The characteristics of Biblical Counseling

1.   God’s is love and God is truth. (John 4:16, John 14:6) His love motivates Him to reveal the truth to us.

2.   Though not all crises or problems are spiritual (in their cause or in their correction), they are interrelated with a person’s spiritual beliefs and spiritual state.

3.   A crucial (and integrating) factor in achieving healing and wholeness is a personal relationship with the living Christ. Wholeness cannot be achieved apart from Jesus Christ.

4.   Healthy relationships are the linchpins of mental emotional and spiritual health. Many of the crises faced by today’s youth are inextricably related to the relationships – with parents, with mentors, and even with God. Loneliness, low self-esteem, peer pressure, rebellion, homosexuality, under-achievement, and other problems have their basis in unhealthy or broken relationships.

5.   Healing of the mind, emotions, and spirits is possible. It will almost certainly require work on the part of the counselor and counselee (and perhaps other in the counselee’s circle of family and friends). It will also necessarily involve the work of God through the Holy Spirit. It may take a considerable amount of time. But God who restored and entire nation that had been conquered and broken can also restore to emotional wholeness a young man or woman who turns to Him.

6.   The goal of biblical counseling is not happiness but Christlikeness.

7.   Healing and wholeness will not come without sound biblical teaching and obedience to the Word and will of God. 

      The man or woman who seeks to help youth in crisis must make every effort to develop sound biblical tenets and techniques for such a ministry of comfort and communication.  As Jay Adams has written: Methodology and technique, skill and the exercise of gifs are all consonant with the work of the Spirit.  

      What makes the difference is one’s attitude and inner motivation: does he do what he does in reliance upon his own efforts, in dependence upon methods and techniques, or does he acknowledge his own inability and ask the Spirit to use his gifts and method? Gifts, methodology and techniques, of course, may be abused; they may be set over against the Spirit and may be used to replace his work. But they may also be used in complete subjection to him to the glory of God and benefit of his children.