Conversational Counseling

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Why are we seeing such increasing levels of control, coercion, and abuse in dating relationships… even experienced by women in the Church?  In America, one out of every four women will have experienced abuse in a relationship (this is self-reported and do...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Is the Church actually harming instead of helping victims of abuse?  It’s difficult to learn when we’re afraid, and many churches are afraid to navigate complex situations involving abuse. Leaders might fear pushing a couple towards separation or divorce,...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ In the Church, we may not often recognize physical manifestations of abuse out in the public. But that doesn’t mean abuse isn’t happening among the people of our congregations or even within the four walls of the church building. In this episode, we’re jo...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ What do you do when the people you love most in your life are struggling with addiction? This is the question Dawn Ward navigated every day for two decades as members of her immediate family faced addiction. She’s wondered, “Is there hope for my child?” S...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Is divorce ever an option? What’s the difference between a disappointing marriage and a destructive one? Does the Church ever harm rather than help vulnerable women in marriages? We break down all of these topics with Leslie Vernick in this episode of Con...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ How do you create a culture of flourishing in your marriage when you both bring different stories, preferences and goals? No matter how similar to our partner we think we are before marriage, there are often big differences in vision and preferences for t...

>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Every day, we feel the weight of the brokenness in our world. Brokenness that strains our relationships. It can be hard for us to believe the best days are ahead. That one day what’s broken will be made whole — that our broken stories, hearts and relations...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Brokenness and ruptures in relationships are inevitable.  We live in a world where sin has distorted our relationships. But because Jesus conquered sin and death, brokenness isn’t the end of God’s Grand Narrative and doesn’t have to define our marriage st...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Do you worry that your spouse sees but doesn’t accept you? Do you feel insecure in the relationship?  When sin entered the world through the Fall, God’s good design was distorted. Our sense of agency, purpose, belonging, and rest was distorted, not only i...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Some days we feel like we can handle the stressors in our lives. Other days it feels like if one more thing happens, we’re going to break down, shut down, or lash out. We all have a window of tolerance. When we’re within this window of emotional and menta...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ How do you handle conflict? Do you face it head-on or does it make you want to leave the room? Do you prefer not to address it and instead do nice things for your partner in hopes that the conflict will just blow over? We all have different ways we handle...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ When communication is falling apart, when your spouse feels more like an enemy than a partner, when illness or circumstances are straining your relationship — that’s when we really feel how the Fall affects our marriages.  Instead of thinking about deligh...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Do you feel like you and your partner are missing each other?  Both of you are trying to communicate love and communicate what you need. But you’re still feeling distant, unsupported, or undervalued. It can be easy to lose touch with your spouse, especial...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ “If marriage is good, then why doesn’t mine feel that way?” What should we do when our marriages don’t feel like a delight? When they don’t feel like they’ll ever be a good thing? When our marriages are difficult, we feel the weight of the Fall. And we ca...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ We don’t just bring two people into a marriage. We also bring our stories.  Sometimes there is abuse, hurt, sin and suffering on the pages of our stories. Sometimes we bring pictures of marriage that we’ve seen in our own families, pictures that can be go...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Is marriage even worth it? What should a biblical marriage look like? What does it mean to live as God’s people in the realm of husband and wife?  Are we missing the bigger story? This season, we’re exploring what God says about marriage! But we’re not st...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ We often hear “I’m only human” as an exasperated admission. But what if being human isn’t the problem but the whole point?  Marty Solomon invites us to a theological framework that starts with our belovedness rather than skipping forward to our brokenness...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Is it unloving or selfish to set a boundary? If I forgive someone, does that mean I must restore the relationship and have no boundaries? How do boundaries work with “honor your father and mother”? In this episode, we dive into some of the most common que...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Boundaries can hurt. But that doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong by setting them. God has placed in all of us dignity, purpose, agency, and limits, and they’re all worth protecting. Setting boundaries to protect each of these can feel selfish, as i...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Talk about having boundaries is everywhere… it’s all around us in our culture! But how do we actually walk out having boundaries with wisdom and love in real-life situations with real-life people? It’s easy to talk about hypothetical boundaries and framew...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Does love mean that we should allow our dignity and agency as image bearers to be trampled upon? We’ve been conditioned to love and consider others. After all, we’re supposed to love one another and love our neighbor as ourselves! What lines can be crosse...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ Have you ever heard someone argue that boundaries aren’t biblical? Have you ever struggled with feeling like having boundaries made you unloving? In God’s Word, we see just the opposite. In fact, He’s been instituting boundaries from the very beginning! T...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ You’re not too sensitive. You can just say, “NO!”  In fact, saying “no” might be the most loving thing you can do! But when we consider saying “no” and setting boundaries, we often think: Shouldn’t I show more grace? I thought I was supposed to turn the o...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ What do we do when God seems silent or even indifferent to our suffering? How should we pray when we feel God has told us to wait or even said “no”? It’s easy to let doubt, disappointment, or shame creep in when God doesn’t answer our prayers. Sometimes w...

⁠>> Click HERE to get free visuals, handouts and discussion questions for Conversational Counseling sent straight to your email! <<⁠ What can you do when you feel weak or anxious? When your mind is racing and you don’t know what to pray? Guided scripture prayer gives us the support we need to pour our hearts out to God when we don’t know where to start.  God’s Word is living and active...