Biblical Knowledge and Confident Counseling

Camille McDaniel (00:03.822)
Welcome to another episode of Christ in Private Practice. If you have been with us all this time, then welcome back. I’m so thankful that you have continued on this journey. And if you are new, welcome, welcome. I hope that you participate in conversation. I hope you join our Facebook group for mental health professionals who practice Christian counseling or would like to learn more about practicing Christian counseling.

Today we are going to kind of talk about, we’re gonna talk a little bit about practicing Christian counseling. And one of the things that I wanted to just talk, so like let’s just lean in, let’s talk about this. So as mental health professionals, right, we have studied many years, we’ve gotten our graduate degree, we have, many of us, gone on to become licensed in one or more states.

which requires us to get supervision by many, hours, hundreds of hours of supervision year after year after year for many of us, a couple of years. Some of us even had to take a second exam by our state and some other separate quizzes. just, do a lot to get as far as we are now in the field of mental health to be able to support others through counseling services, right?

And along that way, we wanted our counseling services to be able to direct people in their faith and their Christian path and allow it to like their counseling experience to align with their faith. And I wanted to come today because this has been kind of something that has been popping up in my mind just this year. So it’s not like it’s been popping up in my mind for years, but just this year.

So this year I was doing a fast. I participate usually in the fast at the beginning of the year, like a corporate fast. But this year, you know, I did not know, I didn’t know what the focus of my fast should be. I really just, didn’t exactly have clarity. And the first night actually of my fast, the Lord gave me a dream. And that dream actually led me to looking up a particular pastor.

Camille McDaniel (02:30.73)
And when I looked that pastor up right smack dab, what was brought up on the internet was exactly what I had needed to focus on and actually had brought back to my remembrance something that the Lord had been encouraging me. And that was just reading through the whole New Testament. And what it made me think of is,

You know, in all of our training, in all of our studying, in all of the books that we recommend to other people as we are talking, you know, whether online or, you know, whether in our offices, how many of us are able to direct people to answers that the Bible clearly already has laid out? How many of us feel comfortable navigating

the books of the Bible to be able to instruct our clients, give them clarity, help correct things that may have contributed to some hurt, some harm that they may have experienced as far as religion is concerned. For those who may have even been raised Christian and had, excuse me, gone over to maybe a different belief and had decided that they may have wanted to pursue

Christ again, but they had questions. Are we able to answer them? How confident, how confident are we in our knowledge of the Word of God, the Bible, compared to how confident we are in our knowledge of our DSM, in our knowledge of different books and resources that we may refer?

You know, I just wanted to ask that because I want us all to be thinking about that. Do we know other books inside and out better than we actually know the Bible? And yet we are practicing as Christian counselors. And so I want to come with some like good news. I don’t want to just come with, you know, questions or, you know, concerns and all of that. But guess what?

Camille McDaniel (04:42.668)
So when I was led to this particular pastor and this pastor had something that they were doing with their church for corporate fast and prayer and they were saying for this fast, you are going to read the New Testament in its entirety in these 21 days. Now, for some they’re like, my goodness, there’s no way, right? And it’s like, here’s the thing, it may be not 21 days for you, let’s say a month.

month, you can read through the New Testament. Now, you obviously would stop. You’re going to take notes. You’re going to allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, to speak to you, to bring revelation to you. That could stretch it out beyond 30 days, but I say 30 days because let me tell you, there are 27 books in the New Testament. There are 260 chapters in the New Testament.

And if you read just nine chapters a day for 30 days, you will get the whole New Testament read. Now let’s say you’re like one month. I don’t know if I can do it in one month because I want to take notes. I want to pray on things. I want the Holy Spirit to speak to me and then I’ll take more notes on it. That’s great. All right. How about two months? Two months.

four chapters a day for 60 days so that you will have more revelation, connection with the Lord, understanding of his word and be able to combine the knowledge, the wisdom, the instruction, the warnings of the word of God.

with things that you do in the counseling office or on sessions online to be able to help your clients have more healing. I had just kind of noticed that sometimes in some of the groups that I’m part of online, sometimes people will have challenges arise that a client may be experiencing and people are asking,

Camille McDaniel (07:10.322)
and these happen to be in Christian spaces, Christian spaces. They’re asking for book referrals to address certain issues to be able to pass on to their client and oftentimes scriptures are not offered. The Bible itself is not offered but other books are offered and I’m like okay there are other books and okay that’s cool right but

Is it because, and I’m really honest, I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t know the answer. I’ve not taken any poll. I really haven’t, but is it because we are just kind of so entrenched in our work as mental health professionals that the Bible doesn’t really come up first as a recommendation? Is it because maybe although we definitely align ourselves with being followers of Christ that we don’t know our word well enough to recommend it?

I just wonder, you what is it? But either way, 30 days, nine chapters a day, or 60 days, four and a half chapters a day, in order to get through the whole New Testament. Now, you can definitely go from beginning and add the Old Testament and then come all the way to the New. Why did I say the New Testament? That was one of the revelations that I had just gotten for my fast, you know.

