Christian Counseling Today Vol. 22, Iss. 1

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christian counseling today VOL. 22 NO. 1 61
taste for the good and our power to
loathe evil. We eventually silence the
voice of God and our response of fear
to that voice. The problem, of course,
is that sin will hurt us; and contrary to
what the enemy told Eve, it will lead
to death. Once we begin removing our
taste for good and our power to hate
evil, then we only habituate that which
causes our death; or as the psalmist says
in Psalm 36:4, “He sets himself on a
path that is not good.” As deception
becomes a way of life, evil can be easily
practiced by an increasingly dead soul
that is presumptuous, planning, and
actively participating in evil. Over time,
the possibility for penitence is destroyed
and the habit ends in soul death. It is a
sobering and frightening picture.
If we truly see the life-destroying
capacity of such addictions, we will
not settle for a mere discontinuing
of the behavior. We will want to
see—in ourselves and our clients—a
transformation of longing. Merely
repressing the darkness we have
pursued is not sufficient. We must,
instead, be full of light. Change
and holiness are not just restraining
old passions (that is simply the
beginning)—they are the growth of a
new passion that grips the soul more
deeply than the former addiction. It is a
long, hard road to go from addiction to
deceit to habituated love and obedience
to our God.
May we, as counselors, come out
of the cold that has numbed us, from
the painlessness that deceives, and the
sin that no longer stings in our own
lives. May we stand before the Light of
the World, whose scorching light will
disturb us, but by whose stripes we will
be healed. May our own injections of
deception never become comfortable.
May we who are His people eagerly
look for the God who searches hearts so
that out of us will pour, not deceit but,
rivers of living water into the parched,
deceived souls with whom we work. ✠
DIANE LANGBERG,
PH.D., is a practicing
psychologist with Diane
Langberg and Associates
in suburban Philadelphia,
chairs AACC ’s Executive
Board, and is the author of Counseling
Survivors of Sexual Abuse, On the Threshold of
Hope, and Suffering and the Heart of God.
REFLECTING ON INTEGRATION
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8611-16-08-Fuller_AACC-01.indd 1 8/29/16 11:59 AM
Merely repressing the
darkness we have pursued
is not sufficient. We must,
instead, be full of light.