Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church and counseling and discipleship. Hello. Hello. Hello. We are at the Made to Minister Conference, and I am really excited about this episode.

We've had this person on, I think, one other time over the last six years. So it's been a long awaited episode. I'm excited, but I've got John Henderson with me. John, how

are doing, brother? Doing great. So good to be with you. Thanks for

having me. Yes, we're going to be focusing on trauma and really with John because this is his background. And we really want to focus on when we're talking about trauma. Do we understand trauma? Obviously, our culture, there's a lot of trauma language being used.

How do we understand trauma? But we want to do that with a biblical lens. And before John and I hit the record button, John made an interesting statement about it. All these years, it's really just replacing a noun. And so it's just a biblical lens literally for life, for everything.

Right?

Yeah. There's a way in which trauma is it's not new to these recent decade or two. Yeah. It's certainly gained a kind of traction and attention in our current day. The number of books, the number of podcasts, the number of courses, the number of attention it's gotten both in counseling settings, but also popular settings and movies.

And so to say, okay, understanding trauma through a biblical lens, and that is hopefully the statement we're making about all of life. Understanding life through a biblical lens. And then trauma is the noun we're gonna think about now, the word, the construct, the idea that is trying to capture something that is real in human life, and that people are seeking help for, and that we believe Scripture has much to say about. And not just say about, but a way to see it through God's Word that is the truth.

Yeah, that's good. And actually, in order to get a biblical lens, got to start with Scripture. Right? And so just to introduce the idea of seeing trauma through a biblical lens, looking at Psalm 55, for example, and John, I see you've got your Bible open. Do you happen to be on Psalm 55?

Psalm

55.

Nice. Could could you read that? Yeah. The eight verses? That'd be great.

Yeah, I can read those first eight verses and and we could go to many Psalms. Yeah. But this is one that is striking to me because of how the language captures, inspired by the spirit of God through David to capture the kinds of circumstances, the kinds of experience, the kinds of thoughts and feelings, emotions that make up what I would call just the raw material of trauma. Where he says, God, listen to my prayer. Do not hide from my plea for help.

Pay attention to me and answer me. I am restless and in turmoil with my complaint. And here's why. He says, because of the enemy's words, because of the pressure of the wicked, for they bring down disaster on me and harass me in anger. My heart shudders within me.

Terrors of death sweep over me. Fear and trembling grip me. Horror has overwhelmed me. I said, if only I had wings like a dove, I would fly away and find rest. How far away I would flee.

I would stay in the wilderness. I would hurry to my shelter from the raging wind and the storm. And so when you sit with men and women and hear their stories of horror and terror, whether endured throughout childhood, endured as a soldier on the battlefield, endured in abusive or oppressive marriage, endured in the experience of natural disasters. And if you learn your way into their world and into their life and hear them talk about what it's like, it sounds similar to these kinds of words. Yeah.

To where the Spirit is inspiring David to put words to this experience. And it's circumstances like enemy's words. It's pressure of the wicked. It's disaster that David is not choosing for himself. Somebody's dropping it on him.

They're harassing him in anger. There's a persistent kind of persecution, a persistent kind of oppression that he's feeling. And it's bringing about this sense of terror sweeping over him and notice it's a terror of death. Yeah. There's a way in which trauma is about threats of death and terrors of death.

And it's about being overwhelmed by horror, something truly horrifying and horrible. And so that's what's coming at him. And then to hear the way he's expressing what takes over him, fear and trembling grip me. This idea that there's a very heart level, soul level, fearfulness, anxiety, but also the sense of the body is feeling it. The trembling and the shuddering, and using language that captures.

He is an embodied soul made in the image of God facing something in a fallen world that overwhelms him. And so, read those kinds of verses, and that provides a lens by which now we can interpret life and see life that that the Bible isn't far away. It's right up, right in the nitty gritty of what it's like to be a human being in this fallen world.

Yeah. It's like a newscaster reporting live. Reporting live from the hurricane. Yeah. It's very much and that's to your point, like that is the language of it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really good because that really lends us to the next idea, the reality of a description of trauma. So you talk about trauma being an experienced threat of destruction without opportunity for escape, or the resources to recover and restore.

