Worthington, Jr. offers a comprehensive manual for assisting couples over common rough spots and through serious problems in a manner that is compassionate, effective and brief. His hope-focused (rather than problem-focused) approach enables couples to see that change is possible and gives them a new outlook on the future. Combining this with a brief approach that addresses the realities of managed care and tight budgets, Worthington shows how to be strategic in each counseling situation by including teaching, training, exercises, forgiveness, modeling and motivation. At the heart of the book are dozens of interventions and exercises, includingdrawing on central values promoting confession and forgiveness strengthening communication aiding conflict resolution changing patterns of thinking developing intimacy cementing commitment Backed by years of experience and substantial research, hope-focused marriage counseling offers hope to counselors that they can provide help to troubled couples quickly, compassionately and effectively. This paperback edition includes a new introduction, summarizing the latest findings and developments in marital counseling and applying hope-focused marriage counseling to today's cultural and clinical realities.

    Good Mood, Bad Mood; examines whether we are in an epidemic or if we have simply misdiagnosed common sadness as depression. Current research in the medical community seems to indicate that the criteria we use to diagnose depression has resulted in an increased and incorrect labeling of common sadness as depression. While medical treatment is now the commonly accepted way to deal with pain and sadness, its promise has not been fulfilled. In Good Mood, Bad Mood, Dr. Charles Hodges offers an explanation to help the reader see the importance of sadness and the hope that God gives us in His Word.

    As an experienced counselor of children and families and an adoptive and foster mom applying the CCEF model of biblical change, Julie Lowe uses Scripture and biblical wisdom to teach parents how to know their children and specifically love them with the love of Christ. Every family is unique, which is why Child Proof explores the need for parents to cultivate personal and intimate care for their children as modeled in God’s individual, personal, and fatherly care to his children. This parenting book lays a foundation of parenting by faith and progresses by teaching parents how they can know their own children well and parent accordingly. By discussing particular issues parents might have in family life, Lowe demonstrates how parenting formulas aren’t the answer, and parenting with biblical wisdom is best for a proactive rather than reactive approach to parenting. Through Lowe’s personal and professional experience, parents as well as those helping parents—pastors, counselors and counseling students, youth workers, and churches—will discover gospel-centered application rather than formulas for the ideal family, equipping parents to be experts at knowing their own children so they can know Scripture and live it out personally in their homes.

    In this short book, a highly respected biblical counselor and successful author offers practical guidance for all Christians--pastors and laypeople alike--who want to develop their "helping skills" when it comes to walking alongside hurting people.Written out of the conviction that friends are the best helpers, this accessible introduction to biblical counseling will equip believers to share their burdens with one another through gentle words of wisdom and kind acts of love. This book is written for those eager to see God use ordinary relationships and conversations between ordinary Christians to work extraordinary miracles in the lives of his people.

    "The Complete Guide to Crisis and Trauma Counseling "is a biblical, practical guide to pastoral counseling written by one of the most respected Christian therapists of our time. Dr. H. Norman Wright brings more than 40 years of clinical and classroom experience to this topic, and shares real-life dialogs from his decades in private practice to demonstrate healthy, healing counseling sessions. Readers will learn how to counsel and coach both believers and non-believers who are in crisis, how to walk alongside them through the hours, weeks and months following their trauma and how to help them find the path to complete restoration.

    For each approach, Siang-Yang Tan first provides a substantial introduction, assessing the approach's effectiveness and the latest research findings or empirical evidence for it. He then critiques the approach from a Christian perspective. Tan also includes hypothetical transcripts of interventions for each major approach to help readers get a better sense of the clinical work involved. This book presents a Christian approach to counseling and psychotherapy that is Christ centered, biblically based, and Spirit filled.

    Relationships between women can be especially enriching, but when conflict arises, they also can be especially damaging. Too many women approach conflict as if they were unbelievers-with gossip, spiteful actions, bitterness, and even hatred. In Peacemaking Women, Tara Klena Barthel and Judy Dabler offer a meaningful, lasting message to lead women out of conflict to a state of peace where they can live as representatives of Christ to one another and well as unbelievers. With advice that is firmly rooted in Scripture, the authors bring sound, practical help for women who want to know what the Bible says about conflict resolution and how to achieve peace in their relationships with God, self, and others.

    With penetrating insight and practical applications, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making identifies how to work through the most stubborn problems that plague any contemporary relationship - be it marriage, parent-child, or friendship.

    God radically changes people, and he offers us the opportunity--and the ability, by his power--to be involved in that change. We can live not just as grateful objects of his love but as effective instruments of his love in the lives of the people around us. Have you been satisfied by too little? Content with small changes in your life and the lives of others? Unsure of how to help others and uncomfortable when you encounter their needs? You don't need to start with a strategy or technique, Tripp argues--you need a renewed imagination! Only then can you grasp what is real but unseen and live accordingly. The kingdom of God is near, and it takes us far beyond our personal situations and relationships, making ordinary people a part of God's extraordinary plan for the world. This guidebook shows us how.

    Allender and Tremper Longman III have together written this brief, simple and charming introduction to help couples build healthy and happy marriages. Their model follows the "leave, weave and cleave" imagery of the Bible: leave your parents, weave a life together and cleave to each other. This book is part of a kit that includes everything needed to mentor individual married couples or to lead a group discussion. It will be especially helpful for newlyweds or young married couples who are just beginning their new life together.

    Written by well-known and respected scholars, the book, in nine core chapters, provides an introduction to a set of disorders along with overviews of current research on etiology, treatment and prevention. Prior chapters give a context for the integration of Christianity and the scientific study of psychopathology, and articulate integrative themes discussed throughout the book, providing a foundation for the concluding vision for Christian health professionals and the church. This is a unique and valuable resource for Christians studying psychology and counseling, or providing counseling services, pastoral care, Christian healing ministries or spiritual direction. Though fully capable of standing on its own, it is also a useful companion volume to Modern Psychotherapies by Stanton L. Jones and Richard E. Butman.

    Mack's Bible-based approach to marriage offers practical insights on marital roles

    This approach to pastoral counseling focuses on solutions rather than problems and is typically short-term, requiring only one to four or five sessions.

    Jim Petersen distills years of counseling and pastoral ministry into an informal volume loaded with practical tips, examples and techniques to practice. His book highlights our cultures courtroomlike communication that often puts people at odds with each other. Most people think they listen well but dont and folks walk away unheard, misunderstood and disconnected. Readers will chuckle in recognition at the tongueincheek but spoton flatbrain theory of emotions. It shows how and why we get upset and confused in tense situations and what to do about it. It lays the practical groundwork to better manage emotionally loaded situations. This book shows communication that works and is equally appropriate for professionals, such as pastors and therapists and for the general public. The ingenious TalkerListener Card gives a takingturn method to end arguing as we know it. It works for couples, business relationships, church listening programs, counselors, group discussions and the family dinner table listening game. Thirty listening techniques will help the reader immediately begin to turn enemies into friends, poor relationships into decent ones and good relationships into better ones. These accessible skills are being used in pastoral counseling classes, counseling offices, church staffs, professional offices, on dates, in corporate board rooms and at kitchen tables around the country .

    From this point they learn to respond to their wives in a consistent Christlike manner. A radically transformed and renewed marriage is the result.Drawing from his own story and the stories of husbands whose marriages were dissolving, Ken Nair reveals major problems in life and marriage. After discussing the problems, he reveals relationship altering concepts which not only will revive a marriage, they will radiate throughout couple's lives as well.