The Mustard Seed Counseling: Experience God’s Empowering Presence in Biblical Counseling

By Ibrahim Youssef Ph.D.

“Mustard Seed Counselling” is a systemic appraisal of biblical counselling; the author’s easy style of writing is encouraging to those who feel a calling to counsel. Many people within the church are hurting and they are trying to make sense of what is happening to them. The answer is biblical counselling, working with the Holy Spirit to bring wholeness. The work, “Mustard Seed Counselling,” will encourage those who feel the call to counsel and have a desire to study and check their relationship with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781665504898

Ibrahim Youssef Ph.D.

Ibrahim Youssef MD MSc, MA Ph.D is a former physician and affiliate member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, London UK. Graduated in Egypt, and earned his MSc in Medicine from Ain Shames University, Cairo, Egypt. He holds MA in biblical counselling and Ph.D degrees, focus in biblical counselling from the Trinity College of the Bible and Trinity Theological Seminary Newburg, Indiana USA. He lives in Dorchester UK with his wife Salwa and daughter Joyce.

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Copyright © 2020 Ibrahim Youssef, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/23/2020

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0480-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-0489-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020920627

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scriptural quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from the New King James Version. Thomas Nelson Inc, 1982.

Dedica

tion

To my daughter Joyce

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abstract

Introduction for the second edition

Chapter 1    The Real Change

Chapter 2    The Holy Spirit and Biblical Counseling

Chapter 3    The Holy Spirit and How Does He Empowers Biblical Counseling?

Chapter 4    Jay Adams’ Model of Biblical Counseling

Chapter 5    The Fruit and the Charismatic Gifts of the Holy Spirit with Reference to Gordon Fee

Chapter 6    Colin Dye’s Adopted Model of Biblical Counseling

Chapter 7    The Mustard Seed Model of Biblical Counseling

Chapter 8    Conclusions

Bibliography

FOREWORD

In this book, Ibrahim Youssef presents a counselling methodology combining sound Biblical principles with an expectation that the Holy Spirit needs to have an active and powerful role if counselling sessions are to be effective.

A number of Christians face circumstances and emotions so difficult to bear that they seek counselling. In response to this, several different counselling frameworks have been promoted within the Church in recent decades. Ibrahim Youssef reviews several of these approaches and carefully considers some of their strengths and weaknesses. Counselling based on Christian psychology seeks to integrate secular psychology with the Christian faith. The counsellor follows a counselling model based on an understanding of how people react to problems, including both unhelpful thought-patterns and inappropriate behaviours. In this model, the counsellor offers support, encouragement and understanding.

Biblical counselling, on the other hand, places a high emphasis on challenging the counselee regarding any attitudes and habits which contradict the Biblical teaching. Sin and its consequences can only be broken by repentance and forgiveness.

Although the Christian psychology and Biblical counselling approaches both have their merits, Ibrahim Youssef argues that Christian counselling will not be effective without the enabling power and the transforming presence of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament teaches that a believer’s life should be characterized by the Fruit of the Holy Spirit, and empowered by the charismatic Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Ibrahim Youssef proposes a practical counselling framework which he calls the Mustard Seed Model of Biblical counselling, in which he brings together his Biblical understanding, his experience working in the field of psychiatry, and a reliance on the Holy Spirit for strength and guidance. Jesus taught about the mustard seed of faith which grows when watered by the Spirit and nourished by the Word of God.

David Element

Dorchester

England

PREFACE

Counselling, whether secular or Christian, deals with change, change of thoughts, behaviour and feelings to solve the problems of living of the counselee (or client).

There are many differences between biblical counselling and secular counselling. The most important, in my opinion, is that in biblical counselling God is in the centre of the counselling, however in secular counselling man or client is in the centre.

Biblical counselling is not new. It started since the beginning of creation. God counselled Adam and Eve after the Fall when they committed the sin of disobedience. Ever since, Christian counselling is carried out by pastors and priests of the church. A person has a problem used to go to a clergyman who after a short conversation, helps him or her to find some kind of solution and pray with him or her and that is all.

It is only due to one man, Jay Adams, the protestant pastor who made an effort to make the Christian counselling process systematic and structured when he published his first book Competent to counsel CtC in the early 1970s. Ever since, biblical counselling has become a well recognised discipline that been studied at universities and colleges.

