Pastoral Counseling Quotes

If I know the classical psychological theories well enough to pass my comps and can reformulate them in ways that can impress peer reviewers from the most prestigious journals, but have not the practical wisdom of love, I am only an intrusive muzak soothing the ego while missing the heart.

And if I can read tea leaves, throw the bones and manipulate spirits so as to understand the mysteries of the universe and forecast the future with scientific precision, and if I have achieved a renaissance education in both the exoteric and esoteric sciences that would rival Faust and know the equation to convert the mass of mountains into psychic energy and back again, but have not love, I do not even exist.

If I gain freedom from all my attachments and maintain constant alpha waves in my consciousness, showing perfect equanimity in all situations, ignoring every personal need and compulsively martyring myself for the glory of God, but this is not done freely from love, I have accomplished nothing.

Love is great-hearted and unselfish; love is not emotionally reactive, it does not seek to draw attention to itself. Love does not accuse or compare. It does not seek to serve itself at the expense of others. Love does not take pleasure in other peeople's sufferings, but rejoices when the truth is revealed and meaningful life restored. Love always bears reality as it is, extending mercy to all people in every situation. Love is faithful in all things, is con ~ Stephen Muse

I've experienced several different healing methodologies over the years - counseling, self-help seminars, and I've read a lot - but none of them will work unless you really want to heal. ~ Lindsay Wagner

I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade. ~ Sharron Angle

When asked by a grumpily puzzled professor what "rules" he followed, Debussy is said to have retorted, mon plaisir "whatever I please" and he further claimed that more was to be gained by watching the sun rise than by listening to the Pastoral Symphony. Although such remarks were intended to shock, they contain a core of Debussyan verity ... ~ Claude Debussy

The bond of love must be kept strong. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

To awaken a new longing for holiness: this is the great pastoral challenge that we have before us, if we want to be faithful to God's plan and also to respond to the yearnings and hopes of the peoples of America and of all peoples on earth ... ~ Crescenzio Sepe

Missional leaders are comfortable in the own skin. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

The job you seek isn't out there in some job description, it's already inside you, aching to get out. ~ John Tarnoff

Our enemy attacks the conscience little by little seeking to wear us down and then wears out a leader's resolve to fight the good fight. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

I am not an 'elder', 'deacon', nor a 'pastor', and I do not have any ambitions to become one!".

~R. Alan Woods {2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

Finding a job that is a good fit is as much about you selecting the right company as it is about them selecting the right candidate. ~ Miles Anthony Smith

All of the modern counseling vernacular is really not dealing with the root issue of idolatry. Someone or something's preeminent rather than God. ~ Mark Driscoll

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom. ~ Richard Rohr

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

Life is way too short to be bogged down by challenges we may face. ~ Asa Don Brown

The one trying to have the last word is rarely walking in the Word. ~ Hollisa Alewine

You have before you the task of seeking new ways to announce Christ in situations of rapid and often profound transformation, and of emphasizing the missionary character of all pastoral activity. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The American people intuitively understand this, which is why the majority of Catholics practice birth control and some of those opposed to gay marriage nevertheless are opposed to a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Religious leadership need not accept such wisdom in counseling their flocks, but they should recognize this wisdom in their politics. ~ Barack Obama

Survivors of trauma may have difficulty initiating relationships ... ~ Asa Don Brown

When I arrived at the graveyard, Silla and her brother were sitting together snacking on cookies. They both wore jeans and sweaters and had blood on their foreheads. Like a gruesome splotch jerking you out of an otherwise pastoral scene. That happened to be a cemetery. Okay, it was all pretty gruesome. ~ Tessa Gratton

Adaptability is the name of the game; if you understand that you must now be adaptable and flexible, you will find a way to succeed in your career. If not, you will succumb to job market pressures. ~ Miles Anthony Smith

Techniques are like tools: The more you have, the more options for getting a job done - but you have to know what you are building first. ~ Joseph A. Micucci

