 Master, you muted. Sorry, sorry, so sorry. Okay, yeah, so welcome back and hope you have your cup of coffee with you as we go on for the next 45 minutes. Okay, so as what we looked into quickly, a brief about how as a result of the fall, the attributes that we had became needs and we were looking at the way, what are these needs and how they divided? They're divided into casual needs. We looked at critical needs and we're gonna be looking at crucial needs. And all of us, like we said, our image bearers, what does it mean? Image bearers mean that we function. We function in particular way for a better understanding. We said there are five areas of the way we function. And whenever there are needs that come, they become strong motivators. And we're looking at what these needs are. So we looked at casual needs. Casual needs are those kinds of needs that really don't bring about too much of a distress to us. The critical needs are those that bring about some form of distress. But however, life does tend to go on even when those kinds of needs are there. The crucial needs are what we see. I think the diagram also in itself explains how they are the most basic and the profound longings of the human heart. It is those desires that we feel must be met if life needs to be worth living. So nothing we see can fill that core except what we are designed to experience. So there is the core longings and needs that we have and nothing can satisfy these crucial needs except the kind of relationship which God offers. So what would this mean? When those needs, now I'm going back to those attributes, those needs of self-worth, of security, of significance. When these needs get unmet, it can tend to crumble us. I'll give you examples of these needs. Let's say a person who is going through a divorce, in whatever circumstance that they have, what do you think gets affected? These parts, the crucial needs, the sense of security, the sense of purpose or the sense of worth that they feel. Think about someone who loses a loved one. What do they sense? A sense of no purpose, no meaning, right? Or the sense that they feel alone, they feel isolated and the sense of not feeling in a place of belonging. So nothing, so when we understand, as a believer when we look at this, we know that we go through these emotions, we go through these profound longings, even as believers, when there is an argument with somebody or when there is a fight that happens or when there is a loss of something, let's say a loss of job. A person has been to a job regularly and suddenly one morning they are fired. They are sent off from their employment. Suddenly there's a feeling of a question of who they are, what their value is, what their self-worth is, where is their security? Or let's say, when there is amounts of money that are lost or possessions that are lost, there is a question that comes. So do you see that when these needs go unmet, we experience spiritual, emotional and psychological problems. So what are these crucial longings? The need for love or the need for worth, the need for security and the need for significance. The same attributes that God gave us prior to the fall that made man, those attributes that God put into man became those crucial needs for us. So even when you look back at your own life, different situations have happened. Maybe it's a simple, maybe an argument with some member of your family. There is that the questions, you know, the self-doubt begins of, okay, am I really loved? Am I valued in this relationship? If this happens and then that begins to worry, if something happens, what's going to happen to me? What is going to be the meaning of my life? You see? So all of this is what we look at and bring under the banner of those crucial longings of the crucial needs that people have. And when these needs go unmet is when people go through emotional problems, people go through psychological problems, people go through spiritual problems and that is what we need to restore, okay? So security, significance, worth. So, you know, these things you find in your relationship with people as you grow up because that becomes like a window of God's love to you. But, you know, as children or as you grow up, you realize that even the relationship that you have had with your parents or with your spouse or with your child cannot be perfect as your relationship with your heavenly father. And so until we bring people, so what does it mean to restore people back into God's image through counseling is to make them feel that sense of security, sense of worth, sense of significance in their relationship with Christ Jesus, okay? Let me give you just an example so that this makes it a little bit more clearer. Okay, so let's look at this example and we'll try and unpack this through a case and let's, so we're just going to make certain deductions over here, okay? So we're looking at Ms. S, who's a young woman. She's striving for excellence in all that she does. As a child, her parents always rewarded her for being first in class. They showed their displeasure at any failure on her part. As she grew up, her primary goal in everything was to be ahead. In her new workplace, she began to face tough competition and soon began to question her adequacy and her importance. What do you think are her needs? So I'm going to open this up for a small discussion. What do you think are her needs and what do you see is some of the origin or sources of where she's at right now? Yeah, so what do you think are her needs? I think self-worth. Okay. Self-worth, okay. What challenges her self-worth here? Maybe the image that she has about herself is not really right. Okay. Okay, so it's that. Go ahead, go ahead. She always thought. Yeah, I think, I mean, she always thought about being first. She never was in any competition. Now when she suddenly faces this, it makes her think like, what is my worth? Right, absolutely. So