The Christian Counselor's Manual Quotes

“Counselors must recognize that too many Christians give up. They want the change too soon. What they really want is change without the daily struggle. Sometimes they give up when they are on the very threshold of success. They stop before receiving. It usually takes at least three weeks of proper daily effort for one to feel comfortable in performing a new practice. And it takes about three more weeks to make the practice part of oneself. Yet, many Christians do not continue even for three days. If they do not receive instant success, they get discouraged. They want what they want now, and if they don’t get it now, they quit.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“The word grace has several meanings in the Bible, one of which is help. The Holy Spirit gives help when His people read His Word and then step out by faith to do as He says. He does not promise to strengthen unless they do so; the power often comes in the doing.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Christians never should fear change. They must believe in change so long as the change is oriented toward godliness. The Christian life is a life of continual change. In the Scriptures it is called a “walk,” not a rest. They never may say (in this life), “I have finally made it.” They must not think, “There is nothing more to learn from God’s Word, nothing more to put into practice tomorrow, no more skills to develop, no more sins to be dealt with.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Feelings are up and down, they have peaks and troughs. Often, feelings generated by other causes get tangled up with a decision and color one’s vision. Nothing short of commandment living (often in spite of feelings) can keep life stable. The peaks and troughs grow larger as they are allowed to become the life motivating force;7 however, on the other hand, they tend to flatten out as life becomes commandment oriented.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Week after week, counselors encounter one outstanding failure among Christians: a lack of what the Bible calls “endurance.” Perhaps endurance is the key to godliness through discipline. No one learns to ice skate, to use a yo-yo, to button shirts, or to drive an automobile unless he persists long enough to do so. He learns by enduring in spite of failures, through the embarrassments, until the desired behavior becomes a part of him. He trains himself by practice to do what he wants to learn to do. God says the same is true about godliness.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“When Christ said, “take up your cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23), He put an end to all such thinking. He represented the Christian life as a daily struggle to change. The counselee can change if the Spirit of God dwells within him. Of course, if He does not, there is no such hope.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Love, therefore, may be commanded (Luke 6:27 ff.; Ephesians 5:25) and taught (Titus 2:3-4). Love does not come naturally, it must be learned.21 But since it is the fruit of the Spirit, Christians may be sure that it will take the work of God’s Spirit in their lives to learn to love. The Spirit works through prayerful obedience to the Scriptures.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“True love is always under control. It is commanded. Christ commands, “Love your enemies.” You can’t sit around whomping up a good feeling for your enemies. It doesn’t come that way. But if you give an enemy something to eat or give him something to drink, soon something begins to happen to your feelings. When you invest yourself in another, you begin to feel differently toward him. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Paul is clear about what it is. Love is giving—giving of oneself to another. It is not getting, as the world says today. It is not feeling and desire; it is not something over which one has no control. It is something that one does for another. No one loves in the abstract. Love is an attitude that issues forth in something that actually, tangibly happens. Notice Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her (Ephesians 5:25). John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Corresponding to the two basic philosophies of life, then, hedonism and biblical theism, are two views of love. Everyone, of course, is for love. The hippies are for love, the situation ethicists are for love, the followers of Hari Krishna are for love, Christians are for love. But it is true of love, as it is of heaven, that “everybody talks about it ain’t got it.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Blameshifting is so easy; after all, it has such a long history—it goes back to the Garden. A person’s personal relationship to the counselee is discussed publicly without any knowledge of the fact on his part and without any opportunity for him to straighten out misunderstandings or balance off unfair judgments. His name and his actions are being discussed in an intimate way by a group of people who know nothing about him and have no right to know anything about him. Often the discussion is instigated by a bitter, resentful person who, according to Matthew 18, should have gone directly to the husband or parent or pastor to seek reconciliation if he felt that way.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Hope in the Scriptures always is a confident expectation; the word hope never carries even the connotation of uncertainty that adheres to our English term (as when we say cautiously, “I hope so”). There is no “hope so” about the biblical concept.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“With a taproot sunk deeply in the unchangeable Christ, one can learn to live a relatively rootless life here with joy. Change is what the Christian ought to expect, ought to demand of himself, and ought to learn to live with. He knows that there is “no continuing city”26 here; his “citizenship is in heaven.”27 Counselors with this hope can undertake the task of counseling with joy and expectation. By the grace of God, there is every hope of change!”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Every change that God promises is possible. Every quality that God requires in His redeemed children can be attained. Every resource that is needed God has supplied.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Cf. pp. 448 ff. In an interesting article, “Make Your Marriage a Love Affair,” Joyce Brothers makes the following correct observation: “…most people have no idea of the far-reaching consequences of a single change in behavior,” Reader’s Digest, March, 1973, p. 81.