Yeah, the more that I've sat with other believers who are trying to think carefully and biblically about what trauma is, the more often those conversations go back to being an image bearer of God. Yeah. The importance of the fact that we bear the image of God as part of why we experience trauma. In Psalm 22, when David's going to talk about feeling like a worm and not a man, there's something that the experience of horror and terror and abuse and oppression assaults the dignity of a human being. It makes you feel subhuman.

And so, of why we experience it is because we bear the image of God. And so, then to think about trauma as an image bearer of God experiencing and then reliving the threat of destruction or threats of destruction. And so, there's a way in which it's not just about suffering merely or pain, but a certain kind of suffering that brings the shadow of death right to our face. There's a kind of threat of destruction. There's a way in which even sexual abuse is not just pain.

It's a pain that tears at your dignity, at your worth, at your humanity. It's a threat of destruction, is some of what you're even enduring. But there's a way with trauma, there's both the experience of it and the reliving of it, that is perceived to be outside the loving presence of God. And I think that's an important piece, that why does not just trauma get experienced but relived? In many ways because it's felt and perceived outside the loving presence of God.

Even though no Christian ever endures anything outside the loving presence of God, there's a way in which we can face moments that are so dark, so overwhelming, where terrors of death have swept over us. And we don't perceive the loving presence of God. We don't perceive God as near. Yeah. And but then also not perceiving opportunity to escape into the loving presence of God.

There's a way in which the experience of oppression and abuse and terror and horror feels trapping. Like we can't get out. We're helpless in front of it. That's part of trauma. Thirdly, and without even applying the active resources of God's grace to recover, there's a way in which the reliving of trauma is the struggle to find the resources of God's grace to apply to what we've gone through, so that when we look at it, we're interpreting it differently.

We're seeing it differently, feeling it differently. And that's why the ministry of the word and the ministry of the gospel to those who experience the effects of trauma is so important, is because we believe this really is where the power is, the grace of God applied that can bring restoration.

Which is really difficult because that's one of those dimensions that seems so out of touch. Right? Because the power in front of the powerlessness. I like this kind of like one of your points is just the powerlessness of the person. And that's why those just feels God possibly can't be in this.

Yeah. When you think of dimensions of trauma, I tend to think of three. One is the magnitude of the danger. There's There is a threat of destruction. There's a magnitude of the danger that is overwhelming.

But then, yeah, secondly, the powerlessness of the person. And we feel small in the face of it. We feel weak and unable to helpless in the face of it. And then thirdly, yeah, the resources to recover. If high magnitude, low sense of power in ourselves and low sense of resources, Those tend to be dimensions that increase the likelihood that trauma can develop.

And that's part of where Psalm 55 is so beautiful, is where actually the Spirit leads David, where David leads us. Yeah. These words would suggest that though David is experiencing terrors of death and horror and the trouble of enemies, that there's not gonna be this long standing reliving of that experience Yeah. Over time because he goes somewhere, the Lord takes him somewhere. Verse, was it 15, let death take them by surprise.

Let them go down to Sheol alive because evil is in their homes and within them. There's a kind of appeal to God as just, as good, as righteous. Verse 16, but I call to God. Yeah. Like, that's a huge statement.

And that's where he began. Right? God, listen to my prayer. Verse one. Do not hide from my plea for help.

That in the midst of all that affliction, David is going to the Lord. He calls the Lord and he's convinced, verse 16, the Lord will save me. Now he's in the middle of horror and terror and threats of death, and yet he's convinced whether it's from this or through this, the Lord will save me. I complain and groan morning, noon, and night. There's a way in which the biblical counseling for trauma, the personal ministry of the word in the midst of trauma is equipping each other to groan.

Yeah. How do you groan in a cursed world, groan in a cursed body, groan in suffering, but groan toward the Lord in a way that is faith filled, and he hears my voice. Like that kind of confidence that when I cry out, he hears. Verse 18, Though many are against me, he will redeem me. And so I love, it sounds like this where David just states the raw, painful reality, Life, many are against me.

And then it's followed by this statement, but he will redeem me. Yeah. Horror overwhelms me, but he hears me. Terrors of death sweep over me, but he's near, and he's close, and he cares. God, the one enthroned from long ago, just there's a statement about power, about sovereignty, about exaltedness, about God as creator and sovereign.

