iGod X?

How can we find consistency in an ever-changing world?  I am not the “get the newest phone” type of person.  As long as she (my phone) is treating me well, I will keep her, and we’ll mutter through life together.  Recently, my son’s phone was broken, so I went to get a new one and give him my old one (I’m not that attached to her).  So I got the phone that is one number bigger than my old phone…It was just like my old phone!  There was nothing new about her?  Why is it that every year we need to change to the latest model?  Why do we need an iPhone X when they didn’t even make the iPhone 8 or 9?  It was the stupidest thing I ever heard.  Think about it, every time the makers of this phone come up with something new, I’m sure they think it’s perfect.  No one (in their right mind) truly puts a flawed product on the market yet every year there is something better than the previous product.   

We live in a world that is ever-changing, and we have to accustom ourselves to that.  We are used to changes in fashion, cars and the newest “in” thing.  We have to admit our inability to hold on to something that’s constant in this day and age.  We change–just as much as the new iPhone and newest style of shoes– in our moral, our beliefs system, values and more.  I remember when teens would hide their smoking and drinking habits from their parents.  We would say, “as long as you are living in my house under my roof you will respect my rules”, now parents encourage teens to do it under their roof so that their kids won’t need to hide it.  

In June of 2015, President Obama was instrumental in making it law that same-sex couples would be able to get married like any other heterosexual couple.  The bill sent some of my friends into a frenzy because of their religious convictions; they did not know what to think.  They felt that we, as believers, were beginning to embark on our rights were being taken away.  It raised the inner conflict amongst us; this made me feel like it was necessary to separate myself from it all. My friends thought that the United States was indeed going downhill and this law proved it.  I begged to differ.  This nation went down a long time ago, and this law is just a result of it, not the proof.  Believers can get in an uproar about that law, but stay silent about other things.  The United States is not the only ones that have lowered their standards.  To me, this bill shows how the church has failed in their own standard.

God Cannot…Change…

 How does it benefit us that the God we serve, never changes?  A God who stays the same is like a piece of land we build our homes on.  How foolish is it to try and build a house on the water, or a swamp. If building a structure on something that changes is not devastating, you have not observed the catastrophes left behind from an earthquake.  We are a people that need things we can depend on, yet we are attracted to things that are always changing.  When someone finally gives their life over to God it is usually because they are tired of things that are ever changing; they need him to be their Rock who will always be immovable and unchangeable. Look at these verses 

God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?  Numbers 23:19

16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.[d] James 1:17

Can God’s inability to change keep us from wanting him in our lives though? I think the reason we struggle with our inner image of God is that he doesn’t seem to want to compromise his values to meet our desires. When we think that God conforms to the new fads, trends, and styles he will revise his expectation of us.  God will completely understand if I fall in love with the new girl/guy at our job and it starts getting a little heated after our date.  God knows that it is so hard to live in this sex-filled world without falling prey to sexual temptations.  Does God truly want me to obtain from any form of sexual activity until I find the right one?  But what if I wait and find the right one, marry them but realize they are the wrong one? God will be okay if I go looking for right one after marrying the wrong one. That’s pure foolishness that happens regularly.  

Why can’t God see that sex, money, knowledge, and popularity that is the driving force of this today?  The sad truth is that these things have gotten us caught up in that web of lies where these ever-changing fads motivate us.  What ticks us off the most about God is that even with the millions of translations of the Bible, it still says that the love and pursuit of these things will lead to a life full of pain, hurt and destruction.  We want God to change his ways so that we can live the way we want to live and still have the favor of God on our side.  We yearn for him to grant us blessing and erase the consequences for making these choices, but he won’t.  

…Because He Can’t Improve

Why does change happen in the first place?  The reason one changes is because we get tired of something and another thing comes along that is better.  We change because something (attitude, friends, significant other, job, church) is not meeting our new needs, so we invest in something better.  We change because we realize that maybe our old ways was not giving us what we wanted—whether good or bad. We also change so we can be better than what we are.  So why would God change? 

God is the same yesterday today and forever (Hebrews 13;8) because how can you improve on perfection?  Perfection means flawless, so do you fix something that’s not broken?   But when we think of the word “perfect,” we perceive, for the moment, as time goes on it will need remodeling like that perfect iPhone.  See God needs no improvement, he needs no upgrade, update or new downloads to understand what it takes to be our God.  What does it mean to serve a perfect God?  It means that what he says, what believes, his ways and his thoughts are always better than ours.  We are imperfect, and that’s why between God and us, we must change.  

3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Matt 18:3

Weekly Challenge:

As yourself this question and journal the answer, is there something about God you wish he would change about himself?  Is there something you wish he would compromise on so that things would be easier for you?  If God changed this side of himself for you, would that affect others in a negative way?

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An Alien Like God

When you think of an alien, what comes into your mind?  I always think of some weird looking creature with huge eyes, missing a nose or ears or a mouth.  My mind thinks of an alien being a demon looking creature that is either black or green, scaly or moist with some slime.  There is no evidence what so ever that another life force from another planet has ever been here yet we have done an excellent job conjuring up an abstract image that we believe all alien life force would have.  Depending on the movie, we give them vicious qualities where they are aiming to eliminate all life as we know it.  They are an invasive species that are so intelligent that if we don’t rally together, we are going to be extinct.  Do you think we do the same thing with God?  We can’t see God but, unlike aliens, we have evidence of his existence.  The activity that we do have from God causes us to paint a picture of him that is less than favorable.  Even my best description of God is flawed and a mile miss from the bulls-eye.  In our desperate need for an understanding of our life’s experiences, we give God qualities that make us feel better about ourselves and the decisions we make.  

As I said last week, the last few months I have been challenged with my inner image of God and I want to extend that image to you.  I think of him as loving, strong, dependable and intense; then I am starting to see that my ideas of these qualities are flawed, so my inner image of God is flawed.

God Will Never Leave Us…

How can we wrap our minds around the truth that God is an every present King and Savior in the time of trouble? Psalms 46:1.  In our hope to describe God, he has been compared to wind and air.  Wind is an invisible force that destroys and rescues.  The power of wind can ruin a boat’s sail, or it can bring a stranded survivor to shore.  It can cause a bird to sour over the storms but can also cause it to lose balance and collide in something.  Wind is strong but can you hold wind?  Wind stops being wind when it is no longer moving.  Can you take a perfect picture of wind or can you only take pictures of its effects?  The air around us has the same amazing qualities.  Air is all around me, but I don’t see it.  I have never woken up wondering if there was going to be enough air to go around today.  I know that my lungs can take it in as long as I am healthy.  Yet, air can be trapped, and we can run out of air—still it cannot be seen by us.  

The God who created the heavens and the earth, the sun, moon, the stars and the galaxies is more present in our everyday then the wind beneath a bird’s wind or the air we take into our lungs.  Maybe you feel like God has left you on your own to fight a difficult battle, you may even feel like he is watching you beg for help in your prayers. You think he measures our level of desperation to determine when he will step in.   Despite the hurt, we have faced over the years—or maybe one that you are facing now—God will (and has never) left our side. 

…Because He is Everywhere But…

Can you wrap your mind around the idea that God is everywhere?  He is in the bathroom with us when we are relieving ourselves.  He is sitting in the theater with us when we’re watching that movie.  He is even in your bedroom with you when you are having a moment with your significant other.  The only way to explain it is like this—I know empty sealed bottles float but—imagine an empty bottle that is at the bottom of an ocean.  Anywhere the bottle moves on the ocean floor, water is there.  He is everywhere.  Even David said it in Psalms 139:7-12

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
 Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in [a]hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall [b]fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness [c]shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

When you think of my bottle and ocean analogy, there is one place the water was not…inside.  Yes we say that God is everywhere; however there is one place he won’t invade, and that is in the hearts of a man that refuses to believe in him.  Even though it may not feel like it, our world, our galaxies are submerged in God, but the hardness and stubbornness of a rebellious, reckless man does not have God in it.   

But I Know Someone God Forsook

So if David knew that if he made his bed in Hell that God would be there, how come God forsook his own son on the cross?  I thought he would never leave us?  You are so right, and on the day that Jesus died on the cross Jesus, in his agony, quotes a scripture found in Psalms 22:1 written by David.  In these verses, David sounds like us.  He is a man that is desperate for God to rescue him from something in a time of pour desperation.  In my pursuit to understand this verse, I looked into Psalms 22 and I notice that a lot of it was a comparison of things as opposed to pure reality.  He calls himself a worm, not a man (6).  He describes his enemies as bulls, lions, and dogs(12, 13 16).  He feels poured out like water (14), and he says all his bones are out of joint.  David, like us, can interpret life differently when we are looking through the lenses of pain.  In our chaos and confusion, we can feel like God has forsaken us.  Look at verse 2 of Psalms 22- he said that he called out to God day and night for him and God did not answer.  David feels like God has turned away from him because—through David’s perspective, God is not there.  Chapter 22 is the same one Jesus quotes from.  So the question is did God really forsake Jesus?  When one looks at the words “forsake”, scholars have said that Jesus was talking about God’s fellowship and the favor was taken away because the iniquity of us all was placed on him.  God was present, but there was no communication, and that’s what Jesus needed, to hear his Father’s voice and feel his love while bearing the sins of the whole world, present, and future.  He was pushing through something that no human has ever endured before.  So what happens when the voice of God that had been comforting him and giving him strength stopped when he needed it the most?  You feel forsaken.  

Now let’s go back to David, remember in vs. 2 he states that he called out to God day and night and did not answer?  Well look at verse (??)

For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from Him;
But when He cried to Him, He heard.

When we are in a place of hurt and pain, our perspective changes.  When we are out of the pain, we can see clearer.  I heard it once said, “Perception and reality are two different things.  Our perspective depends on our own values which are shared by the affections of our heart.”  If you aim to see God for who he really is, resist the urge to give him attributes that we think he has.  Remember that God will never leave you even though we don’t feel him or see him.

Can You Picture Him

Have you ever heard about another individual so much that you pictured them in your mind? That person was so vivid in your mind that you could break down of their character, their humor, their nastiness—that before you really met them; you had an image of this person in your head? We may even have expectations of them because of this image. Do we do the same thing to God? Despite what we may think, I believe that since we have no image of him, no clear understanding of God—because his ways are so much higher than our ways and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts—we find ourselves looking desperately for something to piece together his character.

My Inner Image

For the last few months, I have been challenged with my inner image of God. I think of him has loving, strength, dependability and intensity; then I am starting to see that my ideas of these qualities are flawed, so my inner image of God is flawed. Let me explain. When I think of love, I think of my husband, Sam. Sadly, my childhood didn’t have too many people that would show me the true meaning of love. When Sam came in into my life, he was that for me. He was patient and, sometimes, aggressive in his love, but Sam always looked forward to the time when he could—do what he did best—love the woman God gave him with all his heart and soul. After being married for some time, Sam adopted something new. Don’t tell anyone but, there are times he gets up in the middle of the night get a drink of water and every time he would get up or lays down he would gently kiss my shoulder. He has been so dedicated to love me that I can count on one hand the times when I wanted him to do something for me, and he refused out of laziness or lack of motivation. He lives to serve God and me. He does all he can to put himself third and make me his priority.

Now in this description, you have a small idea of what it may be like for me to be loved by him. My opinion of love comes from him so, many times when I think of God’s love, I think of Sam. That’s so romantic, right? There is still a flaw in my image of God even though Sam is a very loving husband. You see even though; for a husband, Sam has gone above and beyond to make me happy, he still failed me many times. There were quite a few times that he did things because he loved me but it almost ruined our marriage. There were times when he tried to protect me, but he unexpectedly exposed me. Even the best version of love could never compare with God’s perfection.

If I go to God expecting love—as I know it—I would expect God to do what he thinks I need but not listen to my hurt. I would assume that God’s version of making me priority would expose me to morert and pain. You see even the best version of someone is a flawed depiction of God because my example is a limited man with finite knowledge of who I am and who I am called to be.

So the question lies, do we give God the attributes of those that are around us to get a better picture of who he really is? In the next two months, I want to go on an adventure to see if we can remove our image of God and adopt who he is. We are going to start off with, “God will never…” How would you finish that sentence? God will never…(what)? So now I personally want to finish that sentence with my thoughts but I to be more productive, I can’t. I want to finish it with what the Bible says.

God Will Never Lie…

Do you genuinely believe that God would never lie? Well, maybe you are thinking of a few your experiences in life that makes you question your real thoughts. God says, he will never leave us.

⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have,because God has said,

Yet there were many moments when you felt completely alone and abandoned by God. God also says he will  no weapon formed against us would prosper

“no weapon forged against you will prevail,
    and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
    and this is their vindication from me,” Isaiah 54:17
Is there a time in your life that you felt anything the victim of the enemy’s attacks? Or maybe you were taken advantage of, you were battered, bruised and you see no evidence of protection. Are there times you felt lost and without direction even though God promises to lead and guide us? You felt lost, clueless and incompetent; and you thought that he gave you no clue as to which direction to go in.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.. When we read that God is not a man that he should lie, we have to wonder why not.

Pro 3:6

…Because…God is Truth

Someone said it like this, and God can’t lie because God’s words come to life the moment he speaks it.

The tongue has the power of life and death,
    and those who love it will eat its fruit. Pro 18:21

God’s very words produce exactly what he speaks. The world we live on is an example of that. Water, light and living creatures were brought forth just because he spoke it. As mere humans, we think that God CHOOSES not to lie versus the reality that God cannot lie. It is utterly impossible because once it words leave his lips, it becomes real.

When we think of God not lying, we find it be too favorable but there are some things in the Bible we wish were a lie right? Bad company corrupts good character 1 Corinthians 15:33. That means that God is saying when you surround yourself with bad friends it will corrupt you no matter how much you feel you are the light (one more). It does not matter how much you want to excuse it away or believe that you are the exception…remember God does not lie.  As a people, we would like to look on God’s character to find flaws, but we want to erase his other side of who he is.

Think about a time in your life that you feel that God failed you, is it ever so possible that the results may have been our hope that God’s word was a lie? Maybe we were hurt by a relationship that we knew was not good but we pursued it anyway cause we thought we could be the exception to the rule. Maybe you went against authority, like a parent, because you thought you knew better and the results did not wield what you thought. If we can take a moment to think for a second, do we try to find a loophole in God make up to rationalize that our wrong decisions weren’t that wrong?

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When Mentoring Your Enemy

This whole month I’ve shared with you about the importance of forgiveness and how it helps you grow as a person and a believer.  In this last piece, I wanted to explore a hard topic that many may want to ask me.  How does one forgive another who seems to want to destroy you?  The stories come in different ways like someone that is jealous, or that the offender is determined on making the other unhappy.  The offender has been in different forms like bosses, exes, a bitter family member or a neighbor.  No matter what the story and who the offender is, the question came; “How do I forgive this person, who haunts me or who tests my very being?”

My husband and I have worked with teenagers since we were teenagers ourselves.  When he took the job as a youth pastor in his early 20’s, we met teens from all kinds of walks of life and experiences.  Many of their situations were not their fault.  The choices of their parents and people of influence created in these young people senses of insecurity and in some cases doubts about life in general.  We stayed up at night praying for so many of them and at times talking to them for hours about their struggles and encouraging them.  We tried to love them as best we knew how and became attached to many of them.  

A year or two after becoming the official youth leaders, one young lady developed a connection with me in an unhealthy manner.  She had grown so attached to me that if I connected with another girl in the youth she would find ways to sabotage the relationship.  It was subtle in the beginning, but it became more evident as time went on.  Soon after, she started dating a member of my family—giving her more access to me outside of youth functions.  I wasn’t wise on how I gave her access to my family, my home and allowed her into my personal life with no real restrictions.  Their relationship lasted for a little over a few months and it wasn’t a good fit.  When it came time for them to separate it wasn’t in a simple way and it was pretty nasty.  

Shortly after the break-up, she began to share the news that she may be pregnant.  It turned out that she wasn’t, but that led to the question of “Why would she think she was pregnant?”  It was at a youth gathering where she then told members of the youth that my family member had raped her; it was her word against his.  You can imagine how the coming weeks were.  Truth be told I would have preferred “weeks.”  This lasted months, years and even a decade.  As her youth leader, I needed to love her even when I would find out that at a retreat she gathered the girls into her room to give them the details of how my family member took her virginity.  It was not just tearing me up personally but affected my home life as well.  My family member wanted to know who I believed and if why I wasn’t defending his name.

I wanted this all to go away, even when she dated someone else she would still tell the story.  She didn’t hide who the person was and who they were to me.  My husband and I were questioned by people who didn’t even have children in our youth.  Any attempt on our part, from that point on, to discipline her if she did wrong was silenced because it was interpreted as us trying to get back at her.  During that time I prayed with her, cried with her and believed that God would do something within her to help bring healing for her hurt.  I think one of the most painful moments was when there was a women’s meeting and she proceeded to give testimony of being raped.  She graced me this time with keeping my family’s name out of it; however, those who had heard her story before knew who she was talking about.  

Keep Doing Right??

There were others, who did not believe her.  Her constant telling of her story began to show, and many became concerned for Sam and my ministry.  It became apparent at one point that she began using this experience to gain more sympathy from me and others.  She wanted me to love her, and whenever the attention wasn’t on her, the story would surface again.  I needed to pull away from her because I was losing my patience.   I developed connections with to other teens in the youth who weren’t so engrossing, and this made her even more jealous.  The story of the rape began to hold less ground in peoples eye so a new one was formed and at a secret meeting with some leaders of my church she proceeded to tell them that I was having an affair on my husband with one of the young men from the youth group.  She gave false testimony of relationships I had with the teen boys and, for reasons of their own, without speaking to Sam or myself once, they believed her.  

When we were finally made privy to the accusations, the leadership never asked if the accusations were true; they spoken to us as if the accusation was correct.  We were monitored and babysat like children. I was removed from my office position in the church and other things happened to Sam and me that’s not worth getting into.  All the while we met with our youth and had our services.  We poured into them as best we knew how.  And at each service and function there she was.  I didn’t know how to handle this and her.  My hands were tied on what I could do.  Along with other things going on between my husband and the leadership, I just became overwhelmed and wondered, “How much more could I take from her?”

Shortly after my family moved away, my husband took on a new ministry position, and we started a new life hoping to leave that nonsense behind.  After a few years, my husband and I planned to have a get together with the old teens, who were now young adults.  This young lady was now married and took the opportunity to place it on the internet what happened to her…again.   I wanted to scream because it was like she never wanted me to forget it; it was like she wanted everyone to remember and bring a cloud over what could be a great reunion.  

A week or so later I received a text message from her asking if we could talk.  I agreed to meet her, so we met at a Starbucks where we started talking about surface things and then she cut to the chase.  She admitted that she wasn’t doing well.  She had been living with a lot of pain and guilt, and she needed to confess.  She wanted to talk to me about what we knew but could not prove, that she was never raped by my family member.  She told me that they never even had sex—so the whole idea of her being pregnant was a lie as well.  She didn’t know why she created all the lies about me and why she tried to sabotage my relationships.  The driving force of her actions was to have a relationship with me, and she wanted acceptance.  So she was willing to do whatever, even develop a story that my family member violated her.  

