The Remedy for “Take Two Verses and Call Me in the Morning”

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The Remedy for “Take Two Verses and Call Me in the Morning”

Your friend tells you, “My spouse just left me.” What do you say? How do you help?

A parishioner shares, “Pastor, I can’t deal with my bitterness and anger.” How do you respond?

What Do I Do After the Hug?

Whether you’re a lay person or a pastor, what do you do after the hug? How are you being trained for biblical one another ministry in the local church? Unfortunately, even the Christian world seems to recommend two extremes.

Extreme # 1: Secular Help.—“The World’s Way”

Someone comes to us with a life struggle, and in our panic we race to the self-help shelf at the local bookstore. Or we type the topic in an Amazon.com search and we find a boatload of the world’s answers.

There has to be a better way.

Extreme # 2: Shallow Help—“Take Two Verses and Call Me in the Morning”

Or, in our attempts to be biblical, we become shallow. We quote a verse and rub it on like a band-aid. We wave a passage of Scripture like a magic wand.

There has to be a better way.

How to Care Like Christ: Helping You to Help Your Friend

Of course there’s a better way. It’s caring like Christ. It’s speaking and living the truth in love. It’s Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed biblical counseling and spiritual formation.

It’s caring like the Apostle Paul who said, “We loved you so much that we gave you not only the Scriptures, but our own souls, because you were dear to us’ (1 Thessalonians 2:8).

Spiritual Friends: The Remedy for “Take Two Verses and Call Me in the Morning”

It was in my first pastoral ministry that I began equipping lay people and pastors in spiritual friendship. I longed for them to combine truth and love, Scripture and soul, so they could help others with suffering and sin. I long for you to do the same.

Twenty-five years later, I authored Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. It’s the remedy for “take two verses and call me in the morning.” It’s the remedy to shallow help and to secular help.

Spiritual Friends helps you to help your friends. It equips you to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth.

Unique Focus

• Spiritual Friends trains you, step-by-step, in a relational model for dealing with suffering and with sin.
• Spiritual Friends equips you to develop five “GRACE” biblical counseling skills to offer sustaining help for suffering. “It’s Normal to Hurt.”
• Spiritual Friends equips you to develop five “RESTS” biblical counseling skills to offer healing hope for suffering. “It’s Possible to Hope”
• Spiritual Friends equips you to develop six “PEACEE” biblical counseling skills to offer reconciling care-fronting for sin and growth in grace. “It’s Horrible to Sin, but Wonderful to Be Forgiven.”
• Spiritual Friends equips you to develop six “FAITHH” biblical counseling skills to offer guiding wisdom for sin and growth in grace. “It’s Supernatural to Mature.”

Unique Features

• Spiritual Friends includes a built-in application guide to help you to grow in Christ-like character.
• Spiritual Friends is a biblically-relevant training manual with thousands of sample “spiritual conversations” that model how to speak the truth in love.
• Spiritual Friends is a relational practical workbook with hundreds of skill-building exercises to train you in the art of spiritual friendship/biblical counseling.
• With scores of role-plays, vignettes, life applications, and ministry implications—Spiritual Friends is perfect for individual and group work. A growing number of church small groups, church lay counseling training ministries, pastors, professional Christian counselors, and students are using Spiritual Friends as their twenty-first century manual for people helping.

Learn More

To read what others are saying, to download a free sample chapter, and to order Spiritual Friends at 40% off, please visit my RPM Ministries (http://www.rpmministries.org/) Spiritual Friends page (http://www.rpmministries.org/writing/spiritual-friends/).

Join the Conversation

How are you being equipped for biblical one another ministry in the local church?