People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change
Paul David Tripp
How God uses ordinary people in relationship to genuinely shape others toward Christ.
God's primary tools for transformation aren't programs or professionals — they're ordinary people in everyday relationships. Tripp shows that most people don't need a therapist; they need a friend who knows how to have an honest, caring conversation.
Everything Tripp wants you to walk away with
The church is the instrument. Every conversation you have is an opportunity to help someone change. Most people don't need a therapist — they need a friend who knows how to have an honest, caring conversation.
You don't need to have your life together before you can help someone else. In fact, the shared awareness that you're both broken is what creates the credibility and humility that effective ministry requires.
First, enter their world with genuine care. Second, listen for what's really going on beneath the surface. Third, bring the gospel to bear on what you've discovered. Fourth, walk alongside them for the long haul. Skip a step and the whole process breaks down.
Ask not just what someone is doing but what they love, fear, and believe. That's where lasting change begins. The heart is the control center — if it doesn't change, the behavior will eventually revert.
The avoider preserves peace at the expense of honesty. The confronter delivers truth at the expense of relationship. Both are failures of love. The goal is truth spoken in the context of genuine care — which requires both courage and tenderness.
Every interaction shapes the people around you. Your words, tone, timing, and presence are all communicating something. The question isn't whether to minister but whether to do it intentionally and skillfully.
Before you can speak truth into someone's life, you must earn the right to be heard. That right is earned by listening — deeply, patiently, and without an agenda to fix. People open up to those who make them feel understood.
Tripp insists that the same gospel that saves you is the gospel that changes you today. It's not just the entry point — it's the power source for every stage of growth. Discipleship without the gospel becomes moralism.
The 'do' stage means walking with someone over weeks, months, and years. Quick fixes don't exist in real life. The people who make the biggest difference are those who refuse to leave when progress is slow.
God is at work everywhere, in everyone, all the time. Your job is to pay attention, enter in with humility, and trust that he will use your imperfect efforts for his perfect purposes. You are the tool — he is the craftsman.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Paul David Tripp
Chapters 1–6
When Jesus announced, “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15), he was doing more than introducing himself. He was declaring that all of history had been moving toward this one moment. God had not forgotten or lost interest in humanity. Since the first fall into sin, he had been bringing the world to this day. This announcement gives every person who endures the harsh realities of the Fall the only valid reason to get up in the morning — a hope that is wonderfully practical and intensely personal.
Consider the scene from Revelation 19, where the redeemed multitude stands before the throne and exclaims with a roar like rushing rapids: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.” Notice what they are not singing. They are not celebrating career success, great marriages, defeated depression, or well-adjusted children. Two things capture their hearts: Christ has won the final victory, and God has gathered a people who find ultimate comfort in his rule.
People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations, strategies, and techniques — they simply want things to be better. But God offers much more. What people really need is imagination: the ability to see what is real but unseen, to look at their families, neighbors, jobs, and churches and see the kingdom of God at work. This is what Paul fixed his gaze on.
We must not offer people a system of redemption — a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer.
As sinners, we have a natural bent to turn away from the Creator to serve the creation. We turn from hope in a Person to hope in systems, ideas, people, or possessions. Real Hope stares us in the face, but we do not see him. Instead, we dig into the mound of human ideas to extract a tiny shard of insight. We tell ourselves we have finally found the key. We act on it and embrace the delusion of lasting personal change. But before long, disappointment returns — the change was temporary and cosmetic, failing to penetrate the heart of the problem. So we go back to the mound, dig again, find another shard, and end up in the same place.
If you are going to help someone, you need to know what is wrong and how it can be fixed, just as a mechanic diagnoses why your car is malfunctioning and gets it running again. Any trustworthy perspective on personal change must correctly diagnose what is wrong with people and what is necessary for them to change.
Sin as condition: Scripture defines sin as a condition that results in behavior. We are all sinners, and because of this, we all do sinful things. Our core problem precedes our experience. As David says in Psalm 51, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Because sin is our nature, it is inescapable — it marks everything we think, say, and do. It guides our cravings, our response to authority, our decision making, our values, hopes, dreams, and every interpretation we make.
Sin does not only cause us to respond sinfully to suffering; it causes us to respond sinfully to blessing. The smart kid teases the dumb kid. The athlete mocks the uncoordinated. Something is so wrong inside us that we cannot even handle blessing properly. This is why Paul writes so pointedly in Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world and not on Christ.”
Rebellion is the inborn tendency to give in to three lies: Autonomy says, “I have the right to do what I want when I want to do it.” Self-sufficiency says, “I have everything I need in myself, so I don’t need to depend on or submit to anyone.” Self-focus says, “I am the center of my world; it is right to live for myself and to do only what brings me happiness.” These are the lies of the Garden — the same lies Satan has whispered through every generation. They deny our basic design: we were created to be in daily submission to God and to live for his glory. Living outside this design will never work.
And as God changes us, he allows us to be part of what he is doing in the lives of others. As you respond to the Redeemer’s work in your life, you can learn to be an instrument in his hands.
There is a crucial difference between seeing yourself as a conduit of God’s work and seeing yourself as an instrument. A conduit is a passive channel connecting one thing to another. An instrument is a tool actively used to change something. God has called all of his people to be instruments of change in his redemptive hands. Embedded in the larger story of redemption is a principle we must not miss: God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things in the lives of others.