if you look at this, you will find that her acceptance by her parents. So remember, as a child when you grow up, the first window to all of this comes from your closed people who you relate with, right? Either your family or your parents or people who grew up here. I'll take the question. Okay, you said significance. Okay, yeah, yeah, significance, right. So this becomes, sorry, where was that? Yeah, the acceptance that a person has comes initially from the part of parents, right? Because that's the first window to any relationship. Now, if you look at this young lady's case, her acceptance by her parents was based on something. What is it based on? What is it based on? She was accepted when she became first in class, based on her performance, right? So only if she performed well, does she have self-worth? So she has built a connection like that. But if I need to feel a sense of worth or a sense of value, then I need to be the topper or I need to be performing well. My behavior should be striving for the best in all of things. If I don't get the best, then there's something wrong with me, right? This is what has grown through her. So what happens is the self-worth and her value becomes challenged in the face of the competition at the office, right? So she soon begins to question her adequacy and importance because there may be people who are better than her which makes her feel that there is something wrong with me or I do not have that sense of value. So her feelings of inadequacy and self-worth is affected. She's not able to find purpose because for her the significance and meaning and purpose of life is that I must come ahead. Only if I am on the top is that I'm of a certain value. There is the acceptance that the family gave her was conditional, right? So it is in condition to something. Only if you do this are you secure. And so there was, and what was the need that she had? There was a need to feel worth. There was a need to feel value. There was a need to feel purpose and meaning outside of this, okay? So this becomes her needs. So if we were to go a little ahead and kind of suppose what could be problems this young person could have gone through is probably she loses her sleep, right? So remember it's affecting her physical functioning, right? She loses her appetite. It's affecting her physical functioning. Remember you remember the five functioning we talked about? So how does this affect? How do these crucial needs affect the areas of functioning? So it affects her physical health. She doesn't sleep, she doesn't eat. So probably as a result of that she may be losing weight or she may be binge eating or she may be having a certain stress-related disorder so that affects the physical functioning. So as a result of this what she's going through she feels emotionally sad. She's probably depressed or she's anxious. She feels underconfident because whenever she is going maybe to a meeting and she sees other competitors around there is this feeling of anxiety or this feeling of fear whether she's going to perform or not. Do you see that it is all there within and but it surfaces out in the different areas of functioning or let's say in her rational thinking that's the third part that we said, you know her rational thinking. She can't think right. She's not, she's looking at how to improve maybe some skills. So she may be going for a couple of courses or she may be sitting into the night trying to figure out a way how to work through this. She may be using some kinds of other means to find out maybe some ways of working through this competition. So you see the rational part of it begins to think of all sorts of ways to work through this or she may decide to just leave the company. She says, okay, this is not working. She may be thinking about how everybody is unfair of how people are making use of her or how the management is not a good management. So you do, so you say that the rational part of her becomes a lot more affected. She's not able to think straight, bullishness. The way that she makes choices, she may just probably decide something impulsively, right? She makes certain choices. Maybe she says, okay, I'm feeling so overwhelmed. And probably that's when she may get into some form of addiction to calm down the kind of emotional responses she's feeling, the kind of effect that she's sensing in her heart. So the sense of depression or this feeling of lack of self-worth, she may want to forget it. And as a result, she decides and she says, okay, I'll go have a drink or I'll just dump the pain by getting into something that will show me something and she may get into certain activities or certain relationships that aren't helpful. Okay, so that affects the volitional part. And the last is the spiritual part. The very fact that she senses that this work, the self-worth has to be found outside her dependency on God itself puts her away in her spiritual connection with God. She may begin to question who God is. She may begin to blame who God is. So do you see that these crucial needs affect the different areas of our functioning? And often psychological problems comes as a result of the fact that these crucial needs of self-worth, of security and of significance is becomes a motivation to find outside of their relationship with God. Now you and I as believers know outside of our relationship with God, these three can never be met. It can never be fulfilled in the entirety of the way God can fulfill with us, right? And I'm sure we all understand that, that sense of self-worth. That is why when we are in an intimate relationship with God, no matter what happens in our surrounding, whether it be a problem in our physical bodies, whether it be a problem in our relationships, whether it be an issue in our jobs, whether it be an issue in our material possessions, whether it be an issue in maybe some part of our work or purposes being