Okay!  So Marsha what was your response you ask?  Well, truth be told God put me on auto-pilot.  It was like God shut me off at that moment because I KNOW that her confession should have propelled me to flip the table over and snatch her by the hair and let her face her maker but, instead, one of two things happened. Either God was not finished with her yet or he did not want me to start a prison ministry.  At the end of her confession, I turned it from my feelings and hurt to her getting her life right with God and getting herself back into church.  

So That’s It! I Forgave Her.  Yeah Right!!!!!! 

Two days after the confession God allowed my mind to be turned back on and I thought I was going to lose my mind.  The anger in me was so consuming that I thought I was going to go crazy.  In my frustration, I heard God say, “You need to forgive her.”  As I am writing this to you, a lump comes into my throat because I was so broken!!  The hurt I went through for years surfaced; like the trust, I lost from my family member and so much more that happened.  How could God ask me to do that after ALLLL she did to me?  My flesh wanted to destroy her. I wanted to stop being good and ruin her like she almost ruined mine.  My flesh was warring against my spirit like never before.  I could not bring myself to forgiving her.  I was slipping and slipping quick.  My anger was evolving into hate, and I could not stop crying.  God spoke to me again, “Forgive her.”   I did not answer God, and the longer I took to forgive her, the more I was being eaten from the inside out.

I was losing this battle quickly, I felt like God was saying the same thing to me that he was saying to Cain,

“Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?  But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:6

I called my pastor in pure hysteria and desperation.  He could barely hear what I was saying as I was telling him what happened and my battle with forgiving her.  I told him that I was desperate for his prayers.  As he prayed for me I felt the strength to face God in my raw state.  I was able to think a little bit clearer as I realized that she was at home, weight free because she confessed her sin to me.  I was the one tormented now—I was the one making my bed in my prison.  Remember un-forgiveness is not you holding the other person hostage, it’s the other way around as we learned in week one.

This person took enough from me, and I was not going to allow her to take one more thing.  It was then that I did what was right and let God to carry this burden from me and I forgive her—I let go of her offense against me.  That day, I chose to let God deal with her for what she did.  I did not forgive and FORGET.  That is stupid and impossible.  The bible never instructed that cause we can not naturally forget something as traumatic as betrayal, rejection, and abandonment.   It was a process and it was not an easy one by any means.  

Let’s talk because I know that we have all gotten to a place where forgiveness was the worse word ever.  The truth is though that un-forgiveness is like hating someone so much that YOU drink poison in hopes to hurt them.  Un-forgiveness is ONLY hurting you.  You may not believe it but you have no idea how your unwillingness to let go of the offense hinders you more than helps you.   Look at verse Cain did not forgive God for receiving his offering but God accepted Abel’s. Sin was knocking at his door and knocks on all our doors when we allow an offense to consume us.  

I want to make a challenge to you this week.  Get out a journal and list those who have offended you and why you feel like you can’t forgive.  Then I would like for you to write who is suffering more, you or them and how they are suffering and how your suffering.  Written out, you might see things better.  This is never an easy subject to address but know this, the only way to true healing and growth is through forgiveness. 

Giving Yourself A Piece of Your Mind

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What does life look like when we don’t forgive ourselves?  My oldest daughter Rachel is a sweet kid.  She has so many awesome qualities about her.  She is dedicated, faithful, determined, caring, kind…blah blah blah.  Some of you may be thinking that every parent feels this about their child so why should I go on about my amazing daughter?  Anywho, this wonderful child also has a bad quality, she is super forgetful.  When she had to get glasses it was the same question over and over again, “Have you seen my glasses?”  “Did you move my glasses?”  She spent 22 hrs out of her day looking for things, find them and just to lose them again.  

One day we were all downstairs watching T.V. when I noticed Rachel was missing.  I went upstairs half way to hear her having a very intense, firm even brutal conversation with…herself.  She asked herself why she was so forgetful?  Why she couldn’t get it and why she could never remember anything?  With tears running down her face she went on to tell herself all the things she wasn’t and how she failed herself over and over again.  This one-sided conversation died down, but I could not help feeling bad for her.  

Self Talk

Have you ever had a conversation like this with yourself?  This story may seem funny to some, but some of us are the same way.  It is sad that so many people are angry with themselves due to their inability to meet their own expectations.   One of the sins my husband and I have had to counsel some young people were sexual addiction.  Many of them, along with grown adults, battle with fighting the urge to give in to their sexual desires and are prisoners to this addiction.  Tears have streamed down the faces of boys and girls who have been held captive to this relentless struggle.  

I am not ignorant of this bondage, between 6-13 years of age, I too was held captive to it myself, and I’m very sympathetic to the issues that come along with this struggle.  Many times I broke down crying because even though my heart wanted to do the right thing, I fell prey to my own flesh.  

What does one feel about themselves when they are constantly failing over and over again?  Many of these young people felt dirty, unworthy, worthless and disqualified from the positive messages that they heard preached on a Sunday.  They felt separated from God and his written word because they just didn’t know how He could love them and look past their sins.  They questioned the depths of God’s love and felt as if they were drowning.  They continued to measure themselves day by day by their victories and failures.  

Is not forgiving yourself more dangerous than not forgiving someone else?  Last week, I talked about the meaning of un-forgiveness in the metaphoric sense and not necessarily by its literal definition. Unforgiveness is a prison that holds someone captive till they are set free.  I said we fool ourselves into believing that this act of un-forgiveness is keeping the one who hurt us chained up or imprisoned but that’s not the case.  The one who experiences imprisonment is the one who refuses to let go of the offense.  They carry the burdens and memories of the hurt done to them and allow it to fester within their soul.  So living in unforgiveness is placing yourself in a prision that you have the key to.

What does it look like to live in unforgiveness against yourself?   I feel that not being able to forgive yourself can be a more significant battle than having to forgive someone else.  It can leave an individual crippled from being able to move forward in their life and not to mention what it could do mentally and emotionally.  Look at Matthew 22:39 says that we are to love our neighbor the way we love ourselves.  What happens when you have trouble loving yourself?  If it is hard for someone to love another because of un-forgiveness, wouldn’t it be a struggle for many that harbor against themselves?  

When we can’t forgive ourselves we are no different than my daughter Rachel; who made it a habit of reminding herself how much of a failure she was.  You can become your own devil, your own accuser.  We don’t need Satan himself to shout out our failures or flaws because we have them all written down and review them in our heads.  So many have had good things happen to them, only to sabotage it because they didn’t think it was what they deserved.  They believe that all the wrong done to them, is well deserved; as a result of their mistakes.   

My mother was a devout Christian before my father came into her life.  She knew that my father was unsaved; however, she wanted to be with him even though he was not living his life as a believer.  After a few years of marriage, she knew that she had slipped away from living the life she once dedicated herself to.  She didn’t know what to do, so she forsook her faith altogether.  Six or so years into their marriage, my parents became renters of a house that was converted into a church every Sunday.  They went to every service; they really didn’t have a choice.  After listening to a few of the messages, my mother felt compelled to give her heart back to the Lord.  It was like my father felt what she was thinking and he said to her, “If you ever go up to that altar I will leave you.”  She had a decision to make that Sunday.  She went to the throne of God that day to do one thing—to lay down her salvation at God’s feet.  She told God, “I can’t risk losing my husband.  I don’t want you to ever talk to me again because I choose him over you.”  My mother‘s life from that point was a spiral of, wrong choices, confusion, struggle, pain, hurt and loss.  

At the age of 13, I had such a burden for my mother that all I could do was cry for her.  My older brother and I spoke to her continuously about God, not knowing her desire to remove God from her life,  she rejected all of our invitations.  She didn’t reject because she didn’t want to accept him back, but because she thought that she wasn’t worthy of his love.  It wasn’t until my father passed away that God intervened as if to say, “He’s gone now.  Are you still going to choose him over me?”   My mother did not think she was worthy of God’s invitation because she felt that she had committed the most unforgivable sin.  The battle for my mother’s heart was on.  It wasn’t a matter of God forgiving her—it was now about her forgiving herself.  The scales on her eyes were removed, and it was then that she realized that if God was fighting this hard for her then he had to have forgiven her.  He knew what she had done, but he cared more about having her heart than reminding her of her wrongs.  

So What Do We Have to Do?

 First, we need to know that forgiving ourselves is having the willingness to hand over the keys of judgment and condemnation to God.  We have to be willing to give up our job as judge and jury over our mistakes.  

Second, we have to refuse to listen to the lies we tell ourselves that Jesus blood covers all sins except our own.  When we think of his sacrifice on the cross it doesn’t just cover others sins but it covers ours as well.    As much as we want to think that it’s humility and guilt, our reason for not accepting God’s gift of forgiveness is rooted in pride, stubbornness, and self-centeredness. 

Lastly, we need to think about the question Peter asked Jesus, “How many times do I have to forgive my brother?”  Well, let’s change it to “How many times do I have to forgive myself?”  What was Jesus’ answer…490 times(scripture).  Does it mean that we do the same sin 490 times?  Maybe.  My thought is that we may bring to mind 490 times the wrong we have done, and it is our responsibility to forgive ourselves that many times about each offense.  

What happened to my mother because she did not forgive herself?  Well she stayed away from God for almost  15 years, and in that time my own life spiraled downward, and the man she chose almost took my life and her relationship with all of her children was almost completely severed.  

