The God of the Impossible

I am weary with my crying out;

My throat is parched.

My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

 

Psalm 69:3

 

 

Those of us who have been apart of Christian circles for awhile, have heard that there are three answers to prayer. "Yes," "No," and "Wait." I have always been able to handle the "yes" and "no" answers, because they are immediate and the matter at hand feels settled. There is very little confusion in clear cut answers. It feels like I have been heard, and I know that I had been answered in a way that is best for me. 

 

On the other hand, the wait answers are hard. For a long while I wasn't sure why. Then our small group did a Bible study on the concept of waiting on God. The pastor opened the study by having each one of us share what we found difficult about waiting on God. Everyone gave that made sense, but in my heart of hearts I couldn't put my finger on why I found it so hard to wait. Later he shared a verse that essentially said that God has His ears turned to those who are waiting on Him. That really resonated with me and helped me see what was hard about waiting on God. When God didn't answer my prayers, I had been assuming that He didn't see me and that He chose not to hear me. If it was something I felt very passionate about, I would sometimes even envision myself climbing to a mountain top and crying out to Him in hopes of being seen and being heard.  

 

I realized for the first time that night that God's waits were an invitation for me to keep on talking to Him, not a sign that I had been neglected by God. His waits were not a reason to withdraw and gravitate to the lies that I am invisible and not worth listening to. His waits have been and continue to be an invitation to keep on talking...

 

   ...talking until any pain in my heart is turned to joy

   ...talking until the lies I believe are exposed and replaced with His truth 

   ...talking until my unbelief is transformed into belief

   ...talking until my desire for God is greater than my desire for His benefits

   ...talking until my will is perfectly aligned with His

   ...talking until by mustard seed-sized faith is big enough to move mountains

 

I now realize the waits don't mean I am neglected; they are periods of times that are designed by the wise Creator to mature and sanctify my oh so human heart.  

 

As I have been thinking about waiting, I realize that waiting on God to answer prayers isn't the only waiting to which we are called. There are times we wait for God to fulfill His promises. One of the most powerful examples of this found in the story of Abram and Sarai who were barren and unfortunately living in the midst of a people who worshiped fertility gods.   

 

Jehovah called Abram and Sarai out of that situation to a new land, promising to make them a great nation, which implied to them that they would become parents. That promise must have been like music to their ears. They left and were blessed abundantly with material possession...but, for a child they waited... and they waited...and then they waited some more.

 

During their long wait they had a few missteps and a few lapses of faith in which Abram lied about Sarai being his wife for fear he would be killed. In Genesis 15 we even get a glimpse of Abram trying to make sense of God's promise and the lack of it being filled promptly when he asks God if maybe his relative Eliezer was to be his heir. God restated His promise as a covenant contract with Abram trying to reassure Abram that He meant business. 

 

Later, Sarai tries to help God out as well. She gives Abram her handmaiden to raise up children for them, causing all sorts of problems. As Abram turns 99 and Sarai 90, God not only visits again and restates His promise, He changes their names. Abram became Abraham which means exalted Father and Sarai became Sarah meaning princess because kings would come out of her line. Then they waited some more. The Lord visits again and this time Sarah laughs when she hears the promise. If she is anything like me, the laughter probably wasn't born out of joy, but out of cynicism.    

 

I found that as I tried to put myself in their sandals for a bit I became less judgmental. I realize they were living a story as it was being penned and couldn't see the ending like I can. In the context of their story, their questions, their scheming, their actions, and even Sarai's laughter make sense because they're so human, just like me. Month after month, their hopes would rise and fall with her menstrual cycle. It probably even felt as if God were dangling their hearts' desire in their faces and then every month pulling it back.

 

Man, hadn't they already born the shame of infertility in a culture that idolized fertility? Hadn't they stepped out in faith and obeyed God by going to a new land? Hadn't a part of the promise been fulfilled in their amassed wealth? Why not it all?

 

So, the offer to help God out makes sense to me. In all honesty there are times that I do the same thing. When I am going through something that in my human mind doesn't seem match up to what I understand of God's Word, I try to reason it out to make it make sense. I really can't blame Sarai and Abram, for wondering, for misunderstanding, or for offering God solutions in how He could bring His promise to reality in their old age. Maybe they were trying to help God because they saw the situation as impossible. Yes, their view of God may have been small and they may have lacked spiritual understanding. But, sometimes my view is small, too.  

 

During the wait they experienced things that gave them a bigger and more accurate picture of their God. They saw Sodom judged and destroyed and Lot's life spared. They experienced God's intervention and protection when they told lies out of fear. They met King Melchizedek--the priest of the most High and defeated armies. 

 

Ironically, the couple who had been promised a child lived long enough for her life blood Sarah to cease and for all to know Abraham and Sarah's bodies were incapable of reproduction. They lived long enough for their unbelief to be exposed through her laughter...then and only then the God of grace acted. And in His acting God showed Himself to be the one true God, the Creator, and the Author of life. 

 

Hebrews 11 tells us that Sarah came to believe and because she believed she was able to conceive. Maybe a part of the wait served to purify their faith so that they could believe the unbelievable and maybe a part of the wait served to show them that Jehovah is the God of the Impossible! God resurrected their sexually dead bodies and gave them a child in old age, turning their grief to laughter and their scoffing to faith.

 

In acting God also reconnected their sexuality to their spirituality. For the chiasm between the later two happened during the fall and it had grown wider by man's  establishment of false religions that idolized fertility and sacrificed young girls as temple prostitutes. By His actions, God reestablished the purity of the marriage bed and the sanctity of the marriage covenant sealed spiritually by the sexual relationship. 