Consider the people God used in Scripture: Moses (an exiled murderer), Gideon (fearful and hiding), David (a shepherd boy with no military training), Peter (who publicly denied Christ), Paul (persecutor of the church). What ministry or mission board would have chosen them? Yet alongside these are untold numbers of little people God used in big ways. God never intended us to simply be the objects of his love — we are also called to be instruments of that love. The overall biblical model is this: God transforms people’s lives as people bring his Word to others. Each of us has been gifted, called, and positioned to do our part. Our histories, personalities, abilities, and maturity levels differ, which is how the Redeemer intends it.
Many believers don’t think of their involvement much beyond saying a prayer or making a meal. Yet their adoption into the family of God was also a call to ministry, a call to be part of the kingdom’s good work. Personal ministry is about people loving people — but in a way that includes bringing them God’s Word.
What we often think of as “ministering the Word” is little more than a spiritual cut-and-paste system. This rarely leads to lasting change because it does not bring the power of the Word to the places where change is really needed. In this kind of ministry, self is still at the center, personal need is the focus, and personal happiness remains the goal. A truly effective ministry of the Word must confront our self-focus at its roots, opening us up to the vastness of a God-defined, God-centered world. Unless this happens, we will use the promises, principles, and commands of the Word to serve the thing we really love: ourselves. Only when the rain of the Word penetrates the roots of the problem does lasting change occur.
If you try to use your Bible as God’s encyclopedia, you will either conclude that it has little to say about crucial issues of modern life, or you will bend and stretch passages to suit your purposes. Either way, you are not getting from the Word what God intended. This misunderstanding underlies the frustration many people feel with Scripture — we secretly wish God had just arranged it topically.
If you want God’s full perspective on a subject, you cannot limit yourself to the Bible passages that specifically focus on it. A couple immersed in a battle for control will not break out of their cycle by studying only the standard passages on marriage. Without the perspective of the rest of the Bible, those marital passages offer little help and can even be misused. That is how Scripture differs from an encyclopedia. In an encyclopedia, each article is independent; no overarching themes connect them. In the Bible, every passage depends on the whole, held together by interdependent themes that run through every passage like rebar reinforcing concrete. If you handle Scripture topically, you miss the overarching themes at the heart of everything God wants to say. These themes give you a sense of identity, purpose, and direction that fundamentally alter the way you think, desire, speak, and act. They go to the root of the problem, producing change that lasts.
Our deepest problem is that we seek to find our identity outside the story of redemption. If the entire goal and direction of our lives is wrong, we need much more than practical advice on how to do the right thing in a particular situation. We need a message big enough to overcome our natural instinct to live for our own glory. Every day, in some way, we buy the lies of autonomy and self-sufficiency, worshiping the creation rather than its Creator. An encyclopedic, problem-solving approach to Scripture is totally inadequate. We need something that will change us from the inside out — we need Christ. Only his person and work can free us from slavery to self. Lasting change begins when our identity, purpose, and sense of direction are defined by God’s story.
We cannot use the Bible as a divine self-help book.
God is calling a people to himself, forming them into his likeness, and preparing them for eternity with him. This is his overarching plan of the ages. At any moment in time, the right answer to “What is God doing?” is “Accomplishing his plan.” Look around — don’t things often seem out of control? Doesn’t it often look like the bad guys are winning? Haven’t you cried, “Why me?” or felt like the custodian of a small and meaningless life? Don’t you face your own powerlessness to change yourself? In response, God speaks of his sovereignty: “Take heart, I am in complete control. I am the definition of holiness and love. All of my ways are right and true, and I will not rest until my plan has been completed.”
Your world is not a world of constant chaos controlled by impersonal forces. Your destiny is not in your hands or in the hands of other people. You are held in the hands of your heavenly Father, who rules everything.
King David understood this in one of his darkest moments. His son Absalom had plotted to take his throne, and David was hiding in a cave. When his soldiers asked what would happen next, David responded (Psalms 3 and 4) with a perspective that should be true for all of us: “Lord, when I think about you, my heart is filled with joy — joy greater than when the harvest and new wine are bountiful. I am in this cave, but my life is not in Absalom’s hands. My life is where it has always been: in your sovereign hands. So I will not give in to fear. I will sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” Every time you love your enemy, speak softly in the face of anger, or resist the temptation to win an argument at all costs, you are choosing to rest in the sovereignty of God. Because he rules, nothing you do in obedience to him is ever futile.
In all the drama of redemption, one reality repeatedly bursts to the surface: we live in a world where there is grace to be found. God is not only sovereign — he is also abounding in grace. Immediately after Adam and Eve disobeyed, God made it clear he would do more than punish them. He would send Christ to defeat the Enemy and provide redemption for his people (Genesis 3:15). God’s response to willful rebellion was grace.
Grace defines the story and gives it direction. It tells you in a thousand ways that God has made a way to deal with your deepest problem: sin. Your life need not be imprisoned by your own rebellion, defeated by your own foolishness, or paralyzed by your own inability. God’s grace is most powerful and effective at the moment of your greatest weakness. All the marriage books, communication skills, and attempts at self-reformation will fail unless the only true hope — God’s heart-transforming, relationship-revolutionizing grace — is at the center. Only in the economy of grace can biblical principles for healthy relationships bear lasting fruit.