Keeping yourself in the bondage of un-forgiveness is just a trap, and you don’t realize that the longer you stay bound, the greater the mistakes.  I believe that it would be better to let yourself off the hook and let God deal with you as he sees fit.  I am convinced by his resume’ with me that God will never treat us as we deserve.   

Weekly Challenge:

“Well, Marsha how do I take that first step to forgive myself?” You need to be honest with God about the things that you are struggling with. Be honest with him. Tell him why you don’t think you deserve forgiveness. Then surrender your thinking over to God and allow him to create in you a clean heart and renew a right spirit within you. Read Psalm 51 and meditate on verse 4. If you need help, please email me or comment at your comfort below. Lastly, if you would like to hear more about my testimony, read my book, “The Threshing: A Weapon Forged by Fire.” Sign up here to read the first three chapters for free. You can also buy the full book on Amazon.

Is Forgiveness Only For Those Who Have Wronged Us?

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Isn’t it a command of what we must do for those who have betrayed, harmed and sinned against us?  I’ve discovered that those are not the only causes that may require us to forgive. 

In the beginning youth ministry I started helping my teen girls with different problems, but when it came to issues like severe trauma, I knew I was too young in ministry to take on specific sensitive tasks.  I was heartbroken when a woman came to me desperate because her daughter had been brutally raped months before.  Her daughter was really struggling emotionally and didn’t know what to do.  I felt for this mother as she told me her daughter’s story and her need for a breakthrough.  I was besides myself when this mom asked me to counsel her daughter.  I took a moment and nicely told her that I was not equipped to do counseling of that nature.  I was not educated then as I am now; and to do that, would be dangerous.  I gave her other options to go to the pastor of counseling, but she did not want the pastor, she wanted me.  She was adamant about getting me to help her daughter, but I knew my limits.  This girl’s mother went away disappointed; while I was left wondering if I did the right thing.  Ultimately, I settled in myself that I was making the right decision, let alone, the magnitude of what she wanted for me to do would be illegal.

Forgive ME??

Can the true moral conviction for one person be a moment of betrayal for another?  A few months after this conversation, I was sitting in church listening to the famous message of forgiveness.  The preacher shared the basics about forgiveness, but at the end of the sermon, he had us pray and take a step of faith and forgive those that have harmed us.  He wanted us to go to those who had hurt us and openly confess that we were letting go of the offense.  To my surprise the mother of this girl came up to me with tears in her eyes, letting me know that she forgave ME!  I listened patiently and astonished as she said how she devastated that I would not counsel her daughter and that she built up an offense against me.  She said that she needed me—not the pastor of counseling or anyone else—and my recommendation was offensive and made her think I didn’t care about her or her daughter.  I wanted to interject and defend myself because the fact was…well, I did nothing wrong.  Instead, I thanked her, embraced her and we never spoke again. 

Again, is it possible that you have to forgive people who have not done wrong? Last week, we started the topic of forgiveness. My husband and I had a little debate on if we ever needed to forgive God.  Is there a need to forgive God even though God does not sin, betray or do anything to harm us?  Well, we first have to look at what forgiveness is—not necessarily definition wise—but what is forgiveness mentally or emotionally.  Many have likened forgiveness to someone being set free from prison.  Unforgiveness is a prison that holds someone captive till they are set free.  We fool ourselves into believing that this act of un-forgiveness is keeping the one who hurt us chained up or imprisoned but that’s not the case.  The one who experiences imprisonment is the one who refuses to let go of the offense.  They carry the burdens and memories of the hurt done to them and allow it to fester within their soul.

Why Forgive God?

 In 2005 I was pregnant for the third time.  My previous pregnancy with my oldest daughter Rachel was tough because all I did was throw up.  I was so tired and exhausted that the idea of doing it all over again left me bitter and resentful.  Sam and I made the decision that we didn’t want any more children after her.  To our surprise I was pregnant again whether I liked it or not, so I decided that I was going to have the right attitude during the pregnancy.  I prayed for the baby growing in my belly with building anticipation.  My belly started getting a little bigger, and it got real when I slept on my stomach and felt the resistance at night.  I was almost four months when I realized that I was not sick at all with this pregnancy; it was going better than ever.

It was going smoothly till that horrible day.  All of a sudden, I started feeling pain and bleeding soon followed.   I thought to myself God wouldn’t take this baby from me after I just started loving it.  No this can’t be happening.   It became increasingly apparent that I was losing this baby.  No matter how I prayed and asked for God for help, he did not.  

Sam drove as fast as he could to the hospital, and I got out while he parked the car.  I went into the ER, and after asking me a ton of questions, I felt the worse pain ever, the pain of my baby falling out of my body.  My body collapsed on the floor, and I was rushed into a room, but it was over; my third child was now lifeless on the hospital bathroom floor.  

After many hours of examining me, I was sent home feeling empty mentally, emotionally and even physically.  In silence, Sam and I put Rachel and Joey to bed.  I crawled into bed and laid down drained.  I was in shock as reality set in when I lay on my belly, and the apparent void was there with no resistance.   It was then that I cried bitterly.

Where was God?

I never asked for that child.  Isn’t he the giver and taker of life?  Why did he give me the baby when he knew he was going to take it away?  How could I blame Satan for this?  I prayed for God to provide me with answers but I got nothing.  It was the most silent time in my life to date.  I tried to keep going on with the fact that God is good, loving, caring and would never do anything to hurt me but that just made it worse. 

If God’s character consisted of everything good and perfect, why not warn me or stop it in the first place?  I needed to forgive God even though I knew that his plans were perfect.  I know he never makes mistakes and that he has everything under control.  So, did I need to forgive because God was imprisoned by MY bitterness, anger or disappointment or did I need to forgive God because of my lack of understanding bound me?  I needed to forgive him because in my limited world I can only see the pain that was in front of me.  In this time, I could just see my definition of injustice being done to me; I only judge God by my finite standard.  In my mind he did me wrong, he failed me.  God was not going to come down and show me the end from the beginning, as much as I wanted him too.  He was not going to explain the unexplainable.  What was I forced to do then?  I was forced to trust him.  

Sadly, I was not ready to do that; I cut communication from God shortly after and when I did speak to him my hurt spewed out.  I questioned his character and the puppet master-like quality I believed that he was displaying.  I was worshipping with my lips but not with my heart.  Slowly my love and passion for serving him began to change me.  My un-forgiveness towards him made me cold and numb.    

I remember the day I forgave God, not because he was wrong but because I needed to let him off the hook.  I needed to let go of what I did not understand and do it without getting the answers to my questions.  By my words, God did me wrong, but somehow my un-forgiveness was destroying me more than the loss of the baby.   

Like the mother who was upset, I didn’t have to understand God’s role in my miscarriage, but I needed to forgive Him; even though He didn’t do anything wrong.  Sometimes life’s blows make it seem as though God has sinned against us.  It looks like he has failed or ignored us but that is not true.  God does not sin—he fights for us, protects us and doesn’t sit idly by as our world is being violated.  We must forgive God—but not as a man who has sinned against us, but as the God who is making decisions on our behalf even when we don’t understand.

Is there anything in your life that you need to let God off the hook for?  Do you think he had disappointed you, failed to protect you, stayed silent when you needed answers?  Well, the only way you can receive the truth is if you forgive his action/inaction and trust that he is in control.  Then you return to intimacy with him; it is only then that you can receive the healing you need and the strength to carry on and move forward. 

Weekly Challenge:

Is there anything that you are holding against God?  Take sometime to re-evaluateyour relationship with God.  Is there anything that God did not do for you that you need to forgive God for? List them and ask God to help you get pass the disappointment.

If you need additional help, please email us at thruthewinter@gmail.com or comment below.  Follow us on facebook @throughthewinters.

Forgive them… WHAT DID YOU SAY?!

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What immediately comes through your mind when you hear the words, “Forgive them?”  If you are anything like me, one of the most offensive words in a season of confusion, pain, betrayal, abandonment or rejection is “Forgiveness.” 

For a time, it was all I was hearing in the messages my pastor preached, the plays I saw, the devotion I was reading and even the random scriptures I would come across. My pastor, who is also my friend, knew that this word grated on me like nails on a chalkboard. He found a bit of sadistic pleasure in watching me squirm as the word would come up in Bible Study, which was based on the book, “Unconditional Forgiveness.” What kind of human being would even think about putting those words together?  How is it possible to forgive someone one, anyone one, without a condition. Conditions like:

 “I’ll forgive you if you promise never to do that again.” 

 “I’ll forgive you as long as you admit to everyone what you did to me.” 

Or this one, I use this one all the time, “I’ll forgive you if you know what you’re asking forgiveness for.” 

Who forgives without conditions? I spent time challenging my pastor on this whole concept since even Jesus has a condition on forgiving,

Matt 6:15

Forgiveness of our sin usually happens when we ASK God for that forgiveness… which I think qualifies as a “condition.”

During this time God wanted to see if I learned anything, so he allowed some really interesting people to come into my life and test the small amount of patience I was living with. There were moments—dangerous moments—when I almost left my salvation at the altar just so I could knock some sense into a woman, literally. Then there was another woman who swore I made some outrageous comment to her. I know I was thinking it, but I know for sure I never said it. During this season, I passed some of my “forgiveness” tests and failed on others causing me to go through those testings again. 

Guess what, though?  I learned the true meaning of the word forgiveness.  Forgiveness was a lesson I understood, not because I got it so right, but because I got it so wrong.  It was because of my struggle with life and people that I learned what forgiveness was and—most of all—what it was not.

