How To Help People Change

While touching on many aspects of counseling, this book . . . is specifically designed to elucidate the process of counseling. I have often mentioned and illustrated that process, but not in the focused and systematic way that the four-step biblical process is set forth here . . . . This book presents a fresh perspective not only on how to counsel, but also on what measures to take at what stages of counseling. (from the Preface) Change is the essential goal of the counseling process. And Christian counselors recognize, as the author is so concerned to remind us, Substantial change requires the alteration of the heart. How does a Christian counselor work in order to bring about this kind of change? The answer is found, of course, in Scripture — in 2 Timothy 3:14–17, to be specific. Jay Adams is well-known as a counselor who bases his whole approach to counseling on Scripture. This book offers the interested reader an unparalleled opportunity to see both how he discovers and applies biblical principles and the way in which Scripture functions as the basis of his approach to counseling. This book answers not only the question How does a counselor help people change? but also How does Scripture operate as the source of a counselor’s method? It is a book that has much to say about the ongoing discussion of the relationship between theology and psychology in the enterprise of Christian counseling.