At the bottom of a broken marriage, a shattered family, or a forsaken friendship you will always find stolen glory. We crave glory that does not belong to us and step on one another to get it. Rather than glorifying God by using what he has given us to love others, we use people to get the glory we love. Sin causes us to steal the story and rewrite it with ourselves as the lead. But there is only one stage and it belongs to the Lord. Any attempt to put ourselves in his place puts us at war with him — an intensely vertical war, a fight for divine glory. Sin has made us glory robbers. We do not suffer well because suffering interferes with our glory. We do not find relationships easy because others compete with us for glory. We do not serve well because in our quest for glory we want to be served.
The center of the Bible’s grand story is the Lord — it is his story. As Paul summarizes: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen” (Romans 11:36). This is the work of the kingdom of God: people in the hands of the Redeemer, daily functioning as his tools of lasting change.
God has called us to be part of his kingdom work, but he hasn’t given us a neat formula — no “seven steps to personal and relational perfection.” Instead, he has told us to place our hope in the presence and work of Jesus the Redeemer. Both the helper and the person needing help depend on his power and wisdom for change.
The account of Creation has a rhythm to it. God creates, declares it good, and there is evening and morning — first day, second day, and the beat goes on. But when God creates people, the cadence breaks. He does something he has not done with anything else: immediately after creating Adam and Eve, God talks to them. He did not do this with the rest of creation. Why? Because even though Adam and Eve were perfect people in a perfect relationship with God, they could not figure out life on their own. They were created to be dependent. God had to explain who they were and what they were to do. They did not need this help because they were sinners — they needed it because they were human. This is the first instance of personal ministry in human history: the Wonderful Counselor comes to human beings and defines their identity and purpose.
Personal ministry must begin with a humble recognition of the inescapable nature of our need. If there had been no Fall, if we had never sinned, we would still need help because we are human. A proper understanding of yourself and the work God has called you to starts here.
God designed human beings to be interpreters, and this gets to the heart of why we do what we do. Our thinking conditions our emotions, our sense of identity, our view of others, our agenda for solving problems, and our willingness to receive counsel. That is why we need a framework for generating valid interpretations that help us respond to life appropriately. Only the words of the Creator can give us that framework.
Because we are worshipers by nature, we are always doing one of three things: giving proper worship to God, serving something else, or worshiping ourselves and demanding to be the center of our own universe. God’s words to Adam and Eve established this foundational reality: “You were created to love, serve, worship, and obey me. These things should underlie everything you do.”
The moral drama of the Fall gets to the core of human existence. Genesis says Eve saw the fruit as “desirable for gaining wisdom.” Satan was not just selling Eve the best fruit in the garden — he was selling something more fundamentally appealing: independently wise, autonomous personal wisdom without any need for God or his revelation. This was the attraction that led to the Fall. Who has ever fantasized about someone saying “no”? Fantasy is an attempt to be God.
We may not profess to be atheists, but in practice we can live purely horizontal, godless lives. The things of this world capture and enslave us. We may go to church and possess a high level of biblical knowledge, but these pursuits can exist on the fringes of our lives.
A woman once asked during a seminar, “If I have the Bible in my hands and the Holy Spirit in my heart, why do I need to be counseled by others?” The Holy Spirit is indeed the Wonderful Counselor of the church — he enables us to understand God’s Word, convicts us of sin, and empowers obedience. But this does not eliminate the need for one-on-one ministry, any more than it eliminates the need for public worship. Hebrews 3:12–13 captures what this woman was missing: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
While sin remains, we must remember that sin is deceitful — and the person it blinds first is you. You have no trouble seeing the sins of your family, but you can be astonished when your own are pointed out. Christ captures this in Matthew 7: we see a speck of dust in our neighbor’s eye while oblivious to a huge piece of lumber sticking out of our own. Since each of us still has remaining sin, we will have pockets of spiritual blindness. Our most important vision system is not our physical eyes — we can be physically blind and live quite well. But when we are spiritually blind, we cannot live as God intended.
When you say you are getting to know someone, you don’t mean you have a deeper knowledge of his ears or nose. You are talking about the inner person — the heart. You know how he thinks, what he wants, what makes him happy or sad. Because the Bible says your heart is the essential you, any ministry of change must target the heart.
Many of our attempts to change behavior ignore the heart behind the actions. We threaten, manipulate, instill guilt, and raise our voices to force change, but it never lasts. The moment outside pressure wanes, behavior reverts. The body always goes where the heart leads. Change that ignores the heart will seldom transform the life. For a while it may seem like the real thing, but it will prove temporary and cosmetic.
Christ’s teaching establishes three principles that guide all efforts to serve as instruments of change:
An idol of the heart is anything that rules you other than God. It is a life shaped by the satisfaction of cravings, rather than by heartfelt commitment and faithfulness. Sin is much more than doing the wrong thing — it begins with loving, worshiping, and serving the wrong thing.
Consider a controlling executive who handled all the financial, parenting, and decorating decisions for his family for thirty years — even rearranging his wife’s closet by his prescribed color-gradient system. Now imagine speaking to his wife, who complained that they never talk and conflicts go unsolved, without knowing any of this. What would happen if you gave her husband good biblical instruction on communication and conflict resolution? It would not lead to basic change, because he would use his new understanding and skills to get what his heart worshiped. Because the counsel did not address his idols of the heart, it would only produce a more successful controller. As long as the desire for dominance ruled his heart, whatever principles and skills he learned would serve that dominance.
