Video Transcript: Prerequisites to Coaching Part 2

All right, welcome back. Steve Elzinga here again, & this is the coaching class. I hope you're enjoying it. Hope you're thinking about how you might use this in your life. As I said in the very first session, this is something that you can use professionally, in a church as sort of a side business, but it also can be used in all your leadership enterprises. If you have a family, or parenting, your marriage, your friends—this is just a way of life, to try to help people discover all the things that God has for them.

We've been looking at some prerequisites to Christian coaching. Because coaching is client centered—in other words, you're just trying to help the client figure out what they want to do; you're not trying to lead them in any direction—you want to make sure that there's something solid there.

Last session, we talked about how they need a connection to Jesus, they need the Holy Spirit inside of them to guide them, evidence of the fruits of the Spirit, and they have to understand what their gift is. Those are really important. So we're going to continue looking at some of these prerequisites.

I think a person needs a walk with God. A person can accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and still not have a walk with God.

A walk with God is talking and listening repeatedly. We've talked about that in several of the Christian Leaders classes—that a walk with God is just like a walk with anybody. You have a friend, and the friendship develops over time through talking and listening. You interact with one another; it's talking and listening, going back and forth. As that's repeated over time, and a relationship develops.

The same thing is needed with God. There's something powerful that happens when you walk with God. That includes prayer, and it includes Bible. Prayer is the talking, and Bible is listening. You're listening to what God has to say every time you read the Bible. So: talking and listening. And when you put both of those together, we call that devotions.

Prayer.

1 John 5:14: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

You want a client who—if the client is supposed to be figuring out what they want to do, and then figuring out a plan of how to do what they want to do, and if the client is actually going to succeed in doing the plan that they want to do to reach the goal they have in mind—then you want all of that to fall into the will of God. You want a client who is actually talking to God about these things. Prayer is an integral part of the whole coaching process.

James 5:16: “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

Not only do you want your client to be in prayer daily. Prayer is not just a weekly thing. I'm married to my wife, Marie; we've been married for 40 years. We live in the same house. We say something to each other every single day. What a weird relationship it would be if I didn’t talk to her and she didn’t talk to me for a whole week, and then once a week I go somewhere and listen to someone else talk about my wife.

That's what a lot of people do with church. They listen to the pastor talk about God, but they themselves don't talk to God.

You want a client who is in prayer, but you also want to be the one who is in prayer for your clients. Prayer can be part of the session: before you begin, “Hey, let's pray about this. Let's pray that God would bless our time.” When they're finished with a coaching session, why not ask God to bless the plans and things that are coming up this week? Make prayer a part of it. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Let's use it.

Romans 8:26–27: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.”

As you're coaching someone, the whole point of why you're coaching them is that they really don't know what they want to do and they don't know how to do it. They have no discipline to get it done. That's why they've come to you.

You want prayer to be part of that whole process. Why? Because it says we don't even know what to pray. Your client might not know what to pray: “I don't know what to do. I don't know what to ask God to help me do.” That doesn't matter. The Holy Spirit has something in mind. Let's go to God in prayer, and hopefully the Holy Spirit will be part of this whole process of trying to figure this out.

Luke 11:9–13: “So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given you.” Okay, so we're trying to figure out stuff. The client is trying to figure out a goal, “What do I need to change in my life?” Ask God. Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

In secular coaching, everything is sort of resting on the coach, “I am going to help you. I'm like God to you.” But in Christian coaching—no. I am not God. We're both human beings, and we're both trying to figure this out. We're both trying to figure out what God's will is for you.

Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

Let's ask. Let's make asking—prayer—part of the whole coaching experience.

Another benefit of this: when things go right—when the client actually follows through and does things and his life is changed—who gets the credit?

In the secular world, who gets the credit? It's the coach. “My coach is awesome, man, he's really helped me change my life.” But here—who ultimately gets the credit? It's God who gets the credit. God is the one who lets us know what we need to do.

Okay, so that's prayer. Now Bible.

Psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.” When someone comes with a need for coaching, they're trying to go down a trail—but they can't see. They don't know which way to go. There are many trails to take, and there are many voices saying, “Go this way,” or “Go that way.” What trail do I take? I can't see my way. There are roots, rocks, tree logs in front of the way.

A light on the path—that's what the Word of God is.

We want a client who's into the Word of God. We want a client who's praying, talking, and listening to God. But we also want a client who's daily trying to figure out what God has to say. Every morning, I have a thing at my church where we're following a topic, and we have a verse every single day. I begin my day reading the verse.

This morning’s verse was Deuteronomy 31:8: “The Lord Himself goes before you, and He will be with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

That's the verse I read this morning. Now I'm going to take that verse with me all day long. As I'm doing this lecture right now, the Lord Himself goes before me. I don't have everything scripted out. I trust that God is going to give me the words to say. I'm trusting that God is going to give me something to say that can reach right to wherever you are in the world. I don't know who's listening to this right now. I don't know what your situation is. But I'm trusting that God can speak through me to reach you, so you can become all that God wants you to be, because we're on this team together.

What I'm trying to illustrate is: reading the Word of God forms my day. It makes a difference with what I do or what I don't do. That verse gives me courage today. I'm not going to be discouraged by things that happen today, because the Lord Himself goes before me, and He will be with me, and He will never leave me or forsake me, regardless of what happens.

If you have that kind of confidence, you can go out and try things. You can step out in faith and do something—you don't know if you're going to fail or succeed. But you know what? I can't fail. No matter what happens, I cannot fail. I want my client to have that sense—that they just need to go out and do something. They may succeed, they may fail, but if we're trying to do what God wants us to do, we never fail.

Alright, so reading your Bible.

Romans 15:4: “For everything that was written in the past”—he’s talking about the Old Testament—“was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide, we might have hope.”

I want a client who has hope. Hope is having a positive outlook on the future, even though you don't know what the future will be—even though there are obstacles and things in the way and you don't know how it's going to work out. Hope is having an optimistic view of the future. I want a client who has an optimistic view of the future. How’s he going to get it? By walking with a God who promises to be with him, and by listening to this God through what the Word says.

All the things written in the past were written for this purpose: to provide encouragement and to give hope. I want a client who is encouraged and has hope.

2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God‑breathed.” God‑breathed is how God created human beings in the first place. Now He breathes that same life into His Word. All Scripture is God‑breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

We're trying to get our clients to identify some good work, some goals, some action thing that they should do that might change their life. I want them in the Word, because the Word will equip them to figure this out and to follow through.

Another prerequisite for working with someone in this whole coaching process is: you want a person who is part of the church.

Hebrews 10:24–25: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on…”

A spur, in English, is a cowboy term. A spur is that little pointy thing on the boot that the cowboy uses to kick the horse—to get the horse going. Sometimes you have to poke the horse to get him to go.

This verse is saying: sometimes we need a poke. Sometimes we need someone who wants to challenge us. Being in the body of Christ—being in the church—that’s a place where that can happen. We have people who love us and care for us, and they see when we're going down a trail that's not very good—a trail that's going to hurt us and hurt the people around us. They come alongside us and say, “We think you're going the wrong direction.”

Sometimes we need a challenge. Sometimes in church, we're just wasting our life, and we need a good friend to come along and say, “Hey, you're really not making all that you can out of your life.” So sometimes we need people in our life who will challenge us.

“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds—not giving up meeting together.”

Part of the sense of being challenged is when we're together and then we don't feel alone. But a lot of people give up meeting together. People often give up on meeting together because meeting together involves people—and sometimes people hurt people, and we get tired of it, and there's politics and everything, and we just… stop. But then we're all alone.

Church, in some ways, is like a fire. You build a nice little fire—you have all these coals. But a fire survives because the logs and coals are together. If you take a coal out of the fire and place it off to the side, it quickly goes out. Coals need to be together to be of any value.

That's the way it is in the church. When people separate themselves from the church, their passion, their energy, their ability to go out and do things—to love and to do good deeds—grows cold.

Paul, the author here, is saying: we’ve got to stay together. Sometimes we’ve got to stay together so we can challenge one another to become all that God intends for us.

