Counseled - Facilitating ChangeSample

The third key principle of Jesus’ Leadership style was that He showed unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard is the ability to accept a person and not necessarily accept what they do or their values. This is a counseling skill that is developed to view the person separate from their actions. It’s not about us laying aside our values and accepting the person’s values but focusing on helping them.

One of the most interesting aspects of Jesus’ ministry was that He was able to fully know what kind of past people had, but we never see Him using that against them. Even though He had a perfect understanding of how far off in the wrong way some people have gone, His focus was always on how to bring them back to God and never on what took them away.

A perfect example of this would be his conversation with the Samaritan woman. Samaritans were avoided like the plague by the Jewish people during the time Jesus lived. But at this point in time, with a radical move on His part, we see Jesus going to find this woman at the well. From a conversation that centered around literal and figurative water, He was able to understand that this woman had had five husband and was currently in a live in situation. Her ethnicity and poor moral choices alone were reason enough for Jesus to judge her. But He doesn’t.

Instead, He avoids condemning her and uses a positive way of bring her to the source of her problem: she was hungry for a source of love and acceptance that would never end. Her method of trying to find it was to go from man to man to man. None of them satisfied her. Jesus was able to discern that she was looking to man to fulfill a need that only God was big enough to fill. 

People who were regularly judged and condemned by society were often accepted by Jesus because He was able to discern where they were coming from, when it came to their poor choices. A facilitativeleader is able to suspend judgment and discern the reasons why people make the negative decisions that they make.

To Think Through:

How quick am I to judge/condemn someone based on their past?

How comfortable are the people around me with opening up to me about their poor choices?

How can I use discernment to better understand and help people?

Prayer:

Dear Lord,

Teach me to see people as you see them, to understand the hurts, confusion, difficulties, regrets etc. Help us meet them where they are with love, grace and mercy.

In Jesus Name, Amen.