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You don’t have to have a counseling center to be effective in your community. In fact, you know, I would argue from scripture that it’s you know, as you go you’re preaching the gospel so you know, the church is gathering together to be equipped, to be encouraged, and then we disperse, right? We go to our work places, we go to our schools, we go to our neighborhoods. That one-on-one ministry, where now we have some equipping to be able to address some of those life issues, you know I think as a pastor I’m thinking I want the average person at our church to be able to you know, talking to their neighbor next door that evening and a life issue comes up. You know, a teenager that’s addicted to something, or you know, they’re having marriage problems. I would hope that a believer at that point wouldn’t say, “Well hey, let’s go to our community counseling ministry,” although they could do that, but that they would engage them wisely and in a loving way from the scriptures to give them gospel hope in that moment.

So didn’t realize it at the time, but by teaching literally every leader in our church who was teaching at some level, taking them through a basic course in Biblical counseling, I didn’t tell them that. I said, “This is discipleship material,” but to get that type of training it really created a culture in our church that helping others with the gospel from the scriptures for life problems, for training children, training adults, you know, whatever it is, that’s normal church ministry.

Biblical counseling, meaning in our view that’s just taking the gospel, taking the scriptures and ministering to hurting people that are struggling with life problems, that has allowed us to evangelize our community in a way consistent with our ecclesiology. What I mean is, we’re not trying to put on a show, we’re not you know, doing entertainment.

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Mainly, they were attracted to the topic or know somebody or they’re already involved in counseling and these issues are coming into the office. The pastor could encourage from the pulpit by preaching one another care and then organizations like IBCD, which bring counseling into the church is what we need to encourage women to take advantage of.

So you have those kinds of stories. We have girls that have been trafficked and treated just brutally. To see them now loving Jesus and having a different understanding of who God is, trusting him. It’s fabulous. They serve. They’re delightful to be around.

I always say that the church needs people who have been struggling with idolatry and addiction, because they know how to lay down their lives, they’ve just laid it down for the wrong thing, for alcohol and drugs.

I would like us to have stories and case studies of people that are vivid and three-dimensional and shows everything, the really good things in a person’s life and the hard things and the bad things all in one sort of composite mess. So first as a group for people to go away saying, not only did that person know me, but they know me in a way that I’ve never been known, they know me in depths where I haven’t been known before.

It shows Scripture’s sophistication, understanding addictions where it’s voluntary, we do it because we want it, we love it, we love it more than life itself, but it’s also this abject slavery and it’s controlling us and telling us what to do even if we want to get out of it

One is people raise these complex stories and situations that rightly should be overwhelming, and none of have these simple sort of, here, do this and everything will be better. Not that any problem has that as an answer. But that simple turn from knowing a person to, okay, how can we pray? Given what you’re saying, how can we pray? That’s what’s certainly I find great encouragement that essentially I’m introducing, there is a person to whom we can turn with this, and we might not even know what he says at this point, but we know to whom to turn and Lord teaches us to pray.

I’m proud in many ways to have that banner but I think it’s something that biblical counseling can really get behind because of all the models out there, we’re the one who believes that change is possible for anybody.

I kind of feel like saying to churches, you can’t call people to celibacy unless you are providing the kind of family and community that the Bible says churches should be.

Our enemy is never flesh and blood. Certain ideologies are, and we need to take those on. Other people, we got to fight the right battle and the right field.

When you read the Puritans, like in the Valley of Vision, sometimes if you look at particular lines, you think, “Man, those guys are beating themselves up,” but look at how those prayers finish. They’re just setting themselves up to be dazzled by the grace of God.

It’s a hard word, but it’s a good word, because Jesus exists by, it’s in losing our life to him that we receive our life; we gain it. Obviously, there are particular things bound up with that. If you’re a same sex attraction, there are certain aspects of the self that we have to say no to.

I think we’ve really got to minister by grace and we will be better pastors for that. We will be kinder to our sheep, if we are actually living by grace ourselves.

The gospel is staggeringly good news. It’s such good news that it’s hard to believe. I remember one couple that I was counseling with, they both were just ridden with guilt, beating each other, beating themselves up and each other, just very discouraged in their walk with the Lord. I remember walking them through the very truths about justification that are taught in Scripture and that we talk about in the Gospel Primer.

Long story short, it was probably about 14 years ago that I was reading Romans 5 and it’s like the lights finally turned on. I realized that, “Wait a minute. I’m justified all day, every day, good days, bad days, waking or sleeping solely based on the performance of Jesus and not mine, and I’m always under God’s gracious favor.” I don’t know why I didn’t see that before, but seeing that in that moment as I read Romans 5, just seeing a man who was resting in his justification while I was wrestling over mine. I wouldn’t have set it in those terms, but that’s what was happening.