Micah prophesied doom and gloom, so his was not a popular message. But Judah had a debilitating spiritual condition, and it was Micah’s job to diagnose it and supply the cure. Let’s see what we can learn from his methods.

The son of King George V, Prince Albert, or Bertie as family members called him, had a stammer so severe he could barely string two sentences together. The King enlisted the services of the best speech therapists money could muster to help the Prince overcome his stuttering tongue. The experts of the early 20^th century assumed the problem was “mechanical” so they tried to help the patient increase control of his diaphragm, relax his vocal chords, and strengthen his tongue and lips. But nothing alleviated the condition. One day Lionel Logue was given an opportunity to try.

Logue, who hailed from Australia, was hired early in 1926. A few weeks later Prince Albert was able to say, without the slightest stutter, a number of tongue twisters and a few months later he was able to deliver a speech in Parliament and eventually, after ascending to the throne in 1936, with his new title, King George VI, he spoke to his entire kingdom on the radio with no stammer in his voice. The results were astonishing.

What helped the prince change?  Logue ruled out all mechanical factors with a simple test that was then considered unorthodox but is today widely used in speech diagnostics.

Logue put earphones on the prince and pumped loud opera music into his ears so that he couldn’t hear himself talk. He then recorded the prince flawlessly reading passages from Hamlet. The prince, convinced he had been stammering, refused to believe Logue until he heard the recording played back to him. There was nothing at all wrong with his larynx or vocal chords, nor his breathing, or diaphragm control.

Prince Albert had a problem with his thinking.

Once Logue ruled out mechanical failure, he could focus on the patient’s thinking, which eventually resolved the physical symptoms entirely.

And that is a similar lesson we learn from Micah 2.

How to Help People Change: Micah’s Exemplary Counseling Session

Micah prophesied doom and gloom, so his was not a popular message. But Judah had a debilitating spiritual condition, and it was Micah’s job to diagnose it and supply the cure. Let’s see what we can learn from his methods.

To help people change give them…

1. The Diagnosis: Call Sin “Sin”

Micah 2:1-2 Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.

Judah’s society was flourishing, but its practices were worldly, against God’s law, and lacking the compassion and morality God demanded of his people. This was a wicked nation. And they needed someone to point this out to them.

Enter Micah. The man who calls a spade a spade.

He knew that for Judah to change he had to call the people’s behavior and attitudes by their biblical names. Too often today people re-label, redefine, and repackage their behavior so that it doesn’t sound like sin but rather can pass as a disease or inherited personality trait.

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