counselors, vocational counselors, rehabilitation counselors, and school counselors. In the newspaper the other day, I saw an ad for a car counselor.

Counseling has become very much a part of our lives. That is, one in ten people are said to be currently seeing a counselor. Pastors, preparing to enter the ministry, are required to take courses in counseling and therapy. Counseling has lost the social stigma that it had merely two decades ago. Back in the late sixties, a pastor tried to hide the fact that he/she was going in for counseling. The attitudes of society towards counseling have changed. Nowadays, people are much more open about their needs of a counselor.

In addition to professional counseling, all of us receive counsel from family, friends and work associates. Any intelligent person realizes the value of other peoples’ insights. No person is an island of information; we need information from others, and so we ask our friends and associates about engineering problems, accounting challenges, cars, boats, campers, and everything else. We are constantly looking for better information to make intelligent decisions, and so we always consult others for help.

Dr. Anderson was the chief administrator of Presbyterian Counseling Services, the largest counseling organization here in the Northwest; and he supervised some thirty to forty professional counselors; therefore Dr. Anderson knows as much as anyone about what makes for a good counselor. So I asked him, “Doug, what are the characteristics of a good counselor?”

Doug said: “A good counselor? First, a good counselor has a personal concern for others; the counselor is personally concerned and compassionate for the needs of others. He or she is not a detached individual who listens for fifty minutes and then asks you to pay the fee. Rather, the mark of a good counselor is that they are truly concerned about your welfare.

Secondly, a mark of a good counselor is empathy; he or she has an intuitive understanding and feeling of the person before them. Just as an electrician has an intuitive grasp of the problem before him; as does someone in electronics, mechanics or accounting, so a good counselor has an intuitive understanding of the dynamics of the person he/she is dealing with.

Third, a good counselor is congruent; that is, basically, he/she is a healthy person, a wholesome person. This does not mean that a counselor is problem free, but has their head and heart pretty well put together.

A fourth and final quality of a good counselor is that they are a non-judgmental person. When we go into a counselor, we unload all kinds of personal information and feelings about stuff we would share with no other; and it is important that the counselor does not condemn us for our feelings or actions. Condemnation and judgment inhibit communication of further feelings.”

So I asked Doug, “What is the purpose of a good counselor?” He answered: “A counselor tries to facilitate growth. He/she tries to enable a person to grow. We all have blocks in our paths to maturity. We all have blocks to growth such as painful, early childhood trauma with parents or persistent personality problems or addictions or embarrassing personal habits that prevent us from growing into God’s fullness for us. A counselor helps remove those blocks.

When a person has a blood clot in the leg, medication may be given to dissolve that block. So a counselor works with the client to help dissolve those blocks that prevent them from growing. A counselor does not solve problems for people, but helps them grow stronger so they can solve their own problems. A counselor does not make hard decisions for people but helps them become strong so they can make their own choices.”

I asked a final question of Doug, “Does a counselor have an ideal image, a goal that he/she is working towards?” Yes, said, Doug, a counselor has a vision of maturity, wholeness and congruence that he/she is working towards.

As I listened to Dr. Anderson speak, I was delighted with his words because many of the same words he used to describe a good counselor are the same words used in the Bible, to describe the work of the Holy Spirit. Doug used words like “counselor, guide, strengthen, enable, make stronger, teacher, truth,” and these are all the same words that are used in John 14-16 to describe the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Greek word for “counselor” is “paraclete,” which means “called to the side of.” You call someone to be by your side and give you strength. For example, when there is a sudden tragedy in your life, the natural instinct is not to be left alone, but to have someone there with you, someone by your side, to give you strength. Or when you face a momentous decision, you often don’t want to think it through alone. You want input from other people as you intelligently go about making this decision. So you will call someone to be by your side, to talk through the options. This is what the word, “counselor,” means: to call someone to be at your side, to give you strength.

Following the outline of Dr. Anderson; when we think of the Spirit of God as counselor, this means that the Holy Spirit is personally concerned about us. God, our counselor, is not a detached listener who listens politely to us for fifty minutes, asks for payment and then wants us to leave, so the next customer can get in. If the mark of a good counselor is that he/she is personally concerned about our welfare and well being, then God is truly a good counselor. God is truly concerned about what is good for us.

Edited with permission.  For more of Rev. Edward Markquart’s sermon