relationships and community on Counseling

"Psychology,” Dallas said quietly, “is the care of souls. The care of souls was once the province of the church, but the church no longer provides that care.” He paused. “The most important thing...

I don't really look at myself as the kind of person who craves attention, but I've never been to therapy so there's probably a lot of stuff about myself that I don't know.

Christian morality has fallen on hard times these days. No one seems to believe in it, least of all Christians. Even the word “morality” is dropping out of our vocabulary—and I do mean the vocabulary ...

I love the following story because it illustrates both our natural defensiveness when we are attacked and the potential for transformation. As the illustration demonstrates, this is only possible when...

I challenge those who come to me for marriage counseling this way: “If you do what I tell you to do for an entire month, I can promise you that by the end of the month, you will be in love with your m...

Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...

The story is often told of a man who made an appointment with the famous psychologist Carl Jung to get help for chronic depression. Jung told him to reduce his fourteen-hour workday to eight, go direc...

Eternal God, Maker of all that is seen and unseen, thank you for the great gifts of learning, growing, and discovering. Thank you for all who are standing here today, and for the millions more who’ve ...

In his book The Mystery of Christ , a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of unde...

Back in 1958, a baby boy was born into the Lane family. The father, a man named Robert, chose to name his boy Winner. How could the young man fell to succeed with a name like Winner Lane? Several yea...

In his book The DNA of Relationships counselor Gary Smalley argues from countless hours of research and observation alongside the wisdom of the Bible that we are hardwired for relationship. This i...

A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.

Almighty God, we confess our need of Your presence and Your guidance. We each have our hopes and expectations for what lies ahead, but only You can give us the strength and the wisdom we need. In life...

The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp...

Have you ever been bullied by a group? Or felt ganged up on? Maybe it wasn’t intended by them, but you felt abused? I have. So have some of the pastors and influencers we help. So has Jesus… Lord J...

It was a very hot Southern California afternoon in August 2007, but thank the Lord, I was preaching in a nicely air-conditioned church with about one thousand people in attendance. The pastor was gone...

It is easier to find guides, someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.

Called to Pastor, Inclined to Argue When I was graduating from college in the mid-2000s, I was encouraged to take a career test to determine where my personality type would fit in the working world. ...

The etymology of certain words can profoundly enrich our understanding and experience of life. Consider the word “consolation.” Its roots lie in the Latin words “con-” meaning “ “to be ” and “solus,...

Most of us need this type of push to help us start the [reconciliation] journey. We need someone or something to push us out of our comfort zones and the isolated social enclaves that keep us alienate...

Guidance, like all God's acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills a...

Through difficult relationships and circumstances, God works to expose your heart so you will seek the grace that can be found only in him.

Change invariably leads to loss, loss to grief, grief to anxiety and, finally, anxiety to hostility. We need therefore, to acknowledge grief. We need to understand and choose to walk with the grieving...

We confess our sins to you, today, O Lord. We confess that we sometimes find it difficult to believe that you are actually involved in our day-to-day experiences, that you actually impact our circumst...

The key for successful personal relationships and ministry is to understand and accept others as having a viewpoint as worthy of consideration as our own.

We’re all tempted to come to Jesus for what we want from him, rather than coming to him for mentoring, training and teaching about what he wants our lives to look like.

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

Conflict in Ministry Have you ever whispered to yourself, “I didn’t sign up for this?” I confess those words have passed through my mind more than once over the years. When I started out in ministry...

We are not called to help people. We are called to follow Jesus, in whose service we learn who we are and how we are to help and be helped.

The last time someone said to you, “I need to talk to you,” how did that strike you? Did you think, Maybe she needs to tell me how much she appreciates me. More likely you thought, I’m in trouble. Whe...