PTSD

Page 3

Lest anyone infer that this is the raving of one who is senile, let me inform the reader that I lived through the Great Depression so I know firsthand of what I speak!  Also, the life transformation herein described took place in my own life forty seven (47) years ago and resulted in my earning a doctorate at the University of Northern Colorado in the counseling method I developed (SpirituotherapyTM), after having been called of God in 1967 to do so.  Subsequently, I have lived by faith for more than forty (40) years; so this rationale is more than mere rhetoric!

After having witnessed God’s transforming lives around the world with various diagnoses, being faced with a person diagnosed as PTSD is not a great challenge to a counselor relying upon the Spirit of God.  Since it requires God’s miraculous intervention, it is only natural, for a therapist offering man’s answers, to be reticent to exude confidence in his secular counseling to produce transformational change.

Having said all of this, it is high time for the Church to step up to the plate and fill the void it has permitted in the past several decades.  The behavioral sciences can only offer soul care; the Church has the spiritual resources in Christ to offer soul cure.

PTSD is merely another of the psychological conflicts which can be resolved by the Holy Spirit’s intervention, even though it has become widespread due to the dearth of spiritual ministry in the war zone and by the Church back home.  Therefore, returning veterans are not offered substantive spiritual help and must settle for symptomatic treatment, as do most of their cousins in Church!

While the answer proffered in the foregoing scenario is not widely available at this point, it could be made so by massive training, with all materials and methods readily available.  A new Reformation, with the cry of sanctification by faith, could awaken the Church to meet the needs of its people and, more particularly, those who are struggling with the multitudinous effects of PTSD.

My first book, Handbook to Happiness, (Tyndale, 1971) details the above answer and lays the foundation for SpirituotherapyTM; Handbook for Christ-Centered Counseling shows how to impart the Answer to others.  My latest book, Discipling the Desperate, documents some 60 case studies over the past 40 years, including PTSD, to give God the glory.  Some have found victory by reading Handbook to Happiness without the benefit of counseling and have turned immediately to minister to another hurting believer, whom the Spirit frequently sets free, as illustrated in Mark's testimony.