Counseling Unbelievers on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems that people face.

This week on the podcast, I have with me, Pastor Tim Pasmus. He's ministered at LaRue Baptist Church in LaRue, Ohio, since the

spring of 1985. He's married to Rebecca, and God has blessed them with three sons and three daughters,

three daughters-in-law, and a son-in-law, and 14 quite active

grandchildren. Pastor Tim earned his BA from Cedarville University and the MDiv from Grace Theological

Seminary. He serves as an ACBC fellow and is on ACBC's board of trustees. He lectures frequently

on counseling issues at counseling conferences and for a number of Christian

organizations. Tim, so grateful for you, brother. Glad that you're here with us today on the podcast.

Privilege. Privilege to be here.

Listen, we're going to talk about, yeah, it is a difficult topic. I have questions like this

all the time in some of my classes and the places that I go and teach. This is a question that remains for

people. What do we do with unbelievers? How do we counsel unbelievers? Or even do we counsel

unbelievers? So I'm going to ask it this way. Some people say you cannot counsel unbelievers.

Tim, is that true? Yeah, that's true, but you've got to understand

what we're talking about there. Right. So when you're counseling, you're counseling the word

of God and the spirit uses the word to help people change. That's the bottom line. However,

what do you do with people who don't have the spirit of God? They can't change in any significant way.

You know, what Jesus said, everything comes from the heart. Everything that shows up on the

outside comes from the heart. If you have an unregenerate heart, these things are going to show up.

So how do you counsel someone or can you counsel someone who is unregenerated? They don't

...