Our idols may not be the overt idols of other religions; they are the covert idols of the heart. But either way, they are god-replacements. They command our daily devotion, shape our routine, and guide how we interact with life, though they have no power whatsoever to deliver. There are times when we are just as deceived and blind as any overt idolater.
God changes us not just by teaching us to do different things, but by recapturing our hearts to serve him alone. The deepest issues of human struggle are not issues of pain and suffering, but the issue of worship — because what rules our hearts will control the way we respond to both suffering and blessing.
We rarely say, “I am going to set my heart on this thing and let it completely control my life,” but that is exactly what happens. The person you mildly enjoyed becomes the person whose approval you cannot live without. The work you undertook to support your family becomes the source of identity you can’t give up. The house you built for shelter becomes a temple for the worship of possessions. A rightful attention to your own needs morphs into a self-absorbed existence. Every human being is a worshiper, in active pursuit of the thing that rules his heart. This worship shapes everything we do and say, who we are, and how we live. This is why the heart is always our target in personal ministry.
James writes: “You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” James is saying that we will never understand our anger, quarreling, and fighting by looking at the other person or the situation. Instead, he counsels us to do the exact opposite — to look within. The only way to understand your anger is to examine your own heart. According to Christ, angry words and actions are the heart overflowing (Luke 6:45). Our feelings of anger and the words and actions that follow reveal very important things about our hearts.
In the phrase “desires that battle within you,” James gives us a window into how the heart operates. The heart of every person is a fount of competing desires. We rarely do anything with one simple motive — most of the time there is a battle within. Our horizontal desires (for people, possessions, recognition, control, acceptance, attention, vengeance) compete with the Lord for the rule of our hearts. Our desire to set up our own kingdom is in direct conflict with the King who has come to rule in our hearts. This is the war beneath all others. Who will rule that tense situation at work — your desire for a raise, or God’s glory? Will God rule that conversation with your child, or your desire for peace and quiet? Will God rule your relationship with your father, or your desire for vengeance for years of mistreatment?
The focus of James’s discussion is not evil desires (desires for the wrong thing), but inordinate desires — desires that may be right in themselves but must never rule the heart. It is not wrong to desire relaxation at the end of a long day. It is wrong to be ruled by relaxation so that you are irritated with anyone who gets in the way. It is not wrong to desire the tender attention of your husband. It is wrong to be so ruled by that desire that your days are filled with bitterness because of its absence and your nights are filled with manipulative attempts to get it.
If a certain set of desires rules your heart, you will not want God to be a wise, loving, sovereign Father who gives you what he knows is best. Instead, you will want a divine waiter who delivers what you have set your heart on. Imagine ordering a sixteen-ounce, medium-rare prime rib with a huge baked potato slathered in butter and sour cream. The waiter disappears and emerges twenty minutes later with a dry salad. He explains, “I took down your order, but I began thinking about your age and health, and I decided what you ordered was the worst thing you could have. So I had the chef prepare this salad.” Would you thank the waiter and dive into your lettuce? Of course not — because the desire for steak is ruling your heart. When a certain set of desires rules our hearts, we reduce prayer to the menu of human desire. Worse, we shrink God from his position as all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful Father to a divine waiter we expect to deliver everything we ask. But God will not shrink to this size. He will only be our Father and King, who “satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Psalm 103:5).
God will oppose your proud and self-absorbed living — not because he is against you, but because he loves you. We should be encouraged by God’s jealousy. True love is always jealous. How would a wife react if her husband said, “Dear, of all the women I love, tonight I think I love you the most”? She would not be encouraged — she would be outraged. Praise God that he will settle for nothing short of the final victory in our hearts.
You cannot keep the Second Great Commandment unless you are first keeping the First. Only in bowing before God and submitting to his desires can you truly turn to one another in peace and love. Any agenda for change that forgets this vertical causality will prove temporary and cosmetic.
Paul’s logic in Galatians 5 is simple. He reduces our living to two foundational lifestyles: either we indulge the sinful nature or we live by self-sacrificing love. Loving your neighbor as yourself summarizes God’s will for us, because only those who love God first will love their neighbors as themselves. To “gratify the desires of the sinful nature” means to feed them — to go where they take you.
Galatians 5 calls you to hold onto two realities at the same time. The first is the everyday reality of the war for the heart — the war between God’s “within you” kingdom and the kingdom of creation. The second is the reality of your identity as a child of God and the resources that are therefore yours in Christ. Paul reduces these resources to two foundational themes. The first is the person and work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Our condition is so desperate that it was not enough for God to forgive us — he had to unzip us and get inside us, or we would not be able to do what he has called us to do. We no longer live under the control of the flesh, but by the power of the Spirit, who daily battles the flesh on our behalf. The second theme is our union with Christ. On the cross, Christ did not purchase potential save-ability — he took our names to the cross. His death and resurrection is efficacious: it will accomplish his purposes in the lives of each of his children. Our union with him means we do not have to obey sinful desires any longer. We can say no and go in another direction.
As you place your story within this great story of the compassion and love of Christ, you will understand who you are and live as you were meant to live.
Every aspect of your existence was meant to be filled with the glory of God. Everything you think, every decision you make, every word you speak was meant to be shaped by a humble acknowledgment of his claim on your life. You were created to live for his glory.
