A Word from Bob: I’ve taken the following “quotes of note” from my book Gospel-Centered Family Counseling: An Equipping Guide for Pastors and Counselors. I pray that these quotes will be a blessing to you and to the families you counsel. Note: You can read Quotes of Note from Gospel-Centered Marriage Counseling here.
A Biblical Vision for Family Life
Children need good, godly parenting more than they need good, godly counseling.
Christ’s love makes our house a home. Christ’s grace makes our home a safe place.
God’s “parenting manual” has one commandment: Parent, be Christlike by being God-dependent.
To become a more powerful parent, we must become a more godly person—a person dedicated to dependence on God.
When we see that our demanding heart is the core problem in our home, then we become desperate for Christ’s grace. Then we begin to look at our family member with grace eyes. And we begin to realize that there is no family problem so deep that the grace of Christ isn’t deeper.
Family members must become each other’s biblical en-couragers—putting Christ’s courage into their dis-couraged hearts and dis-couraged families.
Nothing is more wonderful than watching Christ’s amazing grace melt the hurting and hard hearts of family members.
A Biblical Vision for Family Counseling
Gospel-Centered Family Counseling seeks to ask and answer one central question: “What would a model of biblical family counseling look like that was built solely upon Christ’s gospel of grace?”
God calls us to be gospel-centered family counselors counseling grace-focused parents raising grace-saturated kids.
All secular models of family therapy reduce life to a set of principles and procedures designed to help families to better manage life without God.
All truly Christian models of family counseling expand life to God’s eternal perspective designed to encourage family members to realize that they cannot live by bread alone.
The biblical family counselor must never replace the parents as the primary shepherds in the home.
Biblical family counselors are counseling parents to be their children’s best biblical counselors and parental shepherds.
Our biblical approach to family counseling will address both family suffering and family sin, both hurting hearts and hard hearts, both comforting and confronting.
Infusing Hope in the Midst of Hurt: Resurrection-Focused Family Counseling
Family counseling begins long before we first meet the family—any family. Our family counseling starts with us—with our attitude toward God, life, and families. To infuse hope, we must have hope in God.
If a hurting family comes to us and we encourage them without empathizing with them, they will feel unheard. If a hurting family comes to us and we empathize with them without ever encouraging them, they will feel heard but likely will still feel hopeless. Hurting families need empathetic encouragement—hope in the midst of their hurt.
To infuse resurrection hopefulness, we seek to help the family see past, present, and future signs of God at work—Christ on the move in their family’s life.
One of our primary callings in family counseling is to unite the family against their common enemy—the devil. Satan is the family’s diabolical and deceitful foe (Eph. 6:10-18). When the battle rages in the home, equip family members to wage war together against Satan rather than fighting against each other.
Connecting Families through Christ’s Comfort: Sustaining in Family Counseling
How can I help this family find their gospel comfort in Christ so they can comfort each other?
Empathizing with an individual is Counseling 101. For most of us, empathizing with the family as a unit is Advanced Family Counseling 201. Sustaining in family counseling involves experiencing the family’s pain and identifying with their family suffering—seeing, relating to, and feeling for them not only as individuals but also as a family unit.
We join with them in their family pain so that they begin to learn how to join with each other in their individual and family pain.
Family members need to learn how to communicate to each other that like Christ, we care about each other’s hurts.
We should never underestimate the power of parental prayer that identifies with the troubling circumstances of their child and brings them before God.
Gospel Hope for Family Hurt: Healing in Family Counseling
How can I help this family find their gospel encouragement in Christ so they can encourage each other?
We walk with messy families in our messed up world, applying together the good news that God is graciously present with us in this evil world.
We place the family’s very real, truly painful smaller story into God’s really real, eternally true larger story. We help them to insert their story into Christ’s eternal story. We take their family story seriously while helping them take God seriously.
Help the family receive God’s healing faith, hope, and love by bringing Christ’s gospel of grace and peace into the center of their painful family narrative.
Forgiveness from the Father and in the Family: Reconciling in Family Counseling
How can I help this family find their gospel restoration in Christ so they can forgive each other, reconcile with each other, and have their family restored in Christ?
This is a central family counseling issue: parents and children come to us so hurt by each other that they are blind to and deceived about their own family faults.
God’s Spirit works through God’s Word to bring sinners to their senses. Biblical counselors speak gospel truth in love (Eph. 4:15–16). We care-front via our words about God’s Word because only God’s Word has the power to reveal family heart sin.
Families should feel our support and understanding before they experience our challenge and confronting.
Grace is God’s medicine of choice to heal our sin; grace is Christ’s prescription for our disgrace.
Family Wisdom and Strength from Christ: Guiding in Family Counseling
How can I help this family discover and apply gospel wisdom from Christ and his Word so they can discern together what is best and pure and glorifying to Christ?
Before counselees can put on trust in Christ’s wisdom, counselors must truly believe that God’s Word is richly relevant. Biblical counselors must believe that Jesus is the wisest person who ever lived—the One in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Once family members begin to grasp their inability to change themselves, the soil of their souls becomes fertile ground for learning how Christ changes lives.
Biblical family counseling is not just about the nuclear family. It is about family members seeing themselves as the family of God sent on a mission together to impact the world like Christ, through Christ, and for Christ.
