Counselor Counseling Quotes

Self-talk reflects your innermost feelings.

The counselor says that with more time and more surgeries, I will begin to feel normal again. She says this with a mouth that can still smile. It’s so easy to be reassuring when you have lips.

I have never seen a client make a serious effort to confront his abusiveness unless somebody required him to do the work. The abuser who truly enters counseling voluntarily, with no one holding anything over his head, quits within a few sessions, unless he finds a counselor he can manipulate.

The actions and emotional responses of others are not your responsibility. You cannot rescue people from themselves. This is for them to do. — André Chevalier

After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him [as a career counselor] was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited--long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms--what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true 'calling.

Being divorced does not necessarily make one’s advice on marriage useless … or useful.

By instinct, habit, and enculturation, all of us tend to think of counseling as a human-with-human interaction. But in fact a human-with-Savior interaction must come first. When I as a counselor don’t get that straight, I inevitably offer others some sort of saviorette.

Angeline, distraught over her son's obsession and afraid of the effects of the past year on Artemis's mind, signed her thirteen-year-old up for treatment with the school counselor. You have to feel sorry for him. The counselor, that is.

There’s a reason why many people feel most loved and cared for in the therapists’s or counselor’s office: few people ask us questions as well as they do, with the interest that they do. We should consider deprofessionalizing that task, though, and restore it to the context of friendship and mentorship where it originally belonged.

Counseling is ultimately not about the counselee or the counselor, but about the Divine Counselor.

Some people would have killed themselves and/or someone else if they were single; and some people would not have done that.

Deanna's job (as counselor) is to keep us from deluding ourselves.

A good coach can be a caring parent, a wise teacher, an exemplary pastor, a passionate friend or a devoted mentor. Keep in touch with all of them especially at the time they are needed.

Sure you’re all right?” The nurse. Maybe she was some kind of counselor, Chip thought, with some special kind of training, who gets sent around to deal with it when they find people staring out of windows.

They've started to say "life-limiting" instead now. "Children and young people with life-limiting conditions..." The nurse says it gently as she explains that the hospital has started to offer a counseling service for young patients whose conditions are "terminal." She falters, flushing red. "Sorry, I meant life-limiting." Would I like to sign up? I could have the counselor come to my bed, or I could go to the special counseling room for teenagers. They have a TV in there now. The options seem endless, but the term is not new to me. I have spent many days at the airport. Years. And still, I have not flown away.

The word grace has several meanings in the Bible, one of which is help. The Holy Spirit gives help when His people read His Word and then step out by faith to do as He says. He does not promise to strengthen unless they do so; the power often comes in the doing.

When I consider the men (like my father) I have treated in psychotherapy, I recognize the challenge I face as a counselor. These men are in counseling due to an insistent wife, troubled child or their own addiction. They suffer a lack of connection with the people they say they love most. Chronically accused of being over controlling or emotionally absent, they feel at sea when their wives and children claim to be lonely in their presence. How can these people feel “un-loved” when (from his perspective) he has dedicated his life to their welfare? Some of these men will express their lack of vitality and emotional engagement though endless service. They are hyperaware of the moods, needs and prefer-ences of loved ones, yet their self-neglect can be profound. This text examines how a lack of secure early attachment with caregivers can result in the tendency to self-abandon while managing connections with significant others. Their anxiety and distrust of the connection of others will manifest in anxious monitoring, over-giving, passive aggressive approaches to anger and chronic worry. For them, failure to anticipate and meet the needs of others equals abandonment.

A great fool is any counselor, serving a Lord of high honor, who dares presume, or even think, that his counsel should surpass his Lord’s wit.

The biblical counselor must always remember that the ROOT problem is deeper than skin; it is sin. The ultimate cure is not culture, but Christ.

The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.

Every change that God promises is possible. Every quality that God requires in His redeemed children can be attained. Every resource that is needed God has supplied.

Use fear as a counselor not a captor.

