The way I counsel is very much from the heart and is about my clients’ hearts.  It is my aim to sit with those that God leads my direction in order to help them find freedom from the wounds they accumulated in their hearts and from the coping mechanisms formed in reaction to those wounds.  To teach an angry man how to “control” his anger leaves you, in the end, with an angry man who is a slave to controlling his anger.  I don’t see much freedom in that.  To sit with an angry man in a way that invites him to be powerless in front of others so that he might see Christ there, that is freedom for him. 

As you look over Christ’s time with those He interacted with, you see some interesting choices.  He chose to call Zacheus out of the tree and wanted to spend time with him.  Zacheus had probably, because of his profession, made it through life as a hard, lonely man.  And it was likely disturbing for him to have Christ want to see him, spend time with him....to care for him.  The adulteress woman who was about to be stoned, must have been disturbed by such grace, disturbed by the way Christ would have looked at her as if she wasn’t dirty, and he meant it.  The woman at the well, who had “many husbands”, walked away knowing just how thirsty she had always been although never knew, which could not have settled her heart but stirred it to want more of this Christ. 

I believe a Christian counselor should counsel in very much the same way.  To create an environment where shame has no power, that clients are deeply cared for and where they leave each week more thirsty for that which only He can quench.  I feel invitation to deeper places is the only way to find Him in the midst of our painful stories and the only way to find healing and freedom.