When They Don't Yet Know Jesus

I saw my first therapist in 2006 at the age of 15. It was presumably a positive experience since I decided to become a therapist myself a few years later. I remember almost nothing about it except that she suggested I sing when I feel anxious. I must have found this both intriguing and impractical because it stuck…but I didn’t do it. Then, I came to know Jesus over a decade later and He essentially told me the same thing (Ps. 68:4, Phil. 4:6, Ps. 105:1-2).

In a moment of clarity, I saw that the Lord had subtly spoken to me through my therapist all those years ago. Not with anything explicitly Christian, but with a warm presence and a word of wisdom based on how He designed me—a word that would ultimately find its fulfillment in knowing and worshipping Him. I think back to that therapist now and smile. 

Yet for years, as a therapist myself, I forgot about my experience and wrestled with how to do therapy with non-believers. (To be fair, I wrestled with how to do therapy with anyone. I was at the start of my career, new in my walk with Jesus, and was learning—am still very much learning—how to be human, a Christian, and a therapist all at once.)

Walking with believers felt…simpler. We could refer and defer to Scripture. Seek and acknowledge the Lord in the room and in their story. We both knew and accepted the truth of the Gospel—of ourselves as broken and beloved sinners, and of Jesus as faithful Lord and Savior. The seed of the Spirit had been planted and I had the freedom to water it.

With clients who didn’t know Him I felt stumped. Their view of reality was one without Jesus. Without the peace, power, and perfect love of the Savior who had (only very recently) set me on fire and was setting me free—from hopelessness, anxiety, pride, self-hatred. I so badly wanted to share the truth of Jesus with my clients outright, yet was also aware of legal and ethical guidelines that prohibited exactly that. I wrestled, then, with what my role was.

Scripture describes our spiritual state before knowing Jesus as “without God and without hope” (Eph. 2:12). This sounds dramatic, and it is. Life apart from Jesus is darkness. When we don’t know the Lord, we live in self-condemnation. We are slaves to sin and a fear of death. We rely on our own, often meager resources, and long (and I mean long) for rest. We long for love.

My heart both breaks and is set ablaze knowing that my clients long for the love I’ve found in Jesus. But while my first impulse was to tell them about Jesus, I quickly realized that the Lord was rarely bringing those clients to me for that purpose. Echoing John the Baptist, my role was to prepare the way. To prepare the soil. To meet them where they are, “without God and without hope,” and invite them—with my presence, words, and way of relating to them—into something better.

Probably not by telling them about Jesus Christ outright.

But by remembering they’re His.

Remembering they’re precious.

Paying close attention.

Having compassion.

Gently challenging.

Genuinely grieving.

Exposing cracks.

Confronting evil.

Encouraging longing.

Embodying joy.

Holding hope.

Being patient.

Pursuing peace.

The love—the Person—they’re longing for is still in the room, even if unseen by them.

Every moment in my office might be one that God is using to break up and prepare the soil of their hearts for His coming. Every word I speak might be a seed of truth scattered upon that soil, slowly taking root or waiting for the day when it finally can.

In the meantime, what others did for me before I knew or accepted Jesus, I hope to do for my clients. Knowing that they are a garden yet to be planted, a temple yet to be built, a masterpiece yet to be made. They have “very good” bones, magnificent potential. They also need help. A Savior who is not me. They are broken and beloved. Surely God is pursuing every one of them, His precious creations, even when they have yet to see it. I didn’t see God in my therapist’s office at 15 years old. But there He was.

One day, my clients, too, may see who was in the room with them. With us. One day, by grace, they may turn to Him and be saved.