Feelings are up and down, they have peaks and troughs. Often, feelings generated by other causes get tangled up with a decision and color one’s vision. Nothing short of commandment living (often in spite of feelings) can keep life stable. The peaks and troughs grow larger as they are allowed to become the life motivating force;7 however, on the other hand, they tend to flatten out as life becomes commandment oriented.

Counselors must recognize that too many Christians give up. They want the change too soon. What they really want is change without the daily struggle. Sometimes they give up when they are on the very threshold of success. They stop before receiving. It usually takes at least three weeks of proper daily effort for one to feel comfortable in performing a new practice. And it takes about three more weeks to make the practice part of oneself. Yet, many Christians do not continue even for three days. If they do not receive instant success, they get discouraged. They want what they want now, and if they don’t get it now, they quit.

Christians never should fear change. They must believe in change so long as the change is oriented toward godliness. The Christian life is a life of continual change. In the Scriptures it is called a “walk,” not a rest. They never may say (in this life), “I have finally made it.” They must not think, “There is nothing more to learn from God’s Word, nothing more to put into practice tomorrow, no more skills to develop, no more sins to be dealt with.

Hope in the Scriptures always is a confident expectation; the word hope never carries even the connotation of uncertainty that adheres to our English term (as when we say cautiously, “I hope so”). There is no “hope so” about the biblical concept.

When Christ said, “take up your cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23), He put an end to all such thinking. He represented the Christian life as a daily struggle to change. The counselee can change if the Spirit of God dwells within him. Of course, if He does not, there is no such hope.

Love, therefore, may be commanded (Luke 6:27 ff.; Ephesians 5:25) and taught (Titus 2:3-4). Love does not come naturally, it must be learned.21 But since it is the fruit of the Spirit, Christians may be sure that it will take the work of God’s Spirit in their lives to learn to love. The Spirit works through prayerful obedience to the Scriptures.

Are you committed to a life of continual counseling, growth, and education? Are you committed to a life of consistently receiving truth, of renewing your mind? From what sources do you receive your counseling? Are you reading books by authors who speak wisdom? Are you listening to music and watching movies that have redemptive and edifying themes? Are you involved in a small group or community of people that can offer you support, guidance, and encouragement, and in which you give back that which you have been given? Do you know of professional counselors you can see when needed? Are you asking God for wisdom about life on a regular basis? (He says if you will ask, He will provide [see James 1:5–8].)

God’s Word changes people, changes their thinking, changes their decisions, and changes their behavior. Change is an important matter to nouthetic counselors. The Scriptures everywhere anticipate change. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of change. His activity is everywhere represented as the dynamic and power behind the personality changes in God’s people.

Corresponding to the two basic philosophies of life, then, hedonism and biblical theism, are two views of love. Everyone, of course, is for love. The hippies are for love, the situation ethicists are for love, the followers of Hari Krishna are for love, Christians are for love. But it is true of love, as it is of heaven, that “everybody talks about it ain’t got it.

The scriptural admonition to “prove all things” (1st Thessalonians 5:21) has no meaning when an institutional view may not be questioned. “Through a multitude of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14; 24:6) has no meaning when an authority figure provides the only acceptable answer. There is no need for a multitude when the only allowed counsel comes from an institutional authority figure.

True love is always under control. It is commanded. Christ commands, “Love your enemies.” You can’t sit around whomping up a good feeling for your enemies. It doesn’t come that way. But if you give an enemy something to eat or give him something to drink, soon something begins to happen to your feelings. When you invest yourself in another, you begin to feel differently toward him. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Surprisingly, once she started working with professional counselors and advocates, Natasha’s opinion about the desirability of reporting rapes to the police changed. Her colleagues pointed out that for some victims of sexual assault, engaging with the criminal justice system could traumatize them severely all over again, so the staff at SFTS didn’t necessarily recommend it. Her colleagues definitely urged every victim to get counseling, however.

With a taproot sunk deeply in the unchangeable Christ, one can learn to live a relatively rootless life here with joy. Change is what the Christian ought to expect, ought to demand of himself, and ought to learn to live with. He knows that there is “no continuing city”26 here; his “citizenship is in heaven.”27 Counselors with this hope can undertake the task of counseling with joy and expectation. By the grace of God, there is every hope of change!

