The Self-Sufficiency of God in counseling on this edition of Truth and Love.

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

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

This week on the podcast I have with me, Dr. Keith Evans. He's associate professor of Christian

counseling at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Previously, he was a professor of biblical counseling, director of the Biblical Counseling,

an academic dean at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And prior to becoming a seminary professor in 2018, Keith pastored in Lafayette, Indiana for seven years. He's married to Melissa. They have four daughters. And he earned his Ph.D. in Biblical Counseling at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Keith, welcome to the podcast, brother. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you so much for having me. We're going to talk about the self-sufficiency of God,

the independence of God today. And I'm really looking forward to this because, Keith,

to be honest with you, I think many, many times when we think about counseling solutions

or counseling methods, we unintentionally may disconnect our theological dispositions,

sometimes preferring more pragmatic methodologies,

without intending to discount our theological positions or our confessions about God and his character.

But sometimes we wind up doing that, again, as an

unintended consequence. So I want us to start here, just ask you a basic question. Why is it

important for counseling to be rooted in a right understanding of God's nature? Because when we

think about biblical counseling, the nature of God is so important. So why is it under, why is it important that we start with understanding God's nature before we even think about counseling and the person, what they're walking through? Why is that important?

Yeah, absolutely. So just at a really basic level, our theology always informs our counseling. Like, it can't not, right?

So counseling methodology always flows downhill from our theology.

And if we get our theology right, we have a greater likelihood of getting our counseling

right.

It doesn't mean that we'll always get our counseling right if our theology is right,

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