Spiritual Journey Press

P.O. Box 3041, Mercerville, NJ 08619

Welcome to Spiritual Journey Press!  Let's explore our journeys together!  Use the mail order form  to purchase Endless Possibilities and other Spiritual Journey Press products. 

By Pastor Mark E. Stortvedt, MS, LMHP, CPC

I want to first take the opportunity of introducing myself. I am in my mid-forties and live in the conservative heartland of Nebraska. I currently am the Executive Director of Oasis Counseling International, with offices in Norfolk and O’Neill, Nebraska. I was a youth pastor and the pastor of counseling at a nondenominational church before I worked for Oasis.

I was first exposed to Endless Possibilities when our counseling center invited Lee Spitzer to be the presenter at our Annual Advance. He used the goal oriented journey model to help us understand what journey we are on as a counseling center and how to cooperate with God in this journey. When there was a crisis in the church I go to, we invited Dr. Spitzer to come and help us understand how this crisis related to the journey God had for us as a church. For many people in our congregation it was like scales fell off their eyes as they were brought into a bigger picture of what God was doing and some of their pain was able to be objectified by seeing what God was doing and how to cooperate with Him.

Two years ago the ministerial association had Dr. Spitzer come and help us discern what was the journey that all of us were to be on together as churches in the Norfolk Area. He did this through exercises that helped us put on paper what God had already written in our hearts.

I have also used the Endless Possibilities material with the high school age children of missionaries from New Tribes Mission in Mexico. Some of the people commented that this information has been some of the most challenging information they have encountered for a long time. This is quite a statement from missionary children who go to the mission school during the year and have good Biblical teaching.

I have been invited back again this year to help lead the children’s conference for New Tribes in Mexico and this time we are using the spiritual journey model for the center of our curriculum from elementary age on up. The exciting thing about describing the spiritual journeys of Bible characters is that there often are several themes in a character’s life. This allows different people who are in different places in their journeys to gain totally different insights from the same character.

In my doctoral dissertation, I wish to explore the integration of psychology and personal faith. I desire to develop a grid that does not have its origin in psychology with Scripture added, but rather a grid that people could use in their counseling of others that would primarily and truly come from the flow of the Scriptures. I thought of the goal oriented journey model and called Dr. Spitzer and explored using his work as a basis for my research and dissertation.

In the field of psychology, Freud sought to track down the instinctual unconscious but was suspicious of the spiritual. Jung took this the next step and sought to lift spiritual phenomena into consciousness. Jung was open to spirituality but uncritical in regard to its meaning and application. Another significant progress in the discipline of psychology was the work of Viktor E. Frankl, who asserted that if man is going to be truly responsible he is as responsible for the spiritual area of his life as he is the psychological. I desire in this dissertation to progress forward yet another step in the area of spiritual therapy. I would like to show that the Bible was given by God to be a therapeutic tool that acts like a mirror, lifting our spiritual journey into self-consciousness so we can be responsible for our specific spiritual journey.

The purpose of my dissertation is to research and explore how the Bible plays a therapeutic role in the lives of people. I am exploring how specifically the Scriptures speak to the therapeutic needs of people, how the Bible aids in the discovery of one’s life purpose and how understanding a sense of destiny provides the context of meaning for one’s life experiences. I Corinthians 10 verses 1-6 states the following:

"For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and passed through the sea; and all ate the same spiritual food; and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless with most of them God was not well pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved."

It is clear that the Scriptures assert that the stories recorded in the Old Testament have therapeutic application for our present generation. Since we see this assertion in the Old Testament it warrants researching the New Testament to see if it makes similar claims of therapeutic relevance. Romans 15 verses 3-4 reads:

"For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is written, "The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on Me. For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."

We read in 2 Timothy 3:16 that "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." Timothy sums up this principle by stating that all Scripture is to have a therapeutic equipping effect on our lives and prepare us for our future spiritual journeys.