However, two main issues have been emerged:

1. Would Christian counselling be a pure biblical based only on the Word of God in the Bible, or it could be mixed with secular psychology (known as integration method).

2. Can biblical counsellors counsel the non Christian unbelievers or not.

The above two issues are studied in details in the first six chapters giving readers some ideas of the pure biblical counselling referred to Jay Adams model in contrast of the integration model of Larry Crabb and his model that was adopted by Pastor Colin Dye, the well-known charismatic preacher.

The last chapter (before the conclusions) deals with my model of The Mustard Seed Counselling. The uniqueness of this model, (besides it is a mere biblical counselling) is that it is based entirely on the Holy Spirit with His fruit and charismatic gifts alongside the Word of God in the Scripture.

I pray that this book will make a difference for the readers. First is to know our Lord Jesus Christ more closely, without him there would be no hope either in this world or in the eternity and indeed there would be no effective biblical counselling. Second is to introduce biblical counselling which has attracted more interest recently here in the UK and worldwide.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all, I thank God in the Person of the Holy Spirit who gave me the strength and ideas to complete this work. I am deeply grateful to Dr Elbert E Elliott, the Committee Chair, for continuous guidance, indispensable advice, and encouragement to fulfill this work.

I awe thanks also to Dr Howard Eyrich my tutor during my study of the Master degree at Trinity whom I learned the basic principles of biblical counseling either from his online lectures or from his book,Curing the Heart, and other assigned books of biblical counseling.

I thank the staff at the Trinity College of the Bible, and Theological Seminary for their help and support, especially Sheryl Knight, while working through this project. I thank also David Element who kindly read the draft and wrote the foreword of the book and Richard Dunkley from Storehouse Pentecostal Church of Dorchester for his encouragement and his comment on the draft. I also thank my Bible study group at the United Church in Dorchester, UK, especially Alison Pople and Pat Bolton who kindly read the book and made their comments.

I am grateful to Mrs. Bella Blanchard, the English Language teacher, for reviewing the rough draft to appear without grammatical/spelling mistakes and lastly my family, my wife Salwa, and my daughter Joyce for their support during my study for the PhD degree.

ABSTRACT

Jay Adams, the founder of the Nouthetic Biblical Counselling that depends on the confrontation of sin as the corner stone of change, declares that biblical counsellors cannot counsel the unbelievers in the biblical sense of the word (changing them, sanctifying them through the work of the Holy Spirit, as His Word is ministered to their hearts), so long as they remain unbelievers. They need the regeneration work of the Holy Spirit and then, they can be counselled by putting off the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) and putting on the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). The Holy Spirit empowers them while they pursue His luscious fruit and that might be all they need from biblical counselling.

Gordon Fee points out that we live in a time (postmodern period), similar to the Greco-roman time when the Church of Jesus Christ started at the day of Pentecost. The message of the Gospel was spread across the whole ancient world by the apostles. Their success relied not only on the proclamation of our Lord Jesus who died for our sins on the Cross and rose from the dead, but also they were empowered by God’s presence of the Holy Spirit. Fee disagrees with Adams on the issue that the charismatic gifts of the Spirit, as listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10,had ceased. Fee declares that they are relevant today as at the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit still works in the believers now powerfully with miracles and wonders as we come nearer to the end of the age, waiting for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ our redeemer.

Colin Dye, the charismatic and the senior pastor of the largest Pentecostal church in Europe (London City Church, KT, UK) planned to publish three counselling manuals corresponding to three counselling levels to establish a counselling ministry in the Church. However, in doing that, he adopted Larry Crabb’s model of integration of Christian faith with secular psychology. In his first manual, he suggests that all church members should be level I counsellors, in the sense that they encourage and support other members passing through difficulties or problems. Although the original Crabb’s model ignores completely the role of the Holy Spirit, that does not prevent Dye from saying that the encouragers should have the fruit of the Spirit of Galatians 5, especially joy and love. In his second manual, Dye develops a model similar to Crabb’s with some modification. In the introduction of his model, he points out that the Holy Spirit is needed to empower the change required, especially His gifts