Praying the Scriptures Within Cognitive/Behavioral/Systems Therapy

Chapter 14, Transformative Encounters

George Ohlschlager

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780830882120
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Transformative Encounters, The Rebuilding of Psychology

Praying the Scriptures Within Cognitive/Behavioral/Systems Therapy

George Ohlschlager

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.

PLAQUE ON THE WALL OF AACC KITCHEN

When you judge people, you have no time to love them.

MOTHER TERESA

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. . . . And when He had called His twelve disciples, . . . He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease.

MATTHEW 9:35; 10:1 (NKJV)

After I spent four years doing intensive community mental health practice as a clinical social worker in small-town and rural Iowa, I moved back to Humboldt County in Northern California to join a friend to launch The Redwood Family Institute in 1988. It was there, as a Christian counselor and California LCSW, that I began to develop a Christ-centered approach to change by praying client-chosen and image-rich Bible verses with my clients to enhance inner healing and godly intimacy.

I learned about inner healing ministry from my friend and practice partner Peter Mosgofian, an LMFT and Vineyard pastor who had long practiced charismatic inner healing in both his pastoral and psychotherapeutic roles. Inner healing prayer—which is highlighted in numerous chapters of this book—is an explicit form of interventional Christian prayer aimed at helping clients “who have unresolved painful memories of their past that may involve deprivation or neglect, abandonment, rejection, harsh treatment or criticism, physical or sexual abuse, and trauma” (Tan, 2011, p. 345).

When learning this practice, I was also struck by the similarities of inner healing prayer to the process of guided visualization, a cognitive therapy technique often used in relaxation and anxiety reduction (see chapter by Tan in this book, 2013, 2011, 1992; and chapter by McDonald and Johnston in this book, 2013). In Christian counseling throughout the 1990s and into the new century, there was controversy around whether to impose a guiding visualization by the therapist, or to let the client choose a preferred image, or to let the Holy Spirit bring it to the client as God saw fit. All these approaches were being done by Christian therapists all over the country, with fairly persuasive rationales being offered for each one (see Seamands, 1985; Payne, 1991; Flynn & Gregg, 1993; Smith, 2002/2005).

Developing a Transformative Spiritual/Clinical Process

Psychotherapy outcomes research during this time was revealing the great influence of both client factors and the therapeutic alliance between therapist and client (see Lambert, 1986). Believing also in the revelatory power of the Bible, I began to stitch together a client-centered counseling process that honored all three of these important variables for change. I started to encourage clients to choose their favorite Bible verses—Scripture that we would pray aloud together both to serve as an invitation for God’s healing presence to appear, and to increase client investment in and responsibility for the therapy. Not only did God come alive in the scriptural text, but clients also nearly always had a favorite verse—something we believed by faith that God would bring to the client’s mind in this therapeutic context (see Tan, 2007).

Figure 14.1. A model for transformative spiritual/clinical intervention

A transformative process model for Christian counseling—what is now full and robust (see chap. 22 on integrative model)—was developing in nascent form in my work with clients during this Northern California sojourn.1 Three stages of change and growth—assessment, intervention and aftercare—were acknowledged and followed. Three steps of distinctive practice were done or reviewed in each stage, for a total of nine possible steps from beginning to end. This integrative inner healing/cognitive behavioral/social systems counseling model is comprehensive, eclectic and holistic, and honors both the biblical text and the person-in-environment (P-I-E) structure that has ...