Preface

The following considerations concern different approaches to Christian counseling:

1. The attitude approach

The metaphor of "Walking in the Spirit" characterizes Christian counseling as a particular attitude, which transforms metaphors into an experience.  Therefore, the guidance by the Spirit is a core-example for such concept:
When people talk about the Holy Spirit, most of them remember Pentecost; churchgoers mention the Trinity (Blessing, Baptism), Bible-readers remember Creation (Spirit on the waters, infusion by God). Some of them mention St. Mary and the angel; a few mention the temptation of Jesus (Matthew 4) or Philippus and the Ethiopian (Acts 8). All these public memories concerning the Holy Spirit show different aspects of this complex phenomenon; the research evaluates these aspects concerning their role within a particular literary, theological, and historical context (Biblical times, Early Church, Times of Reformation, Age of Enlightenment and Pietism, modern times). Because in any century, people are coping with temptations, tasks, challenges, and expectations of any kind - particularly within a spiritual framework (prayer, parish, Church), the focus is on the guidance by the Spirit. Therefore, the paper evaluates how people could/can draw benefit from the spiritual tradition since biblical times.The research follows the two main models of orientation at the Spirit's guidance: being led into a challenging situation like Jesus before temptation (and like Abram in Genesis 12), and is led into a challenging mission and task (similar to Moses in Exodus 2); the aspects of Trinity and Creation belong into consideration according to their importance for this topic. Both models are based on a partnership attitude, and combine the divine and human sphere (Baptism) and, thus, of listening to God; Similarly, both models encourage drawing benefit from such attitude for Mission and power in life. Because these and similar models depend on listening and praying attitude, and can be compared with a kind of "stairway to Heaven,  the book  evaluates works concerning the guidance of Spirit, which share this attitude, and follow these models: For the Biblical times, the focus is on the book of Psalms, according to Early Church, on the Confessions of Augustine, for the time of Reformation on John of the Cross, for the Time of Enlightenment and Pietism Madame de Guyon, and for modern times Leanne Payne. Although written in different contexts and frameworks, the texts share a typical spiritual attitude like Romans 8:14 ( led by the Spirit of God).

This attitude of "walking in the spirit "is also characterized and exemplified by the Psalms and other Prayers, which emphasize the attitude of listening. From Biblical times – original in the O.T.. often quoted in the NT (Flint/Miller, 2005) - until today, the Psalms play an essential role for Christians in a variety of aspects (Brown, 2014), Particularly in the services, they are crucial for prayer, song, praise, and as a topic of sermons. Therefore, during he centuries, people translated and renewed them in their poetry ((Bonhoeffer, 2005; Wieder, 1995), they used them for comparisons like Voltaire (Ages, 1967) or C.S. Lewis (1958); they also use them or educational purposes (Baldermann, 2006). All these purposes show the crucial role of community for the use of Psalms (Augustine, 2015; Benedict, 2018; Bonhoeffer, 1949 and 2019; Erasmus, 1997 Pachomius, 2018 and others). This paper evaluates the Psalms as a particular kind of counseling ministry: They combine not only different types of prayer, but also of different biographical situations, different emotions (joy, grief, hank), different spheres (immanent/transcendent), and contexts (confronted with enemies, with suffering, with temptations, with disappointment); thus, they facilitate a holistic point of life-view. The paper, therefore, evaluates the primary genres, which underline that Psalms are in a certain way a mirror of human existence, individually or of the community of people. They demonstrate how people feel joy as well as sorrow, express praise and lament; thus, they cope with the challenges of life in a theocentric way (Brüggemann, 2011; Hengstenberg 1984). By evaluating this variety, consequences for pastoral ministry, 