 

The story of Abraham and Sarah gives me such hope with all that is going on in this world --wars,  earthquakes, droughts, famines, tsunamis, persecutions. I know that Jesus promised to return and when things heat up in this world I find myself wondering just like the early church if God has forgotten his promise. But 2 Peter 3:9 says, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance."

 

It is so important to accept that the waits are intentionally designed by His love-scarred hands. My job during the waits is three fold. First, I am to be prayerful--pouring out my heart so that all that stands in the way of my faith is exposed and removed. Second, I am to be patient, believing that God is working both in the world and in the spiritual realms in ways that my human mind cannot understand. Third, I am  to be a promise seeker who diligently pours over His Words because they remind me of who He is and give me hope.

 

His Word says, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." (2Peter 1:3-4). His promises are precious and they are great. He gives them to me so that I can become more like Him. The enemy will try to convince me that God is not listening. But the truth is His ears are always turned to those who belong to Him. There is no greater time to display faith to a dying world than when I am waiting for God to answer prayer or waiting for God to fulfill His promises. 

 

So, how are you doing at being prayerful, patient, and a promise seeker during the times that you are waiting on God? Some times I falter, but I am trying. I would love you to share what you have learned as you have waited on God! What did you learn about Him? What did you learn about yourself? And what did you learn about life? 

 

 

 

God Meets us in our Deepest Pain

"He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from who men hide their faces

He was despised, and we esteemed Him not."

Isaiah 53:3



The recent death of Robin Williams touched my heart deeply because he was able to touch our human hearts at a deep level with both laughter and tears. He always presented himself as a kind and decent person in interviews that he granted in the midst of the crazy Hollywood culture. The death of someone so well known triggers grief in each of us even though we didn't have a personal relationship with him and that is OK. Because his death was classified as suicide, the grief is more complicated, leaving us with all sorts of questions and all sorts of judgments.

As saddened as I was by his death, I was more impacted by the responses of believers who blogged expressing thoughts and opinions. Some of the blog posts were full of compassion and hope as was Ann Voskamp's. Her blog gave me a lot to think about, brought up parts of my own story I hadn't thought about in a while. She talked about things I too had experienced within the church and I was sad that she had experienced those, too. It was a good sadness because it reminded me of how to respond in a godly way to hurting people.

Others bloggers, like Matt Walsh, wrote posts about William's death that made me cringe and grieved my heart. Ironically, it is because he reminded me of the same things Ann had. The difference was that Ann pointed out those things from her personal experience and she imparted hope and a challenge to love as Jesus loves. Matt wrote from a critical perspective that sounded judgmental and shaming, which didn't offer hope and my fear is that it will silence those who are hurting and don't want to be judged.

I became deeply acquainted with depression after the birth of my third child. The pregnancy was tough because a man broke into our home in the middle of the night. I woke up with him touching my night clothes. Even though my husband woke up and the man ran, it did trigger PTSD which kept me from sleeping through the rest of the pregnancy. If I did fall asleep, I would awaken my two preschoolers and my husband by screaming when I was dreaming or having flashbacks of traumas I previously experienced. During the day, when one of my little ones approached me from behind, I would screamed in terror instead of turning and sweeping them up playfully in my arms. We sold that home and moved right before the baby was born. I was excited and thought the move would solve everything. But the fear I felt wasn't a fear of a certain place, it was a fear of being unsafe in my own skin.

After the baby was born, my husband was studying at the college and I walked into our home and put the kids to bed after church one night and I sat down and started crying and couldn't stop. I was confused and kept telling myself I had everything I wanted--a relationship with God, a great husband, three beautiful children, a new home, and yet somehow I couldn't shake the dark feeling of dread and fear I lived with for several years.

I visited the church library at one point and found a book called Happiness is a Choice.  A few things  helped a little, but try as hard as I could, I couldn't resolve the darkness I experienced and felt even more ashamed because I even failed at choosing happiness. After another pregnancy, I told two doctors and one corrected nutritional deficiencies and one corrected a minor thyroid problem which helped a lot. I also began to run, boosting my brain chemistry and felt hopeful. God also put some key people in my life that listened to me and encouraged me as a mom, a believer, and gave me the gifts of friendship and fellowship centered around God.

After the birth of another child and two moves across the country, I went through another season of pain and darkness I thought would never end. No amount of trying to choose happiness worked. I tried to silence dark thoughts and I functioned, but I hurt down to the deepest parts of my soul. In addition to the depression I was experiencing broken relationships, two things I thought Christians weren't supposed to have. I struggled with an eating disorder in which I bounced back and forth from anorexia to obesity and back again and the thoughts were as dark as the self-loathing was deep. I believed my family would be better off without me and construed plans that would lessen their pain. One wise friend I confided in told me honestly he didn't know how to help me, but believed God wanted to help me through counseling. After a couple of years of wrestling with the shame attached to going to counseling, I did seek it. I began to find some relief and hope in the office of Christian counselors. Sadly, I heard many negative comments about believers who sought counseling from Christian leaders. I even had one person shove a Bible in my face and tell me if I spent more time in it I wouldn't have depression or an eating disorder. I was reading, praying, and attending church. I was hurting and wondering why this God thing seemed to work for everyone but me. I hated the fact that as I woke up day after day, pleading God to either heal me or take me home. I hated that I could love another and care about them so deeply, while the loathing of myself was destroying my heart.

