After decades of having these conversations in the counseling room and side by side over coffee with friends, we were compelled this year to create a podcast resource to inspire, equip, and train you to use your everyday conversations to connect others to the love of Christ.
Because we learn better together, we want to encourage you to gather and discuss the podcast. Simply sign up for our emails to receive 3 conversation starting questions, visuals, and handouts for each episode.
S7 Ep. 1 / Counseling is Story Work
What makes a good story? If we think of our favorite stories, we’ll start to notice a pattern. Many of these books or movies present the journey of a hero with a redemptive arc because God has hardwired a love for this kind of tale into our hearts.
S6 Ep. 6 / Ginger Jacks: Help When Someone Has Lost a Child
Our guest and dear friend on this episode, Ginger Jacks, lost her 17-year-old daughter in a car wreck back in 2010 when we all shared daily life together with our teenage kids. Our desire is that as she shares her story, that you would find hope and help if you have lost or child or know someone who has... or even are in your own season of grief for other reasons.
S6 Ep. 5 / Peggy Bruning: Help When You Love an Addict
Drug use and abuse is a growing epidemic. And every struggler has a loved one. The grief of watching someone self-destruct can be agonizing. What are some of the things that can lead someone down a path of addiction? And what are some of the things that can truly help them?
S6 Ep. 4 / Andrew Dealy: Help When You or Someone You Know is Suicidal
Our guest Andrew Dealy has a family history of five generations back of completed suicides, including losing his own father. When dark thoughts come, Andrew doesn’t take them lightly. With compassion and clarity, he helps us learn the difference between suicidal thoughts and intent, risk factors, and what to do if someone discloses they are thinking of ending their own life.
S6 Ep. 3 / Chris Torchia: Help When Your Child Reveals Gender and Sexual Identity Struggles
A lot of Christian parents haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about gender and sexuality issues. Our special guest this episode, Chris Torchia, reminds us that we do have the freedom to lean into the nuance and the messiness of real life relationships and helps us have some tools and language to be able to do so.
S6 Ep. 2 / Marnie Ferree: Help When Your Spouse Betrays You
Having herself been the betrayer, Marnie found out decades into her marriage that she had been betrayed. She shares her story from childhood up until just a couple of years ago with honesty and great hope, and in a way that is applicable to each of us as we've all experienced betrayal in some way.
S6 Bonus / Shauna Van Dyke with Association of Biblical Counselors (ABC)
Shauna has an amazing heart to equip believers for the work of ministry as she sincerely believes we are all called to care. That every single one of us can live out the "one anothers" in our daily lives. And she is an amazing champion and cheerleader of what the Lord is doing in and through others!
S6 Ep. 1 / Christine Chappell: Help When Depression Overwhelms You as a Mom
Sharing about depression is vulnerable, especially when it involves being put in a mental institution not once, but twice… Christine Chappell so compassionately and bravely shares her story of facing depression hoping to help us all walk with compassion with others as long as it takes for us to know that darkness doesn’t have the last say… No matter how long it takes.
S5 Ep. 8 / Tim Challies: A Story of Immeasurable Suffering and Incomparable Hope
We’re honored to share time here together with Tim Challies. Tim’s firstborn and only son, Nick, died at college in 2020 after suddenly collapsing while playing a game and there is no diagnosis still to this day. When we look on at the suffering of others, it’s so easy to feel the weight and think we could never make it through something similar ourselves.
S5 Ep. 7 / When All Hope Seems Lost
There are times when we just can’t see a way out. When all hope really does seem lost. Even very committed Christians can face very, very dark times. Oftentimes we’re afraid to talk about emotions, especially big emotions, that come with suffering seasons. In our process of lament, there are times when all we can do is protest. But it’s so helpful to remember that when we protest, we’re still oriented towards God.
S5 Ep. 6 / How Can I Suffer Well and Help Others?
Suffering well might sound like a contradiction, but it is the process of going to God over and over again and allowing him to change us through the process of suffering. As believers we can be confident in who God says He is and that He will do what He says - but in seasons of suffering those truths can be harder to hold on to. We want to be careful to not minimize suffering, or that suffering well means we walk through hard things perfectly. It does not have to be big and glorious. Suffering well can just be putting one foot in front of the other in daily life.
S5 Ep. 5 / What is God Doing in My Suffering?
We all know people who have suffered profoundly and now they walk with Jesus deeply. We can hold on to hope that one day we will be able to tell our story without pain and shame, solely to put the glory of Christ on display. Until that day, we can continue to run to God in our suffering and trust that He sees us, hears us, and is near to us in it all.
S5 Ep. 4 / How to Write a Lament
Through the practice of personalizing a lament we can lay all of our pain and messiness before the Lord who will never stop loving us or get tired of us bringing all of our struggles and deep hurts to Him.
S5 Ep. 3 / Carol Collier on Lament: How to Cry Out to God in Suffering
The reality of lament, is that we’re saying what is true… that we were not made for death and decay and pain.
S5 Ep. 2 / Where is God in my suffering?
Wrestling with God as a believer is not necessarily a sign of unbelief but it’s really a sign of desperate faith.
S5 Ep. 1 / Why do I suffer?
We suffer because we live in a fallen world. None of us escapes the impact of pain and sorrow and even outright evil. And honestly, this is probably one of the hardest things to reconcile for anyone who believes that there is meaning in this life. Sometimes we just desperately just want to know why...
S4 Ep. 9 / Perfectionism
Have you ever felt like you are constantly striving for something that is never quite good enough? Or maybe you just feel like you're always falling a little short? If so, then this episode might be especially for you. This week’s common struggle is perfectionism. Whether we can see it in small areas or all throughout our lives, perfectionism can quickly become exhausting, exacting and exasperating! However, the gospel provides freedom from the many things that can drive the perfectionism in all of us.
Bonus Episode / Elyse Fitzpatrick
In this episode we talk about how we can know all the right things and be doing them well, but miss the gospel. For the listeners that feel full of questions, this podcast is for you. If you are the person who has worked really hard to do all the right things and find the right answers, then this episode is most definitely for you. Listen now and hear Elyse talk about her journey and how the trajectory of life changed when the profound beauty of the gospel truly reached her heart.
S4 Ep. 8 / Fear of Man
We were created to be known and know others deeply - but people pleasing distorts that into an inordinate desire for approval or inordinate fear of disapproval. These desires and fears can lead us into patterns of overcommitment, excessive worrying, over sensitivity, and over achievement.
S4 Ep. 7 / Bitterness
Bitterness can cause us to feel powerless and will begin to shape how we view the world around us, how we see the past, and how we anticipate the future. If it continues we can begin to lose hope and forget that God is writing the story and we can trust Him in it.