Book Recommendation for the Counselor’s Ministry: How People Change
You’re reading the fifth in a weekly series of posts in which I recommend books for counselors. Shorter than a book review but longer than a tweet, these recommendations will whet your appetite to obtain books that will build your ministry by equipping you to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.
• Read my first recommendation: The Cross of Christ
• Read my second recommendation: Dynamics of Spiritual Life
• Read my third recommendation: Christ Formed in You
• Read my fourth recommendation: Shame Interrupted
How People Change by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp 
How People Change is a classic second generation biblical counseling book. Developed by Lane and Tripp, in part from materials in a course by David Powlison, the book provides a solid overview of biblical counseling theory. The four-fold imagery of Heat + Thorns + Cross + Fruit offers an easy-to-follow biblical understanding of people, problems, and solutions.
I also appreciated their foundational material on the “Gospel Gap” (the gap between who we are via our salvation in Christ and how we tend to live day-by-day in our sanctification), and on being “Married to Christ.” I’ve always thought and taught that “false lovers of the soul” is a more biblical and relevant image of the core nature of sin than is the useful “idol of the heart” imagery.
Join the Conversation
What impact has How People Change had on your life and ministry?
What additional books do you recommend for the counselor’s ministry?
RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth