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Nowhere does the Bible say that one must wait for change. Jesus did not ask people to wait. He expected and effected change right away. Not everything, of course, but something can be changed as the result of every session, including the first. There is a solution to every unsolved problem; this is the Christian conviction that emerges from I Corinthians 10:13 and II Timothy 3:16, 17.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Cf. also Acts 3:14, 15: “But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One,…and put to death the Prince of life.” Boldness (Acts 4:31) and confidence Acts 4:13) now characterized his personality since he had “been with Jesus” and since he had received the Holy Spirit.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“As always in Christian service, he will find his life in losing it. His fears of men will diminish as his loving service to them increases. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Personal blessing comes not by seeking blessing, however, but by becoming a blessing to others.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Love is self-giving; fear is self-protecting.3 Love moves toward others; fear shrinks away from them. But the counselor must remember (and persuade the counselee that) love is the stronger since it is able to “cast out” fear. In dealing with fear, nothing else possesses the same expulsive power.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“The story of Elijah in I Kings 19 is illustrative of the destructiveness of self-pity. Elijah was bold as long as his mind was centered on God, but not when he began to focus his attention upon himself (cf. I Kings 19:4, 10, 14). Because he refused to turn from this self-orientation, his prophetic ministry was taken away and given to Elisha. Self-pity, envy, and brooding can lead to other serious results, as David warns (Psalm 37:8). The case of Amnon shows how through such brooding “he made himself ill” (II Samuel 13:2-4). This continual brooding led, at length, to disastrous consequences.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Thus, assigning of homework from the first session on enables a counselor to discover quickly (1) who is willing and able to do God’s will, (2) who is willing but unable to do so (and what impediments stand in the way), and (3) who is unwilling.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Counselees need to structure hard tasks by scheduling them.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“No one ever left Jesus Christ the same. Of everyone who met him, He demanded change. It does not take months or even weeks to change. While the new patterns (that constitute a new “manner of life”—Ephesians 4:22) take time to establish, the first changes (or at least the first steps toward such changes) can be taken right away. Every counselee may (indeed must) change after each session. That is why, as the conclusion of every session, the counselor should lead the counselee to an understanding of God’s Scriptural solution to the problem (or at least to some aspect of it).”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“There are at least seven separately definable elements involved in biblical change. These cannot be viewed merely as successive steps, since most of them must be introduced into the counseling process and pursued simultaneously. The elements are as follows: Becoming aware of the Practice (pattern) that must be dehabituated (put off); Discovering the biblical alternative; Structuring the whole situation for change; Breaking links in the chain of sin; Getting help from others; Stressing the whole relationship to Christ; Practicing the new pattern.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“There is much that people do not feel like doing. But there are only two ways to live. These two ways of life reflect two kinds of religion and two kinds of morality. One religion and life and morality says, “I will live according to feelings.” The other says, “I will live as God says.” When man sinned he was abandoning the commandment-oriented life of love for the feeling-oriented life of lust. There are only two kinds of life, the feeling-motivated life of sin oriented toward self, and the commandment-motivated life of holiness oriented toward godliness. Living according to feeling is the greatest hindrance to godliness that we face.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Counselees continually confuse learned behavior patterns with inherited nature (phusis). Counselors may take it as a rule that any quality of life, attitude of mind, or activity that God requires of man may be acquired through the Lord Jesus Christ.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Change, then, is necessary, but change is hard. One of the major reasons why Christians founder is because they are either unwilling to make changes or do not know how to make the changes that God requires of them in order to meet the vicissitudes of life.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“The problem in counseling is to bring Christian counselees to full recognition of the glorious reality of the eternal inheritance. The present, as a result, will be strongly conditioned by the future. This great hope and assurance provides a foundational motivation to make the present approximate the reality of the future.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“It is wrong to think of the present imperfect existence as the more real situation and the perfect record that we have in Christ merely as the ideal toward which we must grow. Perfection (if either) is more real for the Christian than imperfection, since the ultimate proper and eternal state of every Christian will be a state of perfection. There can be no uncertainty about this since the eternal sinlessness of every believer has been secured by the work of God in Christ and the Spirit. The present imperfections are unnatural and temporary. They are, therefore, in this sense less real than the eternal perfection obtained in Christ since, unlike that perfection, inevitably they will pass away. That which is imperfect and sinful, indeed, already is passing away;6 ultimately it must give way completely to that which is perfect.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling

“Similarly, the Scriptures urge the believer to be what God has declared him to be in Christ.”
― Jay E. Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual: The Practice of Nouthetic Counseling