Counsel Biblically exists to glorify God by providing Scripture-saturated, theologically insightful, and genuinely helpful resources to anyone facing difficulties.
Our Aim
Hello and welcome to Counsel Biblically!
My name is Daniel Szczesniak, I am a certified biblical counselor (ACBC) with a B.A. in Biblical Studies (Northwest Christian University) and am currently in the Masters program at Reformed Baptist Seminary.
For the past decade my day job has involved online marketing and SEO. I run two successful websites and, with the flexibility that comes with making my own schedule, have been able to pursue ACBC certification and seminary training as well as playing an active role in the biblical counseling ministry at my local church.
I started this website several reasons.
First, I love what I do. I love blogging, writing articles, and serving in the church as a counselor. This site brings together those two passions.
Second, while there are many wonderful ministries, churches, authors, and counselors with websites who are producing great resources for biblical counselors, these resources can be difficult to find. One goal for Counsel Biblically is to make excellent, biblically faithful, and useful resources more available to counselors.
Even more importantly, there are few (if any) biblical counseling websites that target Christians outside of our little nouthetic bubble. Few of the incredible insights are reaching the wider Christian audience who are searching for help with their marriages, help with pornography, help with anger, help with grief and finances and bitterness and parenting and… the list goes on and on.
Not to mention, there are virtually no biblical counseling resources that reach a secular audience.
I believe that the biblical counseling approach calls sinners everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). To that end, we aim to get the insights of Scripture-saturated counseling in front of the eyes of a wider Christian and even secular audience.
As a longtime blogger with SEO and internet marketing experience, I hope to do just that. (Read on for a little more about this.)
Third and finally, I want to pursue the Lord’s call on my life for ministry and, if possible, do so without financially burdening my local church. This site can be a means to that end, while still being something of a ministry in itself.
Our Resources
Our resources are directed towards two audiences:
First, we aim to provide answers the questions asked by people who have turned to the internet for help. If you are someone dealing with trouble, we want you to know that God’s word can provide clarity, healing, and direction as you submit to him.
Second, as biblical counselors we aim to create and share teaching outlines, homework assignments, and thoughtful reflections on Scripture that can enrich fellow biblical counselors in their work. If you’re a biblical or pastoral counselor, we welcome you and hope you are built up and encouraged by what you find on this site.
Beliefs
We believe that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God which governs what we are to believe and do. Therefore, we affirm that:
- God exists eternally as one God in three Persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
- Mankind was created by God to glorify him by bearing and reflecting his image, walking in obedience to his commands and in relationship with him
- When the first man, Adam, sinned, he and all his posterity were rightly condemned, separated from God, and became by nature opposed to God and his ways
- Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, who both fulfilled the law perfectly and bore the wrath of God against sin in the place of sinful humanity
- Only by faith in Jesus Christ and his atoning work can human beings be made right with God, receive forgiveness of sins, and be restored to fellowship with him
- Change is rooted in the gracious new creation work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who believe in Christ, worked out through our choices as we seek to know God’s will as revealed in his Word
- Counseling is a ministry of the Word, carried out in the context of the local church as a discipleship relationship between believers that seeks to apply the Scriptures to every aspect of an individual’s life
- By God’s grace, through faith in Jesus, by the power of the Spirit and in conformity to God’s Word, we can have true hope to repent and turn from sin, to endure and thrive in the midst of trials, and be made more like Christ no matter what we face
Our contributors affirm the standards of doctrine held by the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors.
Our Approach
The articles you’ll find on this site cast a wide net due to the two audiences we are targeting (biblical counselors AND the average person searching the web for answers).
So don’t be surprised when you see us using terms that might raise your eyebrows. In order for search engines to recognize that our content is relevant to a user’s search, we may, for instance, refer to “therapy” when talking about a counseling session.
Search engines don’t care that there is a massive epistemological difference between the Bible and modern secular humanistic approaches to solving problems. Nor do they understand the nuances that differentiate biblical counseling from other types of counseling.
This means that, for our purposes, we will sometimes – with wisdom – use terms or language that the average person would understand, but might not be the standard terms in the biblical counseling world. It’s a matter of contextualizing God’s Word for the general audience of the internet (c.f. 1 Cor 9:19-23).