His mercies never end, they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.

Do you believe it, Christian? If not; why not? May I suggest a reason?
You have trouble singing the hymn based on this verse because you don’t look for those mercies every morning! Jeremiah (the probable author of these words) looked—and he found! If you are on the lookout, you too will do so. How about it? Do you need a coffee “fix” in the morning, or a wake-up call to explore God’s mercies?

Check out our online courses, including, Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling and  The Use of Scripture in Counseling, taught by Jay Adams!

Books related to counseling others:

1. Competent to Counsel by Jay Adams
2. The Christian Counselor’s Manual by Jay Adams
3. How to Help People Change by Jay Adams
4. Check out our Bookstore for all the best counseling books!

The Christian Counselor’s New Testament and Proverbs, translated by Jay Adams

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The post God’s Faithful Love appeared first on Institute for Nouthetic Studies | Biblical Counseling.

There is no peace for the wicked says my God.   (Isaiah 57:21 HCSB)

Take heart in the fact that the wicked are like the troubled (storm-tossed) sea (v. 20) They do not have true, lasting peace. Oh, they have their seasons of happiness, revelry, etc., but these don’t last. Nor are they truly satisfying. God sees to that. He troubles them inwardly—even if you can see no such trouble outwardly—Be assured of this! He calls them through their troubles to repent. Some do—and it may or may not make the headlines. But, of course, most do not. So God brings judgment. Now that is real trouble!
Regardless of how they respond to troubles, be assured they do come!

Check out our online courses, including, Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling and  The Use of Scripture in Counseling, taught by Jay Adams!

Books related to counseling others:

1. Competent to Counsel by Jay Adams
2. The Christian Counselor’s Manual by Jay Adams
3. How to Help People Change by Jay Adams
4. Check out our Bookstore for all the best counseling books!

The Christian Counselor’s New Testament and Proverbs, translated by Jay Adams

Visit our online bookstore for all your biblical counseling resource needs.
For more biblical counseling training, check out our list of INS Online Courses.

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The post Are You Troubled? appeared first on Institute for Nouthetic Studies | Biblical Counseling.

Elsewhere, he places these three virtues in a different order when he enumerates faith hope and love. It would seem that the last of the three is the one that he is emphasizing, the other two building up to it.

If that is so, in this letter, he is emphasizing hope. And rightly so. There was confusion in the Thessalonian church about death and the resurrection. Evidently, as the second letter clarifies, some rumor had reached them to the effect that no Christian would die before the Lord’s coming. Presumably, some of their loved ones had died, and this caused confusion and consternation among them. So hope was the uppermost quality they needed.

At Corinth there were many unloving things happening among members of that church—lawsuits, rivalry, unloving use of their gifts, selfishness at the Lord’s table—you name it, they had it! Naturally, then, in writing to them, he would stress love. He does so by putting it at the apex when writing to them.

Now, having settled that, let’s look at the outcome of each of these superlative qualities. Faith, as everywhere in the Scriptures—if genuine—always produces work. Here, there is nothing different. Next, he speaks of love producing labor. A man works from 9-5, but a woman “labors” for her family out of love. There is no clock-watching on her part as there may be with the workman. Hope produces endurance–the ability to hang in there when the going gets tough.

That hope, which the Thessalonians so dearly needed, and that Paul writes about is the “expectation” or “anticipation” of something that is certain to happen, but has not yet occurred. What makes it certain is that God has promised it; what makes it hope is that the promise has not yet been realized. To be able to look forward with assurance is precisely what the church needed, and what Paul provided for them in these two letters (“I would not have you to be ignorant, brothers . . .”). Thus, he provides a certain hope in the promises of God to enable them to endure the disappointments and the trials that lay ahead of them.

On what is your hope based? For what do you hope? Is it grounded in God’s unfailing promises; is it that upon which you have the right to expect? These are matters to which you ought to have solid, biblical answers. If you don’t, then you too ought to listen to the apostles as they seek to instruct you in their letters about faith, love and hope.

Check out our online courses, including, Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling and  The Use of Scripture in Counseling, taught by Jay Adams!

Books related to counseling others:

1. Competent to Counsel by Jay Adams
2. The Christian Counselor’s Manual by Jay Adams
3. How to Help People Change by Jay Adams
4. Check out our Bookstore for all the best counseling books!

The Christian Counselor’s New Testament and Proverbs, translated by Jay Adams

Visit our online bookstore for all your biblical counseling resource needs.
For more biblical counseling training, check out our list of INS Online Courses.

Follow INS on Social Media:
– Facebook: noutheticstudies
– Twitter: @noutheticstud
– Instagram: @noutheticstudies

The post Hope appeared first on Institute for Nouthetic Studies | Biblical Counseling.

Therefore, buckling the belts of your minds for action, keeping level-headed, set your hope entirely on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.   1 Peter 1:13

The encouragement that comes in suffering is not mystical; it doesn’t just suddenly appear from nowhere. The Christian himself is responsible for it. If he doesn’t experience the joy, gladness, and hope mentioned in the previous verses, that is his own fault. He cannot complain against God, the church, or anyone else; this verse makes it perfectly plain that he is responsible for developing the hope that will sustain him in trial.
Encouragement in trial is not merely a matter of trusting in God’s promises in some purely intellectual manner. Surely that is important—indeed it is a theme that Peter never really leaves behind—but there is another side to the page; the suffering believer must do good. That doing of good begins with the matter of hope. Right here, at the outset, the believer’s trust in God’s promises is pictured as a matter of obedience: “set your hope on the grace . . .” That is a command, involving a duty. Consistent with the major thrust of the entire epistle, Peter already strikes the note: Trust and Obey! There is no other way to be happy in trial, but to trust and obey. God holds the individual believer responsible for his behavior in times of trial and trouble and says that these two elements constitute that responsibility.[1]

[1] This post is an excerpt from Dr. Adams’ short homiletical commentary on 1 Peter entitled Trust and Obey (now out of print).

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He who has this hope in him, purifies himself just as He is pure.
1 John 3:3

It is essential to understand what biblical writers mean by the word “hope.” When we say, ‘I hope so” we usually mean, “I have no certainty about what will transpire, but I hope against hope that it will be like such and such.” For us today, hope is a hope-so hope.

The biblical meaning of the word is very different. The element of uncertainty has been removed from it—when you read the word “hope” think “expectation,” or ‘anticipation.” It is applies to something that is certain, but is a “hope” because it just hasn’t happened yet. The blessed hope isn’t the blessed “hope-so.” It’s the happy expectation—the joyous anticipation OF Christ’s coming in glory as the “great God and Savior.” What makes it a hope is not that it is uncertain, but that it is still in the future.

So, John says, when you are sure of what it means to be God’s child, you will want to purify yourself. What did he teach? Two things:

1. It doesn’t yet appear what we will be like someday,
2. But when He appears, we know that we will be like Him.

What an expectation! To be like our Lord some day—even though now we don’t have an appreciation of what that will be like, we know that it will be glorious. What is uncertain isn’t the fact but it’s meaning—what will it be to bt like Him? To have a body like His—to have a life like His—wonderful! We shall see Him as He is, and will be like Him! Too much to fathom-but not too much to contemplate.

While we can’t picture it adequately, we can begin to think about it. And as we do, the very thought ought to transform our lives” “I am God’s child. I will be like Christ. He is pure—I will be pure. Why wait till then to begin living the life of purity?”

To become more like Christ is to become purer every day, removing the defiling elements that keep us from being entirely what we should be. Refined by the thought so that the more we contemplate that likeness, the more we will want to remove every impurity.

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