You absolutely can start from the very beginning with Genesis. But if you wanted to start with Matthew and then go all the way to Revelations, then you get just a whole history of Christ and his coming into the world and all that he shared and taught and explained, all the grace and the mercy he showed, what happened after he passed, what happened after he rose again, and then all of the instruction that the disciples

with through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, all of the instruction that the disciples shared with the nations, know, letters to different churches to instruct them on how to act and how to be and how to treat each other, warnings, all kinds of wonderful amounts of knowledge that we can help our clients understand, just understanding life, just understanding, you know, the way things function, just understanding that there are

Camille McDaniel (09:34.99)
There are many things that, know, many challenges that arise within the counseling setting that come from a root cause of sometimes something that is physical, sometimes something that is spiritual. You know, the spiritual realm has rules, just like we have rules here in the flesh, natural world. It would be great for us to be able to identify

when something is coming into our counseling practice that happens to be of a spiritual nature and know how to help our clients deal with it and know whether something is coming that’s of a physical issue, an ailment, and know if something is coming and it’s just because of decisions that were made, right? And some of you listening to this particular podcast are like, hey, I’m there, I already do that. But I do know that there are…

many others listening to the podcast and they’re like I have not done that and I am absolutely overwhelmed with the idea of reading the whole New Testament, which is why I started off by letting you know, look, guess what? If you break it down and do day by day, guess what? You could get through the whole entire New Testament. Can you believe it? Right? And so while on this journey,

I would also say, partner up with someone. You can partner up with someone and then maybe like once a week or more if you want to, but at least once a week, check in with each other to see what revelations each person has gotten while you are going through these chapters within the Bible. Share your revelations. Keep on going. Meet up week after week. Pray together.

Pray for one another or pray over your clients together. Continue to read and get revelation. There is so much richness in the word of God that explains everything. Like I had somebody ask, why do people do such atrocious things to one another? Well, there are some root.

Camille McDaniel (11:59.04)
reasons that can contribute to why we find ourselves doing things that are self-serving, self-gratifying, even though they are hurting other people.

And sometimes there are some things, because I’ll have some clients say like, I don’t know, like, I don’t know, is it spiritual warfare? You know, and then we have to go back to some of like the episodes I’ve talked about before where I’m like, okay, well, let’s, let’s make sure that we don’t have any, you know, physical ailments that are popping up. You know, we talk also about certain decisions that people are making and things that they’re engaging in and

And then sometimes we can look at things after we’ve cleared out some of that. then sometimes it’s very clear and sometimes not so much that it is spiritual in nature. And there are things that we need to do. Because sometimes when we are not familiar with things happening, we can find ourselves also kind of going toward encouraging people to be treated.

something that the Holy Spirit is trying to get them to see or get them to understand. So we need to just be in good connection with the Lord, with the Holy Spirit so that we can get understanding, so that we can continue to have wisdom as we move forward. And I’m just, I was just super excited and I was just grateful for the revelation just for myself but I also you know sometimes you get revelation and you know it’s just for you.

Like you don’t have to, you don’t have to pass it along. That message was for you alone, right? And then sometimes you get revelation and you realize, yes, it was absolutely for you and it’s for others. Don’t keep it to yourself. And so that’s why I am sharing this episode today. I think today’s episode might be a little bit shorter because it is a very simple message that you can

Camille McDaniel (14:07.202)
get this knowledge if you have not already, that it is not too hard, that you can absolutely do this with someone else, that this is going to allow you to be even that much more powerful in helping your clients, even clients who are not Christians. I didn’t say that before but I probably could have also led with that to say this is not just for the Christian client, this is also

for the non-Christian client, okay? These things can definitely also assist because let me tell you, the Lord, I think I said this when I was talking to a previous guest on the podcast, but the Lord is going to bat for people who don’t even follow him. I know because the Holy Spirit has spoken to me in sessions.

in order to assist somebody or ask someone specific questions and they were not a follower of Christ. The Father loves us all so much that he will still try to reach out to you even if you do not choose him. Wow, you know? So I would love to hear from you all on this. Like obviously you can, you can send a message, you can, you know, write

underneath the video, if this is YouTube, you can write, if this is like Spotify, you can actually send an email, like, you know, just go to the Christ in Private Practice website and you can send me an email too. You know, how are things coming along with your journey, with your reading? Yeah, absolutely. I would love to support that. So whatever works for you.

Let’s go ahead and just make sure that we are equipping ourselves in the knowledge of the word of God, just as much as we equip ourselves in the knowledge of the DSM. Just as much as we equip ourselves in the knowledge of those homework planners, in those wonderful books that we engage in that are so helpful that some of us have also written ourselves, which I think I will be doing some book reviews in the future as well, some books that I’ve been kind of checking out.

Camille McDaniel (16:25.514)
that other mental health professionals have written. So it’s not saying that, you know, these books are not wonderful. It’s just saying that if we are providing Christian counseling services, shouldn’t we know the Bible? We should. And hey, look, look, I got revelation to kind of to do this. I am not throwing any stones. But it was such a blessing. And I definitely didn’t want to keep silent on that.

But I wanted to share it because I know that reading that entire passage, even just reading for some is just difficult. so make it the first thing that you do in the morning or make sure to put it in your schedule, just like you schedule lunch, hopefully, just like you schedule any other appointment, right? Because we want to put God first because he orders our steps.

So again, reach out, tell me how you are doing with this. It would be wonderful to just hear how it’s coming along. And then we can kind of move forward and supporting you or supporting each other because there are others who are gonna be on the journey with you. So let’s go ahead and armor up everyone. Let’s get it done. It’s the beginning of the year. We have no reason. Matter of fact, by December, we could have read.

New Testament multiple times. As matter of fact, thrown in the Old Testament and the New Testament multiple times by the time December rolls around. All right, this is forward thinking, we’re planning, come on let’s do this. All right, until next time, God bless.

CPP Ep. 23 Biblical Knowledge and Confident Counseling