bought down. If we are able to build our foundation on knowing that only the Lord, only in our relationship with Lord, these three needs are completely met. Why? Because that's what how we were originally designed. They were attributes. But because of the fall of man, it became needs. And man tries to attempt to fulfill those needs apart from their dependency of God, all right? Is this clear? Is this part of it understandable? Have you all got this? Because like I said, this is extremely crucial when you are meeting people and when you're looking at them, when they are talking about something that may be almost like think of when you help people, when you're trying to explore into their life, look at them like you look at an onion, okay? What is presented on the outside is only what you can see. But it is to go deeper into this place of what of your crucial needs or what need has gone unmet. Because only then can we help people understand that it is because of their need for self-worth or their need for security or their need for significance is why that they're running after something that's causing them these psychological problems, okay? Now, maybe just one more example and then maybe two, three minutes just to hear any questions. Let's take a real case scenario of a couple together, all right? Where one of them chooses to get into maybe, let's say an extramarital affair, okay? Now, I'm not looking at believer, unbeliever, I'm just talking about the specific situation, all right? Now, in counseling, we could go about dealing with the issue on the surface, right? By, you know, in different ways, like when you're giving advice and saying, okay, this is not the right thing to do, you know, which is true, these are all true, this is right. But in order to meet the person at their point of need, we need to ensure that we peel them like an onion. So, you know, the person's come to you and you're helping them and, you know, they begin to realize and say, yeah, I know that I should not be in this relationship. They know that, right? But that's not the only point of help that we give them. We give them to a place where they are able to see where is this coming from? What is the source of this expression that has come about, right? So, in order to do that, bringing them explore, now this, you may, you know, it may seem easy to say, okay, you know, Mrs. So-and-So, you're, you know, you don't have any self-worth, you don't have security, and that's why in your relationship or you feel that's not what you get from your marriage and you're going to Mr. X, right? But instead of Mr. X, you should be going to God. That is the truth, that is the truth. But in order for them to experience it and feel it, they need to come to a place of realization, to come to a place of exploring and saying, yes, I feel a sense or lack of work. I feel a sense, I feel a sense of no security. And I feel that my husband is the one who can give me this. And because he can't give me this, I choose somebody else to give me this, right? And in her mind, in her appearance, and she may think this is what it's giving, but it's creating a lot of problems. It's creating a lack of sleep. It's creating interpersonal problems. And so why isn't she able to meet those core needs in this way that she's found? Because in all of this, we understand as we look at man and their problems, every need can only be met by their relationship in God, right? And we bring them to an understanding of why there is a problem such as this. What is it that takes them to run after something, to run after money, to run after fame, to run after somebody else, to run after promiscuous relationships? So that is the place what counseling is meant to do. And this is not by telling them, but bringing them to a place of realization as we go through our conversations with them, okay? All right, I'm stopping here any question. Is there any question that you all would like to bring about? Hi, first. So one of the things I wanted to ask is, first of all, do we step in unless they ask, if let's say the last example you mentioned, the family who is, you know, one person in the family is looking for an extra matinee or trying to find their needs met in another person. So if we get to know through different sources or let's say some third person is informing us as a minister or as a leader. So do we step in at that moment or do we really have to wait for him to, or her to come and discuss this matter? Okay, so I would answer this specifically in two ways. So we, some of us may also be holding a pastoral role, right? And there may be some of us who hold only a role of a counselor, some may be holding both, okay? Now, as a pastor, there is something that comes up to you. It is important that we gently need to bring it up to whoever the person may be concerned, all right? And to do that is to help them to maybe see something that they're not seeing, all right? So that's one thing, as I'm saying as a pastor, yes, if someone comes in and tells me something about somebody and they have given me, like, for example, let's say whoever, you know, one of the spouses come and say, this is what's happening. I need their permission to approach the situation, all right? Because sometimes they are also here for some reason. That's one thing I will want to find out. If you told me this, as a pastor, if you've told me this, you need to also give me permission to at least broach the topic up. Now, if he says, no, no, no, don't tell my spouse, none of it, then, you know, that's as much as where it lies. You may not be able to go further, right? Because this is all done in respect. It's all done taking care that things don't tumble off, right? Do it with respect. You do it with the permission of the other spouse, okay? But let's say that they have given you the permission, it is good to meet with them. Now, I'm talking, so that's one part of