Four Questions that Help Destructive Clients Self Examine and Self-Reflect
Author: Leslie Vernick
Category: Counseling
When working with husband’s who have been abusive, you will find that most all of them have a stubborn blindness to what they are doing that is destructive to their wife. Their habit patterns are to blame and accuse rather than take the time to personally reflect upon their own attitudes and behaviors. When they...
Keep ReadingMental Illness and the Church
Author: Bob Kellmen
Category: Uncategorized
At the 2014 Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC) annual conference, and at the 2015 Faith Biblical Counseling Training Conference, I presented on: Mental Illness and the Church: Developing a Compassionate and Comprehensive Biblical Counseling Response Here’s a summary of my presentation: As the Body of Christ and as a biblical counseling movement, God calls...
Keep ReadingWhich Promises Are For Me?
Author: Jen Wilkin
Category: Family, Identity/Roles, Ministry, The Gospel
Not many things are more comforting than a promise made and kept. And not many things are more hurtful than a promise broken. Knowing we worship a God who keeps his promises is a source of deep joy. But misapplied, this knowledge can also lead us to treasure-hunt Scripture for promises in problematic ways. How...
Keep ReadingThe Art of Listening
Author: Susan Thomas
Category: Uncategorized
Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. James 1:19, NLT Every counselor knows a big part of the job is listening. We are talking Counseling 101. We may remember the first time we sat in our mock counseling appointment and...
Keep ReadingThree Reasons We Encourage a Woman To Lie and Pretend That her Marriage is Better than it is
Author: Leslie Vernick
Category: Marriage
As Biblical counselors, is there ever a good reason to encourage our client to lie or pretend something is other than what it is? You might immediately think no, but I believe the Bible does give us a time when we might not tell the truth. That reason is safety. For example, in the Old...
Keep ReadingThe Struggles that Overwhelm Us
Author: Robert Cheong
Category: Counseling, Ministry, Relationships
You love people. You love to help people. Given your heart for others, you can be overwhelmed by the brokenness around you, especially with those who share their struggles with you. As you sit and listen to their story, you grow uneasy as God reveals similar heart struggles within you. You don’t look at pornography,...
Keep ReadingOrdinary People Do Heavy Lifting
Author: Edward T. Welch
Category: Relationships
In a culture of experts and specialists, it is easy to get the idea that only specially-trained people can do the hard stuff. But that’s not how the Church works. We’re the body of Christ and there are no unnecessary or unimportant parts. We are all called to bring the love of Christ to bear...
Keep ReadingProfessional Boundaries. Do we need them?
Author: Leslie Vernick
Category: Blog, Counseling
Over the past year I have worked with a number of individuals who have been wounded by counselors who have not maintained good or clear boundaries in the counseling relationships. Licensed counselors have more professional guidelines that they are required to adhere to but many church based counselors as well lay counselor need more help...
Keep ReadingThree Ways to Spot a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Author: Leslie Vernick
Category: Blog, Counseling
One of the methods bank tellers and merchants learn in order to distinguish real money from counterfeit bills is to examine genuine $100 bills over and over again so that they more likely to spot the counterfeit bills when they see them. In the same way we can learn to recognize destructive people by knowing...
Keep ReadingGod’s Glory in Counseling: 5 Daily Reminders
Author: Jeremy Lelek
Category: Blog, Counseling
As a member of the Association of Biblical Counselors my prayer is that you are continually strengthened and encouraged in your ministry to others. Walking through the difficulties and hardships experienced by those God sends into our lives is one of the most amazing privileges to which we have been invited (Gal. 6:2). However, this...
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