Editor’s Word: Our July 2025 mini-series on the BCC Grace and Fact weblog is designed so as to add some sources to your counselor’s toolbox. On this third article, Jim Newheiser presents 5 ideas for serving to the counselor enhance their data of Scripture to have the ability to use it spontaneously in a counseling scenario. In different contributions to the sequence, Rush Witt presents a plan to assist counselees disconnect from their smartphones, Lucy Ann Moll offers a case examine and homework task for serving to the OCD struggler reply within the second, and Garrett Higbee shares concerning the Fruit to Root Diagnostic instrument to uncover not simply what is going on in an individual however why it’s taking place.
It has been my privilege to take part within the coaching of biblical counselors for the previous twenty years. Many college students enthusiastically embrace biblical counseling idea within the classroom, however then have bother once they observe counseling in fictitious role-play eventualities and later once they try and work with precise counselees underneath the supervision of an skilled counselor (for instance, an ACBC Fellow).
After having listened to a whole bunch of hours of counseling and having learn or heard 1000’s of case session reviews, I’m satisfied that many counselors have Bibles which are approach too skinny. They want thicker Bibles if they’re to be efficient biblical counselors. The “thickness” of 1’s Bible describes how a lot of the Bible a counselor is aware of nicely sufficient to have the ability to use spontaneously in a counseling scenario.
In some methods, counseling is harder than preaching in that the preacher can put together extensively for his sermon and may management the path the sermon takes. The counselor might search to organize for a session, however she or he doesn’t have management over the path the assembly might take. The counselee might elevate a brand new situation or could also be going through a sudden (and unrelated) disaster for which rapid assistance is required. The counselor should be capable of supply solutions from God’s Phrase, which implies that she or he should know the Scriptures very nicely.
One of the vital frequent methods wherein starting counselors fail is that they provide solutions that sound true and biblical, however they don’t really quote Scripture. I remind these whom I’m supervising that our authority doesn’t relaxation in our place as counselors or in our private knowledge, however in God’s infallible Phrase (2 Tim. 3:16-17). It’s necessary for the counselee to learn the Scriptures for themselves to see that God Himself speaks to their situation. In the event that they don’t like what they’re listening to, they should notice that their argument shouldn’t be with the counselor, however with God.
God’s Phrase is highly effective and life-transforming (Ps. 19:7-11). I vividly bear in mind a gathering I had over thirty years in the past with a nurse from Singapore who had questions on her religion. After spending practically an hour giving my finest explanations and illustrations of the truths about which she was asking, however getting nowhere, I lastly had her learn a bit of Romans 3. Instantly after studying the textual content of Scripture, her eyes have been opened, and she or he was capable of clearly specific the central gospel truths I had been making an attempt to clarify. Since then, when I’m tempted to merely paraphrase a biblical reality to a counselee for the sake of time, I’m reminded that it’s worthwhile to have her or him flip to a passage and browse it out loud.
How Can You Make Your Bible Thicker?
- Do no matter it takes throughout a counseling session to seek out applicable texts of Scripture in your counselee to learn. For those who don’t know the place to show, then be keen to pause to lookup a passage. Have instruments at your disposal—a Bible program which lets you lookup passages, a e book or pocket book of Scripture references on explicit subjects, or you possibly can merely Google verses whose reference you can’t bear in mind.
- Do your homework. After a session wherein you didn’t really feel that your data of Scripture was ample, take time to go looking and examine God’s Phrase so as to be ready for the following session with this counselee and future periods with different counselees. You might discover that what you realized by your failure within the session can be burned into your reminiscence for all times.
- Compile your personal lists of favourite Bible texts to which you ceaselessly refer. A few years in the past, I created an inventory of “Roughly 100 Go-To Verses for Biblical Counseling,” which I share with my college students.
- Fastidiously examine books of the Bible so as to expound passages of their context.My finest preparation for counseling has been greater than thirty years of preaching and educating consecutively by books of the Bible. Biblical counselors who depend upon remoted proof texts have extraordinarily skinny Bibles and sometimes fail to faithfully and completely expound the Scriptures of their context. For instance, chances are you’ll know that Ephesians 5:25 teaches husbands to like their wives as Christ loves the church, however your rationalization of that verse can be a lot richer whether it is grounded in what Ephesians 1-3 teaches about Christ’s love for us and what chapter 4 teaches about strolling in mild of all that Christ has carried out for us.
- Perceive how all of Scripture is related to the gospel. The resurrected Christ confirmed His disciples how all the Previous Testomony factors to His Individual and work (Luke 24:25-27). Are you able to join each textual content you utilize to the central theme of Scripture, which is redemption? Whereas obedience to God’s Phrase is necessary, our counseling periods shouldn’t be decreased to moralism and law-keeping. Our failure to dwell as much as God’s requirements frequently drives us again to Christ (Gal. 3:24). Our union with Christ allows us to dwell as new creatures who’ve been let loose from slavery to sin and are united with the risen Christ (Romans 6:1ff).
We’d like biblical counselors whose periods are Scripture-saturated and gospel-centered. Making our Bibles thicker is a lifelong endeavor.
Be diligent to current your self authorised to God as a workman who doesn’t should be ashamed, precisely dealing with the Phrase of reality. (2 Tim. 2:15)
Take ache with these items; be absorbed in them, in order that your progress can be evident to all. Pay shut consideration to your self and to your educating; persevere in these items, for as you do that, you’ll guarantee salvation each for your self and for individuals who hear you. (1 Tim. 4:15-16).
Questions for Reflection
- How thick is your Bible?
- How have you ever sought to enhance your personal use of Scripture in counseling?
Writer’s Word: This text was initially revealed on October 26, 2016, and will be accessed right here.