it, when you're looking at it as a pastor. Now, let's say as a counselor, that's not something I would do because maybe a person who shared it with me has shared it with me in absolute confidentiality, right? And I cannot breach that confidentiality, but I can help them to suggest to the person to come and speak to me. I can do that, all right? So I think it really matters with wisdom, the role that you play, and how you proceed in something like that. So if it is a spouse who's come to you, gives you the permission, you are more than, you know, you could do that. Nevertheless, if let's say the person decides and says, you know, pastor, please stay out of it, and I'll figure this out, then that's as much as you can do it. Then you work with the other partner, with the other spouse, you work with them, right? But as a counselor, that's something I'd be very careful not to do because of this fact of confidentiality. I have to be careful of how I proceed further. I would generally get the other person who's talking to me to go suggest to have the, and that's what would most likely be useful and be productive. I hope I answered your question. Yeah, yeah, that really helps. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and just to add to this, let's say if a third person is informing, let's say not somebody from the family, but somebody maybe close to them, but for us, there is a third person, it's not husband, it's not wife. It's the third person, and this person is also sharing in confidence, and we also get to see, so this is other part of it, we also get to see visibly that there are few things. Then we try to connect the dots and we understand this is the issue, but then also we don't have enough proof. Say one example, let's say one of the spouses, they are posting certain WhatsApp status or something like that in connection with this, but when we get to hear from the third person, we understand, oh, this was the issue. So, I'm just trying to understand because it's a very practical scenario for us here. So do we, then do we ask anything or we can just tell them if you feel like talking, let's just know or things like that. How do we handle? So the best thing to do if it's a third person, keep what they have told you confidentially, you shouldn't make a reference to them, but out of your role as a pastor, you can go back to the maybe one of the persons have a private individual discussion with them to give them what you're observing or what you're noticing and invite them for a conversation. Rather than making a judgment and saying, okay, I saw these two, three things and it looks like this is this way, rather than that saying that I'm concerned that something is going wrong, but I wanted to hear from you before anything else and as a result is why you are approaching them. So keep it a one-on-one, keep it confidential, keep it respectful, keep it non-judgmental, keep it open and keep it confidential so that the third person is not bought into the whole conversation as such. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. I think that we all supposed to question, okay, is it possible for a person to have a distorted sense of the three crucial needs probably caused by manipulation of another? Absolutely. So, you know, if you look at a lot of people who do not understand or do not know, and I would say this even about maybe believers who do not understand that their value, their security significance comes from God, that in itself seems distorted in itself, right? So I have umpteen number of times when I have spoken to people, it's almost like a light bulb when they discuss when they discuss and then they realize that the very fact that they have held on to something either like a job or a relationship or a performance as an identity marker. They're like, okay, if that doesn't become my identity, what becomes my identity? So it's so that they are so blinded to the fact that there are things in the world that marks these three needs, right? And I've seen it happen almost every other time when they come into a discussion and say, okay, I never thought, I thought my wife was the one who gives me this identity. I mean, I recently had a person who I was helping. His wife walked out on him, she had a divorce and walked out on him. He was so broken because he did everything keeping her in mind, whether it was building a house or whether it was planning for the future, whether it was doing something for the children. In his belief that if he does this, there is some sense of security he feels. The minute she walked out, he began to question life and its existence company. So much so much so that he was, you know, he was on the brink of a suicide, but it was this understanding that all of this is not attached to things, right? It's dependency on something else that makes them feel that life is worth living. But to come to that place that my security, my significance, my word comes from a God, comes from the God of all creation. Now to bring them to that point is where you'd bring them to the gospel, you know? So the idea is to bring people to that point where they feel and they know that there isn't any place that they can look to apart from God about. Now remember this, it seems very simple, but this is where, you know, you will have people saying they will go into, you know, all sorts of practices that gives them the feeling that they are reaching where they are, you know? Even this thing of philanthropic activities, you know, doing things for the poor, doing things for people who are underprivileged makes them feel a sense of acceptance about who they are, right? So there are people who see that, but they begin to find it again in other places, you know, doing something. It's out of an act. It's out of some kind of acts that they do. You know, if you do this, then you work. If you do meditation, this is it. If you do this form of an exercise, you