Staff

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The way we counsel is from our heart and is about the clients' hearts.  It is our aim to sit with those God leads to Gateway to help them find freedom from the wounds accumulated in their hearts and the coping mechanisms they formed in reaction to those wounds.  

To teach an angry man how to "control" his anger leaves him, in the end, as a slave to controlling his anger.  There doesn't seem to be  much freedom in that. It is essentially making a slave that used to make bricks into a slave who now bakes those bricks.  

As you look over Jesus' time with those He interacted with you see some interesting choices.  He chose to call Zacheus out of the tree and wanted to spend time with him.  Zacheus had probably, because of his profession, made it through life as a hard, lonely man.  And it was disturbing for him to have Jesus want to see him, to spend time with him...to care for him.  The adulteress woman who was about to be stoned must have been uncomfortable with such Grace, disturbed by the way Jesus looked at her as if she wasn't dirty...and He meant it.  The woman at the well, who had "many husbands", walked away knowing just how thirsty she had always been but never knew.  This clearly stirred her heart to want more of this Jesus. 

We believe any practitioner should perform marriage counseling/individual counseling in the same way.  To create an environment where shame has no power, that clients are deeply cared for and where they leave each week more thirsty for that which only He can quench.  Being invited to deeper places helps us find Him in the painful places of our stories so that we might find freedom and healing.