The Goal of Biblical Counseling on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson, and you're listening to Truth in Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

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

And this week on the podcast, I am once again joined by Dr. Sam Stevens, who is our director

of Training Center certification. If you recall, last week we were discussing the definition of

biblical counseling, or at least one that Sam and I have proposed. I'm going to read through that again,

because this is a continuation. We're going to look at the second part of that definition and

sort of dissect that, just to describe in a little bit more detail what we intend to say by this

definition. So I'm going to read the whole thing, and then that'll give you an opportunity

to sort back through, maybe remember last week's podcast some of the things that we discussed,

and then we're going to hone in on that second section. So here's the definition that we are proposing.

Biblical counseling is the personal discipleship ministry of God's people to others under the oversight of God's Church,

independent upon the authority and sufficiency of God's word through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Biblical counseling seeks to reorient disordered desires, affections, and behaviors toward a God-designed anthropology

in an effort to restore true worship of God

and right fellowship with others. This is accomplished by speaking the truth in love and applying

scripture to the need of the moment by comforting the suffering and calling sinners to repentance,

thus working to make them mature as they abide in Jesus Christ. So, Sam, this

week, what we want to do is focus on that second section. If you remember last week, we tried to

begin the process of talking about the nature of biblical counseling, what it is, what it isn't.

This week, we want to focus a little bit more on the goal. What is it that we're

aiming at? What are we trying to accomplish? What are we setting out to do in the counseling room?

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