Christian Counseling attempts to provide encouragement and guidance for those who are facing losses, decisions, or disappointments. Counseling can stimulate personality growth and development, help people cope more effectively with the problems of living, with inner conflict, and with crippling emotions, assist individuals, family members, and married couples to resolve interpersonal tensions or relate effectively to one another and assist persons whose life patterns are self-defeating and causing unhappiness. The Christian counselor seeks to bring people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and to help them find forgiveness and relief from the crippling effects of sin and guilt.
A Christian counselor has beliefs about the attributes of God, the nature of human beings, the authority of Scripture, the reality of sin, the forgiveness of God and the hope for the future. The counselor seeks to help counselees change behavior, attitudes, values, faulty thinking and/or perceptions.
We attempt to teach skills, including social skills, to encourage recognitions and expression of emotion, to give support in times of need, to teach responsibility, to instill insight, to guide as decisions are made, to help counselees mobilize inner and environmental resources in times of crisis, to teach problem-solving skills, and to increase counselee competence.
The Christian counselor also seeks to stimulate spiritual growth, encourage confession of sin and the experience of divine forgiveness, to model Christian standards, attitudes, values and lifestyles, to present the gospel message, and to stimulate counselees to develop values and live lives that are based on biblical teaching... never forcing beliefs and always treating people with respect and giving them freedom to make their own decisions.
Christian counseling techniques seek to arouse the belief that help is possible, correct erroneous beliefs about the world or themselves, develop competences in social living, and help counselees accept themselves as persons of worth. Important counselor qualities include warmth, sensitivity, compassion, understanding, genuine concern, spiritual maturity and a willingness to confront people in an attitude of love. A Christian counselor is to have the qualities of trustworthiness, good psychological health, honesty, patience, competence, and self-knowledge as well as a knowledge about human problems and good counseling skills.
At the core of all true Christian helping is the influence of the Holy Spirit. A counselor yielded to the Holy Spirit becomes an instrument through whom the Holy Spirit may work to comfort, help, teach, convict, or guide another human being into the Truth and spiritual and psychological health and maturity.
|