I want to make it clear that even though I had some bad experiences during the dark time, I did have some people in my life who were believers who spent hours encouraging me in the work I was doing with counselors. Some may have wanted me to get done quicker, but others were patient and understood depressed wounded people are suffering and their minds move slowly. I didn't choose to be happy anymore, but I did choose to quit trying to please the critics and allowed the healing process to be what it was--slow steps and tiny victories overshadowed by slips and grief. I chose therapists that understood I believed Jesus was the healer and I chose to dive in and work hard, because I knew for me it was a matter of life or death.

The counseling office was the first place I shared the hurts of the past that drove my disorder as well as the hurts I was presently experiencing. I expected to hear the Christian admonition to forgive, but what I experienced was compassion and having someone enter the trenches and cry with me, get angry over the sin perpetrated against me, and then rejoice with me as I began to move forward. I had the gift of someone who listened to the words I needed to say to get well and someone who made it safe to cry tears I needed to cry.

I also learned the difference in being self-centered and self-aware so I can take care of myself and love others in healthier ways. I learned to confront in godly ways so I didn't live as a human doormat. I learned to forgive from my heart, acknowledging events, pain, and grief rather than living in denial and stuffing pain.

I was encouraged to spend time in the Word especially Psalms so I could learn to express emotions and thoughts to God in the way the man after God's own heart did. I filled journals with letters I wrote to God, processing traumatic events and painful emotions as well as the goodness of God. I also chose to spend a time studying the names and characteristics of God and found that some of those names were ascribed to Him by hurting people just like me. I began to explore in minute detail the gospels and gained glimpses of how Jesus talked to people and how He treated them. He never shamed broken people, but He confronted harshly those who thought they weren't. I learned that He experienced and expressed all the same emotions I felt, but stuffed. I came to realize that unbelief isn't just not believing what the Word says about God, it is also not believing what God says about me.

During the time of counseling I wasn't shamed for my concerns, but taught to cast my cares upon God by naming them to Him rather than pretending they didn't exist. I learned that the person who told me tears were a sign of weakness was wrong and herself deceived. I learned that I could face the past and that God was big enough to heal it and to hear my questions, thoughts, and emotions about it. I learned all emotions are God-given and serve as a good indicator that I am alive. I learned to read the messages the emotions tell me and to manage them. I found a courage in the midst of my fear that I didn't know I had.

I've said all of that to say, I am deeply saddened when someone takes their own life. I understand first hand  the desire to end the dark feelings of hopelessness, despair, and shame. I understand the desire to end the pain I believed would never end. I feel sad that people have written things in the Christian community that is so judgmental. I believe God is the author of life, but also believe there is a huge difference in being sad for a few days or grieving for a season and in suffering clinical depression that is debilitating and clouds one's perceptions and decisions making processes in the same way drugs or alcohol can. I believe it is only by the grace of God that I didn't take my life. I know some have sought every kind of help possible and didn't make it. Rather than judging them I will simply acknowledge that I don't know why. I refuse to judge the validity of another's salvation, another's strength or lack there of, or another's character at a time like this.

I want you to know I found great joy and purpose in doing the work I did to overcome depression and trauma. While, I will never be like someone who hasn't had those experiences, I have found in facing the pain of those experiences I have had the joy of seeing God intricately involved in my journey and experienced first hand His comfort. I have experienced His strength in my weakest moments. I have experienced the truth of His Word taking form in my heart through the wrestling I've done with God.

Most importantly, as I read through the Gospels I realized Jesus experienced every emotion I have felt, even sorrowing unto the point of feeling He would die from it. He was abused, lied about, misunderstood, falsely accused, hated, rejected, and yet He loved and He obeyed God by taking on my sin. I began to find solace in the truth that the Savior I had embraced so long ago was a traumatized Savior, a man troubled deeply by sorrow. The scene of Him in the garden shows He understood the struggle, the sorrow, the aloneness, and even the despair. The scene also taught me to hang on to God knowing that what looks bad is often the vehicle through which His goodness, grace, and mercy are delivered. As I came out of that dark season, I began to grasp the truth that my story as painful and ugly as it was at times is a beautiful story of redemption, restoration, and healing. Out of the ashes, He has given me a ministry of comforting other women who have been deeply wounded and I can say today, that the joy in watching precious ladies find Jesus in their pain is overwhelming and the privilege of seeing them leave our groups as women no longer defined by their pain and their pasts is indescribably rewarding.

I learned so many beautiful and powerful things about Christ from my dark season. I have come out of it finding profound joy. I think of the cross and what that must have looked like to the world. It grew dark, the ground shook, the Savior died, and the flock scattered. It looked like the end. But what they could not see at the time was that during the darkness, human sin was overcome by God's righteousness. Hatred was defeated by God's love, The Deceiver was silenced by the Truth. Death was overcome and the light shone through the darkness erasing every nook and cranny. I fear the  tendency we have as a church to judge those who take their own lives or who struggle will emotional pain will keep us from being transparent, compassionate, and loving. I fear it will keep us from being the hands and feet and voice of Jesus to those in pain. I fear it will leave us stuck in our miserable pride rather than foster humility.

I know when I find myself judging another I am experiencing fear, struggling with insecurity, avoiding pain, am uncomfortable with something or someone, or am trying to fit God into a box so He and His ways make sense and feels comfortable and safe to me. But to be honest, I want a God who is bigger than comfortable. I want a God who is bigger than my perception of safe. I want a God who refuses to be boxed in by my simple human mind. I hope we, as believers, use Williams' death to do some soul searching and heart correcting so we love as He loves. Maybe compassion and a willingness to understand the mind of someone in so much pain can teach us to love in tangible real ways and to speak God's hope into a heart filled with despair. Shame only causes their pain to be intensified and then buried deeper where it festers.