The job of an ambassador is to represent someone. Everything he does and says must intentionally represent a leader who is not physically present. This is not a part-time calling; it is a lifestyle. When an ambassador assumes his responsibilities, his life ceases to be his own. Paul says that God has called every believer to function as his ambassador. Your life does not belong to you for your own fulfillment. The primary issue at every moment is, “How can I best represent the King in this place, with this person?” Anything less is an affront to the King.
But this is where we get into trouble. We don’t really want to live as ambassadors — we would rather live as mini-kings. We know what we like, the house we want, the car we want to drive. Without recognizing it, we fall into a “my desire, my will, my way” lifestyle. If we were honest, we would confess that the central prayer of our hearts is “my kingdom come.”
One of the things you will quickly discover is that when most people seek change, they seldom have the heart in view. They want change in their circumstances, change in the other person, or change in their emotions. They think that if “things” would change, they would be better off. But when the focus is put only on outward circumstances, the solutions are seldom more than temporary and superficial. Whatever you do as an ambassador must have the goal of heart change, and whatever you do must follow the example of the Wonderful Counselor.
Love highlights the importance of relationships in the process of change. God makes a covenant with us and accomplishes his work within that relationship. We are called to build strong relationships with others — workrooms where God’s work of change can thrive.
Know means really getting acquainted with the people God sends your way. Knowing a person means knowing the heart — her beliefs and goals, hopes and dreams, values and desires. If you know your friend, you can predict what she will think and feel in a given situation. The goal is to get below the surface.
Speak involves bringing God’s truth to bear on this person in this situation: “What does God want this person to see that she doesn’t see? How can I help her see it?” Through stories and questions, Christ broke through spiritual blindness and helped people see who they were and the glory of what he could do for them. For lasting change, your friend must see herself in the mirror of God’s Word.
Do means helping your friend apply insights to daily life and relationships. Insight alone is not change — it’s only the beginning. God calls your friend not just to be a hearer of his Word, but an active doer of it. As Christ’s ambassador, you are called to help her respond to this call.
Chapters 7–8
We want ministry that doesn’t demand love that is so demanding. We don’t want to serve others in a way that requires so much personal sacrifice. We would prefer to lob grenades of truth into people’s lives rather than lay down our lives for them. But this is exactly what Christ did for us — can we expect to be called to do anything less? As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, without love, even tongues of angels, prophetic gifts, mountain-moving faith, and total sacrifice amount to nothing. Love is patient, kind, not self-seeking, not easily angered. It always protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. Love never fails.
God’s relationship to us is loving and redemptive, and he wants our relationships to mirror those qualities. This means at least three things: he has a higher goal for our relationships than our personal happiness; he wants our relationships to be the context for the change he works in and through us; and we need to build relationships that encourage this work of change. Sanctification — the process by which God actually makes you what he legally declared you to be in justification — is the goal.
An entry gate is not the objective problem a person has encountered, but his or her particular experience of that problem — fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, hopelessness, aloneness, envy, discouragement, desires for vengeance. When you speak to people’s real struggles, they respond: This person has heard me. This person understands me. I want more of this kind of help. This is the power of a loving relationship.
Following the Lord’s example, you should communicate several things to a struggling person. Let them know you have heard their struggle — restate the emerging theme in their own words. Let them know your focus is on them as a person, not just the issues they face. Let them know that God is there and understands the struggle — turn to Scripture passages that speak to the exact thing gripping them. In doing so, you help them recognize that Scripture speaks to the deepest issues of human experience, and that God meets his people most powerfully in experiences where they fear he is absent.
One of the most common struggles in crisis is the feeling that you are all alone. It is very discouraging when people throw quick answers at you and walk away — it feels as if they have quickly let go of your life and gone back to their own. This is why it is so important to incarnate God’s “I will be with you” promises from the outset. In doing so, you address a theological lie — the lie that God is absent in trouble — and offer a living, loving presence that puts flesh and blood on the presence of the Lord.
When you minister to people this way, their hearts respond in three ways that open the door for deeper ministry:
1. Horizontal trust. People in difficulty often do not open up easily. But when you connect with a person’s real experience in the midst of a trial, you engender trust. The person thinks, He really heard me. He appears to be a person I can trust. This willingness is crucial — you are asking the person to place the “fine china” of her life in your hands. Most conversations are impersonal and self-protective. We reserve moments of personal self-disclosure for people we trust.
2. Vertical hope. God not only surprises struggling people with his grace — he calls them to do things that are difficult and unexpected, things that contradict their normal instincts. If a person under trial looks at the Lord and sees anything but hope, he will not follow. In those early moments, you are helping the person to see the Lord, to recognize that he understands the secret struggles, that he is present, and that he offers help that really helps. You want to help the person move toward the Lord rather than away from him — to become a seeker, and not just a seeker after help, but a seeker after God.
3. Willingness to continue. The main goal in a first conversation is to help the person be willing to talk again. The first talk may be nothing but venting, but the second talk signifies some kind of commitment to God’s process of change.
Think of people God has used in your life. Perhaps their willingness to forgive you taught you more about forgiveness than any conversation. Perhaps you learned about the resources of Christ by watching them endure great difficulty. Maybe you grasped the power of biblical love by watching them love someone unlovable. Perhaps they stood as evidence that the promises of God were true, or their willingness to stand with you for the long haul gave you strength to continue. Their ministry was made up of more than words. As ambassadors, it is not just what we say that God uses — it is also who we are and what we do. We are not only called to speak the truth but to be living, flesh-and-blood illustrations of it. We are not simply God’s spokespersons; we are his evidence. Our lives testify to the power of his grace to transform hearts.
