Counseling Distinctives

The triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—created us to participate in fellowship with Him. He welcomes us to himself through Jesus Christ. The Spirit connects us to Jesus, and Jesus is the only way to the Father.

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God’s plan is to be close to us and for us to draw near to him. In response, our care for each other is inviting and familial.

The Spirit presses the very word of God into our hearts, revealing Jesus, in whom we find all wisdom and goodness. No one else can so deeply nurture and sustain us.

 

The Spirit applies Scripture to our hearts. God's Word then must shape the details of our counsel, and it must be the lens through which we see the world and its many observations about people. We want to translate everything we hear, back into the language of Scripture; aiming to understand everything through question: Who is the Lord and what has he said?

People are complex creatures.

 

We are affected by our own bodies, other people, culture, work, money, spiritual beings, and much more. These contribute to our endless diversity, and they can build us up or tear us down.​ Our bodies are unique among these influences because they both affect us and they are us. 

Amid the swarm of life’s influences is the human heart— the soul — which has depth and layers. To know the heart is to know the person and what they desire and love.

 

Our desires point to the very center of our lives, where we walk with God or turn away from him. We are most fully human—and grow progressively nearer to God—when we listen to the words of the Father, believe in the Son, come to Christ because of the Spirit’s work, turn from sin and death, and live in faith, hope, love, and wisdom.

The care of souls is not formulaic or predictable. What helps one person might not help another. We are constantly reliant on God, the wisdom and experience of others, and the input of those we help.
 

Our help joins our knowledge of the person with the knowledge of God, uniting the person’s story with God’s story. As people who are simultaneously saints, sufferers, and sinners, we will see good, hard, and sinful things in ourselves and in the people we help. We aim to look for the good, hard, and sinful—in that order.

As the care of souls, biblical counseling is the ministry of the Word done face-to-face, bringing the many facets of the gospel of Jesus to the details of daily life. Its setting is the wise, encouraging conversations that are carried out by every person in the church, in which we speak the truth in love so that we might all grow up into Christ (Eph 4:15).
 

From this home in the church, biblical counseling moves out and appears in conversations with neighbors, parachurch organizations, professional counseling offices, and many other places where God’s people work to meaningfully bring the truth of Scripture to the troubles of life.

Biblical counselors are not alone in our desire to help others. There are many helpful Christian voices, and there are differences among us. Differences in practice usually reflect different theological emphases, particularly in how to understand people and how people change. There are also many secular voices whose differences in practice reflect more fundamental differences about who God is and his activity in our lives.

We are intentional to learn from the observations and experience of others, including psychology, literature, sociology, and so on. Biblical counseling adds, however, that all these sources are then interpreted and refined by the question: Who is the Lord and what does he say?