counseling

Ten-Four Ministries is humbled to partner with Grace Bible Church and certified Biblical Counselor and Retired Police Officer Kevin Johnson to offer Biblical Counseling, free of charge, to Law Enforcement Professionals and their family.  If you are in need of Biblical Counseling please contact us.  If you reside in the Tulsa (OK) area, counseling will be conducted in person.  If you live outside the area, arrangements will be made via phone or e-mail to communicate with you.  All information will be kept confidential.

Goals of Biblical Counseling

Biblical counseling has many goals, but our primary goal is to help you develop a whole-hearted love for God and others. Strange as it may sound today, our purpose is not to simply help you "feel better" or "find happiness," but to help you grow in personal holiness and spiritual maturity for service in the body of Christ. Another goal of biblical counseling is to help you meet the various challenges of life in a way that will always please and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

Uniqueness of Biblical Counseling

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to your most basic problems. The Bible is the counselor's main tool. The Holy Spirit imparts gifts to the counselor to guide and give hope through the Scripture. Prayer and dependence upon God are essential parts of biblical counseling.

Using the Scripture in counseling requires understanding your problems from a biblical perspective and then applying step-by-step biblical solutions to those problems.  The counselor serving for Ten-Four Ministries knows how to bring the Word of God to bear on sinful and hopeless situations.  Hope can be found and change can be accomplished as the Word of God is ministered in the power and working of the Holy Spirit.

What is Nouthetic Counseling?

While the name is new, the sort of counseling done by nouthetic counselors is not. From biblical times onward, God's people have counseled nouthetically. The word itself is biblical. The New Testament was written in Greek, from which the noun nouthesia (verb: noutheteo) comes. It is a term used largely by the apostle Paul which is sometimes translated "admonish, correct or instruct." The term, which best describes biblical counseling, occurs in such passages as Romans 15:14: "I myself am convinced about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and competent to counsel one another." In that passage, the apostle was encouraging members of the Roman church to do informal, mutual counseling, something that all Christians today should learn, as well. On the other hand, the leaders of a congregation are to counsel nouthetically in a formal manner as a part of their ministry: "Now we ask you, brothers, to recognize those who labor among you, and manage you in the Lord, and counsel you” ( I Thessalonians 5:12).

Nouthetic counseling involves warning others about the consequences of sin.  It often requires lovingly admonishing others to turn away from wrong thinking and behavior.

National Association of Nouthetic Counselors

The National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (NANC) is a fellowship of Christian pastors and other believers who have joined together to promote excellence in biblical counseling. NANC was founded in 1975 to address several needs in the biblical counseling community.

NANC is first and foremost a certifying organization.  The certification process consists of the completion of an approved training course, the completion of both a theological and a practical counseling test, several references and a minimum of 50 hours of supervised counseling experience.