Workers of lungless labs- when dying
Will you be proud you were midwife
To implements exemplifying
Assaults against the heart of life?
You knew their purpose, yet you made them.
If you had scruples, you betrayed them.
What pastoral response acquits
Those who made ovens for Auschwitz?
Indeed it is said that the banality
Of evil is its greatest shock.
It jokes. It punches its time clock,
Plays with its kids. The triviality
Of slaughtering millions can't impinge
Upon its peace, or make it cringe. ~ Vikram Seth

I've laid down in dried up streambeds, leaving a shadow. And then, five minutes later, it's flash flooded, and where I once laid is now running water, which would've washed me away, you know? There's that power and danger often in places that look so calm and pastoral to begin with. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

It turns out that up to 35 percent of people with bipolar disorder also have ADHD. ~ Julie A. Fast

Ed Welch says that all counseling is a variation on a single theme: knowing and praying for the counselee. Of all the questions the counselor might ask, then, the central guiding question in the counselor's mind is, How can I pray for you? ~ James MacDonald

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness. ~ Shannon L. Alder

An understandable hunger for ... potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, ... immune to the methods of factory farming. ~ Alain De Botton

Virgo: Your teddy bear will reveal that he is pregnant and will require counseling. ~ Sue Limb

On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again ... on the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward. ~ Isaac Asimov

The personal costs of counseling also remind us why it is so necessary for a counselor to experience continuous renewal through Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments. Only when one's own spiritual batteries are being continuously recharged can one hope to have something to give to others. And only in one's own personal walk with the Lord can one find the strength to bear not only one's own burdens but also those of others. ~ David G. Benner

The prayer level of a church never rises any higher than the personal example and passion of the leaders. The quantity and quality of prayer in leadership meetings is the essential indicator of the amount of prayer that will eventually arise among the congregation. ~ Daniel Henderson

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

That makes three suicides without logical explanations. Now, for people like Fitzhugh and the senator, with their kind of financial base, there's counseling at the snap of a finger. Or in cases of terminal illness - physical or emotional - voluntary self-termination facilities. But they took themselves out in bloody and painful ways. ~ J.D. Robb

Missional leaders know that their church will only grow as large as its capacity to provide ongoing care through a network of small groups and ministry teams. ~ Gary Rohrmayer

[R]eal prayer is not an excuse for laziness but, in fact, is one of the most arduous engagements I know of in ministry. Prayer is not a replacement for hard work but, in most cases, empowerment for even more fruitful work. ~ Daniel Henderson

She wakes in a puddle of sunlight.
Her hands asleep beside her.
Her hair draped on the lawn
like a mantle of cloth. ~ Roman Payne

Over four decades of pastoral ministry - I got started early - you make mistakes. But the mistakes you most regret are the ones that obscure the gospel and hurt the people you love, by saying in effect, "You do not belong," to those for whom Christ died to provide a place of belonging. ~ Ken Wilson

The explanation of this perennial quality of Arabic is to be found simply in the conserving role of nomadism. It is in towns that languages decay, by becoming worn out, the things and institutions they designate. Nomads, who live to some extent outside time, conserve their language better; it is, moreover, the only treasure they can carry around with them in their pastoral existence; the nomad is a jealous guardian of his linguistic heritage, his poetry and his rhetorical art. On the other hand, his inheritance in the way of visual art cannot be rich; architecture presupposes stability, and the same is broadly true of sculpture and painting. ~ Titus Burckhardt

The subjects range from the pastoral (sniffing of the butt of a melon to tell if it's ripe. and almost romantically lush descriptions of lightening storms sweeping across fields on summer nights) to elaborations on the value of man's having a life of his own, apart from whatever life he has with his family, a private life that no one knows anything about, "a place he can be himself without concern of disappointment or rejection". ~ A.M. Homes

You must read to lead. Reading feeds. It opens our souls to a long line of counselors. ~ Dave Harvey

My job is not to solve people's problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives. ~ Eugene H. Peterson