And because trauma throws all that into question. Like, trauma says, okay, who's in charge of this? Yeah. Who's got the power? Who's sovereign in my life?

And yet these are the types of truths and promises that push back against traumatic effect because they help us see, you know, he's enthroned. Yeah. He's in charge. His hand of providence is guiding it. And just how he says, we'll hear and we'll humiliate them.

His trauma is about injustice. Yeah. David sees, no, there's gonna be justice. Because they do not change and do not fear God. Go ahead.

I just did this is so packed. And I think verse 20 kinda gives us a little bit more insight on in terms of what was going on, led to David saying these things. We're going back to the response and the event sort of stuff. But avert to your point, verse 18, he redeems my soul and safety. That were in are you reading from the CSB?

Yeah.

Okay. The ESV and likewise, but the word there is shalom. The the reality of the just the paradoxical nature of trauma and, like, the the reality that you can have peace and joy in the midst of these things, but it's it seems so far outstretched away from me or the person struggling, like, that can't possibly be a reality. Yeah. But he's choosing to to speak that, and I think of Psalm 46, I mean, just or forty two six, excuse me.

I'm getting it mixed up now. Don't have it in front of me. But why are you downcast on myself? Why why are you in turmoil within me? Hoping God.

Yep. And so it's like that same language of it is it seems far removed, but in that moment, there's faith element that he is still enthroned and he's still there. And then it to your point, like, you're reading through and him anchoring himself in the Lord, but then verse 20, my companion stretched out his hand against his friends. He violated his covenant. And so now we're getting into like more relational.

Like, there's like the overarching, like, external sort of the reality of a sinful world, but then it like all of a sudden, this is on his relational backdoor.

Yeah. He's beginning to help us see the nature of some of the horror and terror and its betrayal. Yeah. Someone very close to him has turned on him and has been violent with him. And we don't know who this is.

There's a way in which King Saul certainly fits some of that description. His own son Absalom's gonna fit that description. There's gonna be a number of people in David's life. And that's something that the experience of trauma is often about. It's just very intimate relational When

you said earlier, like when talking about like domestic abuse and the trauma from that, and that is the companion, right?

Yes. It's turned on me violently. And there's a way in which that magnifies the sense of pain and affliction in it and aloneness in it. Yeah. And yeah, there was deceit even in verse 21 that words are smooth, but war was in his heart.

And yet twenty two and twenty three, David is gonna show us again a destination. There's a way in which scripture is it's sometimes putting in front of us a destination. Yeah. It's not always a description of where I am, but where the Lord is taking me. And a way in which sometimes scripture is a process.

It's laying sort of stones on a path in front of me. Yeah. Here's what faith does next. Here's the one next step. And yet care for trauma is long and slow and hard.

And so it's not idealistic. It's not, okay, here's all the stuff you should be feeling right now. If you just had faith, this is what you Yeah. No. Faith is, okay, what's the next step in faith that has Christ and his promises Yeah.

In view. Because 22, cast your burden on the Lord. There's the next step.

There's where Peter got it from. First Peter five.

That's where he goes. Values upon the Lord because he cares for you. Yeah. And yeah, that's what he this is what he's taking it from. And he will sustain you.

He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. There's a way in which that's a statement of truth about not just the way the world is, but where this is going. Even though David's saying, I'm pretty shaken right now. But there's shaken and then there's shaken. Yep.

And David's sure that the way I'm being shaken is temporal, and the Lord's not gonna let me go. There's another way in which I'll never be shaken cause the Lord won't allow it. He's not gonna lose me. He's not gonna surrender me. God, you will bring them down to the pit of destruction.

Men of bloodshed and treachery will not live out half their days. And then just that wonderful closing statement, but I will trust in you. And that's, if you will, the heart of his response Yeah. To terror and horror is this anchoring of, I'm gonna trust in you.

Yeah. That's good. The development of trauma. And in a sense where it's starting with the situation, we don't really know ultimately like what it is specifically until we get to verse 20, get a little bit of insight. But then the development of trauma, and obviously you can pick any number of psalms.

