Biblical Counseling Quotes

Any counseling that does not pursue spiritual formation through an intimate relationship with Jesus by faith as one of its chief goals is not worthy to be called BIBLICAL counseling. ~ James MacDonald

The Bible does not deny that we were various things - addicts, homosexuals, hateful, prideful, pornographic masturbators - but that is what we were (past tense) (1 Cor. 6:9-11; Titus 3:3-5). The emphasis in Scripture is on what we are and what we are called to be. The Christian does not say, Hello, my name is _____ and I am an X Y or Z." The Christian says I was dead, but now I am alive. The Christian says I am a struggling sinner, yet I am a saint. The Christians says I am a new creation; I am transformed. ~ Paul O'Brien

Biblical counseling is listening to a person long enough until you hear a violation of scripture. ~ Henry R Brandt

God is faithful to all His promises, nor can He fail, or deceive; He is all wise and foreknowing of everything that comes to pass; He never changes His mind, nor forgets His word; and He is able to perform, and is the God of truth, and cannot lie; nor has He ever failed in any one of His promises, nor will He suffer [allow] His faithfulness to fail; and this is a strong argument to hold fast a profession of faith. ~ John Gill

Mankind was designed to function as a worshipper of God for eternity, and the intent was for all aspects of his life to be acts of worship to the living God. ~ Jay E. Adams

The Peacemaker, Ken Sande suggests that a biblically based request for forgiveness will involve practicing the Seven A's:
(1) Addressing everyone involved;
(2) Avoiding all ifs, buts, and maybes;
(3) Admitting your own sin specifically;
(4) Acknowledging sorrow for the way your sin has offended God and hurt the other person;
(5) Accepting the fact there may be consequences because of your sin and being willing to accept what those consequences may be as part of the Romans 8:28 process;
(6) Altering your sinful behavior to godly behavior and thinking; and
(7) Asking specifically for forgiveness from everyone who has been hurt by your sin; ~ Ken Sande

Twelve dead?" I said. "Jesus. ~ Dennis Lehane

Motor Racing Outreach is great. They provide a chapel service every Sunday for drivers, wives, crew members, and others in the NASCAR industry so that we can gather and celebrate our faith. It's important to me to have this time before the race on Sundays. They also provide other services such as at-track childcare and counseling. ~ Austin Dillon

Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.

Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

We do not have to have the correct answers to listen well. In fact, often the correct answers are a hindrance to listening well, for we become more anxious to give the correct answer than to hear. ~ Richard J. Foster

Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to. ~ Peter Block

I'd always follow Nixon's orders, but you can't order somebody to be happy. ~ Charles W. Colson

Economics operates legitimately and usefully within a 'given' framework which lies altogether outside the economic calculus. We might say that economics does not stand on its own feet, or that it is a 'derived' body of thought - derived from meta- economics. If the economist fails to study meta-economics, or, even worse. If he remains unaware of the fact that there are boundaries to the applicability of the economic calculus, he is likely to fall into a similar kind of error to that of certain medieval theologians who tried to settle questions of physics by means of biblical quotations. Every science is beneficial within its proper limits but becomes evil and destructive as soon as it transgresses them. The ~ Ernst F. Schumacher

Wilson's weakness was to be over-literal, or to assume that his opponents were. One treatise, The Uttermost Pit, demonstrated with considerable geological learning that there could not be space within the mineral bowels of the Earth for any chambers big enough to contain all the damned souls of the ages. A third, Going to Gehenna, purported to show that the biblical references to the infernal domain were in point of fact to real places of sinister repute, and not to anywhere metaphysical. Wilson lost no opportunity to argue, with any evidence he found to hand, that there could not be any hell or Hades, and so none should fear them. ~ Mark Valentine

I thought there was no use for me in reading Sun Tzu and Machiavelli because I am neither a warrior nor a politician, but it turned out to be useful when I married ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

It has been a great source of sadness to me to see two schools of thought within the evangelical church over many decades. Those who come glorying in manifestations of power sometimes seem dismissive of those whom they regard as "cold theologians." I once heard a man speaking at a large conference say that theology was the enemy of the church and if only we could abandon doctrinal perspectives, the church would be a happier place. What tragic nonsense! We also see and hear those who love theological insight and savour the doctrines of Scripture expressing equally dismissive remarks about Christians who are enjoying God's power, as though they were mere children preoccupied with experience. How I long for a recovery of true biblical Christianity where the apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Romans, also raised the dead! It seems that profound theology and great signs and wonders happily cohabited in Paul's life and ministry. ~ Terry Virgo

We must stop using the Bible as though it were a potpourri of inerrant proof-texts by which we can bring people into bondage to our religious traditions ... We must no longer use the Bible as the Pharisees used the Torah when they gave it absolute and final status. Christian biblicism is no different from Jewish legalism. It is the old way of the letter, not the new way of the Spirit. ~ Robert D. Brinsmead

Anyone who has worked within biblical scholarship knows, or ought to know, that we biblical scholars come to the text with just as many interpretative strategies and expectations as anyone else, and that integrity consists not of having no presuppositions but of being aware of what one's presuppositions are and of the obligation to listen to and interact with those who have different ones. ~ N. T. Wright

If the biblical account of creation in Genesis isn't true, how can we trust the rest of the Bible? ~ Beverly LaHaye

My encounter with desperation while witnessing the death of a precious child changed me, teaching me that although we will have sad times, we can move on, chastened and changed but resilient and hopeful. Laurel showed me one way to live with hope as well as cancer as she thrived even when tumors grew within her small body. She exhibited how a child can push aside despair and appreciate as many moments as possible, to believe in the power of resurrection, both the human spirit and in a Biblical sense. ~ Brent Green

Emerence understood nothing of this. She rejected it. Like the leader of some primitive tribe she flew her standard - a sequinned evening dress - against the banner of the Lamb of God. The old woman opposed the church with an almost sixteenth-century fanaticism; not only the priesthood, but God himself and all the biblical characters, with the single exception of Joseph, whom she revered for his occupation: her own father had been a carpenter. ~ Magda Szabo

In fact, I believe that theological interpretation runs the risk of jeopardizing what it means to be a responsible biblical hermeneut, by attempting to overlook or negate, whether consciously or not, a biblical hermeneutic. ~ Stanley E. Porter Jr.

