"That's all you got?" "Yup."

It is irrepressibly hard to counsel someone who has a different world view than me.

I can't even begin to describe how much it makes my head hurt to give someone advice when what they are communicating to me is born from a framework that I do not (read: will not) hold. It is easy to enter into their pain, find the hopelessness, and see the questions that are in need of answers. But, at the point where empathy turns to counsel...that is a turn that I simply cannot negotiate. Maybe it is a weakness of mine, but I find it to be like trying to speak Polish when I have had only 3 years of Spanish in high school.

And so I offer the counsel through the only framework I know. And now, I am the one speaking Polish because not only am I asking them to consider my counsel, but I am asking them to change their world view as well. And that is a turn that is impossible to negotiate with assistance from the Spirit Himself.

Thanks be to God that He is the one that changes hearts, frameworks, world views, languages...all of it. He is able to negotiate those turns quite well.



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