Thirteen Words (Part 2)
My Rooted Soul Counseling · Andrew Siefers, MA, LPC-S · Neurotheology, Christian Counseling
Why Scripture governs what neuroscience observes, and what that changes in the counseling room.
Part 2 of 2.
In Part 1, I told the story of a thirty-second embrace before a conference session, a couple rushing home to a grieving family, and thirteen words from Colossians 1:17 that turned out to be inscribed inside a stranger's wedding band. Here is what that room taught me.
The Vertical Before the Horizontal
More importantly, it wasn't the horizontal things happening in front of me that amazed me. It was the inner working of the vertical relationship, the Spirit of The Holy God within, moving me to see and hear differently than if I had simply noted a couple's closeness before a meeting.
If I had been inattentive, I wouldn't have noticed the scene in front of me. If I had been aloof and uncaring, it might have led to annoyance, even resentment, coming from a self-centeredness that puts me at the center of all things. An idolatry.
If I had not… But God.
The moments in Scripture that change everything often have "But God" in them.
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…"
Ephesians 2:4–5, ESV
"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…"
Genesis 50:20, ESV
Out of all the words in the Bible, how could I have come to these thirteen, written by the Apostle Paul more than 1,900 years ago? And how could the very chapter they come from be about the preeminence of God, and how that preeminence is putting things right, placing things where they go?
"…and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
Colossians 1:20, ESV
He Goes Before Us
Science doesn't come before theology. Theology is already explaining science.
Weeks earlier, The Holy God had attuned Himself to me as I was writing about predictive processing and bringing up Colossians 1:17. That primed the process. In some ways the verse itself affirms it: He is before all things. He was going before me, preparing a way He wanted to minister in and through me, in vivo.
"It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you."
Deuteronomy 31:8, ESV
He allowed me to be a conduit of the Holy Spirit, and afterward I was even more finely aware that I "can't do it," as Dr. Siang-Yang Tan famously puts it.
"…apart from me you can do nothing."
John 15:5, ESV
God is the forerunner of attunement. He goes before us. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"
John 14:6, ESV
He preplanned that I would be in that room. He allowed me to answer a question that would become ministry to a couple, through a random stranger maintaining fellowship in a vertical relationship with The One Supernatural God of the universe.
"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
Ephesians 2:10, ESV
Pay Attention to What You're Paying Attention To
Do you pay attention and attune so well that you can see the Jesus Anna sees?
"For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace."
Romans 8:5–6, ESV
Curt Thompson, writing on this very passage in The Soul of Shame, puts it plainly: "Ultimately we become what we pay attention to" (p. 48). To set the mind on something, he explains, is to pay attention to it, and what we attend to turns back and governs us, toward death or toward life.
Pay attention to what you are paying attention to. Ask the Lord and the Holy Spirit to anoint your day and guide you in the way you should go, so that the good work He has planned for you in this very moment might prosper, for His glory.
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you."
Psalm 32:8, ESV
The Healer Is in the Room
Recently I've been less stressed about having to have the answers. I trust that as I listen and stay present, the Lord will continue to work, helping the one before me process what they carry. That creates less performance and less anxiety in me, because He is the Rapha, the Healer.
"…for I am the LORD, your healer."
Exodus 15:26, ESV
He has taught me to simply serve the one in front of me, not living in the past or in the future. That has helped me tend to what is before me and not let my mind drift anywhere else.
"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Matthew 6:34, ESV
I also find myself asking Him to show me what is needed: to direct the conversation, to direct my hearing. It's a change in dependency. The sustaining force is His presence, not my own, even though the client sees me and perceives me as the one in the room. My presence isn't unfelt. But I've been putting less pressure on myself to have all the knowledge or answers, and more trust in Him.
If you'd like someone listening with you, I see clients in McKinney and online.
Schedule an appointmentWhat I Mean by Neurotheology
My interest in the brain keeps blooming. Until recently it was largely uncharted territory, and we keep crossing frontiers, both in the minute and in the grandscape.
At the conference I listened carefully to another session, where Dr. Timothy R. Jennings, M.D., talked about deeper discoveries in how the brain may retain memory. Not only in its structure, but possibly within microtubules, tiny tubules inside our neurons whose shape researchers propose can be affected by vibration and harmonics. The research is early and still debated, but it fascinated me. The complexity of what is being discovered keeps pointing to a Creator God who is unfathomable, and yet relationally as close as our breath.
"…he is actually not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being.'"
Acts 17:27–28, ESV
So as I study the biological mass that fills our cranium, I cannot divide it from its origin in God. I attribute all things, as the Colossians passage does, to God as the Author of reality, not man.
"For by him all things were created… all things were created through him and for him."
Colossians 1:16, ESV
We are interpreters, filters that perceive a felt sense. We know because we are known by God.
"…but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God…"
Galatians 4:9, ESV
We exist by His good pleasure, so that He might delight with everlasting joy, in a relational and fully engaged way, in those He loved first.
"We love because he first loved us."
1 John 4:19, ESV
"The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing."
Zephaniah 3:17, ESV
Neurotheology, for me, is studying the brain without ever dividing it from its Author.
Andrew Siefers, MA, LPC-S
I Will Jump In
So, are you ready to explore a process where I come alongside you and start to get under the boulder you've been carrying?
"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
Galatians 6:2, ESV
Believers are called to support their brothers and sisters in Christ through illness, death, job loss, and the tragedies no one sees coming. Cloud and Townsend emphasize this too, and they also help us see where each of us is responsible for our own knapsack.
"For each will have to bear his own load."
Galatians 6:5, ESV
Maybe you're in a pit you can't seem to get out of. You're tired of people giving you pointers on how to climb out, and what you really wish is that you weren't alone in it.
I will jump in. I may not know all the things, but I know the One who does.
"He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure."
Psalm 40:2, ESV
"And I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."
Philippians 1:6, ESV
This piece reflects my own theological and clinical reflection and is offered for educational purposes only. It does not constitute counseling, therapy, or a counselor-client relationship, and reading it does not establish one. Names and details have been changed. If you're in crisis, call or text 988, go to your nearest ER, or see national mental health resources.