Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling Quotes

“You can't teach a person to love something. But you can get him to feel the heat of your love for something.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“At the end of life, each of us must answer the question, Whose story captured my soul?”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“To disrespect a person made in the image and likeness of God is a lot worse than desecrating a flag. We should be offended and repulsed in the same way when God's image bearers are desecrated – abused, beaten, neglected, discriminated against, and not loved and taken care of as they should be.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Satan's kryptonite is separation through slander. He slanders God to us and us to God.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Satan mounts his mutiny against God through a deceitful stronghold: God is untrustworthy. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, he places God's heart on trial by whispering insidious lies: "God is holding back on you. He wants you to jump through hoops in order to earn His love. He's stingy. He doesn't have your best interest in mind. You're better off trusting in yourself. Your resources and functional saviors work better then waiting and trusting in Him.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Sin does not remain a contented servant; it seeks to seize and master its participants.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“If all you are doing is spending time with the struggling members of your church and you are not building proactively into your church's culture, and you are being shortsighted and limiting the effectiveness of your ministry.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The body of Christ is about doing life together, and by doing life together sin is revealed.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Suffering always reveal idols of the heart.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“This is God's world, so everything, even if it intends to efface God, bears witness to God – understood and interpreted through biblical eyeglasses.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Counseling is ultimately not about the counselee or the counselor, but about the Divine Counselor.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The biblical counselor must always remember that the ROOT problem is deeper than skin; it is sin. The ultimate cure is not culture, but Christ.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Any counseling that does not pursue spiritual formation through an intimate relationship with Jesus by faith as one of its chief goals is not worthy to be called BIBLICAL counseling.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“So often, it's others around us who can see where God wants to grow us even before we see it ourselves.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“In healthy churches, the pastors life, not just his words, sets the tone for the church.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Our hearts are wired for worship, and our worship is directly tied to our sense of hope.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“We must evaluate every person, place, product, perspective, position, or pleasure we have looked to in place of the promises of God, and turn away from those things accordingly.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“When we shift from personal purity to personal happiness, we lose biblical hope because we are not focusing on God's agenda, we are focusing on our own. God's agenda is guaranteed on our agenda is not.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“When we pray, we are speaking to the One Whose eternal purpose and designs are unfolding as our present realities. In order to find hope in them, we must seek HIM and HIS perspective. This requires a keen understanding of the redemptive nature of our existence, which points to the glorious gospel of Christ.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Repentance is shockingly beautiful when we see it not as "I sinned again, I need to repent," but as "I sinned against my God again, but He is calling me back so He can lavish me with His love and forgiveness.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Our view of human problems determines who is qualified to speak to them. If sin is the primary human problem, then those with the theological and practical expertise in dealing with sin – in its varied and complex forms – should lead the way in the field of people-helping. Unless we have an accurate and robust conception of sin, the church will concede much of its work to outside professional and will be ill-equipped to cooperate with them when needed.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Too often, we think of sin as self-contained, point-in-time choices with no interconnection or momentum. But sin refuses to remain contained in the moment it is conceived.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“One of the most frequent sins of omission is the failure to get adequate rest.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“We also notice that Paul was focused. He had a clear goal, and he would not veer to the right or to the left from it. We can’t help but wonder how many emails Paul would have skipped over, or how current he would have been with the news of the day, or even how vigorously he would be rooting for his favorite sports teams or athletes. Our ability to have information quickly is both a blessing and a curse. Our ability to function in a fast-paced society sometimes encourages us to focus on nothing of lasting value, just running from one temporal thing to the next. Just”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“If our counseling is truly Christ-centered, then the topic of forgiveness will inevitably come up in the journey toward growth and change.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“The counselee should be aware that you are not God. Better yet, she should be aware that you are aware that you are not God.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“While the United States is becoming the most culturally diverse nation in the world, less than 5.5% of Christian congregations are multiethnic.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“When we worry, we are telling God, "You are neither trustworthy nor in control, so I need to worry and scheme as I take matters into my own hands." In this way unbelief drives worry, for it is impossible to worry when we are trusting in the provision of our sovereign God.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth

“Small groups are the place to push past Bible knowledge and on to life application so that we can see people's lives transform more and more into the image of Christ.”
― James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth