Despite my introverted tendencies, I love being around people. It can exhaust me after an extended period of time, but I still love it. It does my heart good to spend time with others. That said, there is one surefire way I can grow cold in my love for other people: by isolating myself from them. I've noticed that if I spend too much consecutive time on administrative or ...

At Grace Biblical Counseling Ministries we have formal biblical counseling sessions on-site every Thursday. Those meetings take place because people have sought us out for help, filled out paperwork regarding the issues they're facing, and been matched with a trained biblical counselor. In these formal settings, it's often much easier to speak truth to someone regarding si...

David Mathis writes forDesiring God Listening is one of the easiest things you'll ever do, and one of the hardest. In a sense, listening is easy or hearing is easy. It doesn't demand the initiative and energy required in speaking. That's why "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). The point is that hearing is easy, and faith ...

When people we love are going through hard things, we want to comfort them in any way we can. We feel for them, we're filled with care and compassion toward them, so we seek to console them. But sometimes our efforts to help can go wrong. Let's say you're out for coffee with a close friend one afternoon. You ask how he's been doing, and as he responds he becomes noticeab...

It is the church's function and a part of God's plan that biblical instruction be communicated through its ministries. The church is described in 1 Timothy 3:15 as the pillar and support of the truth. The church has been ordained by God to spread biblical truth to the world. Biblical counseling, being the ministering of the Word of God to people in need, would seem to be b...

This is the fifth and final post in a series titled "Properly Interpreting the Scriptures." Read thefirst,second,third, andfourthposts. The fifth principle of Biblical interpretation is that we must understand the relationship between God's story and our lives when interpreting Scripture. The almighty God has given us His Word in order to enlighten us to what truly is. Go...

This is the fourth post in a series titled "Properly Interpreting the Scriptures." Read thefirst,second, andthirdposts. In order to accurately interpret Scripture, it is important that we do not view it as simply an assortment of unrelated pieces; we must have an understanding of the overarching storyline of the Bible. What is the overarching storyline of the entire Bible...

This is the third post in a series titled "Properly Interpreting the Scriptures." Read thefirstandsecondposts. After first seeing the need to evaluate a passage's context, the second principle of biblical interpretation we're going to look at is the importance of understanding the meaning of words used. This has to do with the true content of words. Gordon Fee writes, "Co...

This is the second post in a series titled "Properly Interpreting the Scriptures." Read thefirst post. The first principle we must understand when interpreting Scripture is the context of the passage, or you could say understanding the passage's place in the Bible. Everything that is said or done has some form of context. We speak words within the context of a sentence. E...

How many times have you spoken to a friend using a passage of Scripture only to find out later that its true meaning was different than the way you presented it? Such an occurrence should lead us to ask several questions: Why did this happen? How can we guard against this? Can we ever be sure of the meaning of a particular passage? Are we willing to do the work to ensure i...