IN LOUISVILLE, KY AND ONLINE
CHRISTIAN COUNSELING
Christ Centered | Biblically Informed | Relationship Focused
Christian Counseling
Would You Like To Strengthen Your Spiritual Connection With God?
Are you struggling to find a meaningful connection between your faith and how you deal with difficult situations in your life? Is a personal challenge, life transition, or loss of a loved one testing the limits of your faith? Are you trying your best to gracefully deal with infidelity or perhaps a family member’s unexpected pregnancy, but the intense emotions make you feel like your spiritual resolve isn’t enough?
Perhaps you go to church and pray often but still feel inadequate or not good enough—as if you are somehow letting God down. Conversely, maybe you are in so much pain that you feel like God has failed you because you don’t understand why He hasn’t answered your cry for mercy and help.
Sometimes, we think of faith as if God was a genie in a bottle—something that we can access when we need it and then shelf it until the next time. But relying on faith to heal or overcome life’s challenges requires much more of us. All too often, we think that prayers, fellowship, the Bible, and attending church on Sundays are what signify a true connection to Christ—one that will see us through the rough times. But it is not that our faith isn’t strong enough; it’s that our relationship with Christ and God’s love simply isn’t mature enough.
Sometimes, even for those who are most steadfast in heart, a little guidance and counsel can go a long way. So if you are struggling to find strength in your faith—or if you simply want to strengthen your connection to God— Christian Counseling at Life Training can help. By relying on Biblical truths, God’s love, and our combined efforts, you can experience healing of your wounds, hurts, struggles, and disappointments no matter how profound they are.
Even With The Power Of Your Faith—Life Can Be Difficult
“I have observed something else under the sun. The fastest runner doesn’t always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle. The wise sometimes go hungry, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don’t always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time.” Ecclesiastes: 9:11, NLT
Regardless of who you are or how strong your belief system is, everyone eventually experiences some sort of personal challenge that tests their faith. And although it’s normal to want to be able to navigate these obstacles on our own, when we can’t, we end up feeling like we’ve either failed God or He has abandoned us for some reason.
Unfortunately, many of us carry within us deep wounds and hurts from the past that give energy to these unfounded fears. Oftentimes, these fears have their roots in our family of origin. For instance, if you had an emotionally detached mother or for some other reason you were separated from your birth mother as a child, you may have experienced a mother wound. This tends to cause you to fear abandonment or dread aloneness. It may also lead to unhealthy emotional dependencies on others. And one of the most profound effects of this type of wounding is that there can be a loss of self, insecurity, and possibly even confusion as to gender. So you project that fear onto your faith by worrying about abandonment because you’re constantly wondering, Will someone close to me remove their love from me?
Father wounds are particularly harmful because we regard God and worship Him as the ultimate Father. So if you grew up in a home where your father was overly critical, inattentive, unaffectionate, or completely absent, you might fear that you are inadequate and not good enough to deserve His love. Or you may have spent your life trying to prove that you are worthy of His love and acceptance. In either case, these are destructive false beliefs that cause us to perpetually ask the question, Am I good enough?
God loves His children and wants us to find true joy through our relationship with Him. As human beings, we don’t always have a Biblical perspective or mature enough relationship with Jesus to meaningfully draw upon the strength this offers.
Moreover, there is a big difference between religious tradition and a deep, abiding faith in Jesus. It’s not about saying more Hail Mary’s or putting more into the offering plate. And it’s not about being more religious or good enough to deserve His love. It’s about having a living, healing relationship directly with God and being able to access that in times of distress. And most of us need help understanding just how to do that.
Our Specialties
Depression Counseling
Have you lost interest in or become numb to the everyday pleasures or activities that once gave you joy? Do you constantly battle a sense of hopelessness or low self-worth that is holding you back from achieving God’s plan for you? Perhaps you are overly irritable or easily angered, but don’t even understand where these conflicting feelings are coming from.
Anxiety Counseling
Are you constantly ruminating on the past or worrying about the future, as if something terrible could happen at any moment? Do you have a hard time relaxing or feeling at ease, even in ordinary situations with people you trust? Are you experiencing heart palpitations, trembling, nausea, or chronic aches and pains that you can’t explain?
Do you want to repair your marriage and develop a deeper, more meaningful connection with your partner? Are you searching the Bible for guidance and having trouble understanding how to apply or even locate that wisdom? Have you tried working together to overcome your relationship issues only to have conversations explode into anger, criticism, and arguments?
Christian Counseling
Are you struggling to find a meaningful connection between your faith and how you deal with difficult situations in your life? ≈Are you trying your best to gracefully deal with infidelity or perhaps a family member’s unexpected pregnancy, but the intense emotions make you feel like your spiritual resolve isn’t enough?
Online Counseling
Is a busy schedule or financial stress keeping you from getting the help you need? Perhaps you’ve considered in-person or online therapy before, but committing to ongoing self-care feels intimidating. You might be uncomfortable taking time away from work or relationships, and the thought of weekly therapy sessions feels overwhelming or even selfish.
Teen Counseling
Are you considering counseling for teens because you know a teenager who is struggling with anxiety, depression, substance abuse, or a complicated relationship with Christ. Do you get the sense that they feel unseen, unheard, misunderstood, or even unloved? Are they having trouble navigating academics, making friends, or feeling accepted for who they are?
