They Want You To Help Them Solve Life’s Most Difficult Problems
What will you do?
Tell them what they want to hear?
Teach them ways to cope with their situation?
Or discern the root issue for genuine healing?
The Blame Game
If we listen to the “experts” or even to the ordinary folk we live with every day, we hear many different explanations for why people do bad things. What most of these explanations have in common is a tendency to say that the behavior is not really the fault of the one who does it.
In some instances, the blame is completely misplaced. In other instances, the blaming does manage to identify a contributing factor to someone’s poor behavior. But even in such cases, the contributing factor does not constitute the heart of the problem. The blaming misses what is really going on.
Sadly, everyone loses at the blame game. Worst of all, blaming poor behavior on secondary factors results in a reliance upon solutions that do not work.
Coping or Cure?
People naturally seek treatments suitable to the causes they believe are driving their bad behavior. Today, people seem to rely most upon such methodologies as medical treatment, psychotherapy, and education.
Coping skills like those offered by such treatments can be effective in the sense that they may squelch the conscience and help people feel better temporarily. But a cure, not coping, is what they want, is it not? Certainly a cure is what biblical counselors should help them find.
Two Kinds of Peace
Jesus told His disciples, “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn’t like the peace the world gives” (John 14:27). In part, He was saying that there is a kind of worldly peace. This is the peace that can come through coping strategies that make us feel better for a while. But Jesus’ peace is qualitatively different. It is based on real, heart-level change that can come only through the work of the Holy Spirit. In the words of one Old Testament prophet, “righteousness will bring peace” (Isa. 32:17).
Unfortunately, it is easy to mix up the two kinds of peace: worldly and godly. Your clients want relief. They are seeking peace. Does it matter which peace they find as long as they feel better?
As a counselor you have various ways you can help your patients find some relief as you address contributing factors to their problems. But worldly peace is temporary. Godly peace remains but can only be obtained by dealing with the heart of the problem.
A Pioneer of Biblical Counseling
Dr. Henry Brandt has accumulated over 50 years of counseling wisdom that is now available to you. This pioneer of biblical counseling has been instrumental in helping countless people from all walks of life find true freedom in their battle. As a biblical counselor with a Ph.D. in Psychology and Family Counseling, Dr. Brandt saw radical life transformation in counselees who were willing to apply biblical principles to their challenging circumstances. They came seeking ways to cope with their problems but left knowing God’s cure and complete healing.
The Word for the Wise
Dr. Brandt has taught many counselors how to use the permanent truths of scripture to bring long-term healing to the people they counsel. Worldly solutions offer people only temporary relief from their problems. Biblical counseling offers a trustworthy and lasting cure.
Do you want to be more effective in helping angry, broken, confused people look at their lives from a Biblical perspective? And then move beyond the situation of the moment to the real underlying cause of pain and disappointment?
It’s a fact that a person’s happiness or misery is not based on circumstances, but on what is in his or her heart. As long as someone’s heart is filled with sin, the situation that prompted them to seek counseling will never be resolved. First, they must seek God’s forgiveness and turn from their sinful ways. Then their pathway to dealing with external situations and relationships will be clear.
Are you interested in learning more about the qualifications, attitude, methods, and standards of professionalism for Biblical counselors?
Click here for practical guidelines for biblical counseling from THE WORD FOR THE WISE.
The Heart of the Problem
While society looks to DNA or abuse or social conditions as causes for bad behavior, the Bible gives a completely different explanation. Why is the world so messed up? Why do people hurt themselves and others? How can an evil tendency become so ingrained in us that we cannot seem to get rid of it no matter how hard we try? It is all because at the beginning of human history a change came over our race that marked us with sin.
Sin really is the heart of the problem, because in the end each of us is responsible for our own behavior. Regardless of the influences that may be acting upon us, sin is an act of the will. We choose to do what we know is wrong. And you know that it is never safe to try to live with a sin problem. Sin is like a cancer: it grows in seriousness over time.
Repenting and turning to God for help are first steps toward the freedom from sin that we so desperately desire. But as we have said, that requires facing up to the fact that sin is at the heart of our problem. We have to come to grips with sin.
Biblical Counselors are not interested in helping people live with their problem—they want them to be fundamentally transformed. And a cure like this is only possible by getting to the heart of the problem.
Click here for insights about how to help people deal with THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM.
Soul Prescription
Many Christians struggle to get free from a web of sinful habits that hold them in bondage. They seem to exist in an endless cycle of confessing, doing their best to change, and then falling back into sin. Their lives appear to be no different than those of the non-Christians around them.
The bondage of His children grieves the heart of God, and He longs to see Christians living in the light and victory He has promised in His Word.
The Soul Prescription process offers the help and hope many believers have been looking for. It is unique in its methodical, yet biblical, approach to eliminating sin habits. With it, you can help your counselees to evaluate their behavior and attitudes by God’s standards and gently lead them through the process of turning from destructive, sinful habits to embracing Holy Spirit–empowered virtues.
Click here for an overview of SOUL PRESCRIPTION: A Healing Process for Habitual Sin.
Henry Brandt Web Library
Explore this extensive online collection of Biblical counseling resources for you and your ministry. Dr. Brandt’s life changing insights are readily available to you in various formats:
- Biblical answers to 70 key life questions
- Dozens of dynamic audio messages and Downloadable MP3s
- Audio transcripts and printer-friendly versions
- Topical lists of Bible passages for your needs
- Many case histories of people and their struggles
- Plus books and other resources
. . . all to help you help others discover God’s life-healing plan.
So, come in and look around. And come back often as new resources will be added as more funding becomes available.
Click here to explore the BIBLICAL COUNSELING INSIGHTS of Dr. Henry Brandt.
Disclaimer: HBF does not engage in providing counseling for visitors to this site. However, we will direct inquirers to various messages by Dr. Brandt that may be of help. We encourage visitors with serious problems to meet with a biblically-based Christian counselor.