Thank you, Robin, for making me laugh and making me cry and making me think. Thank you for talking so transparently about your struggles. Your death and its circumstances deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion...its the least we can do for one who has impacted us in such profound ways.

Forgiveness Part 3--The Power of Prayer in Forgiveness

"Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,

and whose sins are covered."

Romans 8:4

 

The more I researched the topic of forgiveness, the more I realize how complicated a subject it is. It's complicated because of the way we define forgiveness and the way we take verses out of context without considering the whole counsel of the Word of God as we formulate our views on forgiveness. Some material says we forgive only if a person repents, apologizes, or changes their behavior. Some material says we have to forgive for God to forgive us. 

 

Some of the confusion comes from intimately lacing restoration and reconciliation with forgiveness. Some of the confusion comes from emphasizing the need to forgive without emphasizing the need to do work to rebuild trust and a healthy relationships after betrayal occurs. Some relationship shouldn't be restored because restoration prevents a person from experiencing painful consequences that may lead him or her to repentance. Sometimes restoration without repentance places us or loved ones in danger and that is never okay. Some of the confusion comes from seeing forgiveness as the sole "fix" for our wounded hearts. Forgiveness doesn't release us from pain, just from the compulsive replaying of offenses and the seeking of revenge. Some confusion may even come from the church using forgiveness as a way of avoiding confrontation and the living with the consequences of sinful choices. 

 

I recently attended a marriage conference with several workshops and plenary speakers, many of which touched on forgiveness. As I listened, I realized that forgiveness alone doesn't take away our pain. Forgiveness requires humility and a relinquishing of our desire to get even, to hurt another as much as we have been hurt, and to see justice done our way in our timing. Forgiveness doesn't automatically grant restoration and reconciliation. Repentance and a willingness to do what ever it takes to take responsibility for one's actions is required for that. Forgiveness doesn't erase the past, it gives us a way to live with it without letting it control our present or our future. Forgiveness isn't saying what happened doesn't matter, it saying I trust God with this person and with my pain. Forgiveness isn't easy, it requires great faith and a work of God's Spirit in us.

 

So, the question we often find ourselves wrestling with is, "How do I reach the place I can forgive, when it feels impossible?" In a nut shell, the answer is prayer. I know, it sounds like a religious platitude, but please bear with me as I explain what I mean by it.

 

Because God wants us to be radically honest with Him, I believe we need to be honest with Him where we are at in regard to pain and forgiveness, trusting that He will meet us there. If we don't want to forgive, we can begin by asking Him to give us the willingness to forgive. If we are willing, but don't know if we are capable of forgiving a particular offense, we can ask Him how we can get to that point. If we are willing and believe we have reached a place of forgiveness, we can then ask Him what does forgiveness look like in that relationship and if He wants us to confront or to consider reconciliation or restoration or simply to release the person and get out of the way so God can do His work. 

 

So, what do we do with all of the messy feelings that get in the way of our choosing to forgive? There are two types of prayers that help us work through our feelings and enable forgiveness. The first is to talk to God about the person. Be like a child and tattletale to God to your hearts content. David did this type of thing in many of the psalms. Tell God what happened, how it impacted your life, your heart, and your relationship with the person. Tell God what you had needed and wanted from the relationship. Try to be emotionally honest with God, naming the emotions you are experiencing, the why's you have on the tip of your tongue, and how you are feeling about God's call to forgive.

 

Don't be tricked by the tempter to stay at the anger stage. Look under the anger and identify hurt, disappointment, sadness, and frustration.  Write out lies you believe and vows you may have made to protect your heart from more pain and come back to the truth of who you are in Christ and to the truth that the offender, is a broken image bearer.

 

Check for distortions in thinking--are you embracing all or nothing thinking? Are you employing catastrophic thinking? Is a past hurt being triggered by the present hurt?  Are you personalizing things that aren't really about you? Then ask God to show you the truth of the situation and His work in it. I did a lot of this kind of work with a Christian therapist. I wrote out the process letters and read them and processed them and prayed over them in her office. It was a freeing work because I was encouraged to be radically honest and as a result realized God didn't zap people because they were angry or hurt. It was also freeing to me to have someone hear the garbage in my heart and head and display God's grace to me in the midst of anger and frustration and sadness. This helped me see that the ugly parts, the weak parts, and the wounded parts could be seen and heard and treated with dignity, kindness, respect, and grace. I think God must hate the pretense of pretending everything is fine when it isn't...yet so often we require that of other and of ourselves. What if the way out of the pain and anger is a process that frees us to let go and embrace our humanness and the humanness of others who bear the image of our Creator?.   

 

Secondly, as your emotions began to heal, we can love the person we consider to be our enemy by praying for the person. I often use Scripture so that I am not just praying my judgments of the person. If the person is a nonbeliever, I pray for their salvation and God's mercy to be fulfilled in them. If the person hasn't repented I pray for that, so that they can be set free form the bondage of their sin. If a person is a believer, I pray through Scriptures like the ones found in Paul's letters that outline the characteristics God wants for them. For example, if I were wounded by gossip, I might pray that God will help the person speak words that build up the hearer. If I were robbed, I might pray that God would help the person become a giver. I would maybe even write their initials in a prayer journal with the reference for the verse. I also pray any other verses that come to light as God's Spirit prompts me. After praying for a person who had harmed me, I felt God's Spirit impress on my heart that no one had ever prayed for the person before. What a privilege to be the one who did!

