Quotes from Jay E. Adams

If no Christian faces unique tests in life, and if Paul can say to the church at Corinth (living in an entirely different age and culture) that what happened to the Israelites is pertinent also to them (cf. vss. 6, 11), the counselor may be assured that he will face no truly unique problems in counseling. There are just so many basic common themes of sin and no more.

And, as a matter of fact, every believer may share in the full supply of divine equipment to the degree that is necessary to accomplish God's will.11

Sin is against God, and it isn't possible to be neutral about God, Who has been offended by sin. Nonjudgmental attitudes actually condone and encourage sin. To accept a sinner as he is, means to say God was wrong in sending Christ to die for sinners in order to change them. God took sin so seriously that He punished His own Son with death for sin. If God punishes sin, we may not accept sinners as they are.

Everywhere the Scriptures either demand change or assume its possibility. Since not all change is good, the Scriptures were written to give direction to that change; the Holy Spirit, their ultimate Author, was given to provide the disposition and power to follow those directions.

During his teens, parents ought to encourage the child to reevaluate his own life. He should reevaluate his standards and performance in terms of the Scriptures. He might well be helped to devise a teen-age program for putting off the old man and putting on the new man for himself. The teen-age period, of necessity, is a time of adjustment.

But even that distress must be balanced by enthusiastic hope. It is his task always to sound the note of biblical optimism that is warranted by the promises of God. A counselor must be, above much else, a man of hope.

Most cases of child discipline may be solved by establishing structure that will lead to the reenforcement of the biblical principles established for the home. To do this, the rules of the home need to be set out clearly.

On the whole, punishments that are productive (work details above and beyond ordinary chores) are the best punishments whenever they can be devised. Ordinary chores ought not to be used as punishments since parents should endeavor to get their children to enjoy helping out in the family.

In addition there are those who do the right thing but give up too readily. They will drill until noon, but give up because it took too long and it is getting too hot; at 1:00 P.M. they would have struck oil! They will drill through the sand until they hit rock, but then they quit; it has become too difficult. Three feet deeper and they would have hit a gusher! Hope leads to perseverence that gives one the patience to continue in spite of delay or difficulty (I Thessalonians 1:3).

Thus the goal of nouthetic counseling is set forth plainly in the Scriptures: to bring men into loving conformity to the law of God.

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.

The question never seems to be asked: is psychiatry a valid discipline?

If Freudianism is true, the most immoral people, or at best the most amoral people, should be the healthiest, whereas in fact the opposite is true. People in mental institutions and people who come to counseling invariably are people with great moral difficulties.

Mankind was designed to function as a worshipper of God for eternity, and the intent was for all aspects of his life to be acts of worship to the living God.

peace and joy come not from others but from God:

The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17).

Where were Christians before Freud? Up a tree? Were the bereft of all crucial knowledge about man's relationship to God and his neighbor? Was the church's counseling a hopeless, primitive, stone-age activity that should have disappeared with flint knives? Were Christians shut up to sinful, harmful living before the advent of psychotherapy? Did God withhold truth for living until our present age?

No man is free to ignore God's standards. No one has the right to choose not to serve God, for God has made man to serve him and has-commanded "all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). He has called them to turn from idols to the true and living God, to serve him and to wait for his Son from heaven. Not all men, however, obey that command. Sin has cosmic dimensions.

The very person that such a client so dislikes is the person whom he has been allowing, strangely enough, to control his life by remote control. In reaction to the hated person he has been doing all he does over against that person. He is not free, but is bound by the very person whom he dislikes, and yet his anger burns so intensely that he is blinded to the foolishness of his pendulum action.

Davison has well stated this point when he rightly warns against the attempt to secure a spiritual end by the adoption of habits, the multiplication of rules, and the observance of external standards, excellent in themselves, but useful only as means subordinate to the Spirit. 1

Only a few things are necessary, really only one (Luke 10:42). That one essential need is to hear Him and believe His Word, as Mary did.

Static living, static decisions, static personality is inconsistent with the biblical picture of the new life. Where there is life there is growth, 1 and growth means change. Growth means maturation; it means refining of ideas and ways of doing things. So a Christian counselee must not be allowed to plead that he is what he is and nothing can be done about it.

food for the body and food for the soul, the latter must always take precedence because it alone is absolutely essential.

Thus the first important fact is that counselees need meaning, and the second is similar to it: counselees need hope. Every counselor must keep these two facts in mind, especially at the beginning of a sequence of counseling sessions.