Too much of counseling wants to focus exclusively on one part of the soul: mind, will, emotions or just the spiritual climate of the soul. This creates an imbalance in helping someone and can keep them stuck in an unnatural life posture as a result of their counseling process.

1. Exclusive focus on the mind creates information without growth in relationship.
2. Heavy emphasis on the emotions forms an endless cycling through feelings from trauma and loss without eventual resolution.
3. Only dealing with the will causes a person to try and annihilate vital parts of the self and endeavor to stop “being human.”
4. When one focuses on the spiritual climate, they will want to do constant deliverance without proper understanding, grieving or behavioral modification.

Any of these imbalances will help one part of the person to the neglect and harm of the other parts. Being led by the Holy Spirit, we need to be open to different seasons when we address different elements of our souls, as led by Him. It is understandable He may deal with one area, such as our emotions first, but there must be a movement towards engaging the other parts of the soul for thorough healing to take place. Getting the will to surrender to God’s love, purposes and ways will ease the wheels for grieving losses and doing deliverance. But before that can occur there will probably need to be belief systems in the mind that must be challenged and changed. But no amount of insight and information will do a person any good unless they surrender to truth and to God’s constant Presence in their lives.

Whether we excel as counselors in “good theology and psychology” so we can help the mind, whether we are safe enough to provide a place for grieving losses and facing trauma, or whether we have great spiritual authority for casting out darkness in people’s lives, we must call those we help to repentance and change (engaging the will) or we are fooling ourselves and them about the true nature of transformation and restoration in Christ.