Religion and Theology

Pastors have been designated to offer spiritual counsel since the early days of the church. Today we think of it as a recent trend from the past. Pastoral counseling has since grown up alongside psychological counseling, seeking to find its identity against the healing or therapeutic culture. Pastoral counseling has become a modern treatment than the traditional soul caring as pastors have distanced from psychological counseling and have now tended to offer biblical counsel living psychological counseling to the trained psychologists. Biblical counsel encompasses soul care which is caring of the human soul. Soul care contains the idea of both care and cure of the soul. Care is the things that are done to support the well being of a person or something. The church has since being involved in restoration and healing process of the people in the church as they also seek to nurture them and cure their souls. Much of the focus is targeted to the soul of a human person. In this case the soul is viewed as the whole inner person, thus soul care is caring of the human person in his inner fullness which is given a priority in the spiritual and psychological aspects of the persons world. Soul care is not always addressed on the problems but nurturing of the whole person (Benner 1998). Soul care has always being the primary focus of the church. Therefore its basically comprised of four elements healing, sustaining, reconciling and guiding the human person. (Strategic pastoral counseling, Benner, David G. 2003).

Pastors are the vessels chosen to deliver the care of Gods grace to the needy people in the souls. Its not just by mere coincidence but its through Gods grace that one is able to care for others and guide them. Pastors are distinguished by the uniqueness of others being attracted to them just by the virtue of kindness and humility to serve others souls. Biblically stated Help to carry others burdens and in this way you will obey the law of Christ (Gal 62). It also got something to do with the compassionate understanding that relates to others as a living testimony that they have also gone through hard times and have not given up or turned their self in but walked in faith. This helps encourage others that them too can be impacted and overcome as them. We should give thanks to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Merciful Father, The God from whom all help comes from, He helps us in all our troubles so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using the same help that we ourselves have received from God (2nd Corinthians. 13-4) .If this is done with integrity and consistency then one is considered to be a trustworthy servant in whom God delights and blesses. All this is the work of a pastor whose soul business is the good guidance and caring of souls as entitled in the biblical view point. (The quick reference guide to biblical counseling, Clinton, Tim, and Ron Hawkins. 2009).

Many times when we seek soul care, we are seeking personal growth and this is related to our hurting in one way or the other. We seriously seek to solve our personal mysteries of life through soul care. By relating to a person and seeing who he or she is, how he or she is hurt and stuck to the situation is all part and parcel of soul care. Helping others overcome emotional detachment, passivity, negative thinking and all the things in the dark side of life is what pastors are graced to do. But to a narrower perspective there are trained psychologists to do the same over time. When this is catered for suffering ceases and a person exposes his or her focus on him or her self. Pastors have been proudly regarded as God sent people, who have a God given ability and obligation to show others how to grow spiritually and what steps to take. As they play their part we also have to play ours and do as they show us because that is what really God has intended us to do. This is just but a pathway of discovering Gods purposes for our lives slowly by slowly. And with this soul given care we are highly favored and graced according to His ever unending mercies. It is not easy to do it alone but God has surely given us pastors to nurture us fully in His spirit.( Nine things you must simply do to succeed in life A psychologist probes the mystery of why some lives really work and others dont, Cloud, Henry. 2004)