 

In closing, I know some of you are probably thinking if she only knew my story. I know life is painful and that we live in a sin-filled world and that the Enemy would do anything he could to convince God's people that the wrong they have suffered is beyond forgivable. I have even cried out to God for precious friends who have had to forgive what in my mind and my heart seemed unforgiveable and then be privileged to watch them work through the issues that needed forgiving. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun, but it was so freeing for them and they were filled with love and joy that most people never ever possess because they were obedient and willing to see God work. When we accept that boundaries are okay for safety and repentance can be required for restoration, we can let go of fear and began to seek God in order to heal and to forgive. When we don't short change the process of forgiveness by excluding the work of confrontation and the work of building godly relationships, we allow God to turn ugly situations in to beauty. When we let God meet us in our pain, we will recognize the works of grace and forgiveness are actually opportunities in disguise to pour love into others' messy lives in the same way that God, Himself, has poured into our. Maybe, just maybe, our ability to forgive is intimately tied with how big our faith is...and God is in the faith-growing business. 

 

See Beth Moore's book, Praying God's Word for more help on forgiving!

Forgiveness Part 2--This Thing Called Forgivenss

"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,

compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience,

bearing with one another and, if one has a

complaint against another, forgiving each other 

as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive."

Colossians 3:12-13

 

The above verses make it clear that as God's chosen people we have been made holy and that we are beloved. It makes also it clear that He calls us to clothe ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience -- all of which are Characteristics of our Jesus. It makes it clear that we have been called to bear with each other and forgive each other because we, ourselves, have been the recipients of such extravagant grace. 

 

If we're brutally honest with ourselves, we have to admit we sin in so many ways. We sin through our actions when we are unkind and unloving as well as our through our inaction when we fail to show kindness and love. We sin through our words when we gossip, say hateful things, tell lies and half truths, and when we spew venom in an outburst of rage. We sin by our silences--those silences we hold  in an effort to manipulate and punish, refusing to express love, forgiveness, affirmation, gratitude, or even gentle confrontations that call loved ones out of darkness. We sin through the display of prideful attitudes that give proof to the fact that we view ourselves better than another or succumb to patterns of narcissistic wounding, failing to see our own value and worth as image bearers of the Creator. We sin through harsh judgments towards another (or ourselves) formed by the comparisons we make. We sin by withholding love, nursing grudges and seeking control to protect our hearts. We commit sin as we don't deal with idols of our hearts that get in the way of radical real relationships we were created to have with the Creator.  

 

In the last post I shared Dan Allender's definition of loving our enemies as "a movement of grace to embrace those who've sinned against us and to offer restoration to those who've done us harm." Enemies can be any one, even loved ones, who have wounded our hearts. Enemies can be those we know well and those we barely know. They can be people we know now, or people from our past to which we are in bondage because of the unfinished work of forgiveness.

 

Many authors believe forgiveness is only about the heart of the forgiver, but I believe that it is about the one who is in need of forgiveness as well. Forgiving has a lot to do with loving and inviting another to move away from the darkness they are perpetuating by their actions. 

 

True forgiveness can only flow from a heart deeply that is deeply connected to God. Forgiveness is in part hungering for restoration, but it doesn't mean restoration is automatic. It doesn't mean we continue to put ourselves in harms way or at the disposal of emotional abusers. It means as we relate to God, we refuse to be peace keepers and become peace makers. It means we long for restoration and become willing to live in that state whether restoration happens or not. This can be a painful state, but this grief is a different kind of pain than the pain of ongoing abuse or of heart hardened by the refusal to feel. It is the pain that comes naturally with loving from a compassionate, tender, and fully alive heart. It is a pain that allows us to continue living, experiencing joy and hope. When offenses wound hearts and tear down relationships, forgiveness is possible only by drawing near to God through prayer and allowing Him to love through us. We must understand the heart of God always longs for restoration of a godly relationship, and to be like Him means we long for restoration. But like God we also calmly and firmly state  boundaries with clear goals and clear consequences. Confronting feels risky because we can't control another's response and possibly could live a life time longing for another to be restored to both God, and us. But, again, that longing softens a heart rather than shrouding it in un penetrable walls and harsh judgments. 

 

In order to love like this we have to be willing to revoke our right to take revenge. Joseph is such a good example of a man who was intimately acquainted with pain and Biblical forgiveness. His brothers betrayed him, some wanting him dead and then agreeing to sale him into slavery. Many years later, after some ups and downs, his brothers come face to face with him in Egypt where he had been elevated to a high position. When their father died, they feared revenge was on the horizon, but Joseph tells them he knows what they did was for evil, but God meant it for good. He didn't minimize or excuse their behavior, nor did he shame them or lord it over them. The story shows him working through his emotions and his pride melting into humility. Face to face he acknowledged the ugly facts of their story were a part of the larger redemptive story their God was writing. Its an honest account of a man struggling to revoke His right to take revenge and allowing God to change their hearts as He had his. He showed himself to be like Jesus. He had every  reason to not trust them and every reason as a governor to take their lives in response to the sin they perpetrated and the suffering He had endured as a result. But, like Jesus he acknowledge their sin and extended them grace and offered them physical life by providing food which ultimately was an offering of spiritual life by reminding them of their God and the redemption story He is penning. 