The person who renders loyal service in a humble capacity will be chosen for higher responsibilities, just as the biblical servant who multiplied the one pound given him by his master was made ruler over ten cities ... ~ B.C. Forbes

To take such a complex creature, on who was meant for God and is destroyed by sin, and attempt to understand how the development of that creature can be affected by hideous trauma is to attempt the impossible. ~ Diane Langberg

...Domestic violence occurs at all socioeconomic levels. ~ Asa Don Brown

The Biblical language was so deeply embedded in the great man's mind that it became his normal way of speaking. ~ Elton Trueblood

Naturalism attempts to fortify itself against God by altogether shutting Him out of public life, social policy, the courts, and eliminating all biblical influence in morality and ethics. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

What does it take to get you to the point where you have to kill your brother? It's biblical, it's huge. It's so personal. ~ Emilio Estevez

If we cannot speak with confidence about biblical authority, what ground have we for challenging the reigning plausibility structure? ~ Lesslie Newbigin

To mend our own relationship with God, regaining God's favor after having once lost it, is beyond the power of any one of us. And one must see and bow to this before one can share the biblical faith in God's grace. ~ J.I. Packer

When you lack the courage to publicly defend biblical truth, it is a clear testimony that you lack the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a gift of no fear. ~ Felix Wantang

Logos (The Biblical Manuscripts/Canon of Scriptures) & Rhema (The Person/Life/Words/Death/Resurrection of Jesus Christ): The 'special' & 'ultimate' revelation of God. Without these revelations God would be unsearchable, unknowable, and inscrutable."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] ~ R. Alan Woods

You and your name-dropping. 'I knew Michael'. 'I knew Sammael'. 'The angel Gabriel did my hair'. It's like I'm with the Band with biblical figures. ~ Cassandra Clare

But it was true. I was constantly surprised how the storied names of biblical locales popped up in the most familiar of circumstances: on a simple map, on a graffitied street sign, or in everyday conversations. "The traffic to Bethlehem was terrible last night!" said a Jesuit over dinner one night. Which still didn't beat "Gehenna is lovely. ~ James Martin

The biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power . It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism , to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel ), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of " anarchism " (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century). ~ Jacques Ellul

This story is true. Of course, there are many lies therein and most of it did not happen, but it's all true.
In that sense it is deeply religious, perhaps even biblical. ~ Craig Ferguson

Another century and there will not be a Bible on earth! ~ Voltaire

When emotions turn and stay sour, when thoughts become cynical and judgmental, good and compassionate treatment is on the line. Helpers who become sour and cynical tend to begrudge their high need clients for their neediness. There is a risk that helpers become too well-practiced at taking a bleak view of those they have avowed to assist. There is a temptation to begin to blame clients for their failure to improve. If treatment ends pre-maturely, with either a client never returning to treatment or a helper 'firing' them out of frustration, there is a tendency for the client to take the fall. Of course what we are talking about here are signs of burnout. ~ Scott E. Spradlin

There is no area of life that does not have a biblical worldview attached to it. ~ Tony Evans

Quite frankly, I would prefer to have a non-Christian like Mitt Romney who at least pretends to embrace biblical principles over a professing Christian like Barack Obama who embraces very unbiblical positions on abortion. ~ Robert Jeffress

The ongoing suspicion that scientific discoveries or rigorous biblical scholarship will undermine faith is a tacit admission that faith is threatened by knowledge, because it is ultimately constructed on weak or faulty assumptions and, like the proverbial house of cards, needs to be "protected" from collapsing. (p. 21) ~ Robin R. Meyers

Without core convictions to help us navigate, we stand uneasily on shifting sand, and we lack the solid footing with which to stage a life of principle and character. Today is a call to biblical conviction ... What is needed today is a battalion of believers who follow Christ and stand for Him and His truth. ~ Dennis Rainey

Faith in the biblical sense is substantive, based on the knowledge that the One in whom that faith is placed has proven that He is worthy of that trust. In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Most counseling cases today involve good desires that have become overgrown. In these cases most relevant passages of Scripture may not be those that rebut particular manifestations of sin, but those that remind us to love God with all our hearts. ~ James MacDonald

When we try to establish justice apart from worship of the true God, at best we will, as Jayakumar reminded me, simply replace one set of god players with another. What will never be addressed by these thin, secular conceptions of justice is the heart of the biblical understanding of justice: the restoration of the human capacity to bear the image in all its fullness. ~ Andy Crouch

Here is a biblical and churchly spirituality so needed today as an alternative to the new age nostrums that crowd the mall bookstore shelves. ~ Gabriel Fackre

As you may already know, post-traumatic stress disorder is extremely complex. Each client has a unique, perhaps virtually unbelievable, set of experiences, and an almost equally set of reactions to those experiences. ~ Aphrodite Matsakis