Paul is clear about what it is. Love is giving—giving of oneself to another. It is not getting, as the world says today. It is not feeling and desire; it is not something over which one has no control. It is something that one does for another. No one loves in the abstract. Love is an attitude that issues forth in something that actually, tangibly happens. Notice Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25). John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Week after week, counselors encounter one outstanding failure among Christians: a lack of what the Bible calls “endurance.” Perhaps endurance is the key to godliness through discipline. No one learns to ice skate, to use a yo-yo, to button shirts, or to drive an automobile unless he persists long enough to do so. He learns by enduring in spite of failures, through the embarrassments, until the desired behavior becomes a part of him. He trains himself by practice to do what he wants to learn to do. God says the same is true about godliness.

Blameshifting is so easy; after all, it has such a long history—it goes back to the Garden. A person’s personal relationship to the counselee is discussed publicly without any knowledge of the fact on his part and without any opportunity for him to straighten out misunderstandings or balance off unfair judgments. His name and his actions are being discussed in an intimate way by a group of people who know nothing about him and have no right to know anything about him. Often the discussion is instigated by a bitter, resentful person who, according to Matthew 18, should have gone directly to the husband or parent or pastor to seek reconciliation if he felt that way.

I also became familiar with an entirely new category of people: the unhappily married person. They are everywhere, and they are ten thousand times more depressing than a divorced person. My friend Tim, whose name I've changed, obviously, has gotten more and more depressing since he married his girlfriend of seven years. Tim is the kind of guy who corners you at a party to tell you, vehemently, that marriage is work And that you have to work on it constantly. And that going to couples' therapy is not only normal but something that everyone needs to do. Tim has a kind of manic, cult-y look in his eye from paying thousands of dollars to a marriage counselor. He is convinced that his daily work on his marriage, and his acknowledgement that it is basically a living hell, is modern. The result is that he has helped to relieve me of any romantic notions I had about marriage.

Preachers and counselors can spend their energy exhorting people to change their behavior. But the human will is not a free entity. It is bound to a person’s understanding. People will do what they believe. Rather than making a concerted effort to influence choices, preachers first need to be influencing minds. When a person understands who Christ is, on what basis he is worthwhile, and what life is all about, he has the formulation necessary for any sustained change in lifestyle. Christians who try to “live right” without correcting a wrong understanding about how to meet personal needs will always labor and struggle with Christianity, grinding out their responsible duty in a joyless, strained fashion. Christ taught that when we know the truth, we can be set free. We now are free to choose the life of obedience because we understand that in Christ we now are worthwhile persons. We are free to express our gratitude in the worship and service of the One who has met our needs.

Back in counseling when we got home, the topic was our trip. His narrative: We had gone to the beach with our kids, and I never played in the waves. My perspective: Never was hyperbole. Rarely is true. What I said: “I didn’t want to be near him. I was too sad.” What I didn’t say: I thought about dying all the time. Or, not dying, but disappearing. Poof. I didn’t want to die, not really, but I wanted relief. I wanted to stop feeling what I was feeling. I carried all of that with me to the coast, and I didn’t know what to do with it there. The sticking point: I wrote poems at the ocean and didn’t play in the waves. The marriage counselor said, “It isn’t about the waves.” What I said: “He knows I’ve never liked being in the ocean much. Even before we had kids, I mostly sat in my beach chair and read or wrote.” What I didn’t say: The thing about the ocean is I don’t feel safe in it, because I can’t see what’s in there with me. I know I’m not alone in the water, but I don’t know what’s there.

Brandi and I struggled with our marriage, but it was obvious we were falling apart as a couple. That was probably clear to me even from as far away as Iraq, but I did try to make it better. One day I suggested marriage counseling. Initially Brandi agreed. I took advantage of the fact that the military has a program called Military OneSource. It’s basically one-stop shopping for all the help you could need from moving, to retirement, to marriage counseling, as it turns out. So I called one day and asked to be set up with a marriage counselor. The morning of our appointment Brandi decided she didn’t want to go. She didn’t give much detail other than to say, “I’m not going.” Annoyed, I said, “Well shit. I’m going.” I arrived and sat down in a chair across the counselor. He looked at the empty chair next to me and started flipping through the paperwork on his clipboard. Finally he looked up and asked, “I have down that you’re here for marriage counseling?” “Yes, sir, I am,” I answered matter-of-factly. Again he looked at the empty seat next to me and then back at me. And then, in a really deadpan tone, he said, “Huh. Seems like things are going well.