Right? As a king, you've got enemies. And so you can pick this, but you've got a number of developments here within trauma in terms of the interpersonal response to terrors and horrors. You just wanna give a few of these, John? And we've hit a few, most of these, but

Yeah. There's a way in which trauma can develop. It doesn't just happen. It and it's never one thing. Like, an event isn't itself traumatic, I like to say, but it becomes traumatic when that's the effect that it has on the person in the middle of it.

But there's a way in which there's inner person development of traumatic effect. There's outer person, body, physical, and then there's interpersonal. And those three pieces are always intersecting. Yeah. Always woven together.

Because you and I were never not embodied Yeah. This side of the grave. Never not ensouled, And we're never not in relationship to God ourselves and others. Yeah. And so there's a way in which And I love it in Psalm 55 because there's there's words he's using that get at the inner person.

Yeah. The anguish, the turmoil, the distress, and the loneliness that can come, the anger that can come, the loss and disappointment. But other words he's using that get at the outer person development. Yeah. The trembling and the shuddering.

And Jeremiah is gonna have very vivid language for when his body at times is overtaken by just his heart pounding and racing. At the sound of the trumpet, the Babylonians are coming. Then lastly, the interpersonal where there's always something we're doing with God. There's always something he's doing with us. There's always something we're doing with others and relating to others in.

So trauma develops at the intersection of circumstances, person, others, and God. It's never just one factor. Yeah. It's all those. And that's really important for when we're caring for men and women suffering the effects of trauma because we realize, okay, this isn't just one dimension.

There's a way in which

Like it's systematically and simultaneously impacting the whole. They're a whole person.

Yeah. And that's part of being made in the image of God is it's a whole person experience. Yeah. It's a whole person reliving. And as ministers of the gospel, as those who minister the word as biblical counselors, we're focused at the core at the inner person where the word of God is being brought there.

And also covenantally, relationship to God, that's where we're that's our lead foot.

Yeah.

And yet the prayer desire is that those words and those promises and prayer and the work of the spirit, that's also gonna help their bodies. Yeah. There's a way in which a deep growing abiding sense of peace and shalom and rest in the Lord does have physiological implications. Yeah. But we're also not gonna ignore any one part of the person as irrelevant.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. And then along with those, if you were to isolate those things in terms of initial responses to the interpersonal, external and those pieces, just you've got a few things here as far as depersonalization, disassociation and fragmentation. Can you give us some framework with that thought process?

Yeah. Because you have inner person experience like weakness, helplessness, vulnerability, shame, intrusion and insecurity, betrayal and distrust. But then, one that's harder to get up is how the inner person can actually be torn apart. Yeah. Yeah.

And fractured and fragmented by the experience of horror and terror. In a psalm that is comes to Psalm seven, where David's going to say, Oh my God, in You do I take refuge. Save me from all my pursuers and deliver me. Lest like a lion they tear my soul apart, rending it in pieces with none to deliver. And so there's a way in which David's expressing a kind of affliction, a kind of threat and danger that if persistent and unabated feels like it's just gonna tear his insides apart, his soul apart.

And that's a It's, again, biblical lens. Those types of verses now help me when I see the culture offering words like dissociation or fragmentation. From thousands and thousands of hours sitting in the room with men and women who have endured unspeakable kinds of pain and affliction and abuse and trauma, who are compartmentalizing their experience. They're compartmentalizing emotion. They're compartmentalizing sometimes personhood.

They're all kinds of things that make movies about, that write books about, that look fantastic and spectacular and at times intimidating. And yet, think there's a way in which scripture, again, puts words to it, that there can be a way in which whenever we're enduring something really unspeakably painful that we want to compartmentalize it. We all do that. That we've endured something that has awful painful memories and emotions. And so, how do we tuck that away in a corner of our mind or our heart and put it behind a door, lock it tight, and keep it separate.

Because how do you now, after what you've endured, go to school the next day? Yeah. Go work at a job, function day to day? And so, those are other types of words like depersonalization, dissociation, fragmentation, that I think, again, are words and ideas and constructs that are trying to describe that part of the profile of traumatic experience effect. And I love that you can go to passages of scripture like Psalm seven that does hint at those kinds of things being possible, which then tells me that God has wisdom and power for addressing it.