have. So it's again, a place of self dependency that, you know, I can find it within me. And that I think is the biggest difference between secular field and Christian, in the Christian practice of helping that everything is at the end based on your exalting of yourself, of learning how to increase yourself, right? You learn how to be happy in yourself. You be, whatever you do, you know, you can find the joy. It's all about self. It's not centered on God. So yes, it can be absolutely, there can be places where it can be manipulated. Yes. Yeah, thank you, ma'am. I just had a like a follow up, actually. So this can come like one, a self deception. Like we are trying to find these to be satisfied and other things from God. But other can be, you know, continued, you know, manipulation, like a brainwashing. Each time a person gets to understand, but the real sense of purpose and self worth, everything is from God. But again, you know, there is, if there is a continued manipulation of there, how they think and how they reason, it's kind of hard to bring them again and again, right back to that, to that real, real, you know, cause and to bring them back to where they should be looking for solution. That's exactly why is where, how do we work through that is only in our intimate relationship in knowing who God is and what God has created us to be. And that's why the word is so important. Because, you know, look back at our own lives. You spend, say a few days without being aware of the word and God's presence in our lives. You know, it's, it doesn't take you too long to begin to self doubt yourself. They begin to see yourself as, as, you know, I need to find some place in where I am. It isn't long because we're far away from the truth. But it's the truth that sets us free. So keeping on understanding what the truth of God's word is in order to meet our crucial needs is vital in keeping us, what do I say, aligned to this. Because the minute we, we question this or we are not in a place of constantly seeking God and being in that relationship with God these are the three things that get attacked, you know, and, and, and that's a reflection of, for me, I personally begin to see whenever I have, you know, when something comes about and I have lost that focus, I know how much of, of groundwork that I've missed. And that becomes a huge reflection for us. So that's why the word is important. Declaring and knowing what the truth of God is what the truth of the cross has, has done for us. That's why it is so important. Yeah, yeah. Totally agree. Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah, but it can, it is applicable only for a, for a believer, right? It is. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're right. It's applicable only for a believer. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. So we'll move ahead. Yeah. We'll move ahead. Yeah. So what, so just, just to quickly summarize, we said that these crucial needs become strong motivators because everyone, all of man belongs for these crucial needs to be met. Okay. So they long for something and we are controlled by what we long for. And so, yeah, we're controlled by what we long for and any of this crucial longing that is not satisfied is what leads us to psychological behavioral or other kinds of problems. Okay. So again, just back in relation to what we were looking at, God has designed us in such a way that we can functionally be able to, you know, look at God has designed us in such a way that we can functionally that we can only function if we stand on this three things that he gives us self-worth, security and significance. So we are spiritual beings and all of us have deep longings and needs and these are strongly, we are strongly led to meet them to the extent that if these go unmet, people will experience problems. They go after things in order to receive to get this part of it. Okay. So I'm just, these are just some more examples which it's just for us to understand. Okay. Let's, we'll just have just a quick to know whether they're casual, critical or crucial needs. Okay. So imagine a scenario where you are a victim of an earthquake where you have lost everything you owned, your house, bank balance, assets, even the closest people you call your own. What have you lost? What do you think you've lost? Security. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. So this example is to show the need for security. So in the physical realm, if this you lose everything, you have lost everything that you belonged to. Similarly in the spiritual realm, because of the fall, we as people go about looking for a sense of belonging in things and people that do not hold any true basis. So we are let down every time we attach ourselves to some form of security other than God. Okay. All right. Good. So let's look at, okay. So we'll move through just to just trying to see if we need to focus on this. Okay. I think I'll go ahead with this. We've spoken about all of this. Okay. So just to quickly retract about what we said about those five five parts of our, of our functioning. This is important for us to just, just quickly focus on in order to understand problems. Okay. So in order to understand why problems begin in the person's life, we need to examine these five areas of function. So like we said, God has given us a body in which, in which the spirit and the soul can be effectively expressed. So remember that the body is also prone to dysfunction and disease. Right. So anything that disturbs our thought, our emotion and will can also have an effect on the body. Now we've got to be careful. Now remember, I told you whenever we deal with the person, we deal with them like we deal with an onion. Right. So let's say someone who's coming to you, who's depressed. So one of the contributing factors of depression also is if, if you do have certain physical illnesses, like for