I’m a self-diagnosed biblical counseling nerd. In my free time, my favourite exercise is to analysis new counseling supplies. What a world we stay in the place we are able to pull up our favourite authors in a second and soak of their knowledge! Each semester, my counseling college students get a Google doc with an ever-growing listing of topical sources, and each semester, with out fail, as I meet with college students, their most incessantly requested query is, “What’s your favourite useful resource?” It’s an incredible blessing that now we have so many great books, podcasts, and articles at hand. Nevertheless, I usually discover I’m faster to hunt out a favourite useful resource than I’m to look the Scriptures.
The Phrase Is the Agent of Change
Good sources shall be stuffed with the Phrase, and they’re a fantastic assist in the counseling room. However they aren’t the Bible. The perform of God’s Phrase is to alter us, to disclose our hearts. As Psalm 19 reminds us, “By them [God’s Words] your servant is warned; in conserving them there may be nice reward” (19:11). We should work arduous as counselors to recollect this and use sources as a lot as they accommodate and help this reality, by no means instead of it. A useful resource in a session is usually a springboard into God’s Phrase, nevertheless it requires a diligent counselor to information the session there as they use the useful resource.
New and seasoned counselors alike should give God’s Phrase a seat of primacy within the counseling session. Once we shirk away from the Phrase, we withhold the medication our counselees most want. In opening the Bible, we dispense the residing Phrases of our Almighty God. We wish our counselees to stroll away from counseling with the Phrase burning of their hearts, they usually received’t if we don’t open our Bibles with them.
Use Your Quiet Occasions for Counseling Prep
It looks like we shouldn’t have to inform ourselves to learn the Bible constantly. We’re, in any case, biblical counselors. However as a brand new counselor, I used to be continuously looking for a useful resource to assist me. In periods, I felt like a fish who had simply discovered herself on dry land. I discovered myself sitting in entrance of individuals, panicking as a result of I didn’t know the way to assist or the place to go in God’s Phrase. I believed the remedy to this was to learn extra sources. Once more, they’re extraordinarily useful, however I discovered my counseling prep grew once I made certain I learn and studied my Bible every day. As I put within the time and work to develop in my data of His Phrase, my counseling got here alive.
So when my college students ask me how they need to go about prepping for his or her periods, my instant query is, “How a lot are you within the Phrase personally?” My aim right here is to not disgrace however fairly to information, reminding them the fount of all knowledge, the supply of life, the agent of change they look for themselves and their counselees, is correct at their fingertips. Although God’s Phrase could be mysterious to us, although it requires a supernatural work of the Spirit to light up us, although it could really feel like work to review it, what candy delight that God guarantees to provide freely. He guarantees the illumination, the vitality, the revealing of the thriller. We now have solely to ask.
Allow us to be counselors who dive in greedily and hungrily to God’s Phrase personally after which deliver it with us to the session in order that we are able to maintain it as much as our counselees and eagerly say, “Style and see that the Lord is sweet” (Ps. 34:8).
Questions for Reflection
- How are you doing in your private research of God’s Phrase? The place are you able to develop?
- How are you going to deliver an keen delight of God’s Phrase to your counseling ministry?