You May Not What to Hear This

Have you ever met a person that was so deep into trauma and grief that you, yourself, could taste it?  A few years ago I met a woman who went through more pain then I could ever imagine. I listen to her as she brought back to memory the events that brought her to her breaking point.  To my surprise the circumstances of her grief was only the beginning; I was shocked to hear that what she started off telling me was just the beginning. I could not help but pray for the person and myself, as I listened to this heart-wrenching testimony. When the person shared all they could share, they went on to say that one of the worst things anyone could tell them at that moment, (me included )was that they needed to forgive those that left them battered, abused and bruised. To that person’s disappointment, I was going to tell them the very same thing.  Forgiveness is like a scalpel in surgery, it will cut, but it’s to get out the infection.

Now before anyone tunes me out–because you think you know what I am going to say or why I am going to say it–read a little more; both of us may be surprised at what comes out. At some point in my life, God told me that true healing, strength, and breakthrough started as the act of pure forgiveness. You see, when I first received Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, I was so deep in sin at such a young age that I was living in pure darkness and Jesus was my only light. 

Before starting that road with him as my flashlight, I needed to ask God for forgiveness. Why do you ask?  Well like a plant, it was the seed that Jesus planted in me to start my new life. The foundation of who I would become started from the seed of forgiveness. Now picture it with me: if I plant an apple seed, what am I expecting to get from the full grown tree? That’s right, apples. If I plant an orange seed, I’ll expect to get oranges. So if God plants a forgiveness seed then what is suppose to come forth when the plant is grown; fruits of forgiveness. An unforgiving Christian is like a person who lives their life walking on their hands. They think their hands are their feet and walk through life on them. Everything is upside down and nothing makes sense to them. If they weren’t confused as a sinner, they are definitely confused as a Christian living with un-forgiveness as a plant growing in their heart.

Are You Walking On Your Hands?

If we were to compare serving God while holding onto your grudge to walking on your hands, right away there is a difference between you and other Christians. First, you see things upside down. You wonder why certain things come more natural for others. You feel like you can’t keep up with other people because while they are running, you are moving at a snail’s pace. You get bitter and angry at other people because they seem to have happier lives than you. They look stronger and can endure more, whereas you feel like the littlest thing, the smallest hill, or tiniest obstacle causes you to stumble and fall. You start to have envy and strife because you try to obey God, but what he is asking of you is way too hard. I don’t know about you but I know for sure I tried living with unforgiveness. I felt like forgiving people was letting them off the hook, erasing their wrong or giving them a free pass to repeat their offense against me. Forgiveness is not even having to continue a relationship with the person.   Forgiveness is not all that we have been told. It’s not as hard as we think and, surprisingly enough, the ones who we need to forgive the most is not even in our thoughts.

Weekly Challenge:

If you feel like life is upside down or that you feel like you are moving with God at a snail’s pace maybe there is unforgiveness in your life. If you find yourself angry, bitter or envious of others because things seem to come easier for others than you, then again, you may need to get an inventory of any offenses you may be harboring. In these upcoming weeks, I am going to talk about three groups of people we need to forgive and some of the ways we can start the process. Let’s have a nice discussion. Look at this verse, 

Matt:18:21

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Are there those in your life that have hurt you over and over again, a parent, a sibling, your spouse even?  Or maybe there is a hurt that keeps happening over and over again, rejection, betrayal or being abandoned.  These events may not have occurred by the same person, but there is a list of them.  May a list of those of those that you need to forgive and why.

Please join us these next few weeks where I will be asking questions to challenge all of us on our level of forgiveness, even myself.  If you are in need of help, please feel free to contact us through email at thruthewinters@gmail.com or comment below.  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @throughthewinters.

Is God as Broken as I am?

If I am made in God’s image, do my limitations and fragmented thinking mirror who God is as well?  This summer has been enjoyable for me as I have been reading books and understanding some things that happen in my life.  I am beyond asking God, “why” but really “when.”  I no longer ask God why things happen in this world.  The evidence is apparent that the corruption of man and their thoughts have brought us into a place where “good” has left most of humanities ways.  The best of our leaders are liars, cheats, adulterous, murders and these atrocities are horrendous, but—because they are the best we have as our leaders—we must watch the corruption and victimization occur.  We are in a time when those that are called to serve and protect are preying on the lives of the unsuspected.  Parents who are expected to raise their children to be a positive member of society are built to survive instead of thrive.  Parents too, are victimizing their children by their lack of attention, their inability to care for the emotional and mental needs.  Unfortunately, this leaves adolescence to enter this world with an identity that has been abused, raped and stripped.  

If we live in a stewing pot of disgust, filth, evil, wicked imagination and greed…how can we clearly see God for who he really is?  Love is life.  To be truly loved is to truly live, as we spoke about last week.  In 2018, we are living in a loveless generation.  We don’t get love, and when we do experience some form of love, we don’t understand it. Let’s get real, most of us don’t know how real love works so when we experience the power of love we run from it; true love has power that is too much to endure if we are in a fragmented place.  There are also times we take this love to retrieve our selfish desire.  We, as a society, are entirely embarking on an era that will be void of the actual knowledge of pure uncorrupt love.  Debate me all you want but the truth is before us every day.  

I Thought God Was Love? 

Yes, God is love, but because we are struggling with so much grief and trauma, we will not be able to identify it; we will always see God’s acts towards us through the lenses of pain.  We will think that pure love extinct.  What we will go after is a counterfeit version of such affections that it will mask itself, but will not have any power.  I never comprehended the understanding that GOD is love.  

These last few months I have come across authors that have done an exemplary job in showing the power of sin versus the power of love.  What would happen if we just let God love us as he genuinely desired?  It would be like the Hulk loving a smurf but never truly being able to embrace it because of its frailty.  But what if in the Hulk’s deepest desire to love this smurf he grabbed it and hugged it with all his strength?  What would be the result?  That little guy would look like a splatter of blueberry jam on the Hulk’s green chest.  God’s love is 10x more powerful than the Hulk’s embrace, and we are 100x smaller than that blue creature in comparison to God.  

Now there are those that may read this and think things like, “But I don’t feel his love,” “How could he love me and allow these things to happen?”  “If God is loving then…”, “If God is powerful then…”  The book, “The Shack,” has helped change my perspective of God in such a way that I had to pack my spiritual bags and get ready for a spiritual journey to understand God for who he really is.  Let me share some things they said that made me go AHH!!

Question 1.  Why can’t we understand God?

In the book, The Shack, this statement on page 100,“The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much and then call that God.”

What does this mean?  It means that I look at my inner goodness to understand God.  Let me explain; I had a best friend who meant everything to me as a child.  We talked about living life together and growing old together.  We talked about getting married and having children and raising them together.  In our sappiest moments, we would promise never to leave each other.  We promised always to be friends but as we grew up so did our issues.  She walked away from the friendship and in response to her abandoning me, I abandoned her.  Well, she deserved it right?  She didn’t hold up to her end of the bargain so why should I?  My declaration to be her friend “forever” and “never leave her,” had a small clause… “In the event, you leave me…then everything spoken of is null and void.” 

 The best friendship—that I showed my most profound love to and dedication to—was conditional and fickle.  Sadly, we think God is the same.  We are a conditional people.  Our version of love never takes us to the ends of the earth, causes us to swim the deepest ocean or climb the highest mountains for someone who wants nothing to do with us.  Our love is greedy and self-seeking, and we project that kind of love on God, and when he claims to love us we think his love is our love.  

Question 2.  Why can’t we trust God at his word?

Limited people only expect to serve a limited God.  Last week, I talked about how the absence of love in our lives is like clipping the wings of a bird who was designed to fly.  So because we think we are limited then God has to have those same attributes.  Tell the truth, doesn’t the world look different walking on it as opposed to flying in a plane thousands of feet in the air?  We think that God has the same ground view but he is so much bigger and we relate to God as if he is a bird with clip wings.  Our God is free and who we are, does not change his character.

Now think about it, walking isn’t so bad because we are a species that walks but we have found a way to defy our design and fly.  How frustrating is life for a species meant to fly?  You and I are created to be loved and again, “Love is not the limitation…”  God’s love is not leaving us grounded, “love is the flying.  God is love” pg 103. The same world you walk on looks different when you’re soaring over it. 

Question 3.  What is the biggest lie keeping us from understanding God?

When people are constantly betraying you, one adapts their expectation to be something more reasonable.  Betrayal is a violation that can’t be put into word without raw, unadulterated emotion.  Your world is turned upside down because someone you trusted took the most vulnerable part of you and used it to hurt you.  To experience that once is one thing but to experience that again leaves a person begging for ammo to ward off anyone who wants to come into their lives again.  With reason we make a declaration to live life apart from others, but independence has never been God’s idea.  

Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
¹⁰ If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.
¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
    But how can one keep warm alone?
¹² Though one may be overpowered,
    two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.  Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

I Can Do Better On My Own

But what is the harm in independence, doesn’t independence make it easier for me to live life without chains?  When I am apart from others, I won’t be hurting anyone when I fail, and no one can hurt me.  But look at one of the statements made in the book, “When you chose independence over relationship, you become a danger to one another.  Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness.  Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong ones use to make others conform to what they want” pg 125.  

So what the author is saying is that the idea of independence is a dangerous system because you are only thinking about yourself.  What would a world look like if parents were only parenting with themselves in mind?  What would a government look like that only enforce laws that have their own interest in mind?  What would it look like to be in relationships with someone who is only thinking of themselves?  Hmmm, I guess it would look like the world we are in now.  Independence is the mantra of this generation, and it is destroying us.  

