Purpose Statement Explained

"The More I Seek You" by Kari Jobe

But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Deuteronomy 4:29)

Purpose: Shalom Counseling Place has many functions, responsibilities, and ministries, but only one basic purpose. Everything I do is related to give glory to my Heavenly Father.

To glorify God: This is my highest motivation and all-encompassing purpose. I do not glorify man, organization, or government, but God, and I evaluate what I do by this standard.

Evangelize: I believe that mankind is lost and needs to be redeemed through Christ Jesus, whom I proclaim as my Savior. My entire ministry is motivated by this belief.

The unreached: My major focus is on reaching unevangelized people groups. I want to minister among individuals and communities who have never had the opportunity to understand the Gospel.

Minister to human need: I acknowledge that the ultimate human need is to know God. I also believe that He has called us to compassionate, holistic service in this broken world. Jesus is our example as minister to people who are suffering because poverty, illness, or natural disaster.

Disciple believers: This involves teaching the Word of God, helping people to discover their God-given gifts, enabling them to serve others, and helping them become mature in Christ.

Christian Counseling is essentially about having a formal setting to share your problems with someone who has been trained to be both sympathetic and analytic in their approach to dealing with personal problems. This approach is a Christian one, that is that Christian beliefs about human suffering and its causes - for example the role of sin in causing suffering, and the need for the presence of forgiveness in people in order for them to be spiritually and also emotionally free, is taken fully into account.

People who have been properly trained can be very good at spotting the underlying causes behind different problems, seeing things that people cannot - as we are embedded in the problem and so restricted in our view. You yourself will probably know if counseling would be beneficial for you. You can always try one or two meetings with a counselor, and then decide if you need more. You may be depressed or you may be experiencing loneliness, and counseling could be beneficial. Combined with other methods, such as prayer for inner healing for example, Christian counseling can be very effective for bringing release from personal burdens.

As a Christian, God is the center of my life. Christian counseling takes this fact and brings analytic skills into a process that helps people understand the source of their problems. Ultimately, these problems will either be founded on people’s own sin, or founded on sin or misfortune that has happened to them. However, it is easy to oversimplify things; and so is highlighted a strength of counseling. Counseling at its best can recognize the different, and sometimes-complex factors that go towards making a person how they are: their emotional, spiritual and mental states (2 Kings 20:5) "Turn back and tell Hezekiah the captain of My people, ‘Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father: I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears; behold, I will heal thee. On the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord."