Counseling
In our last post, we looked at a powerful tool for staying connected to Christ. But before we go into other options for how to stay connected to Christ throughout an entire day, you might be thinking, “Ryan, you have no idea how my sinful nature works. I can have all the right intentions to…
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Notice that when we talk about the gospel, it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not the Gospel of __________ (insert your name). The Gospel is primarily about Him. The J.B. Phillips’ translation of Colossians 1:15-20 makes this clear. It reads, “Now Christ is the visible expression of the invisible God. He existed…
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In our last post, we looked at why Christ is our first principle. If Christ is going to be our first principle, then we need to focus way more on Him than we do on overcoming our sins, loving our families, dreaming about success, or anything else. We are going to discuss several ways to…
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Yesterday, we learned that all of us have good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. God knit us together in our mothers’ wombs to accomplish these good works. There may be some good works that we can’t wait to do. However, what if we don’t want to do the good…
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Christian counseling has exploded. Many counselors look to attach themselves to churches. Some churches maintain a list of referral sources. Some have even closed their list of referral sources since there were so many counselors looking to get on them. Being a counselor, I am biased as to how I would encourage churches to choose. …
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Jack woke up at 3am, and once again he could not fall back asleep. Not even getting into his perfect sleep position seemed to help, even though he was tired. He wasn’t particularly worried about anything. He just could not fall back asleep. He used to get good sleep, but for some reason that stopped a…
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By Ryan C. Bailey Does someone in your life keep relating the same painful story over and over again? Is it getting old? Like you’ve heard it all before, and you wonder why they have to keep sharing it? Is there a part of you that doesn’t even want to be around that person? Listen…
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Usually I work much more on the marriage counseling side, but I’ve been getting a lot more calls from people fresh from a divorce.They are in shock. And in so much pain. Their spouse may have wanted the divorce, not them. Now they feel shame. They feel isolated and alone. They’re losing friends. They don’t…
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For the past several months, I have been writing about the delicate balance between accountability, shame, and transformation. We have struggled to make sense of why our actions don’t change after inviting people in…seeking honest repentance…and beating ourselves up when we fail. We want to feel bad enough so our behaviors change, but in the…
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“Nothing ever becomes real ’til it is experienced.” -John Keats Last spring, a friend and I went backpacking in North Carolina for several nights. We hiked a trail both of us were familiar with but decided to summit a small peak neither of us had done before off on a side trail. If you’ve been…
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