Welcome to Biblical-counselling-by-email.org

About the counsellor behind biblical-counselling-by-email.org

Counselling Qualifications

I am a post-graduate qualified counsellor, having a post graduate diploma in counselling (PG Dip Couns) and three pre-diploma certficates in counselling skills, gained over five years in total.

I also have three years experience of working as a face-to-face counsellor in two different counselling services, and six years experience of using counselling skills working for an agency which provides emotional support to distressed people, by email, by phone, and in face-to-face encounters. You can read more about my qualifications and experience as a counsellor here.

Reasons people seek a counsellor

In my years of working as a counsellor and using counselling skills, I have encountered hundreds of people who were hurting, distressed, or feeling devastated. Sometimes as a result of experiencing a loss of some kind, perhaps in their relationships, health, employment, or other life circumstances. Sometimes through having been hurt or abused by someone else. I have met many clients who were desperately looking for answers, or at least some kind of help or support.

The restrictions imposed by secular counselling frameworks

The contexts above in which I was working were all entirely secular (in other words, non-religious), and I was required to work to an 'ethical framework' which meant I was not permitted to tell the client the truth of God's word, the Bible, or share with the client what God, in his word, has to say about their lives and problems.

This restriction increasingly became a problem of conscience for me, because of the most important fact about myself:

I'm a Christian

I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a Christian. Jesus owns me, on two grounds. First, because God is our creator, and he owns all of us. But, secondly, because Jesus died for me. In the words of the apostle Paul, Jesus 'loved me and gave himself for me.' Galatians 2:20

When I was working for secular counselling services, I could see that clients were often being helped, up to a point. Many of our emotional hurts come from experiences of not really being listened to, emotionally understood, or cared about, by people who were important to us. When we've been hurt like that, it can be experienced as powerfully healing for someone else to be willing to get alongside us, and really listen and care.

The Bible has a lot to say about the value of empathy, compassion, and listening. These are not inventions of secular, humanistic psychotherapy.

In my counselling practice within secular agencies, I was endeavouring to offer my clients empathy, to understand how they really felt, and offer them the experience of being deeply listened to. These are all perfectly Biblical and Christian ways of interacting - up to a point. The apostle Paul wrote the instruction, 'Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep' Romans 12:15. That's a good description of empathy.

As Biblical counsellor David Powlison has pointed out, listening is implicit in 'rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep', for before we can empathise with someone, we have to know what they are feeling, and we can only begin to know this if we really listen to them. God's word speaks about the wisdom of listening to others, for example in the book of Proverbs. We need to listen, both in order to be guided by wise counsel from others (if/when that is what they are offering), and as a prerequisite for understanding the other person.

A person who doesn't know how to listen to others will not be very good at being empathic or understanding how other people feel. They are likely to be constantly talking over other people, never really hearing what the other person is actually saying. We all have a tendency to be like this sometimes, to not listen so well because we want to be heard, or are too self-absorbed. But the Bible says the following about someone who doesn't know how to listen:

'If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.' Proverbs 18:13

The experience of being really listened to and empathised with can be powerfully helpful for hurting people, but only up to a point.

About our greatest need of all

Our deepest need, whether we realise it or not, is for God's forgiveness.

God is love. But God is also holy, righteous, morally perfect, loving what is right and hating what is morally wrong.

"Why do I need God's forgiveness?"

We are all enemies of God by nature, and justly under his judgement, deserving eternal death, because we break God's perfect law. The description the Bible uses for such law-breaking is the word sin. God, who has the right to command us, commands us to love him with our whole being, and love our neighbour as ourselves. We violate these two commandments constantly. Even our very natures our corrupted by sin.

The Gospel

'But God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life' John 3:16. If we turn to Christ in repentance and faith, which is only possible by God's grace, then we receive God's forgiveness, his love, and new life in Christ. This is all provided for because Jesus lived a perfect life, died on a cross, bearing the punishment his people deserved in their place, and rose again. But if we refuse to repent and believe in Christ, then we remain under his judgment, and one day we must all face God as our judge. This, in summary, is the Gospel.

If we are not Christians, we must turn to Christ in repentance and faith.

If we already are Christians, then the difficulties we face and emotional problems we experience can only be correctly understood from a Biblical perspective. We continue to need God's grace and his word all the way through our lives.

Secular counselling does not allow true help to be offered

It is not possible to truly help people at the level they most need help if the Gospel is left out of the helping process. Yet the 'ethical' frameworks which secular counsellors and psychotherapists must work to require any counsellor who is a Christian to remain non-directive regarding such matters.

The help which the clients I met most needed (because this is true for every single one of us) is only found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and this is the very help I was not permitted to mention. The secular frameworks justify restrictions like this on the basis of what they call 'respect for client autonomy'. In the secular psychotherapeutic profession, counselling is largely regarded as an activity which should be non-directive. (Unless of course you are being directive in asserting the epistemology of post-modernism, which is the hypocritical exception!) Frankly, the truth and wisdom of God's word cuts right across this secular 'wisdom'.

Clients do need to be protected

Up to a point, I can understand why the secular counselling frameworks insist on 'respect for client autonomy'. Clients are often emotionally vulnerable. There is a danger that some counsellors would impose their own ideas on their clients, and manipulate the client for their own selfish advantage. I do agree that is wrong. The Bible itself condemns selfish manipulation of others as wrong.

Some people like to be directive (in other words, to tell other people what to do) because they have their own prejudices, which are not Biblical at all, but they like to impose their prejudices on others. Such people are usually not very self-aware, and are quite poor at listening to others or understanding how other people feel.

Learn from Jesus' response to the Pharisees and Law-teachers

Where God's word is clearly directive, then a Biblical counsellor must point to the clear direction God's word gives. But where the Bible allows for differences, or gives no instruction, it is not right for us to create rules of our own and try to impose those on others as though we spoke with the authority of God himself. The pharisees and law-teachers who opposed Jesus liked to do exactly this. Jesus was not impressed:

'One of the experts in the law answered him, "Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also." Jesus replied, "And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them."' (NIV) Luke 11:45-46

But truly Biblical counselling is about what God has said

In truly Biblical counselling, it is not the counsellor's own ideas which are being asserted, it is the truth of God's word which is asserted.

Don't ever simply take my word for anything as being true just because I tell you it's true. Check it out against the Bible, as the Bereans did Acts 17:10-11. If the Bible teaches it, then it is true. If the Bible contradicts me, then I am wrong.

Even when the truth of God's word is presented, it is never going to be helpful for someone to be forced by another person into 'converting' when they don't want to. There would be nothing genuine about such a 'conversion' anyway. It is not possible to convert people by coercion or manipulation. It is harmful to try to do so.

And some people have been so rejected and manipulated in the past, and understandably so crave the acceptance of others, that they may well agree with everything someone else says, just because they want that person to accept them. All counsellors do need to be very careful that such clients are encouraged to make their own authentic choices, and are not simply going along with what the counsellor says because they want to be accepted.

Charles Finney...

There is a strand of 'evangelicalism' which likes to put emotional pressure on people to 'make a decision for Christ'. This style of 'evangelism' owes much to 19th century 'evangelist' Charles Finney (whom I regard as a Pelagian heretic). The true spiritual condition of those who make such 'decisions' is revealed when they later abandon the faith.

It is right to present people with the truth of God's word, and to fairly explain the consequences of their choices. But ultimately, people do have to make their own choice. It can't be made for them by other people.

So there is an extent to which 'respect for client autonomy' is legitimate. The problem is that secular 'ethical frameworks' value client autonomy so highly that they place it far above the instructions given in God's word, the Bible (which they do not recognise as an authority at all). That is wrong.

God's word is still what all clients, all people, most need to hear

The fact remains that if the truth of God's word is left out of the helping process, if the counsellor is not allowed to refer to it, then the help the client most needs is being excluded from the counselling. Of course, if a counsellor is not a Christian, I wouldn't expect them to use the Bible. It's not their book, they don't believe it anyway. But for a counsellor who is a Christian to be required to leave God's truth out of the helping process they are offering, that is not right.

Ultimately, after much study, prayer, and talking the issues through with various people, I decided I had to resign from secular counselling, secular emotional support, and 'psychotherapy', and re-orient my counselling practice on a thoroughly Biblical basis. One aspect of that is the creation of this website.

Contact me for Biblical counselling by email

You do not have to be a Christian to contact me through biblical-counselling-by-email.org. If you're feeling distressed and in need of someone to listen, I'm willing to do so. But I will respond from a Biblical perspective, which includes empathy and listening, but (depending on the context) might also involve direction as well.

I would want to listen carefully first, because I cannot offer helpful direction if I have not accurately understood what you are telling me about your thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The direction I seek to offer should never be my own. To impose my own ideas on someone else would be to attempt to manipulate them. I don't desire to do that. Rather, any direction I would seek to offer would be the direction which God himself gives in his word.

Biblical Counselling is directive, but empathic and relational too

The wisdom of God's word, the Bible, is directive. But a Biblical counsellor must know how to be empathic too, and also be willing to support a client in a relational way.

Sometimes one counselling session is all a client needs, whereas other clients want to be supported over a period of time. In this sense the support becomes a 'therapeutic' relationship.

Even when a Biblical counsellor points us to the right answer from God's word to a question we have, Biblical counselling should never be reduced to telling someone, 'right, I've told you what to do, now go away and get on with it'. People often need help and support with making changes, even when they know what to do. In that sense, counselling is about a relationship between the counsellor and client. The goal is not to create dependency on the counsellor, but to support the client as they grow and make changes.

It's important to realise that being changed in character to become more like Christ is a work which only God can do, and he only does this work, by the Holy Spirit, in the life of a true believer. So, if you are not a Christian, there is a dimension to Biblical counselling which would not apply to you.

If you're not a Christian, you've probably figured out if you've read this far that my worldview is unashamedly Christian, so it will come as no surprise that, if you don't know Christ, my prayer and hope is that you would come to know him. If you're hurting or distressed for some reason, you're welcome to contact me for a Biblical counselling response to what you're going through.

And if you do know Christ and are going through a difficult time, then if I can help you by offering Biblical counselling, you're welcome to contact me.

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