Do you want to know the seven topics every person must master if they are to do truly biblical ministry?

On the first page of my first book, Soul Physicians (http://tinyurl.com/d8grf6), I describe why we need a theological foundation for people ministry. I also outline the seven-part foundation we must understand if we are to have a comprehensive and compassionate approach to the personal ministry of the Word of God.

The Physician’s Desk Reference

Two books are standard in any physician’s office: The Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) and The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy (Merck). Both are considered “Bibles of medical knowledge and practice.”

With its 3,223 pages of prescription drugs, the annually updated PDR is the most comprehensive, widely used drug reference available. It details the usage, warnings, and precautions for more than 4,000 prescription drugs.

Merck is the most widely used medical text in the world. It provides the latest information on the vast expanse of human diseases, disorders, and injuries, as well as their symptoms and treatments. Intended for physicians, it is still useful for the lay person. As one sage has commented, “a must for everyone in a human body.”

The The Soul Physician’s Desk Reference

If the PDR and Merck are the Old Testament and New Testament for physicians treating the body, then the Bible is God’s final, authoritative word for soul physicians treating the soul. It is the soul physician’s desk reference manual for dispensing grace. It’s “a must for anyone who is a soul.” God’s Word provides not only the latest, but the eternal, lasting information on the soul’s design and disease, as well as its care and cure.

What do we discover as we read the pages of the Soul Physician’s Desk Reference (SPDR)? We learn what makes Christian counseling Christian. We learn our Great Physician’s authoritative truth about:

1. Nourishing the Hunger of the Soul: Preventative Medicine—God’s Word

2. Knowing the Creator of the Soul: The Great Physician—The Trinity

3. Examining the Spiritual Anatomy of the Soul: People—Creation

4. Diagnosing the Fallen Condition of the Soul: Problems—Fall

5. Prescribing God’s Cure for the Soul: Solutions—Redemption

6. Envisioning the Final Healing of the Soul: Home—Glorification

7. Dispensing God’s Care for the Soul: Spiritual Friends—Sanctification

These seven biblical categories are essential for developing a theology of soul care and spiritual direction. In Soul Physicians (http://tinyurl.com/d8grf6), we examine them meticulously, as a physician would the skeletal structure of the human body.

Watered-Down or Nourished with the Spring of Living Water

Christianity today is all-too-often watered-down. You can attend church and not even need to bring a Bible. You can attend seminary and not even be equipped thoroughly in biblical studies and biblical languages. You can go through training in biblical counseling and not even open your Bible!

However, if you want to do truly biblical counseling, then you must have a biblical foundation. The bare minimum includes the seven content areas listed above.

Seven Questions Every Biblical Counselor Must Answer

1. Do I know how to use God’s Word to change lives?

2. Do I comprehend how the Trinity serves as the foundation for how I relate to others?

3. Do I understand people—biblically?

4. Can I diagnose problems—biblically?

5. Can I prescribe God’s solutions—biblically?

6. Do I grasp how our eternal future makes all the difference in how we live today?

7. Am I able to dispense God’s grace and care for others competently?

Truth and Love

If we can’t answer these questions, then we need to go back to “soul school”!

It was the Apostle Paul who prayed that our love would abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight (Philippians 1:9). Society today says, “Let your love abound more and more in more love!”

No. We need truth and love—love grounded in God’s truth.

We have no “love life” if we have no “truth life.” We need both, with our love founded in God’s Word.

Do you need a theological foundation for your people-helping ministry? I do!

Do you want to know the seven topics every person must master if they are to do truly biblical ministry? I do!

*Quick Link to your copy of Soul Physicians on RPM Ministries: http://tinyurl.com/d96hc6

Hunger Was God’s Idea

Hunger was God’s idea. He created us with a soul that thirsts for what only relationships can quench. The Hebrew word for soul comes from a word that means “throat”—the organ through which we take in nourishment, fill our hunger, and quench our thirst. The Hebrews used physical body parts to represent immaterial aspects of our personality. Proverbs 25:25 is one example: “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.”

As the throat craves physical satisfaction, so the soul craves personal, relational satisfaction. We long for and are motivated by a thirst for intimate involvement and union. These longings for relationship are part of our essential being as created in God’s image.

Love is to the soul what breathing is to the lungs and food is to the stomach. Without connection, we shrivel; we starve to death. With mutual, risky, giving, grace relationships we thrive. The exact center of our being is our capacity to give and receive in relationships.

What motivates us to do what we do? What impels us? In training counselors, I like to tell them, “Go where the action is.” The action is relational because we are relationally motivated. We pursue what we perceive to be pleasing.

“We have an immense void inside that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves. Yearning and longing and desire are the very stuff of our nature” (John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p. 48).

As the Puritan writer, Henry Scougal, reminded us, “the soul of man has in it a raging and inextinguishable thirst” (Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, p. 108). We’re motivated to quench our relational thirsts.

Worship: The Holy of Holies of the Soul

We were born desiring worship. In our original design, God implanted in us a fundamental nature that must worship.

When I began working toward my doctorate at Kent State University, I decided to develop relationships as a precursor to sharing my faith. Or so I thought. Two weeks into my initial semester, our professor assigned a paper on humanistic psychology. As the class discussed our viewpoints, our professor encouraged me to share my position. “Bob, you wrote an interesting paper contrasting humanistic psychology with Christian thinking.” So much for my “go slow” approach. During the ensuing discussion, one student was particularly vocal against my views.

About a month later, in a course on counseling the culturally different, a Native American presented the guest lecture. Toward the end of her talk, she invited us to stand to worship the spirit of the four winds. Two students remained seated—myself and the woman who had vocally opposed my views in the other class. As soon as class ended, she marched up to me to thank me for not standing. “You gave me the courage of my convictions. But to be honest, I’m not sure what I believe in. You seem so strong and sincere in your faith. Could we talk about your relationship to God?”

This young woman exposed her fundamental spiritual nature. I could have said of her what Paul said of the people of Athens, “I see that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22).