After having listened to hundreds of hours of counseling and having read or heard thousands of case session reports, I am convinced that many counselors have Bibles which are way too thin. They need thicker Bibles if they are to be effective biblical counselors. The “thickness” of one’s Bible describes how much of the Bible a counselor knows well enough to be able to use spontaneously in a counseling situation.
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A few years ago, I wrote two blogs expressing concern that biblical counselors need to approach the very sensitive and important issue of abuse in a scripturally balanced way. I began the previous blogs with an acknowledgment that the church and biblical counselors have often failed victims of abuse by not listening well and failing to protect them from harm. I acknowledged that many church leaders need to repent of their failure to “rescue the weak and needy; [and] save them out of the hand of the wicked” (Ps. 82:4). I include myself among the church leaders who look back (in my case, over 40 years of ministry) and realize that I did not understand the many kinds of abuse and the degree of harm many women were experiencing. Continue Reading →
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Parents of prodigals spend many agonizing hours asking themselves, “Why did my child rebel? Is it because I was a bad parent? Is it because my child got in with the wrong crowd?” Sometimes we may even ask God, “Why don’t you do something to bring my child back?” The problem of wayward children is not a new one. The very first parents, Adam and Eve, had a wayward son, Cain, who turned from them and from God when he murdered his brother. In the thousands of years since then, many parents have shared in the grief that the first couple must have felt. While Scripture does not offer a formula by which you can get your prodigal back, God’s Word does explain why children turn out the way that they do. Scripture also provides hope for parents of prodigals. Continue Reading →
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Recently, the BCC presented a blog about “Helping Adult Victims of Clergy Abuse,” authored by Caroline Newheiser along with an anonymous victim. A fallen pastor who read Caroline’s blog contacted me and wanted to tell his story as a warning to church leaders, so we have written this blog together. I wrote the introduction and the last part, but the middle section is written by the pastor himself. His desire to address us reminded me that when King David confessed his great sins, he promised God that, when forgiven, he would “teach transgressors your ways” (Ps. 51:13), a promise which seems to have been fulfilled in Psalm 32 (see especially verse 8). Continue Reading →
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God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). As I have observed the discussions and debates regarding the pandemic, both in the political sphere and ecclesiastical spheres, this verse has continually been on my mind. The pandemic should make all of us much humbler for many reasons. As we sit at home, we all have been reminded that we are not in control of our plans or schedules (Prov. 16:9). In the early days of the crisis, government leaders and medical experts made bold statements, including the assertion that the coronavirus could not be transmitted through social contagion and predictions that the U.S. was not at risk. These proved to be embarrassingly wrong. As the pandemic spread, some experts made dire predictions about contagion and death rates, which appear to have been overstated. At present, there are loud voices saying that it is relatively safe to end the lockdown, and there are those who say that we must continue to apply restrictive measures for many more months until a vaccine or cure is developed (if such is even possible). Continue Reading →
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