 

When we look at forgiveness in this way we realize forgiveness flows from working through our pain with God. It flows from a heart that is transparent, not in denial of what has happened or the pain it's caused. It's not pretending something didn't take place and that we are okay. Forgiveness isn't about getting another person to see they owe us some kind of penance to repay a debt, it is about letting go of the debt. Forgiveness isn't about repression of, the denial of , or the dissociation of emotions. For both anger and pain flow from passionate hearts. That was true for Jesus and it is true for us. Forgiveness allows us to use that anger constructively rather that destructively. It allows us to rage against things like misunderstandings, misbehaviors, and deception, rather than at an image bearers. When we deny anger we experience in loving relationships, we run the risk of allowing sin to destroy love. We have to understand that godly people experience anger, but we use the anger to motivate us to move relationships towards reconciliation and mutual respect. Anything less may look peaceful, but it belies a heart full of turmoil and has the propensity to keep an erring brother or sister in bondage to sin. True forgiveness works through issues so that we don't live with a heart alienated driven by timidity, caution, and fear.    

 

In his book, The Art of Forgiving, Lewis B. Smedes points out that we can't change or forget past wounds, but that forgiveness can heal those wounds. He also points out that forgiving changes  bitter memories into grateful ones, cowardly memories into courageous ones, enslaved memories into free memories. Forgiveness restores dignity and self-respect that the enemy tries to destroy. Forgiveness melts pride into humility.

 

When we choose the path of forgiveness, we refuse to let our past and those who perpetrate sin control us. We refuse to use energy to deny, to cover up, to suppress emotions, or to protect our hearts which frees us to love and move past the past. When we refuse to nurse our wounds and lay them before God, we find there is a lot more good, a lot more hope, and a lot more joy to be had. When we refuse to hold on to anger and pain we find that a tender heart is more pliable and loving and allows us to live out of what we want to be, not what the accuser tries to define us as. 

 

Forgiveness isn't easy, and many of us are called to forgive what most normal healthy people would deem unforgiveable. But godly forgiveness allows us let go and surrender our heart and the heart of an offender to Jesus, the one who bore the wrath of God for our sin so that we could be reconciled. In my next post I want to share  some practical information on how prayer can draw us to the heart of our God and enable us to move past our emotional pain, even the unforgiveable ones. I hope you will take the time to read it as it will help you understand that we are never ever alone in this thing called forgiveness. For where there is a need for forgiveness, no matter how great the offense, our God, our great and mighty God, meets us there. 

 

 

Forgiveness--Part 1: Loving Your Enemies

"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies,

do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,

pray for those who abuse you."

Psalm 142:1-2

 

Several years ago we had an ongoing situation in our neighborhood that was hurtful for my children. I tried to intervene, but nothing changed. So, I asked for prayer for the situation in an adult Sunday School class. After class, a man I had never met came up to me and said, "Have you ever heard of a thing called forgiveness?" His scolding words stirred the deep well of shame residing in my heart at the time. I left church that morning discouraged. I longed for someone to acknowledge the pain my family was experiencing and the discouragement I felt at not being able to resolve it. I longed for kindness in the face of the unkindness we were experiencing. I longed to have someone pray with me, asking God to give me the wisdom I needed to help my children navigate the situation. I wanted someone to pray for God to heal their hearts. Sadly, after that I seldom asked for prayer in church and for the first time in my life I began to feel unsafe in church and withdrew from adult  activities. My  shame ran deep and I found it hard to talk to God about the situation, losing out on the opportunity to develop intimacy with Him through the experience. Because the man did not know me, he did not know I believed at a core level I was a "bad" Christian and the stronghold of toxic shame was putting down deeper roots by the day because I couldn't work out the situation like I believed "good  Christians would."  I was also feeling anger, hurt, frustration, and anxiety--emotions I mistakenly thought "believers" didn't feel.   

I know our situation was minor compared to what some experience. I've heard many stories and am shocked at what some people have been called by God to forgive. There are those who've lost  loved ones killed by drunk drivers, leaving them to grieve not just their present loss, but all of the things they would miss out on--not having a loved one at a wedding, not hearing their voice or laughter again, not having them at the births of their children, at Christmas or Thanksgiving. Some have faced infidelity through affairs and pornography. Some have faced rejection and/or abandonment by parent's who were incapable or unwilling to love them. Some have experienced tremendous abuse and neglect. Some have endured mistreatment by bosses who wield power in ways that harm. Some have lost loved ones in mass shootings or have had their loved ones forever changed by witnessing shootings. Some have lost friends, jobs, or a reputations due to slander and gossip. Some have been betrayed when their confidence was broken. Some have faced physical, emotional, spiritual, or sexual abuses and were sacrificed by parents who didn't help them because the reputation of the family, the perpetrator, or church was more important than the victim.

I sought counseling for some unresolved issues from my past, which eventually brought me back to the topic of forgiveness. I remember early on sitting in the counselor's office, staring at the floor as I poured out the story of  my abuse to her. When I finished, I was looking at the floor, waiting to hear, "You just need to forgive!" I waited in silence for what felt like an eternity, but the words never came. I finally looked up and saw tears streaming down her face. No one had ever shown a willingness to enter the mess of emotions I had buried deep. Over time, we examined the wounding I'd  experienced and uncovered core beliefs I'd developed as a result of the abuse. We had honest conversations about defense mechanisms with which I protected myself. We discussed how to over come them so I could love others better. We examined the distorted lenses I had used to view God, myself, and others and figured out the truth behind those distortions. We uncovered so many lies that kept me from living life as the loved person I was. And yes, we eventually began to discuss what it means to love enemies, what forgiveness is and isn't, and what forgiveness might look like as it played out in my life.

