How has Biblical Counseling (the conference or counseling itself) changed you?
Submit your story to eibcccontact@gmail.com for us to review and maybe publish here to encourage others!
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A story of how God changed a life through Biblical Counseling:
Written by Danielle Moore
My husband and I have been attending Grace Community since January 2015. We decided to start attending Grace after realizing how important Church was to our lives. We have been married for 13 years (On August 17th). As some of you married couples know, marriage can be a very wonderful and blessed time and also very difficult and challenging.
The summer of 2013 was a very challenging time for Brock and I. We were getting to a very dark place in our marriage. My husband had lost his very good paying job a few years back and he wasn’t finding anything stable and full time. I was busy running our own business and providing for the family. This was in addition to being a mom to 2 kids (ages 4 and 9 at the time).
That is when my pride set in with a journey on growing and building my own Kingdom. Who knew I was so good at construction!!! Things got pretty bad. I was getting angry all of the time. And when mama’s not happy… well you know how the saying goes. We were attending church every Sunday and putting on the front that everything was hunky dory in the Moore Household. When actually… it was a battlefield. I wanted things my way. And didn’t want anyone coming in and disrupting the rules I had built and established in my house. Brock wasn’t able to correct the children without me correcting him. He really could do no right in my eyes. Basically, when he was home I wanted him out of the house because he was messing up my kingdom. This was my domain. I mean, I did everything (in my own selfish mind) why should he have any say.
And I could go a day or two being mad at him for not picking up his socks or dirty clothes. Heck… if he didn’t put the lid down… watch out! Mama was on a rampage. Well you get the picture. This is where God finally said… enough. A friend recommended that we see a counselor. Not just any counselor. A Christian Counselor.
We reached out to the Biblical Counseling Ministry that is available at Grace. And heck… we heard it was free. So we wouldn’t be out anything if it wasn’t for us.
I didn’t know what to expect going and meeting with Jason Blackley for the first time. I had “my list” made up just in case I needed to give him a list of things my husband does and had done to make me angry in the past few years!!! Well… What a reality check I had. There was no couch for me to lie on and just vent. I will speak for my husband as well and say I think he was shocked about what we heard and learned. One of the first few questions Jason asked us was how often we read the Bible…… Uh….. Silence. You mean today or this month?
I felt the lump in my throat. We were not focused on Christ as a couple, as a family, or even personally. How could God work in my life if I wasn’t in his Word? Praying continually? And how could I expect my kids to be godly children if we were not modeling that behavior in our home???
So over the next few months we met weekly with Jason. That poor guy. He got to hear all of our ugliness. But with prayer and God’s miraculous hand, the walls came down. And our hearts unhardened. It wasn’t an easy road and at times things got worse but we committed ourselves to Christ. We made a commitment to put him in the center of our home and the center of our lives. How can you go wrong when Christ is your cornerstone?
I remember thanking God one day for showing me my sin in our marriage. Thanking Him that our marriage was able to survive. And I thought, “I am going to pay this forward.” I heard about Faith Biblical Counseling Courses that were going to be held at Grace in 2014. So I signed up. I was so glad I did, It was everything I needed to hear. Being brought up in a Christian home, attending Christian school thru 8th grade, I hadn’t heard some of the biblical principles that I had been taught during the Biblical Counseling Track 1. I remember getting giddy with excitement after some of the pastors from Faith in Indiana had shared some of the teachings. I couldn’t wait to go home and share with my family and friends. Are you ready for it….? I wanted to counsel others. I wanted to help those who were going through the same things I had. Me… the women with major pride and anger issues.
Faith Biblical Counseling awakened something inside me. It lit a fire in me to be a disciple. Like Matthew 28:19-20 says to do. I made it my mission for the next few months to tell anyone and everyone who would listen. And tell them the truths that I had recently learned.
I am so thankful for God’s unending love and faithfulness, grace and mercy. I am thankful for His faithfulness through Grace Community Church and their biblical counseling ministry as well as Faith’s Biblical Counseling training courses.
It isn’t just for those people who want to become a counselor or get into counseling ministry. It is for everyone, Young and old, Man or woman. We all give counsel every day. To our family, friends, coworkers, store clerk, UPS man. Why not give them the truth? And give them Biblical advice. They will be drawn to you and see Christ in you.
In short, you should sign up for Faith’s Biblical Counseling Courses starting in September. They even feed us good food. Man cannot live on bread alone….
