A Word from Bob: This morning, David Jenkins did a podcast interview with me about Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives. As soon as the interview is “live,” I’ll provide a link. Here’s a manuscript of the interview. 

DJ: “Bob, please tell us a bit about your book Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives, why you wrote it, and how you hope it is received.”

Gospel-Centered Counseling is my 12^th book and it’s a companion book with my 13^th book, Gospel Conversations. Gospel-Centered Counseling focuses on a biblical theology of counseling and Gospel Conversations focuses on a biblical methodology of counseling.

I understand that when people hear the word “theology,” they think of academic stuff unrelated to life. But theology is simply God’s truth about life. So, in Gospel-Centered Counseling we explore theology in terms of 8 ultimate life questions. Here they are:

• Question 1 concerning God’s Word: Where do we find wisdom for life in a broken world?
• Question 2 concerning the Trinity: Whose view of God will we believe—Christ’s or Satan’s?
• Question 3 concerning creation: Not just the universal question, who am I, but the eternal question, Whose am I?
• Question 4 concerning the fall into sin: What’s the root source of our problem?
• Question 5 concerning redemption or salvation: How does Christ change people?
• Question 6 concerning the church: Where do we find a place to believe, belong, and become?
• Question 7 concerning eternity: How does our future destiny with Christ make a difference in our lives today?
• Question 8 concerning sanctification: How do we become more like Jesus?

I wrote Gospel-Centered Counseling to help people to understand how rich, robust, relevant, and relational God’s Word is for everyday life. I even thought about naming it The Gospel for Everyday Life.

DJ: “How do we apply the gospel to suffering?”

That’s a great question because we typically think of the gospel only being applied to our sin. In the beginning of Gospel-Centered Counseling, I quote Frank Lake, a British Christian psychiatrist who explains that “pastoral care is defective unless it can deal thoroughly with both the evils we have suffered and with the sins we have committed.”

Here’s how Gospel-Centered Counseling applies the gospel to suffering. In suffering, Satan hisses and whispers his lies at us. They sound like Job’s wife and Job’s miserable counselors: “Curse God and die.” “God is sovereign; He allows evil and suffering into your life; He must not love you.”

The gospel answers these lies with grace and truth. The gospel teaches that in suffering God is not getting back at us; He is getting us back to Himself. That bears repeating: in suffering God is not getting back at us; He is getting us back to Himself.  

The gospel is God’s once for all declaration that God is for us, not against us. In suffering, because of Satan’s lies, we are tempted to turn our backs on God because we think God has turned His back on us. The gospel turns us back to God so that we can face our suffering face-to-face with God in the face of Christ.

DJ: “What is a gospel-centered approach to growing in God’s grace?”

The book’s sub-title addresses this question: How Christ Changes Lives. In a lot of biblical counseling we talk about “how people change,” and I understand that terminology. But Gospel-Centered Counseling focuses on the work of Christ that enables us to change in Christ’s power. In other words, growth in grace or sanctification is a both/and—it is the work of God as He works in us and as we respond to His work.

There’s an oft-debated phrase about growth in grace: sanctification is the art of getting used to our justification. That phrase makes sanctification all about God, and we do nothing. We just “let go and let God.” The flip side of that approach is sanctification by human effort—instead of letting go and letting God, we “try harder” by our own strength.

In Gospel-Centered Counseling I use the more comprehensive phrase: “sanctification is the art of applying our justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption.” Think about a key word in that phrase: applying not just getting used to. There is something that God calls us to do in His power—to apply the work He has already done in us. Think about the rest of the phrase: it is not just applying our justification. It’s applying our complete salvation: our justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption.

I share this example in the book. When our children were young, we visited Mt. Rushmore, including the museum. There we viewed an interview with Gutzov Borglum, the designer behind the four presidential faces on Mt. Rushmore. Borglum was asked, “How did you create those faces out of that rock?” His response: “I didn’t create them. They were already there. I just had to chisel away the rock that hid the faces.”

