Amazon.com description: Product Description: The purpose of Presence and Truth is to offer a basic strategy for counseling that is true to orthodox Christian faith, is effective, is simple enough to be easily understood and applied, and is flexible enough to incorporate other counseling theories and techniques. Presence and Truth does not seek to replace existing skills and strategies but provides a theoretical umbrella that will enhance the movement from one technique to another.Presence and Truth continues to expand Chuck Thompson's Epistle of James-based applied theology by turning attention to the counselor's side of the equation. Thompson argues that the effective counselor, however experienced or inexperienced, must do two things: be present for the client and tell the client the truth.Thompson develops this central idea to discuss truth-noticing and truth-naming, foundational tools for clients to take responsibility for their lives; wisdom and perseverance for the client enduring a trial; attitudes towards the self, the world, and the furture; depression, growth, and spiritual formation; and executive control for clients who choose to replace old, ineffective routines with new routines of feeling, thinking, and behaving that work.Illustrated by client-counslor dialogues and informed by twenty years of marriage and family therapy, Presence and Truth offers not a theory of counseling but a style of counseling that can make any client-counselor relationship more grace-filled and effective.