Learning to Counsel on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love,

a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions for the problems that people face.

The reason for the existence of ACBC is to pursue excellence in biblical counseling. And the way we

pursue excellence in biblical counseling is by certifying counselors and training centers who know how to do biblical counseling. The work of

certification is so important in counseling because how are you supposed to know if a counselor is any good?

If you want to know if a preacher is a good preacher, you can go visit him at his church or go listen to a

podcast or listen online in some other way.

But there aren't any counseling podcasts. How are you to vet a counselor before you would go see

them or entrust a cherished loved one to them? The answer to that question is the reason for

the existence of ACBC in our process of certification.

We certify counselors who have gone through a process of training, examination, and supervision

where people who have been in counseling for decades are looking over their shoulder

and helping them to do their work with increasing excellence.

One of the questions that people can have is,

why should I care about that? Why should I go be certified to do counseling? And so this week,

on the podcast, we want to take a special look at the answer to that question. And we have asked

Marilyn Kirkpatrick to be our guest on the podcast this week.

Marilyn is in women's ministries at the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida,

and she is actually right now in the process of certification.

Marilyn, we're happy that you're with us this week, and I want to ask you as we get started,

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