How do I choose a good Christian counselor?

Allow me a premise as I begin to write this article. The premise is that each of us has a spirit and a soul. Our spirits relate to God and our souls relate to one another. Have you ever heard the term "soul mate"???

In the spiritual world, we find great benefit in seeking out those of more Christian maturity or training to give us insights. God has gifted many teachers of His word who make the scriptures come alive for us and give us deeper understanding. The insights gained allow us to walk in more freedom as well as in more awareness of who we are.

The same thoughts could be applied to finding others to help us in the "soul" world. Try as we may, we never can find all the keys to successfully relating to others WITHIN ourselves. One of the prices of living in a "fallen" world is that we are all wounded. These wounds trigger mechanisms within us so that we do not feel the pain – or at least they go to great efforts to keep us from feeling the pain. Severe pains in our lives trigger deeper mechanisms and these get "layered", like an onion, as they "attempt" to protect us from more pain.

However, instead of REALLY protecting us, they MASK the pain and never really rid the cause. Often these create behaviors in us where we find ourselves repeating bad cycles – even when we purpose it will not happen. A frequent result is that they often DRAW us to others who only serve to perpetuate the cycles.

I had been married for 25 years and served 8 years in full-time ministry when I found myself in a divorce. (Read by biography on my web site.) A couple years later I was spending time with a new close friend who was also now my Pastor. He asked me if I had given any thought to counseling. I honestly responded that I was open to this, but did not know of anything I had to work on. I did know this friend well enough to understand that he was seeing something that I was not.

He recommended a good Christian counselor and I began to see him. It took several months, but great discoveries were made that produced a freedom like I had NEVER known.

While I share this good news, I must also tell you that my former wife and I also went to a couple of Christian counselors – and I would not recommend either to anyone. So how does one go about in finding a good counselor?