Word

John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Acts 20:32 "And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified."

Yesterday was the first day of my Biblical counseling class.  It was exciting, intense, slow, fast, interesting, and challenging.  Most of the morning consisted of sessions of intro topics of:

-What Makes Biblical Counseling Biblical

-Definitions of Biblical Counseling

-Why Counsel?

-Key Elements in Counseling Process

In the section "What makes Biblical....", we talked alot about the theology of the Bible.  Sometimes in the church, there is counsel given that is not founded on the theology of God's word, but on bits and pieces of modern psychology, Christian literature, and personal convictions.  This was really interesting to think about.  There was a man named James Montgomery Boice (1938-2000) who recognized the popular interest in the inerrancy of scripture.  (He predicted that the next wave of theologian interest in the Christian church would be sufficiency of God's word (for the next century)). 

To honor God and the truth of His Word with their counsel, Faith Baptist has developed a theological pyramid to help guide them.  The 6 levels of the pyramid represent 6 components that need to be included in the theology of counsel.  The bottom level is of course the Bible, the 5th is principles of Bible study and interpretation, the 4th deals with the translation/grammar, and word forms of scripture, the 3rd is using doctrine of God's word "Biblical theology", the 2nd uses the "fruit" of Biblical theology into a system, and the 1st level is "Practical theology" - how to actually grow and change.  The pyramid contains the meat of the methods of counsel used at FBC.  It kinda confuses me with the big words, but I understand why it is needed.

The pyramid is something I would just like to skip over, but that just goes to show how careless I might have been in the past to just try to counsel by the first level (how to grow and change). I am learning that teaching others how to grow and change is not the only thing I should focus on in the future.  

One of the 6 key elements they have developed for the counseling process includes giving hope.

A definition of hope they gave was: a firm belief of God's ability and promise to bring goodness out of chaos in the future.  Brent Aucoin gave an example of this element from Genesis chapter one that got me fired up!  Genesis 1:1-2 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep..."

Brent pointed out that God created the earth as formless and empty/void.  It was chaotic and a mess. God then went on to create the earth as beautiful with order, and abundant life.  God had a plan of beauty for something originally created as messy.  The same God who created this earth with all the beauty of the sea and mountains, is more than capable to make something beautiful out of our caotic lives.  We can give those around us hope from the beginning of the Bible, before Jesus was even mentioned by name.   :)

Praise God for His Word!  It sure gives me hope that He will make something beautiful out of the mess of my schedule right now...