From the counseling experience, I learned the tendency to rush people to forgiveness without hearing the heart causes more wounding. It also shuts down hurting hearts while intensifying pain that is trapped inside. That is a false forgiveness. It is offered without even acknowledging the sin, the consequences of it, or the hurt. That robs us of the opportunity to see God as a Healer and experience Him as we learn to forgive from the heart. We also usually fail to invite another back to the light. 

I've often wonder why we tend to rush forgiveness. Maybe we do it because hearing painful stories triggers our own unresolved pain. Maybe we don't even know where our pain comes from when it is buried deep, but if we don't want to feel it we give a hurting soul the old church brush off by callously telling them to forgive. Maybe we do it because we have not experienced the same kind of pain or may have a different temperament that makes us more resilient to pain. If so, we tell them to forgive, thinking it will help them be more resilient. Maybe we do it because we have experienced something we consider more traumatizing, or maybe we experienced something similar for a longer period of time and find it hard to be sensitive to someone who is sharing about something we believe is small in comparison. Maybe we do it because we don't like confrontation or conflict. So, we tell another to forgive, hoping they will take the passive route which seems less dramatic and more spiritual. Maybe we fear deep pain in others, because it renders us helpless. We can't fix it and we don't realize God never intended us to. Maybe we do it because their pain stirs up uncomfortable questions about God's sovereignty, love, and suffering with which we don't feel comfortable wrestling. We want a safe God, but the truth is a life committed to the God of the Scriptures isn't safe.   

I want to introduce the topic of forgiveness by discussing a bigger topic--that of loving our enemies. Then in part two we will discuss what forgiveness is, what it isn't, and what it looks like. Then in part three we will discuss the role that praying plays in forgiveness. 

Most of us have misconceptions about loving our enemies. The first misconception is that love and anger can't co-exist, but they do. In fact, the more we care, the more anger we may experience. When someone does something hurtful and we don't experience hurt we don't care about them or are avoiding feelings. The more like Jesus we become, the more passionately we feel. The more like Jesus we become, the angrier we will feel towards sin and this anger is a reflection of Him. As we grow, we will love things God loves passionately and we will hate things He hates passionately. We will experience anger when we see another abused and experience it when the sin is perpetrated against us. The anger is not sin unless misused. A godly use for anger is to use its energy to expose sin and offer a person the opportunity to repent and live in the light. God never said in His Word that minimizing another's sin is loving. He never said that love is forgetting the past harm someone has done. The more we minimize and put hurt out of our minds, the more the past begins to control us. Paul called people out by name for their wrongs! Jesus did it as well. 

In his book, The Wounded Heart, Dan Allender defines loving our enemies as "a movement of grace to embrace those who've sinned against us and to offer restoration to those who've done us harm." Sometimes we confuse godly love with warm fuzzy feelings we enjoy. But love is something much deeper than that. Love is given to us by the Creator to only enhance life and destroy evil. We often think extending grace is about overlooking sin, minimizing its impact on us, and pretending sinful behavior doesn't hurt. What if grace is not passivity, but calling someone out of the darkness they are living when sinning against us? What if God allowed their sin to be perpetrated against us so He could use us in His redemptive plan? God calls us to love enemies and loving an enemy doesn't mean we "feel good about them." It means we love them and in the pain confront and impose boundaries that prevent abusers from  continuing to abuse without bearing consequences. It means there may be times we confront an abuser and expose the sin further by asking another person to confront with us. If it is a fellow believer, we may even at some point take it before the church to be obedient, but a church has to be willing to deal with sin. 

Loving our enemies and forgiveness aren't easy. They are sacrificial acts of courage that require a deep faith in God and a willingness to trust His sovereignty over our lives and the lives of those who wound us. Courageous acts because when we quit numbing and denying pain, we feel it and grieve the loss of  fantasy families, churches, or friends we wish we had. Courageous acts because we may have to step out of victim mode and take our power back to confront and set boundaries. For many setting boundaries feels "wrong" and unloving and it goes against the things we were taught. It takes courage because we may lose unhealthy, hurtful relationships, temporarily or permanently, and at some level we believe painful relationships are better than losing them. Courageous because some people will challenge boundaries and confrontations, claiming both are graceless, unloving acts because those individuals care more about  a false peace and the reputation of a person, a family, or a church more than individuals being wounded. Courageous acts because acknowledging hurt makes us vulnerable to others who may either help or do more harm. Courageous acts to speak aloud the things buried deep, removing a denial system used to protect hearts. Courageous acts that let go of what we want to see happen to others who do harm and trust God's justice and His grace are perfect and will be right, good, and always enough. Courageous acts that let go of anger we've used to protect our tender hearts from more pain. Courageous acts because to let go of the past means we have to face the uncertainty of the present. Courageous acts because some people don't ever repent and loving means we live in a state of longing for them to be drawn to the light for a life time like Jesus does?

I can't help but wonder if one of the reasons God was so adamant about loving our enemies is because He knows the real enemy isn't the person with whom we struggle. It is the deceiver, the predator of our souls. It is the one who stirs up strife. It is the one who seeks to devour and destroy humans that God created, humans that God loves. Because we are all preyed upon by the enemy, we really have more in common with those we perceive as enemies than we thought we did.