Paul uses the metaphor of clothing — the thing that covers us, identifies us, and describes our function — to remind us that what we “wear” (the character qualities we put on) in moments of ministry is as important as what we say. The character traits Paul lists are a summary of the character of Christ: come dressed for the job.
In personal ministry, the sin of the person you are helping will eventually be revealed in your relationship. If you minister to an angry person, that anger will at some point be directed at you. If you help someone who struggles with trust, she will distrust you. A manipulative person will seek to manipulate you. A depressed person will tell you he tried everything you suggested and it didn’t work. You can’t stand next to a puddle without eventually being splashed by its mud.
The comforting reality is that God is working on both of you. Be aware of your reactions to the people you serve. One of the most loving things you can do is be committed to humble self-examination: How do you respond when sinned against? Are you demonstrating the power of Christ’s grace? Are you incarnating Christ as you deal with their sin? Are you willing to be splashed by the mud because you find joy in serving Christ, even when you realize you have gotten dirty?
The goals you lay out for people can seem unrealistic. They will have trouble imagining how they could ever do these things. They may be so aware of their failures that they see God’s new way as completely impossible. Personal ministry provides a sweet opportunity to speak to this doubt and fear — not only in words, but with your life as well. The most important encounter in ministry is not the person’s encounter with you, but their encounter with Christ. Your job is simply to set up that encounter.
The Bible clearly declares that God is sovereign over all things — even suffering. Many of us mistakenly think God has nothing to do with the bad things in our world. Yet Scripture roots our hope in the reality that God is not the author of our suffering, but he is with us in it (Ex. 4:11; Dan. 4:34–35; Eph. 1:11). The Bible also clearly says that God is good. It is faulty thinking to say that a truly good God would never allow suffering, or that if God really loved you, he wouldn’t let a particular thing happen (Ps. 34:8–10; 100:5; 145:4–9). And the Bible clearly says that God has a purpose for suffering — it is not a hindrance to redemption, but a tool God uses to work his redemptive purpose in us (Rom. 8:17; James 1:2–8; 1 Peter).
God’s sovereignty over suffering never means the suffering isn’t real (2 Cor. 1:3–9; 4:1–16), and it never excuses the evildoer (Acts 2:22–24).
You are a sufferer who has been called to minister to others in pain. Suffering is not only the common ground of human relationships, but one of God’s most useful workrooms. As ambassadors, we learn how to identify with those who suffer by learning from Christ. Hebrews 2:10–12 tells us we are in the same family as Christ — not just the family of man, but the family of those who suffer. We serve a Suffering Savior. He is compassionate and understanding; he can help us because he is like us.
This means our service must not have an “I stand above you as one who has arrived” character. It flows out of a humble recognition that we share an identity with those we serve. God has not completed his work in us either. We are brothers and sisters in the middle of his lifelong process of change. No one is anyone’s guru. God sends people our way not only so they will change, but so that we will too. The Wonderful Counselor is working on everyone in the room.
Hebrews 2:10 says that Christ, like us, was made perfect through suffering. How? He had lived in eternity as the perfect Son of God, yet something was needed before he could go to the cross as the perfect Lamb for sacrifice. He had to live on earth as the Second Adam, enduring the full range of experiences, tests, and temptations that make up life in a fallen world — without sinning. His perfection was demonstrated through the test of suffering. The author of Hebrews suggests a direct analogy: just as Christ was declared perfect in eternity, we are declared perfect in Christ (justification); and just as Christ’s suffering demonstrated his righteousness on earth, we become holy through the process of suffering (sanctification). We are being made perfect through the same process Christ went through.
Your story is a small chapter in the grand story of redemption, and Christ is on center stage. Your story is much more about him than about you. In your own weakness, foolishness, and inability, you learn the truthfulness of his promises and the reality of his presence. This makes your life a window to the glory of Christ. Often people look at us and want to be like us — but we must redirect their eyes to him.
Real comfort is more than thinking the right things in times of trouble. It involves having your identity rooted in something deeper than relationships, possessions, achievements, wealth, health, or your ability to figure it all out. Real comfort is found when you understand that you are held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in your life is God’s love — a love that no one can take away. The Bible tells us that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall.
If we are members of his family and partakers of his divine nature, increasingly conformed to his image, we should be marked by compassion. We should be more than theological answer machines. We should weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn, and so incarnate the One who is compassion.
True hope is not rooted in achievements or assets, but in the knowledge that you are the child of the King. He loves you with a love nothing can take away. He has given you his forgiving and empowering grace. He is daily changing and maturing you. He has promised to give you whatever you need, and that you will live with him forever in a place without suffering, sorrow, or sin. This means that in the most difficult moments of your life, nothing truly permanent or valuable is at stake. What you really live for is safe and secure.
Suffering gives people who have been jolted out of their comfortable lifestyle a reason to stop, look, and listen. It can help them move out of the confines of their self-absorbed world into the grandeur of a world where God is central, where hope is rooted in things that cannot be seen.
Chapters 9–10
Think about it: most of the conversations you had today were mundane and rather self-protective. We spend most of our time talking about things of little personal consequence — weather, politics, sports, entertainment. There is nothing wrong with this except that it allows us to hide who we really are. A person terribly distraught about her marriage will answer “Fine, how are you?” when asked how she is. The person asking doesn’t really want to know, and the person answering doesn’t really want to tell. They are co-conspirators in a casual relationship.
