Larry Crabb - Effective Biblical Counseling: A Model for Helping Caring Christians Become Capable Counselors

Also by Dr. Crabb

Basic Principles of Biblical Counseling

Encouragement

Finding God

Hope When Youre Hurting

The Marriage Builder

Men & Women

Men of Courage (with Don Hudson and Al Andrews)

Silence of Adam

Understanding People

Effective Biblical Counseling

Larry Crabb

ZONDERVAN

Effective Biblical Counseling

Copyright 1977, 2013 by Lawrence J. Crabb Jr.

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Crabb, Lawrence J.

Effective biblical counseling

ePub edition September 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-51588-3

1. ChristianityPsychology. 2. Counseling. I. Title.

BR110.C76 253.5 77-2146

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

References marked ERV are from the Easy-to-Read Version, copyright 2006 by World Bible Translation Center.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com.

To Rachael

Contents

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I wrote Effective Biblical Counseling when I was thirty-two years old. I am now sixty-eight. Some things have changed. Some have not. What hasnt changed is the foundation of core convictions on which I am continuing to develop my understanding of counseling. Those convictions were tested years ago and continue to be tested today.

When I began graduate school in 1965, I scrapped everything I had claimed to believe about Christianity. Looking back on my growing up years in a strong Christian home with two good and godly parents, I wondered if my faith was more inherited than thought through and personally embraced. None of my professors in the clinical psychology program were religious, let alone Christian. To them, Christianity was at best a crutch, at worst a joke.

The time had come. I entered a season (not knowing when or if it would end) in which I believed nothing, doubted everything, and opened myself to anything. It was a frightening and exhilarating time. My journey back (ahead?) to faith was bumpy and dark. Much of the light that guided me was provided by Francis Schaeffer and C. S. Lewis through their many books. I devoured them all.

A foundation of belief was slowly formed. Five core convictions took shape.

Conviction #1: There is a God. He is a person that I can know. He is a community of three persons with whom I can relate. If this is true, then life revolves around knowing God and relating with each person in the community of God.

Conviction #2: We have a problem. No problem we may ever encounter is more serious than our stubborn refusal to turn to God for the life we were designed to live, our rebellious determination to find love and meaning apart from him.

Conviction #3: The Bible is true. The Holy Spirit saw to it that the authors who wrote the sixty-six books said everything necessary for us to know God and relate with the three divine persons.

Conviction #4: The insights of psychology are never sufficient to lead us into the life we most long to enjoy. Psychological research and theory can provoke good thought but must never be allowed to serve as a Christian counselors final authority. General revelation (including what can be learned through psychology) does not have equal value with special revelation (what God has made known in the Bible).

Conviction #5: Our deepest problem, the one beneath what we call psychological problems, is most effectively addressed within Christian community. The kind of relationships made possible by Jesus, not the counseling techniques developed by psychology, provide what is needed for people to change in the ways God most wants us to change.

These five convictions form the foundation for the understanding of counseling that is presented in this book. It is true, of course, that in the nearly forty years since I wrote it, my thinking has moved beyond what I understood then. But it is also true that each of these convictions continues to shape my ongoing efforts to find in the Bible everything we need to know to live life as it was meant to be lived.

To those who want to think deeply about what it means to counsel biblically, to those who long to live the life that only Jesus makes possible, to those who believe that life is all about relationship with God and others, I offer