Advanced Biblical Counseling — Dr. S. M. Davis – 1 Credit Hour

Life can become complicated very quickly. People struggle with guilt, fear, anger, pride, broken relationships, destructive choices, emotional turmoil, bitterness, and the consequences of decisions they wish they could undo.

Advanced Biblical Counseling is a practical 10-lesson course designed to help students understand how biblical principles can be applied to some of life’s most difficult personal and counseling situations.

Rather than simply identifying what went wrong, Dr. S. M. Davis focuses on an important counseling question:

“What do we do now?”

Throughout this course, students will examine biblical examples, real-life counseling situations, and practical principles for helping people recognize destructive patterns, take responsibility for their choices, restore relationships, deal with difficult emotions, and move forward with wisdom.

What You Will Learn

In this course, you will learn biblical principles for:

• Recognizing how wrong decisions can create complicated consequences and learning how to make wise choices when there are no easy options.
• Identifying hidden pride and understanding how pride can contribute to anger, conflict, bitterness, an unteachable spirit, and damaged relationships.
• Developing genuine humility and learning how to receive correction, admit wrong, apologize, serve others, and give proper credit to God and others.
• Restoring strained and broken relationships through repentance, forgiveness, communication, reconciliation, and wise mediation.
• Understanding guilt, its purpose, and how unresolved guilt can affect thinking, emotions, relationships, and behavior.
• Recognizing the connection between guilt, resentment, hatred, jealousy, and self-justification.
• Understanding the biblical principle of sowing and reaping and how repeated choices can develop into habits, bondage, and serious consequences.
• Recognizing the dangers of fear and how fear can distort thinking, exaggerate problems, produce irrational decisions, and cause people to miss important opportunities.
• Developing courage by trusting God, making decisions based on truth instead of fear, and choosing what is right even when emotions say otherwise.
• Understanding the power of emotions and learning how to keep anger, fear, jealousy, discouragement, attraction, and other strong emotions from controlling decisions.
• Bringing thoughts, choices, and emotions into proper biblical order so that feelings do not become the authority for how a person lives.

Why Take This Course?

Biblical counseling involves much more than telling someone what they should or should not have done.

Often, people seek help after the damage has already occurred.

A relationship has been broken.

A wrong choice has been made.

Guilt has been carried for years.

Fear has taken control.

Anger has damaged a family.

Pride has prevented an apology.

Emotions have begun leading someone toward a decision they know is wrong.

At that point, the counselor needs more than a simple answer. The counselor needs wisdom to help that person understand what is happening beneath the surface and determine the most responsible and biblical way forward.

This course will help equip students to look beyond the presenting problem and ask deeper questions such as:

Is pride feeding this conflict?

Is unresolved guilt contributing to this anger?

Is fear controlling this decision?

Are emotions leading instead of truth?

Is there something that needs to be confessed, forgiven, or made right?

What is the wisest biblical choice from this point forward?

Who Should Take This Course?

Advanced Biblical Counseling is valuable for:

Pastors, ministry leaders, Christian counselors, teachers, parents, mentors, church staff, and anyone who regularly helps people through difficult life situations.

It is also highly beneficial for students who simply want to better understand their own thoughts, emotions, relationships, choices, and spiritual growth.

Course Topics Include

Lesson 1 — How to Solve Life’s Most Difficult Problems
Learning how to make wise decisions when previous choices have created complicated circumstances.

Lesson 2 — Pride
Recognizing hidden pride and the destruction it can produce.

Lesson 3 — Relationships and Reconciliation
Learning how to repair strained relationships and help others reconcile.

Lesson 4 — How to Humble Yourself
Practical ways to develop humility and remain teachable.

Lesson 5 — How to Deal With Guilt
Understanding genuine guilt, confession, forgiveness, restitution, and restoration.

Lesson 6 — Understanding Hatred
Recognizing how jealousy, unresolved guilt, wrongdoing, and resentment can develop into hatred.

Lesson 7 — You Reap What You Sow
Understanding how choices become patterns and how destructive decisions can produce unexpected consequences.

Lesson 8 — What Fear Does
Recognizing how fear distorts perspective, thinking, decisions, and opportunities.

Lesson 9 — How to Conquer Fear and Develop Courage
Learning how faith, truth, and right action can overcome fear.

Lesson 10 — God’s Way to Deal With Your Wrong Emotions
Learning how the mind, will, biblical truth, and emotions should work together rather than allowing feelings to control life.

The Goal of This Course

The goal of Advanced Biblical Counseling is not simply to give students more information.

It is to give them a practical biblical framework for helping people move from:

confusion to clarity,
pride to humility,
conflict to reconciliation,
guilt to forgiveness,
fear to courage,
emotional reaction to wise decision-making,
and destructive patterns toward healthier, God-honoring choices.

Whether you are preparing to counsel others or simply want greater wisdom for your own life, this course provides practical biblical principles that can be applied to some of the most challenging situations people face.