A biographical example
Healing prayer as the work of Jesus through a praying person, means that the gift of healing is given o those for whom we pray, not to those who do the praying, and it involves the well being of the whole person: body, mind, and Spirit; therefore, praying for healing means praying for wholeness following Jesus' invitation for mission (Matthew10). This issue, thus, has an age-long tradition that goes back to the Jewish tradition and influenced many theologians. One of them was Leanne Payer. Her prayer-biography and her prayer books are evaluated in this paper. he was born during the Great Depression on June 26, 1932, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the elder daughter of Robert and Forrest Mabrey. Her father died when she was three years old. Her mother moved with Leanne and her younger sister to Little Rock, Arkansas, to live with her family. By her mid-twenties, she underwent a full and lasting conversion to Christ, stepping firmly onto the path of obedience to God. In 1963, she became the dorm mother at Wheaton Academy, beginning her forty-plus-year association with Wheaton, Illinois. A year later, she joined the prayer circle of Fr. Richard Winkler. In 1965 while working for Wheaton College, she enrolled as a student and thus began her formal education. From 1965 to 1974, she studied at both Wheaton and the University of Arkansas, earning a B.A. and two M.A. degrees. During the next several years, she wrote her first Book, Real Presence: The Christian Worldview of C. S. Lewis as Incarnational Reality, taught at Wheaton College, and assisted Dr. Clyde Kilby, who established the C. S. Lewis literary collection at Wheaton College. She cataloged the letters of C. S. Lewis while sitting at his desk and benefited richly from Lewis and the mentoring by Dr. Kilby. Fr. Winkler introduced her to the healing-prayer ministry of Agnes Sanford in 1973 and Leanne was soon serving with Mrs. Sanford in her Schools of Pastoral Care. As the "mother of Listening prayer" and follower of Agnes Sanford, she became art of the Inner Healing Movement, which the Sanfords founded in 1958 in the Agnes Sanford School of Pastoral Care were among Christians of various denominations: prayer, forgiveness, repentance, rejecting lies and replacing them with truth, and processing painful memories to bring emotional and spiritual healing was engaged. Her first book, The Healing Light, is considered classic in its field., since 1976 Leanne Payne was ministering full time through writing and healing prayer. She moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1978 and served as a research fellow under Henri Nouwen at Yale Divinity School in 1981. This year also saw the much-celebrated publication of The Broken Image.n 1982 she incorporated Pastoral Care Ministries with the guidance of friends experienced in business matters. The establishment of this ministry structure brought order, and Leanne flourished n generative creativity. From this time onward, she provided pastoral care through prayer and Counseling mainly at the week-long PCM schools conducted throughout North America, Europe, Hawaii, and Australia. She published five more books in the years that followed: Crisis in masculinity, The Healing Presence, Restoring the Christian Soul, Listening Prayer, and finally, in 2008 her autobiography. Heaven's Calling, In 2009, Ministries of Pastoral Care was founded with Leanne's blessing has allowed religious care schools to continue beyond her retirement and to this day. She died on February 18, 2015. (Payne, 2008; see https://ministriesofpastoralcare.com/leannes-story/).
During an interview in 1993, when she was a spiritual formation teacher, Leanne Payne calls God er divine spouse, whom she married in her early years. In this context, she mentioned the 3-generation female community, particularly her quiet but often singing Christian mother and her Grandma, learned to harmonize head and heart. Therefore, as a mother and Grandma, she suggests being a good mother and making one's home a sacral place, such a place she experienced when he protestant family members from Scotland encountered there. In her autobiography, she mentioned that as a young girl, she was praying with all her might striving to feel God – an attitude, which Payne later criticized as introspection; in this context, she mentioned her impulsiveness as her Achilles-heel. Payne rejected social sciences from Dewey, Freud, and others) as rational scientists. During an intensive prayer, she felt her ideas and wishes of fulfillment in life burned away by holy fire. As a kind of escape, she married as a 15 year-old girl a 17-year-old boy, but was divorced soon. Later, when both became Christians, they married again. She also mentioned incredible healing experiences and her experience of walking with the Lord Jesus in her private and Church prayers, fighting against legalism, New age prophets, and Neo-Gnosticism. In her thoughts, Churches should be evangelical, sacramental, and charismatic places where discernment becomes crucial. Following Gregory of Nyssa and other theological authors, she suggests climbing the ascent back to Heaven – like she was climbing a big tree in the garden as a young girl and looking for the cowbird and other birds. he also mentioned her dream- and prayer journal and a journey into oriental countries, which impressed her very much (Foster, 1993). When she entitled her autobiography "Heaven's calling, "she underlined that it should people read as a spiritual or prayer-biography with the focus on her particular concept of "listening prayer, "which influenced...