Let me give an analogy. People see their lives in small movie frames, disconnected from each other and not knowing the end of the movie. One of the issues in mental health is that people have a need to resolve their crisis or loss through understanding why it is significant in their life journey. For their own sense of well-being they need to understand the meaning and coherence of their own story. They want to know: "Why did this have to happen? What good can come out of this? How will this prepare me for God’s ultimate purpose for my life?" This meaning is put within the soul of each person and is lifted to conscious awareness through the Bible, a therapeutic mirror to the soul. As this is lifted to conscious awareness, words can be chosen to describe the purpose and meaning of our life journey.

I will seek to build this dissertation by reading books written by classical Christian authors, research from significant contributors to the field of psychology and current research in the field of Judeo-Christian therapy. My desire is to take Lee Spitzer's research and explore specifically how the Bible is used as a therapeutic tool to lift our spiritual journey into responsible consciousness. My hope is that this could open up a new way of approaching spiritual integration in psychotherapy. Did God sovereignly pick the characters of the Bible to be a manual of archetype characters and stories? I assert that the characters we relate to and their stories are very significant to us today. This connection could open up a new spiritual dimension in the connection between Scripture and psychotherapy.

My first hypothesis is that the Bible characters that we relate to most are those who hold the treasure of the recurring themes that tell us something about ourselves and are key in our being faithful to our overall spiritual journey. Refer to page 27 in the Endless Possibilities Spiritual Journey Course Book, Exploration Exercise 8: Biblical Role Models. 

The next hypothesis I will assert is that the actual stories that we relate most to in the Bible are the current life circumstances, presenting issue and unconscious issues we may be unaware of. Refer to page 28 Exploration Exercise 9: Instructive Journeys, in Dr. Spitzer’s course book.

The third hypothesis is that there is a correlation between certain Bible characters and certain DSM IV mental health diagnosis categories. If it is true that a certain diagnosis relates to certain Bible characters it opens the door to discover certain journey themes and insights that could offer significant breakthroughs for those in therapy.

Fourth, I would like to test the hypothesis that those that have a DSM IV diagnosis will relate to the negative themes of the spiritual journeys of Bible characters while those who do not will relate to the positive themes of Bible characters. Two people can relate to the same character but for different reasons. This allows for much diversity and yet can hold insights into some common traits of those who do and do not have a DSM IV diagnosis.

I will have one group of 200 people that are presently in psychotherapy that will be given a 3 page questionnaire. Participants must be at least 21 years of age and have a present DSM IV diagnosis requiring mental health psychotherapy.

The research will start with a cover page explaining that this is the research for a doctoral dissertation and the purpose statement of the research. Also included on the cover page is an outline of the survey and specific instructions related to participating in the research. The first page of the questionnaire will include specific demographic information needed for the research. Part of the demographics will explore family background and have them identify their present DSM IV diagnosis. The second page will ask them, after eliminating Jesus Christ, to name three Bible characters that they relate to the most and any specific reasons why they relate to them. Page three asks them to identify three Bible stories that they relate to. They are then to specifically identify what they relate to in the story and why.

A second group will be a control group of 200 people from churches in the Northeast Nebraska Area. They cannot have had any form of professional counseling in the last five years and must be at least 21 years of age.

I will get one other statistic from the medical program at three counseling agencies that practice holistic mental health treatment from a Judeo Christian perspective and three state insurance companies. This statistic will be the 10 most frequent DSM IV diagnoses that they have treated over the past two years.

I have chosen 15 books that I think are some of the most significant and influential scholarly works on Pastoral counseling and its integration with psychology. These books are in the three categories mentioned earlier in this proposal, Classical Judeo Christian, Field of Psychology and Current Contemporary Judeo Christian Therapy. I reserve the final 10 books that I will read to be related to the research identifying the 10 Bible characters people relate to the most. I will choose one scholarly work to read related to the life of each character identified.

In conclusion, I am approaching my dissertation with great anticipation. I am glad to be able to share with you what I am doing and I will try to do a follow-up article at the conclusion of my research.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Spiritual Journey Press.  All rights reserved.