“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds—not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing—but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Time is short. We don't have forever. We don't know exactly when Christ will come back and the last judgment and then heaven. Is it 10 years? 50 years? 100 years? 1000 years? I don't know.

I do know this: the time is ticking on your time. Because you and I only have 60, 70, 80, 90 years on this planet. For us, the end of the world is coming soon. Time is ticking. Whatever we're going to do with this life, we have to get going—we have to do it.

The author here is saying the church does two things: the church challenges—spurs—but also encourages. Challenge is when we're sitting down, not doing anything, and someone comes along and says, “Come on, get up, let's go.” Encouragement is, “You can do it. We believe in you.”

You need a client who is part of a community like that, so he can be encouraged and so he can be challenged. Otherwise, it's all up to you. Again, everything is resting on you, the coach. And remember, you don't want to be the one encouraging and challenging, because you're just helping the client figure out what he wants to do. He needs that support from a community.

So you want someone that's part of a church.

Romans 12:5: “We belong to each other, and each of us needs all the others.” We can't do this on our own.

Okay, engaged in the seven connections. If you're in this class, you've probably heard about the seven connections somewhere along the line. It's a matrix—a way of thinking about your relationship to God in relationship to other people. These are your basic relationships in life.

Number one: a walk with God. You want a client who has a walk with God—talking and listening repeatedly, prayer, Bible, devotions—something they do every day.

Number two:If they have a spouse, you want someone who is in a walk with their spouse—talking and listening repeatedly. They have a relationship with their spouse. If their spouse is a Christian, there’s a time where they read the Bible and pray together, husband and wife.

Number three: a walk with family. A family connection involves talking and listening, families being together, sharing life together. And if you want God at the center of that family, then there has to be Bible, there has to be prayer as part of that.

Number four: Walk with friends. We don't just exist in our families—we have connections with other people. We have shared interests with others. We can have different friendship circles—friends at work, friends in the community, friends we do a sport or hobby with, or friends we've known for a long, long time. You want a client who has connections like that. Again, it's talking and listening repeatedly. If you're a Christian, you want God to be part of that. There's reading the Bible together, praying together—that’s what Bible studies are: a group of friends coming together, studying the Word, praying for each other. All these things equip someone.

It's a prerequisite. I want someone who is strong. I want someone who has some foundation they're standing on, because I'm going to be trying to help them figure out what they should do in their life. They have to be able to do it—but they can't do it on their own. They need these connections.

They need a connection to God. They need a strong connection. If they don't have a good connection to their spouse—if that's a problem—then if we make these other goals, that problem will always drag everything down. If there's a problem there, then we have to work on that first. We have to fix the husband-wife problem.

And then, if it's a person who is married and has children, but there are problems in the family, that's going to drag everything down. So we need to fix that. We need to focus on changing those dynamics in the family.

So: walk with God, walk with spouse, walk with family, walk with friends.

Number five: walk with church. Connected to the church. People can't do it on their own. Church is your source of support.

Number six: Walk with the kingdom—being part of not only just your own church, but also what God is doing all over the world. As you take Christian Leaders Institute classes, you start getting connected to people all over the world. You can go to the directory, find other Christian Leader students, and connect with them. You should do that. You should be part of our network where you can communicate with people dealing with the same things you're trying to deal with. If you're a church planter, you can connect with other church planters. You don't want to go it alone.

Number seven: a walk with the world. What does that mean? The world is the people who are unconnected to Christ. You want a client who is engaging the world, a client who is not just walking in their own faith, but sharing their faith with others.

Engage in these seven things: walk with God, walk with spouse, walk with family, walk with friends, walk with church, walk with kingdom, walk with the world.

These connections are like a circle. You start with a walk with God. Then a walk with your spouse supports your walk with God. Then you have a walk with your family, which supports your marriage, which supports your walk with God. Then you have a group of friends that support your family, support your marriage, and support your walk with God. Then you have the church that supports your friends, supports your family, supports your marriage, supports your walk with God. And then you connect into the kingdom, which supports all of that.

You can see how it goes.

You want people who have all these connections—these relationships—because then they have something solid, something strong, from which you, the coach, can now bring something good out.

We'll see you next time.