The Bridge: Belief to Practice

We are made for relationship, to be loved and to love.  

As a Christian counselor, I have seen that the beliefs and values of the Christian faith can feel abstract and sometimes confusing to apply to our lives and relationships. I have found that counseling can provide a bridge from our beliefs and values to the practice and experience of them. This is why I’m passionate about crossing that bridge with individuals, families, Churches, and organizations! 

I’m passionate about getting curious with my family and others on how to bridge the gap between His Story and our lives, belief in Jesus to living with and like Jesus.

As a Christian counselor, I believe that we are made in God’s image, made for relationship, for connection. I believe that Scripture shows us that our collective purpose as humans involves knowing God and making Him known on this earth. We are called to do this by the way we take charge of what He has given us to fill the earth with the relational knowledge and presence of God (Gen 1; Habakuk 2:14). 

As Christians, we know that our purpose involves being made into the image of Jesus Christ, to love as he loves. So, when anyone or anything interacts with us, they encounter the character of God. 

In the beginning, God gave humanity a choice: to trust His definition of good, accept His mission of filling the earth with His goodness, and enjoy life with Him forever, OR seek their own wisdom and understanding. The first humans took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and so chose to live in a world that knows both good and evil. Because of this, no one is a pure reflection of God’s character, of His love. God’s love is not natural to any of us. We live in a cursed world.

God made man and woman with equal dignity and value, designed for unity and a shared purpose, for love, but because of the curse, that is not what is natural to relationships.

Marriage relationships are instead naturally characterized by competing desires, conflict, and oppression.

Sibling relationships are naturally characterized by competition and jealousy.

As individuals we share the collective experience of shame, feeling and believing something about us, our bodies, our sexuality, our existence is wrong or a mistake.

And these aspects of family relationships bleed over into all human relationships so that entire communities and kingdoms are built on power struggles and oppression, and we often relate to each other like we are problems to be fixed. 

The rest of Scripture is about God’s plan to redeem his family from this curse.

No matter how many boundaries are laid, consequences enforced, and miraculous rescue missions enacted, people continue to distrust God and choose evil over His goodness. While the other nations belonged to the other gods, God chose to show mercy and form a people who would forever belong to Him to show the world His goodness in order to draw the world back into relationship with Him. Unfortunately, those people continued to choose evil over his goodness. While His laws could teach them His way of love, the law was powerless to transform hearts, and the sacrificial system was a temporary provision. Then Jesus, the promised redeemer, God in human form, comes to save us and to finally show us what God is really like and what He is really about. 

Only Jesus could fully demonstrate God’s perfect love and goodness to the world, and He alone could provide the eternal sacrifice for our eternal debt and redeem us back from the ruler of the world. 

While Jesus is teaching people how to live as members of his family and citizens of God’s Kingdom rather than the kingdom of the world, he is asked which is the greatest of all the commandments. Jesus responds by explaining that the first two commandments, to love God and love people, sums up the entire law. He takes it a step further and explains that he gives us a new commandment - not just to treat people as we would want to be treated, but to love one another as He has loved us. His love is the standard, and the world will know Him by the way we love one another.

There’s a principle in counseling that the messages we internalize, the ones we really believe, are the ones we experience. We can know something in our minds, but we won’t really understand until we experience it and do it. Example: My husband can tell me that he loves me, and I can believe it, but I will know love by how he treats me. And so Jesus explains that the world will know us, the ones who follow Him, by the way we love one another. 

The love of Jesus is the point of The Story of Scripture. His love is our standard, our shared purpose, and our source of healing and life. 

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” - Jesus, Matthew 22:35-40 

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - Jesus, John 13:34-35 

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” - Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

"...But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control..." - Paul, Galatians 5:22

And of course John 15. 

The love of Jesus is not natural to any of us. We need to learn Jesus’ love and be transformed by His Spirit. 

In our American Christian culture, we value achievement and operate in a society of perfectionism. We often find it easy to love God with our minds and emotions and achievements, but we often miss what Jesus is most concerned about. In this world, living in the curse, it is easy to miss the point of it all, our very purpose. 

At the end of our days, what will matter most? Based on the teachings of Jesus, it will not be how our companies performed, if we got an A+ on the assignment, if we made it to our appointments on time, how many people we influenced… what will matter most is how we loved. How we love God and one another is the treasure of heaven.

One of the ways the world wants to define love is in terms of anything that makes a person feel good. The problem is that kind of love does not provide a lasting cure.  Our natural response to disappointment and pain often lead to further disconnection rather than connection. Doing what feels good or even natural is actually the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.

The world can offer temporary relievers and temporary pleasures, but only Jesus can provide the lasting cure and the fullness of joy.

This is where Jesus has met me with the tools of counseling as a bridge from the head knowledge of our faith to the practice and experience of it. 

How do we love someone with a difficult diagnosis? 

How do we love someone, even our own children and family members, with difficult or harmful behaviors? 

How do we recover from the traumas of relationships? 

How do we restore relationship where there is tension, connection where there is disconnection? 

How do we facilitate peace and rest when the world is in such a rush? 

How do we love as Jesus loves in our unique relational contexts? 

It would be my honor to cross that bridge with you!