There are many reasons our relationships are trapped in the casual. In our busyness, we despair of squeezing ten-dollar conversations into ten-cent moments. We deal with the disconnect between our public reputation and our private struggles, wondering what people would think if they really knew us. We buy the lie that we are unique, that we struggle in ways no one else does, getting tricked by people’s public personas and forgetting that behind closed doors they live real lives just like us.
Another reason we rarely talk beyond the casual is because we do not see. Sin is deceitful, causing us to see others with greater clarity than we see ourselves. We tend to believe our own arguments and buy our own excuses, often unaware of how great our need for help really is. This distorts our self-perspective and shapes the way we tell our story — or leads us to question whether we need to tell it at all.
You cannot minister well to someone you do not know. You must be committed to entering their world — beginning by taking the time to ask good questions and listen well. Entering a person’s world enables you to apply the truths of the gospel in a way that is situation- and person-specific.
Ask people to define their terms (What?). Human language is messy. The more a word is used, the more nuances of meaning it takes on. When a woman says she and her husband had a “huge fight” last night, do not assume you understand what she means. If you don’t ask her to define “huge fight,” you have simply reached into your own experience to define it, creating a subtle area of misunderstanding that could affect your counsel.
Ask people to play you the video. The terms people use are verbal shorthand for significant situations. Ask the woman to walk you through, step by step, what happened during the “huge fight.” Listening to her account will make your understanding concrete and personalized, and give you a sense of the drama and emotions of the moment.
Ask people to explain why they responded as they did (Why?). Now you have a definition and a concrete situation — you can begin to get at the heart behind the behavior. Ask the person to share her reasons, values, purposes, and desires. You are asking her to step back and evaluate what was behind the words she said, the choices she made, and the things she did. You are taking the camera off the scene and putting it on the person.
When you ask people questions they would never ask themselves, you are teaching them to view themselves through biblical lenses. You are doing something God can use to change them in fundamental ways. Your questions may help them see themselves more accurately. Because of this, we all need people who love us enough to ask, listen, and having listened, to ask more.
Be cautious with closed questions (those leading to a yes or no answer) — they can lead to misunderstandings because they force you to fall back on your own assumptions about why the person answered as she did.
Why would God put the world’s most significant, demanding, and difficult human relationship — marriage — right in the middle of the world’s most important process — sanctification? If God’s goal were for people to realize their individual dreams, it would have made sense to get them fully sanctified first. But God hasn’t made a mistake. He is working on a greater dream, so he tries and troubles us. He lets our dreams slip through our fingers so that as we learn to love each other, we grow more deeply in love with him.
Because the Bible tells us that people live out of their hearts, we are always interested in how the heart’s thoughts and cravings are revealed by the choices people make and the things they say and do. The first step in making sense of things is to organize the information you have gathered into simple biblical categories — like sorting laundry or assembling a puzzle. When you have finished, you can step back and ask, “Where does the Bible say that change needs to take place in this person, in this situation?”
You can’t fully understand what people are thinking unless you know what they feel as well. Our feelings express our reactions to our interpretations — and we turn around and interpret our feelings in return.
Chapters 11–12
Leviticus 19:15–18 lays out God’s intentions for truth-speaking in relationships: judge fairly, do not slander, do not endanger your neighbor’s life. “Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”
The foundation of the Second Great Commandment is the First — you cannot love your neighbor as yourself if you do not first love God above all else. True love is not offensively intrusive or rude. But the Bible repudiates covering sin with a facade of silence. Those who love will speak, even if it creates tense, upsetting moments. If we love people and want God’s best for them, how can we stand by as they wander away? How can we let them deceive themselves with excuses, blame, and rationalizations?
Everything we are and have belongs to God. We will find our greatest joy in relationships when we recognize that they, too, belong to him. We are the Lord’s. They are the Lord’s. The situation is the Lord’s. Loving confrontation is rooted in the awareness that we are God’s children, and our goal is to be active in his purposes. To do less is to forget who we are. Too often we forget that there is nothing more wonderful than to be Christ’s ambassadors, participating in the most important work of the universe.
If we love people enough to speak honest truth to them, we pursue two goals:
None of us thinks in a purely biblical way. We hold distorted, self-aggrandizing, or self-excusing perspectives on God, others, and ourselves. We fail to properly understand our past and present, and all this shapes our behavior. We also don’t do our best thinking in the middle of suffering, difficulty, and distress — we forget what we’ve learned about God when our emotions are raging. It is a sweet grace to have someone come alongside us and help us remember what we need to remember. Because we are the ones interpreting our own experiences, our conclusions are reinforced by each new situation. We interpret each circumstance in a way that convinces us we are right, oblivious to the impact of spiritual blindness, sinful desires, and wrong thinking. We need the intervention of truth from someone who really loves us.
Through the things you say (message), the way you say them (methods), and the attitudes you express (character), pray that God will change the heart of the person you are helping.
Paul says (Romans 2:4) that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. He also says (2 Corinthians 5:14) that it is the love of Christ that compels us to no longer live for ourselves. The grace of the gospel is what turns hearts, because the gospel is God’s magnificent promise of forgiveness in Christ. This draws us out of hiding into the light of truth, where true confession and repentance can take place.
If we want our words to be instruments of change, we need a sense of direction. These four steps provide a road map:
Our goal is to encourage people to look at their behavior and examine their hearts with biblical eyes. Five questions can help people see what God wants them to see. The order is important because it teaches us to think biblically about why we do the things we do and how God changes us.
It can be very helpful to have people respond to the five questions in journal form. Ask them to identify two or three situations or relationships that are a regular source of struggle, then journal about those struggles using the five questions for two or three weeks. Take the journal, read it, and highlight themes and patterns. When you meet next, return the journal and ask them to read it in your presence and respond. Again and again, God has used this simple method to open people’s eyes to what is going on in their hearts.
Never assume that people are confessing to the Lord, and do not allow your words of confrontation to do their confession for them. Call people to confession that is not weakened by “buts” and “if onlys.” Confession reminds people that their hearts and lives belong to the Lord, and that misplaced worship lies beneath sins of behavior. True confession flows out of worship and results in a deeper, fuller worship of God.
When Paul instructs believers to minister to one another, he says, “Speak the truth [content] in love [method].” The two are equally important. Truth that is not spoken in love ceases to be truth because it is twisted by other human agendas. Love that is not guided by truth ceases to be love because it is divorced from God’s agenda.
In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan was called to confront King David with his murder and adultery. He did not burst into the throne room with flashing eyes, pointed finger, and a list of charges. Instead, Nathan told David a story — an extended metaphor crafted to open the eyes of David’s heart. A rich man with vast flocks took the single beloved lamb of a poor man to feed a traveler, rather than taking from his own. David burned with anger and declared the man deserved to die. Then Nathan said, “You are the man!”
In Nathan’s interactive style, the focus is on the story with the goal of stimulating David to see what he had not seen. The story is short on details yet very specific in application — it is not the goal, but a means to the goal. It must be pointed enough to cut through layers of blindness and expose the heart.
Chapters 13–14
The difficulties now, the suffering now, the disappointments now, and the blessings now are all preparation for the wedding then. Your now response will be shaped by a then perspective. For many people, it is much easier to know what is wrong than how to change it. You may have confessed a selfish, idolatrous heart and seen its fruit in your relationship with your spouse, but it will be harder to think clearly and creatively about how to repent and actually love her in specific ways. You may understand the major themes of Scripture, but not know how to use them in certain situations. We all need people to stand alongside us as we apply God’s Word to our lives.
What does the Bible say about the information gathered? This is not simply asking “Where can I find a verse on this?” You want to examine things through the lens of Scripture’s great themes, to understand how a distinctively biblical worldview shapes your response. Ask: “What has God taught, promised, commanded, warned, encouraged, and done that addresses this situation?” This protects your ministry from personal bias, unbiblical thinking, and crisis-driven impulsivity.
What are God’s goals for change for this person in this situation? This applies God’s call to “put off” and “put on” (Ephesians 4:22–24) to the specifics of a person’s thoughts, motives, and behavior. What does God want her to think, desire, and do? Answering these questions marks out the destination. Recognize that your agenda will not always be the same as the Lord’s. You may not want what God wants for the person who has deeply hurt you. You may be a Jonah who resents God’s mercy. Asking this question keeps you from confusing God’s agenda with your own. You cannot lead a person if you don’t know where you are going, and you must only lead people where God is calling them.
The Christian life can really be boiled down to two words: trust and obey. You must always entrust the things that are out of your control to God (your Circle of Concern), and you must always be faithful to obey his clear and specific commands (your Circle of Responsibility).
We always live out of some kind of identity, and the identities we assign ourselves powerfully influence our responses to life. As people pursue lifelong change, they need to live out of a gospel identity.
There is a radical difference between saying, “I am a depressed person,” and saying, “I am a child of God ‘in Christ’ and I tend to struggle with depression.” The second statement does not pretend the war isn’t raging, but it is infused with hope. It is never a waste of time to remind people of who they are in Christ. Doing so stimulates hope, courage, and faith.
When Christians do not exhibit Christian character or produce good fruit, we ought to ask why. What is missing? The apostle Peter’s answer is: these people have forgotten who they are. They have lost sight of their identity in Christ and do not realize the resources that are theirs. Because of this, they fail to live with hope, faith, and courage. Their problems worsen and new layers of difficulty are added. Their sense of who they are becomes shaped by their problems rather than by the gospel.
God calls us to stand with people as they step out in faith, obedience, and courage. This is the ministry of accountability. It is not about lying in wait to catch them doing wrong. The purpose of accountability is to assist people to do what is right for the long run. It provides a presence that keeps them responsible, aware, determined, and alert until they are able to be on their own. It directs eyes that have just begun to see, and strengthens weak knees and feeble arms. It encourages flagging faith and keeps God’s goals before people’s eyes. Biblical accountability is not fearful, abusive, or intrusive — it is loving, sacrificial, ambassadorial, incarnational, and holy.
We encourage change by helping people live out of an accurate sense of their identity as children of God, with all the rights and privileges that identity entails.
Biblical personal ministry is not a secret technology for the intervention elite — it is a simple call to every one of God’s children to be part of what God is doing in the lives of others. It is living in humble, honest, redemptive community. It is loving as Christ has loved, and going beyond the casual to really know people. It is loving others enough to speak the truth to them, helping them see themselves in the mirror of God’s Word. And it is standing with others, helping them do what God has called them to do. It is basically just a call to biblical friendship. Love people. Know them. Speak truth into their lives. Help them do what God has called them to do.