example, thyroid, you could have depression. Right. So we've got to be careful not to prejudge a person and say, you know, you have depression, maybe you have your, all your crucial needs are not met, you know, your self-worth and your significance and your security is all not met. And that's why you have depression. For all you know, it's probably they have thyroid. And as a result, they're feeling depressed. So they may need to go through a physical checkup and figure that out. So whenever you meet a person, you need to, you need to look at them in all of these five areas of functioning. Don't go into the mistake of saying all problems, every problem that a person presents with is only spiritual in nature. It could be in the, in the other areas of nature, only when you go down to the depth or the core of the issue, would you be able to understand? So it's important to know that physically when, when someone comes to you, check about how they are physically, you know, are they resting well? Are they eating well? Are they sleeping well? Are they exercising? You know, what are the kind of physical conditions that they may be having? So ensure that, you know, you're systematic in the way that you, that you help people, right? Whether they have gone to meet with a doctor to, to find out whatever is issued. So that, that in itself helps, you know, the physical being of them is something that you need to consider. Once you've marked off that and said, okay, checklist, this seems okay. Physically, they seem okay. It doesn't seem to be contributing to their core problem, right? Then you move into the, into the, into the next part of it, or into the next area of it, which is the emotional being. This is where, what are you doing here in this emotional, the emotional part of their functioning? So, first, foremost, we understand that we are emotional beings. And as a result, it plays a huge role in making our lives meaningful. So what we need to ensure is to, when someone comes again, when someone comes to you, don't jump the gun and move straight away into the core spiritual needs. They are coming with you with, with a huge problem. They are crying their heart out. And you may have got this understanding. Say, okay, their problem is because they don't feel loved. Okay. Hold on. They experiencing some emotions help them to go through in expressing those emotions. They need to come to a place of being able to bring about what their emotions are. Okay. And they, they need to have a sense that you have also heard what their emotions are. So sometimes people experience emotions, which, which what we call as signal emotions. I think it's there on the slide. Yeah. Yeah. Signal emotions. Now what are these, what, what do we mean by signal emotions? Now signal emotions are sometimes when we have wrong goals, they jeopardize our emotions and it, it, and it becomes like a malfunction. They are often usually compounded when, when we refuse to face and feel what is happening. So when we look at emotions, there are positive emotions that are negative emotions. So positive emotions are those where we have love, joy, peace, kindness, negative emotions are those that where you may have anger, fear, sorrow, shame, guilt, confusion, emptiness. So in counseling, the counselor needs to acknowledge and help the counselor face and deal with these negative emotions. You cannot tell them and say, you can't feel like this. You can't feel anger. You can't feel shame. You can't feel guilt because that is a very real part of them. Okay. So what we're looking at, why is it that it's important for us to see how they're feeling is because some of these emotions, like let's say anger or resentment may have a certain goal that may be wrong. Right. Maybe the goal that we believe is that we must feel good about ourselves because somebody has blocked something or has done something outside of us. So the emotional reaction comes up. Okay. The goal often, like for example, the wife thinking that, sorry, the person thinking that worth comes only from a career or from earning an income. And what happens when the person is denied, maybe to get into a job by her husband, then she becomes angry. She becomes resentful because there is an undermined goal. Her goal is to feel good worth or feel worth about herself. So without really helping the councillor to express these emotions or come in terms with these emotions, we cannot move into the deeper phase of what they are going through. So these emotions of all of these signal emotions that come about is important for a counsellor to help them process, to help them live through, to help them understand and figure out because only then can we get into further roots of the issue. Okay. Next is the rational being of understanding them as a rational people. Now, what is rational being is the way the person thinks. You would see this in Proverbs. It says, as a man thinks, so is he. A man thinks it is heart, so is he. So what did sin do to the bind? It exchanged every truth for a lie. Right. So what is a lie? It says, you can become a very fulfilled person if you act independently of God. That's exactly what Eve did. I can do things independently of God. And because of the fall, our thinking has been influenced that we can make life work without God. So we believe things that are untrue, especially in particular about how we can become secure and significant and have self-worth. And these beliefs play a role in what we believe. So we say, okay, I can't feel the love of God here. So maybe I could get into something else that will help me feel loved. So our thinking also becomes distorted. And while you're counseling a person, you're actually bringing to the surface these belief systems that they may be having, these belief systems about what they think is the solution to their problem. Right. So they may be thinking, okay, maybe if I don't feel the sense of