And I say, “Christian, the face of Jesus is already in you—by your justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption.” Sanctification is the art of applying our full salvation—the complete gospel—so that day-by-day we cooperate with God’s Spirit as He chisels away everything and anything that hides the face of Jesus that is already in us.

DJ: “What trends do you see in church based counseling ministry?”

I see three significant trends. The first trend is a movement away from the idea that we have to refer everything out to outside experts. If the Bible truly is rich, robust, and relevant for daily living, as Gospel-Centered Counseling teaches, then it is sufficient to help us to speak gospel truth in love so that we all grow up in Christ. So, this first trend involves a growing confidence in the power of God’s Word and in the church’s power to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

The second trend I see is a movement away from the pastor doing all the work of counseling to the pastor equipping God’s people to be competent to counsel. God does not call pastors and church leaders to hoard the ministry. God calls pastors to equip the saints to speak the truth in love. Increasingly, I’m seeing pastors, churches, Bible Colleges, and seminaries focusing on every member ministry, on one-another ministry, and on small group ministry where we are all equipped to counsel. For example, at Crossroads Bible College where I teach, our department is not simply the Biblical Counseling department. It’s the Biblical Counseling and Equipping department. We want every student to graduate not only being able to do the work of counseling, but to be equipped to equip others to be competent biblical counselors.

The third trend I see is a movement toward counseling as a ministry not only for the congregation, but also for the community. For example, Faith Church in Lafayette, IN, under the leadership of Pastor Steve Viars, has 25 biblical counselors counseling 100 people every Monday. Typically, at least 75 of those 100 people are from the community and not from the congregation. Biblical counseling is missional—it is for outreach, it is evangelistic, it is for engaging and impacting our communities for Christ. If the gospel truly has answers for everyday living as Gospel-Centered Counseling indicates, then we should not hoard those answers within the church. We should be sharing those answers with a desperately needy world through gospel-centered counseling.

DJ: “What areas of opportunity do you see in the biblical counseling movement today?”

To answer that question, let’s think for a moment about a phrase often used in the small group movement. They did not want a church with small groups, but a church of small groups. A church with small groups just had small groups as one program in the church, rather than having small groups be the central focus through which people speak gospel truth in love one to another.

The same is increasingly becoming true in the biblical counseling world. We don’t want churches just with biblical counseling; we want churches of biblical counseling. A church with biblical counseling would be a church where a pastor and a few others have a couple of offices and they do some formal weekly scheduled counseling. A church of biblical counseling is a church that is saturated with a biblical counseling mindset.

What is a biblical counseling mindset? It’s a mindset where everyone is confident in the sufficiency, authority, and relevancy of God’s Word spoken in love everywhere—in small groups, in a formal counseling office, at the Starbucks, over the backyard fence, in the living room as a family. It’s a mindset where everyone is equipped to be competent at relating God’s truth to human relationships, where everyone is equipped to be competent to counsel. It’s a mindset where every believer is a biblical counselor, a soul care giver, a spiritual friend, a soul physician.

DJ: “Do you have any final thoughts you want to share about your book?”

A couple of thoughts… First, I have many free resources related to Gospel-Centered Counseling at my website, including a 50-page Discussion Guide. Listeners can download that resource and dozens of others for free at www.rpmministries.org

Perhaps I could give the final word to Randy Patten, a life-long leader in the biblical counseling movement. He was gracious to craft this endorsement for Gospel-Centered Counseling.

“Gospel-Centered Counseling is like a smartphone. That is, it can be helpful in multiple ways. Beginning biblical counselors will benefit from the case studies, which model how to minister the Word rather than just dispensing it. Experienced counselors will be prompted to evaluate whether or not their counseling truly reflects the major themes of the Scriptures with appropriate application to the problems of life and living. Leaders seeking to disciple others will find in Gospel-Centered Counseling a book that teaches theology in a warm, equipping-for-life fashion. Preachers will find seeds of helpful sermon series. Every reader will be more thankful for Christ and the good news of the gospel.”

Randy captures very well the heartbeat of Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives.