Brenton and Carol Mock, in Pittsburgh, PA, as counselors and life coaches provide a biblical approach to personal growth.
In his individual creative act, God fashioned each of us in his image. We bear his likeness in many ways, yet that image is marred by sin, our own and the sinful choices others made that prevented us from becoming all God created us to be. Coming to Christ gives us the opportunity to recapture that divinely crafted image, unique to each of us. For that to happen we need to put off that old, corrupted self and put on that new self that displays the righteousness and holiness of our Loving Heavenly Father. This requires a new mindset that instinctively turns to and trusts God and responds to the challenges of life in faith, with all the life-enhancing gains we want.
Our work with individuals focuses on helping them develop and strengthen a mindset that embraces God’s life changing truths. When our self-image, when our habitual choices come from this God-truth saturated mindset, we become who God created each of us to be, and who we want to be, more like Jesus.
Galatians 5: 1, 5, 6b
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery….But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
The messages of this fallen world continually devalue and impair us. There is a freedom in life we long to experience. We are discouraged in that we have yet to experience that freedom. Our past hurts and old ways of coping prevent us from becoming all that we deep down know we can be. We long for the freedom just to be ourselves and for that to be okay.
We work with individuals to help them experience that freedom. This is the righteousness we hope for in the Galatians passage. It comes as we are in a right relationship with our Creator God and, therefore, in a right relationship with ourselves. It works itself out in being able to consistently make right choices that produce better outcomes. It results in the joyful experience of seeing our faith express itself in love, as we make long-term best interest choices for ourselves and for those we love.
Ephesians 4: 20-24
But that is not the way you learned Christ! – assuming you heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on a new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.