Counseling Religion

We need companions on our spiritual journey. The modern world has taught us to value autonomy and individualism. Our churches often see spirituality as personal and private. But we cannot go long in our Christian pilgrimage before realizing that isolation leads to spiritual barrenness. We soon discover that our souls long for accompaniment, intimacy, and spiritual friendship. As a result, many Christians today are rediscovering the ancient practice of spiritual direction.

For anyone who has ever been betrayed; for anyone who has ever felt lost, abused, or abandoned; for anyone who has ever suffered a broken heart - there is healing! In this inspiring and life-changing book, Joan Hunter shares her challenging testimony of how she overcame rejection and the worst betrayal imaginable. No matter what your circumstances, God wants to minister to you through Joan’s insights and practical advice.

Each day men and women diagnosed with mental disorders are told they need to pray more and turn from their sin. Mental illness is equated with demonic possession, weak faith, and generational sin. As both a church leader and a professor of psychology and behavioral sciences, Michael S. Stanford has seen far too many mentally ill brothers and sisters damaged by well-meaning believers who respond to them out of fear or misinformation rather than grace. Grace for the Afflicted educates Christians about mental illness from both biblical and scientific perspectives.

The work of psychotherapy and counseling is full of ethical challenges and dilemmas. Responding to these situations with wisdom is critical, not only for the professional's credibility, but also for good therapeutic relationships and positive treatment outcomes. Since its first publication, Christian Counseling Ethics has become a standard reference work for Christian psychologists, counselors, and pastors, and a key text at Christian universities and seminaries. This thoroughly revised edition retains core material on counseling ethics that has made it so valuable in a variety of settings.

We lead our spiritual lives in relationship with others. A faithful community gives us opportunities for worship, sharing burdens, confessing faults, offering forgiveness, and celebrating life. Wherever he went, Henri Nouwen created such communities, and within them, he offered spiritual direction. Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith is part of “The Nouwen Trilogy.” These convenient audio sessions let you adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual director.

Many parents struggle in raising their teens because they fail to transition from seeing them as children to seeing them as adults-in-training. Progressively giving teens more control over their lives reduces stress and prepares your teen for maturity as an adult. In Feeding the Mouth that Bites You, Dr. Ken Wilgus outlines a clear path to help parent teens in today’s world. Engaging, accessible, and based on Dr. Wilgus’ thirty-five years of clinical family work, teaching on parenting―and successfully raising three teens of his own―you’ll find this guide immensely practical.

You can't put it into words, but something is happening to you. Your stomach churns, your heart aches, and the tension in your marriage is making you feel weary and a little crazy. The constant criticism, disrespect, cruelty, deceit, and gross indifference are eroding your confidence and breaking your spirit. For any woman caught in an emotionally destructive marriage, Leslie Vernick offers a personalized path forward.

In Effective Biblical Counseling, Gold Medallion Award-winning author Dr. Larry Crabb presents a model of counseling that can be gracefully integrated into the functioning of the local church. He asserts that counseling is simply a relationship between people who care and that its goal is to free people to better worship and serve God.

Modern medical advances save countless lives. But for all their merits, sophisticated technologies have created a daunting new challenge, namely a blurring of the expanse between life and death. The dying process is often hidden behind a complex web of medical terminology, statistics, and ethical decisions, making it difficult for patients and loved ones to know how to approach the end of life in a dignity-affirming, God-honoring, faith-filled way.

Coaching is a widely respected and highly effective way of helping people get unstuck. Companies, churches, families, and individuals are turning to coaches for help in navigating life's transitions, obstacles, relationships, and more. This second edition of Christian Coaching is a revised, expanded, and updated version with significant new material to reflect current trends and standards in the coaching field. Dr. Collins offers you biblical principles, how-tos, and tools to enhance your coaching skills.

Walking with God through Pain and Suffering is the definitive Christian book on why bad things happen and how we should respond to them. The question of why there is pain and suffering in the world has confounded every generation; yet there has not been a major book from a Christian perspective exploring why they exist for many years.

A classic in the field of Christian counseling, Competent to Counsel has helped thousands of pastors, students, laypersons, and Christian counselors develop both a general approach to Christian counseling and a specific response to particular problems. Using biblically directed discussion, nouthetic counseling works by means of the Holy Spirit to bring about change in the personality and behavior of the counselee.

Over the last decade, husband and wife team Evan and Jenny Owens have helped thousands of people overcome the trials, tragedies, and traumas of their past, and in this book, they show you how you can too. With empathy and insight, Healing What's Hidden offers a practical, step-by-step process to help you acknowledge your trauma, heal your invisible wounds, and reclaim your future so you can live beyond the anxiety, depression, and shame trauma leaves behind. Others are already experiencing healing. Now it's your turn.

Pastors and counselors regularly minister to people whose marriages or families are in crisis. Tempers run high and feelings are brought low when a marriage is hurting or a family is in disarray. Pastors and counselors need practical, biblical help in order to connect their theological training to the reality of modern messy relationships.

Every relationship has its highs and lows, but we often don't know what to do with our "lows," or how we ended up there. What is creating friction, exacerbating our pain, and standing in the way of intimacy? More often than not, it is the stories of our past drifting into the present. But if we are willing to look at them closely, we will be able to write a new story for the future. With more than seventy years of therapeutic experience combined, Dan Allender and Steve Call demonstrate how God is inviting you and your partner to a wild faith journey with the hope of transformation.

Bestselling author and pastor Craig Groeschel has walked through the valley of doubt, and in The Benefit of Doubt, he shows us how asking questions, seeking answers, and wrestling with doubt can actually draw us closer to God. With his trademark humor, warmth, and lay-it-all-on-the-table style, Groeschel shares stories from his own life as well as the Bible to help us wrestle with—and find helpful answers to—the questions fueling our doubt.

It’s true: heartache, grief, suffering, and obstacles—they all come in waves. There is no controlling life’s storms; there is only learning the way to walk through the waves. In WayMaker, bestselling author Ann Voskamp hands us a map that makes meaning of life and shows the way through to the places we’ve only dreamed of reaching. In the face of suffering through seemingly unbearable situations, we can rest in the fact that we are not alone. In her signature captivating poetic style, Ann reveals how God is present in the totality of our lives.

On November 3, 2020, Tim and Aileen Challies received the shocking news that their son Nick had died. A twenty-year-old student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, he had been participating in a school activity with his fiancée, sister, and friends, when he fell unconscious and collapsed to the ground. Neither students nor a passing doctor nor paramedics were able to revive him. His parents received the news at their home in Toronto and immediately departed for Louisville. While on the plane, Tim began to process his loss through writing.

We all have questions about death. Despite the strong assurance the Bible gives us about life beyond the grave, Christians are often troubled by other questions. What will happen on the day of judgment? Will we have bodies in heaven? Will there be rewards? This short, simple book is designed to help Christians understand what God has said about these questions in the scripture. Suitable for all Christians - especially those with questions about death.

The Christian Counselor’s Manual is a companion and sequel to the author’s influential Competent to Counsel. It takes the approach of nouthetic counseling introduced in the earlier volume and applies it to a wide range of issues, topics, and techniques in counseling.