What a contrast between the course of Isaac and that pursued by the youth of our time, even among professed Christians! Young people too often feel that the bestowal of their affections is a matter in which self alone should be consulted—a matter that neither God nor their parents should in any wise control. Long before they have reached manhood or womanhood they think themselves competent to make their own choice, without the aid of their parents. A few years of married life are usually sufficient to show them their error, but often too late to prevent its baleful results. For the same lack of wisdom and self-control that dictated the hasty choice is permitted to aggravate the evil, until the marriage relation becomes a galling yoke. Many have thus wrecked their happiness in this life and their hope of the life to come. If there is any subject which should be carefully considered and in which the counsel of older and more experienced persons should be sought, it is the subject of marriage; if ever the Bible was needed as a counselor, if ever divine guidance should be sought in prayer, it is before taking a step that binds persons together for life.

One of the most difficult things for modern men to understand is how they are responsible for their wives. Men come into a marriage pastoral counseling session with the assumption that “She has her problems,” and “I have mine,” and the counselor is here to help us split the difference. But the husband is responsible for all the problems. This is the case for no other reason than that he is the husband. This does not mean that the wife has no personal responsibilities as an individual before God. She certainly does, just as her husband has individual responsibility. They are both private persons who stand before God. But he remains the head, and just as Christ as the head assumed all the responsibility for all the sins of all His people, so the husband is to assume covenant responsibility for the state of his marriage. If a husband says that he objects to this because it is not fair for him to be held responsible for the failings of another, he is really saying that he objects to the gospel. It was not “fair” for Christ to assume responsibility for our sins either. But while it may not have been fair as we define it, it was nevertheless just and merciful.

First, for many people the Bible functions within a narrow scope. It gives a religious formula to “get people saved” and then tells them what to do morally: doctrine, conversion experience, and moral values. From that perspective, all a biblical counselor might say to people is, “Here’s how to accept Christ so that you’ll go to heaven. Now, until that day, here are the rules.” But such moralizing and spiritualizing flies against the Bible’s real call. God never tacks willpower and self-effort onto grace. His words are about all of life, not some religious sector.

Jake McKeon founded the social network Moodswing as a place where people could share their emotional states, from elation to gloom. Over time, he found that some users were turning to Moodswing in times of severe depression, and a few even used the site to threaten suicide. Distressed, McKeon decided to try to provide these users with the emotional support they needed. He concocted a plan to recruit psychology students who would volunteer to offer counseling and advice via chat lines to depressed Moodswing members. The volunteers would be tested and vetted in an effort to curate their quality. This “amateur therapy” offering would represent a new form of value exchange facilitated by Moodswing. It’s an intriguing concept, but one that raises some obvious questions—in particular the potential danger in having untrained and unlicensed counselors offering psychological guidance to people whose lives are at risk. As of mid-2014,

Learn to listen to your inner counselor, believe in his counsel too and you will reap incredible benefits for doing so.

I tried to go to group counseling, but the lady said they were full and so when I tried a 1-on-1 with a counselor, they didn’t respond to my calls. I tried so many times. It’s already so embarrassing asking for help. And you have to pick up my calls, too. Please, mom. When you don’t pick up the phone, my head goes all over the place and I think you’re dead.

Mom filed for divorce. In the counselor's office, my parents claimed that we would always be a family because of me, but things would be better now. No more yelling, no more arguments. By tearing our family apart, they were actually making it stronger. By the time I figured out that they were not making any sense, the family counseling was done and Dad was walking down the aisle with Jennifer.

160 items on the CPCE or 200 items on the NCE. The good news, nevertheless, is that as a perfectionist, you can keep in mind that you could conceivably miss 40 items on the NCE and still receive a perfect score. Counselors say to me: “I’m so upset. I bet I missed 40 or 50 questions on the exam” and I reply with something like, “that’s terrific, it’s possible you achieved one of the highest scores ever posted on the exam!” Well, are you breathing any easier yet?

Isaiah gives the Messiah a five-fold name. His first name is Wonderful. We cannot reckon how marvelous God’s plan for us in the Incarnation actually is. The second is Counselor. God does not just leave us to be staggered by what He has done—He counsels us, He teaches us. The third name is Mighty God—remember this is the same God as the God with us, Immanuel. The Deity of the Messiah is firmly stated centuries before He comes. The fourth name is Everlasting Father. God the Son is not to be confused with God the Father, but at the same time, the Son of God is a Father. He is the bridegroom, married to the bride of Christ, the Church. In our corporate capacity, Christ is our husband. As individuals, the Church is our Mother and Christ our Father. He is an Everlasting Father. The last name is Prince of Peace. Though His coming has been the occasion of war as the darkness has vainly sought to extinguish His light, in order to keep it from spreading, the long-term result of His coming is necessarily the Peace of God.

You can do a lot to compensate for your vulnerabilities. Three basic tools are self-discipline, team building, and advice and counsel. You need to discipline yourself to devote time to critical activities that you do not enjoy and that may not come naturally. Beyond that, actively search out people in your organization whose skills are sharp in these areas, so that they can serve as a backstop for you and you can learn from them. A network of advisers and counselors can also help you move beyond your comfort zone.

In the spirit of disclosure, I am a professional counselor, but I have often spent considerable time on the couch myself. Because counseling helped me, I now help others. Helped people help people.

It was clear that Meredith was special. Extraordinary, like Redbud had been. A conjurer. And then there was Cliff. The first seer in the family in five generations. He could see snatches of the future, but also people's emotions and the hidden qualities of things. They, not Lee, would be the ones to perpetuate the tradition and continue Belva's work. Lee would always be there to support them and to spend a day or a night around the fire. But she didn't want to dedicate her life to it. Lee had started looking at the counseling graduate program at the university a few hours away. She may not be powerful like her mother or Meredith, but she could roam around a person's internal landscape. She wanted to help people like her mother. She knew how seemingly impossible it was to treat addiction, and that was a challenge she wanted to meet. The quest for knowledge was where she'd thrived all those years ago, and she wanted to return to it. That was where she belonged. And now she would use it to serve her community, as generations of Bucks had done before her.

The new Code prohibits counselors from discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Hence, a counselor cannot say, “I will not counsel you because you are gay,” or “I won’t discuss gay relationships because of my religious beliefs.” Major controversy: Several states such as Arizona and Mississippi actually have bills that do not support ACA’s new code on this issue. ACA’s response is that all counselors should tell law makers what constitutes efficacious counseling—not the other way around. Politicians should not be dictating behavior to counselors.

The personal costs of counseling also remind us why it is so necessary for a counselor to experience continuous renewal through Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments. Only when one’s own spiritual batteries are being continuously recharged can one hope to have something to give to others. And only in one’s own personal walk with the Lord can one find the strength to bear not only one’s own burdens but also those of others.

Facing one’s past can be a perilous activity. For the client, joy must exceed misery. Personal successes must far outweigh losses. Pleasure must exceed pain. Always. Always. To do otherwise is a failure of the counselor.— André Chevalier

Who we are is not a question we can ask without seeking to understand the context in which we live. Biblical counselors seek to understand the influences that shape the responses of the human heart.

Ed Welch says that all counseling is a variation on a single theme: knowing and praying for the counselee. Of all the questions the counselor might ask, then, the central guiding question in the counselor's mind is, "How can I pray for you?

I open the door, expecting to find another feeble human whom I have to appease, but my jaw pops open when I see who is sitting behind the desk in the counselor’s room. “So, honey, how was your first day of school?” he asks. “What are you doing here?” I ask as I quickly shut the door behind me. “I thought you’d be happier to see your new guidance counselor,” Dax says. He’s wearing a light yellow sweater with brown patches on the elbows and sucking on the end of a . . . “Is that a pipe?” He nods. “Not lit, of course. No smoking allowed on campus. I thought it made me look older. What do you think?” “I think you’re addled. What are you doing here? What if this Mr. Drol comes back?” “I am Mr. Drol,” he says, raising his eyebrows and biting the end of his pipe. “I am too old to pose as a student like you and Garrick, but I didn’t want to dump you here all on your own, so Simon got me a job instead. His powers of persuasion were quite effective on the administration.” I nod. “But the part I didn’t tell him is that this arrangement will give us better opportunities to talk in private. I think I might be recommending twice-weekly counseling sessions for you.” He smiles around the stem of his pipe. “You’re looking quite emotionally disturbed.” “I feel emotionally disturbed,” I say, sinking into the seat across the desk from him. “You were right; this place is torturous.” “So what’s this about you picking fights? Do I need to suspend you?

The book explains – and, perhaps more importantly, photographically illustrates – death of human beings by all sorts of means. Gunshot, knife, bludgeon, stomping, strangulation, automobile collisions and auto-pedestrian strikes, death by fire, and more are thoroughly covered. When opposing counsel says of your opponent, “He only had a knife (or stick, or bottle)”… “He was unarmed!”… ”He was just driving his car!”…”He was only standing there with an ordinary can of gasoline and an ordinary Zippo lighter!”… …I would like you to be able to honestly say, “Counselor, in that moment I knew what he could do to me. My mind flashed back to pictures I had seen of someone stabbed/clubbed/stomped/run over/burned to death. I pictured my mother or my spouse having to identify me looking like that on a slab in the morgue, and I knew I had to stop him.” There

A—Advising: responses by which counselors seek to teach useful information and recommend that people consider certain actions, beliefs, or attitudes. These responses can be very valuable in educative counseling, usually called “pastoral guidance.” However, they tend to be overused. Most advice is more beneficial to the one giving it than to the one receiving it.

One critical factor in this dilemma is the fact that ministers are profoundly pressed to conform to acceptable contemporary standards. The person who comes to the minister for counsel is not always looking for guidance from a transcendent God, but rather for permission to do what he or she wants-a license to sin. The Christian counselor is vulnerable to sophisticated forms of manipulation coming from the very people who seek his advice. The minister is placed in that difficult pressure point of acquiescing to the desires of the people or being considered unloving and fun-squelching. Add to this the cultural emphasis that there is something dehumanizing in the discipline and moral restraints God imposes on us. Thus, to stand with God is often to stand against men and to face the fiery trials that go with Christian convictions.

we are motivated to meet our needs for significance and security in ways we unconsciously believe will work.

Counseling that attempts to logically teach new truth without concern for the emotional threat involved in changing one’s approach to meeting personal needs will plow headlong into resistance.

By cutting God off (what a staggering concept of freedom—mere humans can cut God off from their lives), you cut off the only source of true significance and security.

Just as carpenters need a variety of tools to build an attractive house or a piece of fine furniture, counselors require a variety of methods to help people rebuild tragedy-shattered lives, dysfunctional relationships, or destructive religious beliefs and values.

It lessened some of the suffocating weight I carried by finally opening up to a counselor.

Love is self-giving; fear is self-protecting.3 Love moves toward others; fear shrinks away from them. But the counselor must remember (and persuade the counselee that) love is the stronger since it is able to “cast out” fear. In dealing with fear, nothing else possesses the same expulsive power.

As always in Christian service, he will find his life in losing it. His fears of men will diminish as his loving service to them increases. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Personal blessing comes not by seeking blessing, however, but by becoming a blessing to others.

Cf. also Acts 3:14, 15: “But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One,…and put to death the Prince of life.” Boldness (Acts 4:31) and confidence Acts 4:13) now characterized his personality since he had “been with Jesus” and since he had received the Holy Spirit.

Nowhere does the Bible say that one must wait for change. Jesus did not ask people to wait. He expected and effected change right away. Not everything, of course, but something can be changed as the result of every session, including the first. There is a solution to every unsolved problem; this is the Christian conviction that emerges from I Corinthians 10:13 and II Timothy 3:16, 17.