Look at this statement made later on, “Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that relationship could exist apart from hierarchy.  So you think that God must relate inside a hierarchy as you do” pg124.  We think that God runs a pecking order kind of world.  We think God classes us, puts the stronger over the weaker.  But He is a relational God who is all about using everyone’s weakness and strength to accomplish unity.  It is far beyond us to think God would want us to saddle ourselves with someone weaker or give away our meaningless possessions to help someone else.  We are wrong to think that God must relate to us the way we relate to people.

Now, when we look at God with those kinds of ideologies we create a God, we think, treats us with the same rules we conjured up.  See just because we are a broken, damaged people doesn’t mean we are serving a damaged and broken God.  Our lenses may be smudged, cracked, or even blackened but how we see God does not change who he truly is and how he relates to us.  

As we finish wrapping up this months topic, we would like to remind you that we are hear for you and if there is ever anything that you need help with, please feel free to contact us through email at thruthewinters@gmail.com.  Follow us on facebook and instagram @throughthewinters.

Do We Honestly Have Free-will?  

My best friend Liz loves nature; she also likes outside more than I am.  Two or so years ago she convinced her husband to buy chicks.  A few months ago she got a new set of chicks, and Liz said that she needed to clip these checks wings because, unlike the other chickens, these new chicken were trying to fly—they were going to the highest point and jumping and gliding.  Believe it or not, living without freedom is like a bird whose wings were clipped.

What’s Free About Free-Will

Free-will has been a convenient topic amongst those who are in some form of protestant religion; God has orchestrated for humanity to live without any limitations; we are free to make choices with nothing driving our decision.  Is free-will really free when there is always a cost to reckless choices?  Am I really able to make self-governing decisions—with no outside influence drawing me to my choices—when the Bible says that God has ordained steps, knows the end from the beginning, never changes and is all-knowing?  We know he is not in the habit of taking prisoners.  So in this week’s article, I want to throw around some thoughts and ideas of what real free will looks like.  I think we have gotten it all wrong and it is a big misunderstanding of what choices we have and don’t have.  How do we all indeed have free will when there are so many testimonies and stories of God interrupting someone’s will?  God has interrupted many plans of bombings by terrorist, interrupted shooters plan to kill, a rapist from raping and stopped an abuser from abusing…so where does free-will really exist?

Real freedom is a topic we lean on when we want to do as we feel but hate when we are the victims of someone else’s freedom.  The mere idea of this freedom makes us think we are in control of our lives when it’s convenient but turn on God when he gives the same opportunity to a good-for-nothing wretches that deserves death. So because God allows this vagabond the gift of free-will—to rape and steal what means everything to us—we then hold our love for God as a ransom because He allowed someone else’s will to bring pain on us.  We think it’s unfair for him to interrupt our will, but in turn, believe it’s justice for him to interrupt someone else’s; if it makes our world better.  Does that seem reasonable?

Grounded Bird

For the last few weeks, we have been using different parts of the book, The Shack, to raise some arguments about tragedy and God’s role in them.  Mack is a haunted man because of a family member’s untimely death.  Because of his pain from losing someone dear, Mack’s faith in God and good, is challenged.    Mack talks about free-will and the character that plays God the Father, talks about man’s limitations.  

It is my thought that choices everyone makes, outside of God, is driven by something.  I do not believe that molesters molest because they are free to; sin, hate, and wickedness is the chain that keeps them bound to this wretched behavior.  Serial killers are not killing because they are free to kill; if anything they held hostage to their emotions than anyone and so are we if we don’t have God.  When we do not trust God and don’t follow God’s instructions we are not living at our fullest capacity; we are limited.  I do not believe that we operate in the free will that God intended. 

On page 99 it says, “Most birds were created to fly.  Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around.  You (us) on the other hand were created to be loved.  So for you to love as you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around…Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly.  That’s not something I want for you.  Pain has a way of clipping a bird’s wings and keeping us from being able to fly.” 

When God created man, he created us to understand love in it’s most intimate form.  We were made to be love.   We were MADE to BE loved.  Do you understand that our purpose in life is not to pursue happiness, or gain money but to live in the center of pure unconditional love.  We are made to receive the most intimate, unreserved version of love that exists in the universe.  This is why we desire companionship, relationship, and acceptance.  

In this wretched world, who could possibly love us to the point where our limitations are none existent?  What would happen if we let go of our fears and allow that perfect person to love us in their most profound capacity?  When we truly understood the power of this love we make decisions with love in mind—not selfishness, malice, greed, fear or spite.  If we are honest, we can admit that we are bound by the chains of selfishness and fear of rejection because all we want to do is take care of ourselves.  When you think of the crimes that are committed, most of them are committed out of selfishness and greed.

Has your pain clipped your wings?  Think about a moment in time that you felt like you were doing so well and something just came in and blindsided you; maybe it was a loss, a betrayal or rejection.  These things clip your wings and keep you from reaching the heights you were meant to experience.  It also keeps us from seeing God from who he really is.

True Love Sets Us Free

How does love and free-will go together?  Everything went wrong when Adam and Eve thought that God didn’t completely love them because he was holding back something they felt they deserved to have; that’s when everything went wrong.  They lost their freedom and became slaves; because of their choices, our wings are clipped. We were no longer able to fly.  Not only that but we are forced to live in a world with other limited birds whose wings are clipped.  And in their desperate effort to remove their limitation, they must violate ours.

On page 102 and 103 God says, “A bird is defined not by being grounded but by his ability to fly.  Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by their intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but everything it means to be created in my image…Love is not the limitation; love is the flying.  I am love”   

Without God, there is no free-will.  Everyone is born into slavery and the only real choice you have is who will you serve.  So unless you choice to bow the knee to God and let his love set you loose, you do not have free-will.  Without God, you are a slave to fear, addiction, insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety, loneliness, disapproval and the list goes on and on; our wants and desires chain us and cause endless limitations in our relationships.

All our tiring desire to satisfy self is like that baby chick jumping off that ledge and gliding for a moment but never soaring.  You know you want to fly, but all you can do is climb to the top of the highest point in your life and glide down, experiencing a moment of freedom but eventually going back to just walking.  

With Love, There is Nothing You Can’t Do

Love restores YOU back to where you needed to be.  When you understand the unlimited power of love and the healing properties—when you saturate yourself in it—nothing can hold you down.  There is NOTHING you can’t do.  There’s nothing that makes you question who you are and how special God created you to be.  You stop trying to prove yourself, and you enjoy being who God created you to be.  The thoughts that plague you about never being good enough, are silenced.  

Let me be clear, free-will and living a life with no limits does have a cost.  You may understand love and have gotten your wings back, but that doesn’t mean you live in a world where everyone is flying and has the same abilities as you.  You may be free in God, but that means you have a better view of those who are hurting themselves to have what you have.  Once you understand love, you can see what love is, and is not.  You can detect when others are not acting in love; most of all, you understand the reason why people do the unthinkable.  With this new knowledge, you go from questioning God, to accepting the truth that freedom is found in love; without it, every deed of man is corrupted and leads to destruction.   

Weekly Challenge:

What area of your life are you living like a grounded bird?  Well let me tell you 2000 years ago Jesus Christ came to die on the cross so that that we were no longer needed to be bound to those sins.  He loved you and I so much that he gave us a choice.  Sin may have you in bondage but it does not take away your choice to serve God.  Don’t allow your pain to cloud view of God.  Today is the day you can give your heart to God and start your flying lessons.  If you are in need of additional help, please feel free to email us or comment below, whatever is most comfortable.  We would love to help you in this process.  Continue to follow us on Instagram and Facebook @throughthewinters.  

Why Don’t We Let God Heal Us?

Do we really believe that God can heal; if we do why don’t we let him?  There are many study guides of the Bible, but one that has genuinely hooked me is the “For You,” series.  It is several different authors from the UK and in America that take every single book of the Bible and break it down so that we can see the modern day relevance.  I have grown spiritually in a tremendous way from reading close to sixteen of the twenty-something books written so far.   One of the devotionals I am on now is “Acts For You.”  In the book of Acts, you see the beginning of the Church starting with a plethora of excitement, danger, and amazement.  The disciples were healing people who were lame, blind and deaf—as Jesus instructed.  The power of the church, in this book, has me to question why we are not experiencing healing of this magnitude in the modern day church.  Isaiah 53:5 says that Jesus was wounded so that we can be healed, but we have been one of the sickest generations ever.  America has found cures for diseases like malaria and smallpox but what about the rise of cancer, diabetes, autism, and infertility.  We see the hands of modern-day medicine but where is our God when it comes to healing?  

Mental Miracle

Not only is there a rise in those areas of disease but there is also a rise in mental illness.  Is psychological healing any less miraculous than physical healing?  Let’s get real, in our churches people attend battling with severe depression, anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder that could equal or maybe double the number of people affected by cancer, and other diseases combined; and perhaps you are one of them.  How is it possible that we can sit in church day in and day out and hear the powerful love of God and suffer with the ongoing, gnawing thought that the life you are living will never get any better than it already is right at that moment?  Depression, for example, can center around the idea that there is entirely no hope—no hope of living a better life than the one they have right at that moment—with or without Jesus.  The despair increases when you have Jesus in your life, and you can’t seem to get the healing you need mentally.  You attend church regularly and listen to the preaching, but it is all you can do to focus and believe that those thousands of promises have your name on it.  

Or maybe you battle with so much anxiety that you can’t even think of stepping out of where you are—even if where you are is full of chaos and despair—at least you are familiar with that place.  The Bible says be anxious about nothing Philippians 4:6 but every day you fail that goal.  Anxiety is not just fear it is the feeling of losing control and not having a handle on how to get it back.  It’s the mental reenactment of what has not happened yet—or what has happened before repeating it’s self.  