security, and as a result, I must do this because God doesn't seem, God is absent here. God's not doing anything. I have to figure out a way. So remember, that's what sin did. It exchanged every truth for a lie. And it makes the person feel that you can fulfill the desires outside of God. And that's why when you're talking to a person, you need to come to a place of getting to understand what are their belief systems? What are their thinking patterns that lead them to go ahead or to think the way that they do or to behave the way that they do? The next one is the volitional being. When we're looking at volitional being, what are we saying? That is God has given man the power to will, to choose and move in a certain direction. What are we helping to see all because of the thoughts that we think, like the rational, we've looked at the rational being, but the thoughts that we think we make certain choices, okay? And so in counseling, what are you helping them to do is to weigh their choices, is to say, okay, if you do this, what do you think can happen? If you do this, what do you think can happen? If you do this, how does it make you feel? What sense of purpose do you think it's going to create for you? Are you happy with that purpose? So you need to come to a place where you're helping them think about their choices, giving them the place where they know the right movement to go in, okay? And lastly, of course, is the spiritual part of it where we said in order to understand the problems, where it begins from, we look at at these three. Everyone has these strong spiritual needs of security, self-worth and significance. And if, like we said, if it goes unmet, that's how problems come. So when we are dealing with people, when we are looking at people, that's exactly what we are doing. We are getting them to, we're looking at them like an onion, we peel it down to a place to find out where are these problems and these issues coming about, okay? Just quickly go into this part as well, okay? So when you look at the five areas of functioning, what are we looking at is that we see that problems arise within our personality because of our unsatisfied deep longings, because of our wrong thinking, because of our wrong goals or unrecognized goals, because of our emotions, sometimes that are not acknowledged, maybe the anger and the resentment is not acknowledged and these are all that functions deep within. So how do we proceed through these five circles of functioning physically? Like I said, we determine if there are any physical problems that's contributing to the council's difficulties. Emotional, we tune in to their emotions, help them acknowledge that they have those negative emotions and help them to identify those problem emotions. Then, bullish, we help them to examine the behavior and how their behavior is and a certain the goal that lies where, why are they doing what they're doing? What goal is it that they are driving at? Rational, how can they identify the wrong beliefs that's there in them and the wrong strategies that's underlining their problem? And lastly, is spiritual to assist them. What is their deep thirst? Their deep thirst is to have the sense of worth, significance and value in the eyes of God. So lastly, how do we restore people back into their image? So what are you doing? When you're able to connect them back, connect their spirits back to God and help them see that their security, their significance, their worth comes only from God. That's where you're working with God to restore their image. Because when their image is restored, when the depth of their needs are restored, the other things begin to change. When they begin to see that God is the one who meets them at every point of need, they are more careful of not running behind things in order to meet that need. And that's what you would. And that's what counseling is all about, is to help them restore them back to their, to the image of God. Okay? All right. Okay, I think I went like a train. That was pretty quick. Any questions up till here? Any questions? Any thoughts? Any questions? We had shot up in two minutes above time, but nevertheless any questions? None? None at all? Okay. So what I'd like you to do is to go back to the material. Kindly read the material. And I'm sure there'll be some questions, definitely, because this is not an easy chapter that we take. In fact, we take at least some two, three hours, but because of the paucity of time, we just kept it for two classes. Usually I take around four classes for this. But go back, read the material, come back with any thoughts or questions. Okay? I think this is so helpful because it helps us to be deep. Right? Why are we in certain situations or in problems or difficult mental states? If we get some of this understanding right about how God is the only one who can meet any point of our needs, we begin to see life with more gratitude. We begin to see life in the way that he sees it. And we want to desire more of him so that we sense security and that significance from him. Okay? Great. Shall we close with a word of prayer? Can I request one of you to please close in prayer, please? Anybody? Here, Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this, G. We thank you for the class that we have. God, we thank you for creating us in your image, Lord. We thank you for the beautiful people around us. We thank you that we are learning about how to help them find you, help them to restore back in this life, Lord, even after the world has fallen. God, help us to understand more about this. Help us to reach out and help people because that's what we are called to do down here on this earth. We love you. We honour you. We praise you. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much. God bless. We will meet next week. God bless you all. Thank you, Pastor. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. God bless.