Yours in Christ,
Danielle Moore
Written by Cassy Townsley
Even though I was raised in a Christian home most of my life, my faith never permeated my daily thoughts, actions or words. I knew that the Bible was true and that I wanted to go to heaven but I never really understood my need for Jesus Christ in my life until I took my first Biblical Counseling class through CCEF (Christian Counseling Education Foundation) 4 or 5 years ago. I was hungry for reading the Bible and seeing it impact lives after each class session and reading I did for my class. It was as if a light switch had turned on and I saw the scripture helping people with whatever situation they were experiencing in life. One of the books that I had to read, Seeing with New Eyes by David Powlison is a great description of what I experienced by taking these classes.
Biblical Counseling has helped me see how prideful that I can be and has helped me understand my depravity and need for grace. Until you understand this and can humbly come to God to ask for forgiveness, you will struggle with all the injustice in this world. It has also helped me to be able to dig deeper into scripture and not feel so lost as to how to study scripture on my own.
After taking two classes through CCEF online I was able to attend the Biblical Counseling Conference in Lafayette, Indiana a couple of years ago. It was refreshing to be with others this time learning right alongside of them. That week I was able to build on what I had already learned in my two classes but also see examples of counseling and I really appreciated the speakers that had medical backgrounds and were able to speak on tough behavioral and emotional topics.
Biblical Counseling has helped me to now truly believe that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness through his scriptures and how his Holy Spirit so desperately wants to change us!
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A story of how God changed a life through Biblical Counseling:
Blinders removed: Written by Trisha Young
I wrote the below on my blog a few years ago after attending the Biblical Counseling Training Conference for the first time in Lafayette Indiana. God continues to use Biblical Counseling in my life every day.
“This last week I attended a conference with a group from our church. It was both a terrible and awesome experience for me. There were moments when it felt so encouraging and wonderful and moments when God used the speakers to remove the blinders that I have been hiding behind to show me the sin that is buried deep in my heart.
When we have sin that is in the dark in our hearts (our minds) we live in a state of disconnect from God. Now, I have been feeling for a while that there was something that God was trying to draw my attention to. Something He wanted to shine his wonderful light on but in my own strength I could not see it. A friend of mine had an incredibly freeing experience while we were at the conference. I remember thinking: I wish that God would show me something, “that thing” in my life that I could confess and find comfort from Him as He took down another piece of the wall that stands between me and Him. Sure enough God answered that prayer the next day as I began to realize just how ugly and prideful my heart is. The thoughts that I have every minute that are not God focused but “me” focused. “My life is so much harder than other people around me” “It doesn’t matter that I just yelled at my kids. They deserved it” Yuck. It is really hard to admit that I have felt these things.
When I have the thought that I don’t want people to know I am reminded that God already knows those thoughts. He is the one I should be concerned about. In fact, the pride that has been buried in me has kept me from truly loving the people in my life. I have been so focused on surviving that I have not been able to truly care for and about the people that God has put all around me.
This blinder of pride also caused me to not see that God’s intention for discipline for my children has nothing to do with anger. I used to believe that I had to be angry in order to discipline my children. What I realized is that the anger that I was feeling was coming from my selfish heart. They were “cramping my style.” They were making things harder for me by acting like children. My thoughts didn’t have much to do with their hearts. But God says “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” Matthew 12:34
It has everything to do with their hearts and my discipline has everything to do with my heart. I used to also discipline my children because I was worried that other people would judge me as a bad parent if I didn’t correct the behavior that was happening. NEWS FLASH: I AM a bad parent. We all are. We all fail at this. None of us can live up to the unconditional love of God. We will all fail each other.
Thank you Lord that you have grace for me and that you have grace for my boys. Only in your strength will I be able to lead my children to you and by your grace you will continue to work in their lives.
When we returned home from the conference this last Friday afternoon I went to my children. I apologized to all of them for being so focused on my own needs.
I am so thankful that God cares enough for me that he would remove the blinders and show me grace.”
As the current Trisha looks back at the one that God was beginning a great journey in back in Feb of 2011 when I wrote the above words, I am encouraged by the change He has made in me. While I still struggle with some of the things I mentioned, and many more actually, I see how my submission to Him in these areas has allowed Him to give me the strength to overcome them. Then; I was focused on me and the pain that I was in. Now; even though I still have pain in my life, God hasn’t removed it, I am able to counsel other women to see the awesomeness of our God and I continue to have more confidence that God will take care of me. This comes only from the strength that He gives me.
2 Cor 12:9
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
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