Yeah, that's really good. And so as we continue to try to think through developing this biblical lens and responding to trauma and understanding trauma, As we wrap up here, any encouragement to counselors who may be like, yeah, I hear you guys and that's good, but I still, it's man, what do I say to those people who are just maybe in the throes on the front end of it? It's just going back to the front of our conversation of being able to try to get them to that point where they're experiencing those things. But we're trying to encourage them to speak out to the Lord, to call on the Lord, to those sorts of things. Because, you know, it's not a formula.

And it's every person's different, especially the person who's experiencing the trauma. And when we start getting into a responses versus the event, all of those components that go into it, how would you encourage the counselors that are like at the beginning stages of dealing with those in the throes of trauma?

Yeah. I think to begin with caring and listening, begin with compassion. Yeah. Ask the Lord to give you patience, to ask considerate, discerning, careful questions. Yeah.

And then listen well, to not panic even if the brother or sister you're caring for panics. To not rush even if that brother or sister you're caring for wants to rush and just get out of it. To begin to ask the Lord to give wisdom of, okay, what's the next step for them? And it may be learning to cry out to the Lord. And maybe Psalm 55 verse one.

Just how do you begin to talk to God about what you've endured. But then step two, maybe how do you begin to help them put to words, put words to what they've experienced? And that's where Psalm 55 again can help. Like, putting words to what you've endured. Putting words that God gives you to describe what it's been like.

But then also, like how do you help them see that God is near, that God cares, that God hears them. The things that David is convinced of. He hears me. He sees me. He cares.

And so you're just planting seeds and you're watering and you're relying on God to cause growth, which would be the other part I would encourage is be ready for a slow journey. Yeah. And it and be ready for the fact that the Lord may give you six months of that journey with him. He may give you a year. He may give you 10 conversations.

Yeah.

And it's not your job to make sure they're healed or in some way rid of it. But okay, how do you receive them where they are? Yeah. And help them over the next leg of the road?

Yeah, that's really good. And it's and it is hard. And I think what you said sums it up in terms of patience and recognizing it's gonna take time. Would you encourage those much like the Psalms, obviously, what we see modeled for us and throughout the Psalms with David? Would you encourage consolees to or counselors to encourage consolees to write out their own song?

What's this language like? How because to that point, because some people just don't know how to really articulate what they're working through is like some sort of way to get them to help draw out what's in them in a way to give it back to the Lord.

Yeah, I think eventually you might get there. I think just starting with the Psalms themselves. And that'd be an encouragement I'd give to any counselors like Psalm 55. Let it provide a structure for your conversation. Yeah.

And then as you're sitting with him in verse two, because of the enemy's words, and you ask him, what are the words enemies have spoken to you? What are the words that have been most crushing to you? Most condemning and alienating for you because of the pressure of the wicked? Just what what have been the pressures for you? What are the weights that have crashed down on you from wicked hands and wicked deeds that that you've endured for they bring down disaster on me?

What have been the disasters for you? So there's a way in which rather than starting with necessarily them writing a song, taking that song and with them putting next to it. Yeah. Their own. What's their Psalm 55 Yeah.

Type of experience. But then, because that's it's not just gonna help them put words to it, but then it's eventually gonna lead them where Psalm 55 leads them. But I will trust in you. And that could take a number of meetings just to work through one Psalm that way. But then it draws them into scripture and into the God of scripture a way that's more personal and also equips them with a way of taking scripture to heart.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. John, thank you so much for your time and thank you for just this encouraging word on trauma and helping us develop biblical lens for understanding trauma. Any resource that you would encourage supplementally outside of the word of God to help with that?

Darby Strickland just Is released it Trauma? Her new book on trauma that I would commend to many. Curtis Solomon has written various pieces on PTSD and a book on it that certainly is going to help give some perspective and some biblical perspective on that experience. David Paulison's work on suffering in Psalm 119, his article on Be Still, Peace Be Still. There's just a number that where the trauma isn't the immediate focus, but everything that's being unpacked from scripture absolutely speaks and applies to it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Good. Well, thank you.

Thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you guys next time.