Counseling is heart-focused discipleship. Marcus Warner writes in A Deeper Walk about the traditional manner of discipleship as an outward approach that focuses on academics, behavior, and church activity. “While that is all good stuff, it still misses something that touches the deeper issues of the heart.” (Warner, 2022, p. 24). The critical component of discipleship is an inward-out approach where the heart is the focus. Heart-focused discipleship tackles the wounds of the heart, where the foundation for lies, vows, and strongholds are found. Addressing the wounded heart enables discipleship to bring the healing and abundant life that Jesus promises His followers. The keys to heart-focused discipleship given by Marcus are freedom, identity, Spirit, heart-focused community, and mission (Warner, 2022). These aspects of discipleship bring about the work of salvation into the life of a Christian.
Interestingly, gaining freedom enables people to perceive who they are in Christ. From a secure sense of your identity in Christ, the ability to walk in the Spirit is like taking a breath; it is part of living. Spirit-filled living draws you into a heart-focused community where the mission field is telling the world about God’s love, forgiveness, and healing. The inward-out approach of heart-focused discipleship is motivated by love and brings change to all who encounter it. When a person is discipled with heart-focused discipleship, the trueness of counseling takes place. It’s from the essence of living out freedom gained through the therapeutic process of discipleship that incorporates counseling with discipleship.
As Warner teaches in his book A Deeper Walk, the heart of discipleship is addressing the wounds of the heart. Heart-focused discipleship is doing the same thing tending to the wounds of the heart that lead to lies, false beliefs, vows, and strongholds. Living from the wounds will produce the rotten fruit that is adverse to living an abundant life. When disciplined with a heart-focused foundation, the wounds are tended, which uproots the lies, false beliefs, vows, and strongholds.
Discipleship isn’t something that is done by oneself. It is essential to be involved with heart-focused people to disciple your heart. A counselor shepherding the heart will bring the wounds to the liberating freedom from Christ. Having God intervene in the healing by His presence, the enteral freedom gained changes lives. The freedom gained enables the heart to live from the true identity of being God’s child who is empowered to live walking in the Spirit of God. A life from the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Connection with others doing the work to live from a healed heart increases the work of God in the discipling process. Let God shepherd your heart through counseling, which disciples the heart for freedom and identity.
References: Warner, M. (2022). A deeper walk (1st ed.). Moody Publishers.
Master’s in Professional Counseling, MA
Licensed Professional Counselor, LPC