Life That Works
Grace Link International (AKA Grace Fellowship Ministries) has been offering the Grace Life training and personal discipleship counseling in North Alabama since 1991. Our director, Blake Rymer, has over 30 years of counseling and teaching experience. The Grace Life training embodies the truths that liberated and empowered Blake and his wife, Sandra, to spend their lives sharing the truth of God's love and grace internationally.
Come experience this liberating teaching for yourself!
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Philosophy of Counseling
At Grace Link our goal is that the Holy Spirit would be the counselor. We see counseling as a function of the discipling of believers, a function which we call “discipleship counseling.” With the leadership of the Spirit and the collaboration of the counselor, the counselee can identify spiritual, emotional, mental or relational obstacles to maturity and victory in Christ. (John 14:16, 17, 25, 26)
As Jesus revealed the important relationship between truth and freedom, discipleship counseling seeks to expose the lies and deception which hold individuals captive, and then calls them to exchange the bondage of lies for the freedom of the truth and the resources of God’s grace. (John 8:31, 32; Romans 1:21, 25; 5:17)
Since the Summer of 1998 when we moved to Budapest, Hungary to spend two years as missionaries there, our hearts have been captivated by the people and experiences we have encountered in Eastern Europe, especially in Romania. When the opportunity to teach in Colombia, South America and our daughter and son-in-law moved to Poland in 2004, our international horizons expanded considerably! The opportunities for ministry and the blessings we have received from our international investments have been overwhelming at times. And we have seen very encouraging fruit from those investments.
A Three Phased Approach
For Equipping Helpers
Called to Care (CTC) training is organized into three levels. Level two builds on level one and three builds on level two. Each level should be experienced in that order for best outcome. It is not required that a church commit to all three levels. Significant spiritual insight can result from the training at each level.
Life That Works
Many congregational care needs arise when individuals try to meet their personal needs themselves in ways which do not work. Life That Works (LTW) is a training experience which addresses individual issues by impacting the individual lives of each person and by establishing them in a solid Christ-centered foundation.
LTW is best presented in a conference format offered to the entire congregation on Thursday Night, Friday night and Saturday. However, the conference schedule is adaptable to the individual church needs.
The topics addressed in the conference are:
What is my purpose here on earth? (God’s plan for life)
What is it that keeps my Christian life from working? (Flesh and the influence of my past)
Who am I as a Christian and what is my identity based on? (Identification with Christ)
What solution does the Christian life really offer to temptation and sin? (The Cross and its meaning in my life)
How do I live the Christian life? (Faith and walking in the Spirit)
In a speech presented at the 1995 Moody Founders Week Celebration, Dr. Larry Crabb, noted Christian psychologist and author, made the following points:
The issues which professional counseling addresses - guilt, anger, self- hatred, hopelessness, the unwillingness to love - are issues which the Bible addresses and which God has designed the local church to handle.
The problems which people in our culture typically take to professional counselors and therapists are really expressions of a troubled soul, not symptoms of an underlying psychological disorder, except when they have an organic basis. They are spiritual problems. Therefore: (1) The only trustworthy source of understanding the soul is the Bible. Therefore, biblical wisdom becomes the foundation, the framework and the substance of all our helping efforts. (2) The community of God’s people - the local church - is the proper setting for the problems of the soul to be addressed. The local church is more vital to the work of healing and helping than the counseling center. (3) The people most powerful in influencing lives, no matter how troubled they may be, are those who have suffered and struggled well.
GRACE-LINK INTERNATIONAL STATEMENT OF FAITH
We believe that God’s Word teaches:
1. Verbal inspiration of the Bible.
We believe the Holy Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, to be verbally inspired of God in the original manuscripts: infallible, inerrant and God-breathed, a perfect rule of faith and practice.
2. The Trinity
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. The Lord Jesus Christ
We believe that God, the Son, who had always existed, became a man (without diminishing his deity) by virgin birth through Mary. He lived a sinless life as an infinite God-Man took upon Himself the sins of all men, died in their place and satisfied God concerning their sins.
We further believe in the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He was then ascended and exalted to the right hand of God as the Great High Priest of all believers.