Christian Counseling Can Help You Put Your Faith To Work
Working with our counselors is centered around helping you know and trust God—not just with your current situation but with your life as a whole. As human beings, we have a natural, predictable tendency to try and control people, processes, circumstances, and outcomes in an effort to protect ourselves from our fears. But by exploring your personal relationship with Jesus Christ and learning to more fully surrender to God’s will and the truths inherent in the Bible, you can turn your faith into action and begin to experience real, sustainable healing and life change.
Although we offer a structured, faith-based approach to counseling, there is certainly no cookie-cutter process for healing and spiritual growth. Sometimes, more immediate concerns come up that need additional attention. But for the most part, there are three general phases that we move through with our clients, regardless of what brings them to counseling.
God has sovereign authority over all things and has a plan for your life that is good. (from Jeremiah 29:11)
During the first phase of your counseling journey, we want to hear your story, and that means taking as much time or as many sessions as you would like to comfortably get there. As we guide you through self-exploration and discovery, we will be able to identify possible origins, effects, and consequences of your pain – at more of an intellectual level. This process kickstarts a deeper self-awareness that allows you to understand how the past, present, and future have intersected to create some of the challenges you may be facing.
God will work all things – even painful things – for your good and His glory. (from Romans 8:28)
In the second phase, we will help you take a focused inventory of your life, looking at certain thought processes, deeply held beliefs, or past decisions that may not always have been in your best interest. By taking an honest, nonjudgmental look at yourself, we can help you take ownership of your life and find healthier ways of responding to adversity in the future. At this point our clients are typically beginning to connect suppressed emotional experiences with the origins of their current struggles.
God loves and cares for you, no matter what you’ve done or where you’ve been. (from Isaiah 41:10)
By the third phase of your counseling work, we now have established a relationship of mutual trust that will enable us to walk with you into more emotion-centered areas of your life. We want to help you give yourself permission to genuinely feel the pain, loss, or shame you may have long been carrying around inside yet may have never really dealt with. And although you may feel vulnerable, you are in the absolute best position to experience the presence and nearness of God in your circumstances. It allows you to encounter His unconditional love and grace—to fully trust in the promise that God can and will make all things right in His way and in His perfect timing.
God uniquely created you in your mother’s womb, and there is no one else like you. (from Psalm 139:13-14)
One of the tools we use for awakening this new, closer relationship with God is Temperament Therapy which uses a comprehensive profiling system to identify your specific needs. Temperament Therapy helps you to better understand God’s unique design for you as it is reflected in who you are, what you need, and your inborn tendencies. In time, you can translate that unique identity into strengths that will enable you to make healthier, more effective choices in your relationships and your life.
Soul Work—another tool we often use in our counseling practice—is a specialized form of counseling that very few counselors are trained in, even within the faith-based community. These methods enable us to effectively walk with you on a healing journey into the deeper, shame-based aspects of your inner person. Oftentimes, secrecy can be a poison that contaminates our lives and becomes an entrenched and unnatural part of who we are. But our various Soul Work tools help you process that profound pain and heal old—perhaps secret—wounds. These powerful counseling methods come in many forms that we tailor to best address the needs of each individual client.
There is an old adage: “You can’t guide someone to a place you’ve not been.” We’ve been there – hurt, abandoned, addicted, rejected, broken… and restored through Christ! Over the course of many years, our Christian counselors have seen God transform their own lives through numerous counselors, mentors, pastors, and teachers who have guided them on their own journey of discovery, radical vulnerability, and healing of the deep, hidden wounds of their soul.
In addition to being nationally licensed and credentialed counselors, our team also has over 30 years of experience as pastors, elders, deacons, and lay leaders in churches. We believe that you too can draw upon your relationship with God to overcome problems and live a more gratifying, peaceful life in Christ.
Perhaps you are considering Christian counseling but still have some concerns…
Christians can’t be weak. Our faith is supposed to give us strength.
As human beings, we are often fallible—sometimes, even in regard to our faith. But by improving your connectedness and surrendering more fully to God’s will, He will provide you the strength to overcome any challenge. And according to 2nd Corinthians 12:9, the way we truly experience God’s power in our lives is to embrace our weaknesses, inadequacies, and our need for Him.
If I just pray more and try harder, I will get through this.
The Bible tells us in Ephesians 2:8-9 that it is by grace we are saved, through faith, and not by any effort of our own. Christian counseling can help you tap into the power of your relationship with Jesus so that your prayers and humility are met with God’s assurance and hope.
There’s nothing Christian counseling can do to change things. It is what it is.
We are told in Isaiah 61:1that God takes the ashes of our past and turns them into beauty in our lives beyond what we can even imagine. Although it may be difficult to believe right now, there is hope, it’s just being obscured by your pain. But we can help guide you to a place where you can see with greater clarity and truly understand the power of God’s unconditional and unending love for you. He specializes in making broken pieces into masterpieces!
Let Us Help You Make The Most Of Your Faith
If you are facing a difficult life situation or you want to enhance your spiritual connection with God, we can guide you along that journey. Please call 502 717 5433 to discover how our faith-based, Biblical approach to spiritual counseling can help you.
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