Cf. pp. 448 ff. In an interesting article, “Make Your Marriage a Love Affair,” Joyce Brothers makes the following correct observation: “…most people have no idea of the far-reaching consequences of a single change in behavior,” Reader’s Digest, March, 1973, p. 81.

When counselors take clients seriously, they usually respond quickly, pouring out problems, failures and sins. Others who minimize such comments frequently succeed only in pushing material back down inside the client again. Clients understandably do not want to reveal themselves to someone who won’t take them seriously. Many clients receive some help almost immediately from the fact that someone at last has taken them seriously. Taking people seriously about their sins is an important way to give them hope.

Typical Counselee Remarks Typical Counselor Responses That May Be Used

Distinguishing between the emotion and the conviction or judgment that triggers it is often fundamental to the solution to one’s problem.

The options given to them are the same options that one faces now. They reflect two distinct moralities, two antithetical religions, and two discrete manners of life. The one says: “I shall live according to feeling”; the other: “I shall live as God says.

It is a clever “wile” of Satan to tempt men to think that they cannot do what God requires because they do not feel like doing it, or that they must do what they feel like doing and cannot help themselves.

Instead of these mild, oblique approaches, we must learn, in such cases, to be irenically direct.

Often counselors find it necessary to spell out for clients methods for getting things done. They teach them first to plan their long-range goals. Then they show them how to plan the short-range goals which must be reached along the way to attaining long-range objectives. Thirdly, all of the goals are then scheduled as accurately as possible. Fourthly, the planning must be followed by doing. The scheduled goals become (1) incentives: it is easier to shoot for short-term goals; (2) milestones: goals performance may be checked.

Sometimes when counselees are cornered and forced to acknowledge that their behavior is irresponsible, they attempt to dodge the issue by replying: “Well, I guess that’s just the way I am.” They say this in a resigned manner and expect to leave the whole matter right there. They speak as though there were no possibility for genuine personality change. Such a view of man is decidedly unscriptural. Human beings in one way might be described more accurately as human becomings. Personality can be changed. God, throughout history, has turned Jacobs into Israels, Simons into Peters and Sauls into Pauls. Today’s personality is based on yesterday. What one is today is but the composite of his past. At birth, God gave to each of us a basic deposit of inherited stuff which Scripture calls phusis (nature). This is a matter of gene makeup. 1 But that is not personality. How one uses the phusis in responding to life’s problems and life’s challenges determines the personality. Those response patterns may become deeply etched over a period of time. At length, they may seem to be, as we say, “second nature,” i.e., almost as “given” as the original phusis. Though habit patterns are hard to change, change is not impossible. Nouthetic counselors regularly see patterns of 30-40 years’ duration altered. What was learned can be unlearned.

If a new relationship based upon biblical change and help is not established, then it is likely that one or more of the parties will revert to his old ways again. If so, again an unreconciled condition will develop. This failure frequently results in a kiss-and-make-up pattern.

When help in changing is not sought and the old ways and the old relationships are allowed to continue, the parties set themselves up for a reoccurrence of the offense. Mutual effort to discover and solve issues God’s way must be encouraged by the counselor. The only way to cement a new relationship that will enable both parties to forgive and forget past offenses and to avoid and/or handle future failures as well is by means of such effort.

To shorten what otherwise might become a long list of possible points of failure, it is sufficient to say that counselors may fail in exactly the same ways that their counselees have failed. Consequently, it is important for counselors to examine their own lives and their counseling practices in the light of every failure they detect in others. Counselees become strong reminders of human error and sin and, in that sense, are among the counselor’s most valuable teachers.

One of these norms says that Christians must not talk negatively to other people about those who are not in the group. Instead, they are instructed to speak privately about their differences to these individuals themselves. Matthew 18:15-17 is quite clear on the point.33

Thus the first important fact is that counselees need meaning, and the second is similar to it: counselees need hope. Every counselor must keep these two facts in mind, especially at the beginning of a sequence of counseling sessions.

There is much that people do not feel like doing. But there are only two ways to live. These two ways of life reflect two kinds of religion and two kinds of morality. One religion and life and morality says, “I will live according to feelings.” The other says, “I will live as God says.” When man sinned he was abandoning the commandment-oriented life of love for the feeling-oriented life of lust. There are only two kinds of life, the feeling-motivated life of sin oriented toward self, and the commandment-motivated life of holiness oriented toward godliness. Living according to feeling is the greatest hindrance to godliness that we face.

There are at least seven separately definable elements involved in biblical change. These cannot be viewed merely as successive steps, since most of them must be introduced into the counseling process and pursued simultaneously. The elements are as follows: Becoming aware of the Practice (pattern) that must be dehabituated (put off); Discovering the biblical alternative; Structuring the whole situation for change; Breaking links in the chain of sin; Getting help from others; Stressing the whole relationship to Christ; Practicing the new pattern.

No one ever left Jesus Christ the same. Of everyone who met him, He demanded change. It does not take months or even weeks to change. While the new patterns (that constitute a new “manner of life”—Ephesians 4:22) take time to establish, the first changes (or at least the first steps toward such changes) can be taken right away. Every counselee may (indeed must) change after each session. That is why, as the conclusion of every session, the counselor should lead the counselee to an understanding of God’s Scriptural solution to the problem (or at least to some aspect of it).

Change, then, is necessary, but change is hard. One of the major reasons why Christians founder is because they are either unwilling to make changes or do not know how to make the changes that God requires of them in order to meet the vicissitudes of life.

Counselees continually confuse learned behavior patterns with inherited nature (phusis). Counselors may take it as a rule that any quality of life, attitude of mind, or activity that God requires of man may be acquired through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Counselees need to structure hard tasks by scheduling them.

Thus, assigning of homework from the first session on enables a counselor to discover quickly (1) who is willing and able to do God’s will, (2) who is willing but unable to do so (and what impediments stand in the way), and (3) who is unwilling.

The story of Elijah in I Kings 19 is illustrative of the destructiveness of self-pity. Elijah was bold as long as his mind was centered on God, but not when he began to focus his attention upon himself (cf. I Kings 19:4, 10, 14). Because he refused to turn from this self-orientation, his prophetic ministry was taken away and given to Elisha. Self-pity, envy, and brooding can lead to other serious results, as David warns (Psalm 37:8). The case of Amnon shows how through such brooding “he made himself ill” (II Samuel 13:2-4). This continual brooding led, at length, to disastrous consequences.

they insist upon obedience to God’s commandments rather than submission to one’s feelings. Rather, they do so, first, because God requires this and, secondly, because they know that it is only in this manner that the proper feelings of peace and joy can be achieved.32

Basic to the New Testament concept of motivation is the task of becoming what you are. In a real sense we are not merely human beings, but also human becomings. The Christian life is not static; it is a life of change.

While victories in the struggle are possible through Christ (vs. 25), they do not come easily or apart from daily battles involving just such self-sacrifice. All change is hard, and there must be powerful motivation to achieve it. Since change comes only gradually and through patient endurance, there must be hope.2

Similarly, the Scriptures urge the believer to be what God has declared him to be in Christ.

It is wrong to think of the present imperfect existence as the more real situation and the perfect record that we have in Christ merely as the ideal toward which we must grow. Perfection (if either) is more real for the Christian than imperfection, since the ultimate proper and eternal state of every Christian will be a state of perfection. There can be no uncertainty about this since the eternal sinlessness of every believer has been secured by the work of God in Christ and the Spirit. The present imperfections are unnatural and temporary. They are, therefore, in this sense less real than the eternal perfection obtained in Christ since, unlike that perfection, inevitably they will pass away. That which is imperfect and sinful, indeed, already is passing away;6 ultimately it must give way completely to that which is perfect.

The problem in counseling is to bring Christian counselees to full recognition of the glorious reality of the eternal inheritance. The present, as a result, will be strongly conditioned by the future. This great hope and assurance provides a foundational motivation to make the present approximate the reality of the future.