Is healing of the mind more miraculous than the healing of a body part?  Last week, we talked about the other book I am reading called, “The Shack,” where a man by the name of Mackenzie (Mack for short), lost a family member very brutally and unexpectedly.  He is face to face with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Mack has a massive grudge against God the Father because he holds him responsible for the loss he has experienced.  He is stuck in his hurt and cannot move on, so God in three forms, calls him for a time of healing and restoration.  In reading this book, I realize that healing of the heart and mind is more miraculous than the healing of the body.  How does a man heal and trust God when God allowed someone he loves so much to robbed from him in such a manner?  How does someone put their faith in God after—what seems like—an epic fails on God’s part?  How do we move forward mentally with such pain and fear building up daily?  

Tell God the Truth

When Mack came face to face with God at the shack, there were so many questions that he started asking.  When God addresses him, this statement came out to me, “I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later…when you’re ready.”  God was not, and is not afraid, ignorant or intimidated by our anger, depression, hopelessness.  Despite what we tell ourselves or the way we try to hide our emotions, God knows everything we are going through mentally, so why deny it?  Many would say, well if God knows it then why do I have to say it?  He knows why I am this way so why go there?  Well, God appreciates hearing us express our feelings—good, bad or indifferent—with our voice.  God will not allow who He is—an all-knowing God—to rob from us the pleasure of being who he created us to be.  Our Lord created us to think for ourselves and express our hurts and pains as we see them.  God will not use his power to take away the thoughts, or the ability to express those thoughts, just because he’s already aware of them.

So where does true healing begin and why don’t we experience it?  True healing begins by facing those thoughts that you are trying desperately to hide, forget or bury.  God can not heal what you do not bring to him.  We chew on thoughts like gum but are too ashamed to speak them out loud; you may feel that not speaking them will keep them from being real.  Sadly, if they are already real in your mind, then they don’t become any less real when you speak it to God for healing.  Your pressing imagination to harm yourself or someone else is already real. Your thoughts of hatred towards God is already real, as well as your disbelief of the things you have read or heard in the Bible; so why not tell him what is plaguing you?  

In this book, Mack tells God that he is cruel, unfair, wrathful, incapable of protecting those he loves, a horrible judge, a horrible example of a father and more.  As harsh as those accusations sound, those are some of the thoughts we may have had at some point during a moment of trauma, loss or abuse.  These moments between God and Mack bring a more miraculous healing than any supernatural physical healing could ever deliver.  God can easily set our bodies back to where he originally designed it, that is not a challenge for him; however, our hearts and minds are for us to think and believe what we want freely.  God cannot and will not invade our thoughts and minds without permission.  He can’t make you trust him; he can’t make you let go of your fear if you don’t want to.  But God can remove cancer from your body whether you love him or not.  He can cure you of lupus whether you believe or not.   Healing in the mind, is a choice that only we can make and to surrender over a part of us that can just be healed when we let go, is even more amazing than what God did in the new church.  

Weekly Challenge:

There are some steps we can take towards healing.

• Check your crutch.   Look at what you are turning too when you feel like you are falling.  For example, many will admit that they seclude themselves and eat junk food that gives them a temporary feeling of satisfaction.  Others watch shows that feed their hurt or mirror their struggle instead of watching something more uplifting and encouraging.
• Review your support system. In this time of your life, you need the right people that will help you and challenge your thinking and help to remove the lies that are continually going through your mind.  

Psalms 1:1-2

          Blessed is the man[a]
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

Anyone that sits, stands or walks with corrupt, sinful, scoffers are not going to experience any healing.  It is so easy to seclude yourself and stay silent about your thoughts, but only you can break that cycle and let those you trust into your dark world of the unknown.

• Go back to the beginning.  Some behaviors that we have are a result of a moment where you feel you were hurt, and we don’t even realize it.   Some bad habits and activity may stem from something simple, and it just needs you to be willing to trace it back to origin to get real healing.

I would also encourage you to get professional faith base help.  God calls himself a counselor for a reason.  A counselor takes time to listen and bring guidance in a time that may seem confusing and disheartening.  God has given us people who have the same gift and can be that physical example of him.    

Next article is a discussion on free will.  Is free will ever really free?

What version of God have you conjured up in your mind?  Version you ask?  Isn’t there just one version of God?  In my church, for instance, we all come to the same place for worship, read from the same Bible, but when I sit with many, the picture of the God they serve is totally different than the God I serve.  What does your God look or seem like to you?  This spring I watched a movie called, “The Shack,” based on the book.  This movie was so unexpectedly emotional and enlightening that I could not help but watch it again and soak in the way the author and director depicted a man’s relationship with God.  

(Spoiler alert if you have not seen the movie.)

Mackenzie (Mack for short) lost someone dear to him; causing Mack to be stuck in his faith.  God gave him a personal invitation to spend some time with Him in a shack away from everything, and the dialogue was astounding.  The questions Mack had for God was harsh, direct, truthful but ever so real.  He asked God the very questions many of us ask about Him when the unthinkable happens. 

So for August and October, we will be talking about the topics, questions and hurts we go through when God does not act the way we feel God should.  His lack of action or His uncaring attitude towards us, when we are so vulnerable, leaves us to ask if He really knows what He’s doing. Does God really love us and should we trust such an untrustworthy God?  

All Present Abandoner

I was not too naïve to understand the omnipresence of God at the age of eight.  As I sat on the hard plastic Sunday School chair listening to one of the sisters in my church teach about the ever-present God I found myself confused and struggling with anger towards this invisible being.  “If God is everywhere then why was He watching me go through my pain and doing nothing about it,” I thought.  The idea that God was watching my father take out that thick brown leather belt to beat me senseless, or that He watched as my molester violated me over and over again, was hard to swallow.  What exactly was God doing while all of this was taking place?  

He was an “ever-present abandoner” in the time of trouble; I rationalized in my mind.  In the movie and book “The Shack,” Mack has taken up the invitation to meet whoever invited him to the shack.  He didn’t think it was actually God, but he knew he was dying inside as questions of his loved ones death burned him.  Mack decided to go just for answers.  After settling in, Mack’s bitterness and mistrust towards God surfaces.  God the Father is reassuring Mack that He loves him as well as the loved one that he lost so brutally.   In his frustration, Mack quotes the words of Jesus as he was dying on the cross, “Father, Father why have thou forsaken me?”  He lets God the Father know that he has the reputation of abandoning those that He loves and who need Him the most.   

Where does one go when one feels totally abandoned by the those who are supposed to protect them?  Many have a view of God, as I did, as one who forsakes you when you need Him the most so why even trust Him in the first place?   Why place your everything in a God who failed you?  What happens when a time comes where you are so desperate, and all He does is leave you once again…or does he?

A Powerful God Who Won’t Protect

Blow after blow I dreaded to think what the next day would bring.  I worried about when my molester would come demanding another “session.”  Why did God allow this to happen to me?    I needed protection; what did you want from God in your time of need and vulnerability? 

Mack is a man who not only was mourning the loss of a family member, he was mourning and angry at the thought of a God that cannot protect.  As a child, he too was the victim of abuse.  It wasn’t until he took matters into his own hands that he was free of the chains of violence, but he wasn’t so lucky when it came to the loss of his loved one.  About a year passed for Mack and his family, God invites him for the alone time.  Though time had passed, Mack still is tormented by the loss.  The question arises at one point in the story of “How can we serve a God who has all the power in the world but won’t use it when the weak are exploited, and the young are robbed of their youth?”  What is in God’s power anyway?  

We read of a God that opens the sea for millions of people, and we have a God that uses a little boy to strike down a 9-foot tall giant, let’s not forget that God shut mouths of the lions when one of his prophets were thrown into the lion’s den.  So has God’s power decreased, or are those just fairytales to dazzle children in Sunday School?    

A God Too Angry to Love

One of the mysteries of the God we read about in the Bible is that we see God’s love, but his anger overshadows it.  How can hurting people find safety in a God that always seems so angry?  He punishes, He destroys, His wrath consumes those not on His side.  How do we know when we are living in his good graces?  This thought can almost be interpreted as an abusive relationship.  What kind of comfort can I rest in when my God never seems to be stable?  

When I was only eight years old, my Sunday School teacher told our class about Hell.  In this opposite universe from Heaven, those that rejected God and wanted to live life their own way, were cast in this abyss with this new villain, Satan.  He was an outcast himself because he wouldn’t follow the rules and those who wanted to follow in his footsteps, received the same reward.  In this dungeon, Satan ruled.  I learned that he hates us and would do anything to get us to come down and join him. 

I don’t know about others, but I remember when my Sunday School teacher talked about hell it gave me comfort.  You see if I was not good enough for God—which I know I wasn’t—then I would definitely be bad enough for this Satan guy.  Satan was easy to please.  I never had to question my status with him.  I never lost my place with him, and I was always hated; wherewith God it seemed like I was conditionally loved.  I felt like I could never honestly keep God happy but I knew I could easily please Satan so to heck with trying to serve a God that had a standard far greater than I could ever reach.  

Like how I viewed my biological father, I saw that God’s love was met with punishment, hate, and destruction, so I thought.  I would rather be in the arms of Satan, even though the consequences were riddled with pain and hurt; at least I knew what I was getting no matter what. 

Religion Ruins God

Can you relate to any of my previous hurts and pains?  Maybe you’ve shared in some of my own views.  Well, let’s face some truths and address some of the fallacies that religion causes.  Many times we mistake religion for relationship.  A wise man once said that religion works from outside in, but relationship works from inside out.  So let’s drop the religiosity and come to God with our hurtful ideas of Him so that He can fix and readjust our false views.

Christianity is the only faith where we question our God.  There is no other religion that I’m aware of where the god says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” All the other faiths condemn you when you don’t trust their ways; trust that their god will taste good.  Understand this, God is not afraid of our misunderstandings, anger, disappointments or our struggle with believing Him.  The circumstances of life may have left us battered and bruised, but it is only God’s patience, and love that helps us to come back and become stronger.

In, “The Shack,” one of the lines I loved was, “Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationships.”  When I started this journey, I realized it was going to take time, and I was going to get bruised climbing the mountain, but as I got closer I realized my God never left me when I was experiencing this abuse.  It was His presence that kept me strong during the times of pain.  The more I climbed I realized that God’s power was more than just about stopping my father from abusing me, it was about crafting me and using the thing that was meant to destroy me into someone stronger.  I never thought that strength could come from weakness, yet that’s the kind of God we serve, and I must accept that.  This world has made its choice not to submit and follow God, and as such evil, hate and harm will exist. God, however, will not leave His children to fend for themselves.  Just as He was there when Jesus took the lashings, He was there with me as I was beaten.  Just as God was there when they mocked His Son, God was there when I was told I would never amount to anything.  In the same way, God was there when Jesus conquered death and the grave; He was there when my wounds became weapons for His Kingdom.

My journey allowed me to let go of my thoughts of how God should use his powers.  Even through moments of horror and pain, there is a plan to create in each of us a weapon and warrior for the Kingdom.  Learning how to trust God when you don’t see a reason to, may not always come easy.   You may still have your opinions of how God should handle certain situations; however, we must learn that our point of view is limited in the scope of life and scripture teaches us we must abandon our own thoughts and learn to trust the God who sees and knows all.    

I pray that you will come back for the month of August as we look into this book. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Please follow us on facebook and Instagram @throughthewinters.  If you are in need of additional help please feel free to email us at throuthewinter@gmail.com.

Have you ever lived in a world of lies, one full of disillusion?  How do you move away from that kind of world in hopes to enter a world of truth and value?  What would your first step be to change from one to the other?  

In these last four weeks, we have had the pleasure of meeting “One Hot Mess,” TTW’s newest blogger.  She has shared with us of how her childhood was a lie in week one , then about a season in her life where everything began falling apart week two.  She shared with us about the paths she took leading her into darker territories of her life week three  , and lastly, she admitted to us God needed her to face the lies in order to give her the truth week four .  In this article OHM, wants to share with us some of the steps she to live the life God had destined for her.

Acceptance Is The First Step

I reached out to Marsha as she was getting ready to launch this website and republish her first book.  I explained to her all that I was struggling with, and she began to counsel me.  I had been to other counselors in high school (like when my mom and dad divorced for example) and to the Christian therapist before I had my daughter, but my time with Marsha was different because as God led her, she not only asked me questions, she gave her own insight to what I shared.

The hardest part was when I told Marsha my whole story.  I had such a hard time talking about Damon, but she wouldn’t let me get past it.  I started out by saying, “Damon and I were intimate.”  She said, “No, you weren’t intimate.  That’s what you do with your husband.”  So I struggled to say, “I had sex with him.”  As I went on Marsha asked me, “If you knew what was going to happen that night, would you have had sex with Damon?”  I said, “No,” so she asked, “Okay so what does that mean?”  I had already been crying at this point, but it hurt so much for me to admit that Damon had betrayed me. He was dishonest with me, and because of his dishonesty, I was pinned to make a decision I would not have otherwise made.  I had to acknowledge that I not only “had sex,” I had been violated. 

We went on to discuss why this was so hard for me to admit.  The control I had been trying to gain from when my parents separated back in middle school is the same control I wanted to keep by denying what happened to me with Damon.  I would be lying if I said I fully believed all of this after speaking to Marsha.  At first, it made sense, and I was completely shocked, but I questioned if it was true.  For years I had thought of myself as a nasty, promiscuous girl and that was the testimony I had always shared when people asked me how I became a follower of Jesus.  Don’t get me wrong, I was promiscuous in other parts of my testimony, but this instance was the one that I would use to define who I was.  So I wrestled with what Marsha showed me because if it was true, it would change everything.

My biggest fear of sharing my full story was not knowing whether people would believe I was violated or just think I was a dirty, good-for-nothing. I was looking for the world to confirm what had happened to me because I didn’t think my feelings alone proved anything. I had reasoned that yes, Damon lied, but I fell for the lie.  I reasoned that because I never said no, I did give my consent.  My conversation with Marsha made me rethink those things, so I decided to do some research on what consent is.  Allow me to take a moment to share what I learned — it just happens to be what God used to set me free.

What Is Consent?

Here is what I always knew:

Consent is when two (or more) parties have a mutual agreement and desire to do something, and have the freedom or perceived freedom to say no at any time to that something. In my case, that something was sex or anything related to it.

When one party says, “no,” the other party does not have consent and should not move forward.

Here’s what I know from experience:

Consent doesn’t always have to be asked, and you can consent without saying yes. For example, Jackson doesn’t necessarily have to ask me if I want to have sex, sometimes he can just take my non-verbal communication as wanting him to make love to me.

This is what my research taught me:

Saying yes doesn’t always mean consent.  If a person feels pressured or threatened to say yes against their desire, that is not consent; it is called sexual coercion.

The University of Michigan says that coercion is “a tactic used by perpetrators to intimidate, trick or force someone to have sex with him/her without physical force.” Also, “A perpetrator who uses coercive tactics knows that his or her victim neither wants nor enjoys this sexual interaction.”

Specifically in my case, The University of Michigan lists “I’ll spread rumors about you if you don’t have sex with me” as a coercive statement. This wasn’t one that was said to me directly, but it was part of the pressure I felt being used against me as I made my decisions.

Back when I researched this for the first time I just searched the internet for “What is consent?”  I knew I hadn’t been “raped” or even “sexually assaulted” so I thought that because I didn’t have a legal term for what I had experienced, I wasn’t really a victim.  I found one website that mentioned sexual coercion, a term I had never heard before, and I cried because I felt like that was precisely what had happened to me.  Now that I know the term, I can search for it online, and several articles about it shows up, further confirming that just because a person says yes, doesn’t mean there was consent.

This was OHM’s truth but what’s yours?  Maybe you need to admit that you are in a domestic violent relationship.  It could very well be that you have to admit that you battle with feelings of being abandoned. Or maybe you don’t want to admit that you are addicted to something, drugs, alcohol or pornography…you have to face the truth to break apart the lies.  The Bible says that truth will set you free (scripture).  Jesus is the truth that will get you free from the lies you are battling with. 

The Beginning of Freedom

My research gave me the validation I needed to start healing.  I was able to pity myself because I no longer saw myself as repulsive. Rather, I was able to forgive myself, and I started to look at myself with the comfort God had for me.  I also suddenly hated Damon and all the guys who were involved.  I was angry that they took advantage of me and that they let me think it was my fault.  I was also completely hurt over how Johnny prostituted me to his friend, as I shared in week 4.  Because I had “forgiven” them for something I thought I chose, I wasn’t prepared to go backwards and have bitterness toward them.  Now I know that I needed to understand what had truly happened in order to truly forgive and truly be free. I wasn’t experiencing freedom up to that point because I didn’t even know what I needed to forgive them for. It took a long time for me to do it for real, and I know that was completely normal.

For a little while I also struggled with acknowledging that God allowed these boys to hurt me, and I had a hard time forgiving Him.  Marsha’s blogs on forgiveness helped me so much to believe that even though I didn’t understand, God is good.

I was also able to learn how to change my mentality from victim to victor. After accepting my story for what it really was, I finally had power over the flashbacks I had at night. Because I knew where they came from and why they were so impactful, I was able to turn to God instead of expecting my husband to make things better for me. I had to work hard at capturing those thoughts that wanted me to feel defeated and depressed.  My husband and I also attended counseling together.  I learned how to communicate the things that would trigger the defense response I had at the beginning of our marriage, but I also learned how to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he loves me.

I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not hurting anymore.  Even though I actively forgive those boys, I am still being healed. However, I do know that if I saw them on the street, by God’s grace I would be kind toward them. That is truly freedom for me.

Freedom for You

I struggled for a long time because I didn’t really know what I needed God’s help with. How can we be healed if we don’t realize what we need healing from? I encourage you, if there are things from your own past that seem to be interrupting your life and consuming your joy, don’t ignore them, dig into them. Find a Christian counselor and work through the pain or trauma that you may have.  Even if you have tried therapy before, sometimes different seasons bring up different issues.  “Shop around” for a counselor until you find one who helps you to see the big picture that you may be missing.

I also want to challenge you. Once you have started talking to a professional about the things you have been struggling with, begin to look at areas where you can start to walk in victory — not as a way to deny what has happened, but to solidify the work that you put into embracing your whole story. For me, walking in victory meant taking responsibility for my emotions and seeking God first over the people he has placed in my life; then communicating with them how to help me. Now the flashbacks are rare, my husband can touch me without me feeling like he’s trying to attack me (it’s more of a tolerable annoyance), and I am trusting that God is with me in my darkness.  There are other things that I need to grow in, but I have come a long way. If God can do it for me, He can absolutely do it for you. If Jesus sets you free, you are free indeed!

If you are in need of help, please feel free to contact us through email at thruthewinters@gmail.com. We have resources we can connect you with.  Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @throughthewinter.