The times we are most like Him is when we love our enemies. For me, loving my enemies was one of the hardest things to process. But Romans 5:10 says,"For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life."  One of the ways we can be like Christ is to do what He did for us, trusting Him to give us the desire, the strength, and the wisdom to love those who have been enemies, not allowing them to continue to perpetrate harm. Its an opportunity to repay evil with goodness. Its an opportunity to repay hatred with love, not just our love, but His.  

Sometimes Life is Hard -- Revisited

I'm planning to write a mini series on the topic of forgiveness and am in the process of praying, researching, and organizing the million thoughts that are running through my head on this topic. So I've been in a quandary. I don't like to let too much time pass before I share a post, but I want to very carefully handle the Word while sharing from my heart with pure motives. Because of this I am not quire ready to share what I am learning about forgiveness. Generally, I share what I am currently learning and what applies to my own life. This month marks the eighth anniversary of Passionate Heart Ministry and we graduated 37 women from our support groups this week. These beautiful women had the courage to feel deep pain, come out of denial about their relationship with food, examine their painfully dysfunctional families, or explore the confusion they had in dealing with their emotions. These courageous women stayed the course so we planed a graduation ceremony. I shared some thoughts with them that were originally from a post I wrote last year. I made some changes for the talk and thought I might post the talk even though it is similar to last year's post. We have added a lot of readers this year and hopefully it will bless you if you are new. I will share some thoughts on forgiveness in the next couple of weeks but for those who were reading last year, I hope you will revisit with me and maybe even leave your thoughts below on how God sees you through the hard. 

"Sometimes life is hard. Life is hard because we experience losses—the loss of loved ones to death; the loss of relationships to conflict; loss of marriages to divorce; loss of things stolen, loss of homes stripped by floods, fires, or wars; loss of sentimental items, representing loved ones no longer here. 

Life is hard due to loneliness we experience. Maybe we married someone who is unwilling or unable to connect at a heart level. Maybe we took a risk and asked for changes in a friendship and the friend ignored us, leaving us feeling more invisible and unheard. Maybe we are dealing with painful issues that must remain private, leaving us feeling so alone. Life is hard when we lose jobs or struggle with poverty face the loss of a home or the fear of not being able to feed our family. Life is hard when we end relationships to preserve our integrity or because a relationship causes pain too deep to bear. Life is hard when we experience abuse. It doesn’t matter if the abuse is sexual, physical, emotional, or spiritual—all abuse robs us of innocence, causes us to feel unsafe in our homes, community, church or our own bodies. Abuse leaves us struggling with injustices and judgments—sometimes others and sometimes our own. Life is hard when we realize we can't fulfill dreams or we face limitations because our bodies or our emotions are wounded. Life is hard because we sin and hurt others. We say unkind words we can’t retract and they hang between us and the person we love like a heavy, dark curtain. We hurt others’ reputations through gossip and slander. We say things in haste that deeply wound the hearts of our children. We lose friendships because we are selfish, self-centered, or hurtful. We may regret it, we may repent, and may apologize many times, but sometimes forgiveness isn’t granted and restoration never takes place.

Ironically, the more we love, the more we will experience hard. But, the hard is not always bad. Pain can create a thirst for change. It can create a humility that leads to repentance. It can create a thirst for our heavenly home where there will be no more death, no injustice, no sin, no abuse, and no more tears. The question we need to contemplate in the here and now is, “How do I live in the hard and remain faithful to God?”

There are a couple of things we can do that will help us remain faithful in the hard. First, though simple, is very powerful. We can choose to look for God’s daily blessings and acknowledge them and give thanks to God for those even in the midst of the hard

Second, we can follow the Old Testament example of building monuments. When Israel experienced the hard followed by God’s miraculous intervention, they were instructed to build monuments so that they wouldn’t forget what He had done. When they crossed the Red Sea, they built stone monuments and when their children asked what the stones were about, they told them the history behind them and what God did for them. Each of our monuments might look different. One of my friend has monuments. She planted plants when her four children were born to mark the gifts God had given her. After one child, she planted a sprig of bamboo that grew into a grove. She recently lost the son that the bamboo represented in an accident and she has survived the great pain of grief by praising God and by remembering the gifts God gave her through her son. She can see the grove of bamboo from her window and will someday be able to share with her grandchildren about the son she lost, the lessons she learned through grief, and about his faith in Jesus.

When our granddaughter was born 12 weeks too early, our women’s director gave me a prayer quilt for her. It covered her incubator as she slept and grew. In my mind the quilt is a monument to the God who created this beautiful little girl and saw her through a rocky start. I also planted a yellow rose to celebrate the life of one of the most precious friends I have ever had. She was a woman of grace and humility and a very giving and loyal friend. Its growing rampant by my front door, and every time I see it I think of her and the friendship God gave us and how that friendship created a hunger to know the God she knew so well. 

But most of my monuments are found in my writing. Not only do I keep a running lists of things, I am thankful for, I have published curriculum for support groups that testify to the work God has done in my life. I also publish this blog, sharing the lessons God teaches me so I won't forget and so others can learn from what I have learned.

One monument I wrote about started being built when a counselor asked me to give her one word that described what I felt growing up. Without hesitation, I said, “Invisible.” Several months later I was going through a healing prayer and the prayer director told me she sensed God wanted me to renounce something she had never heard of. I asked her what it was and she said it was “the spirit of invisibility.” I had not told her I felt invisible and was overwhelmed by God’s love in telling her to have me renounce that spiritual stronghold. God then reminded me of the story of Hagar who was Sarai’s servant. After she had become pregnant by her mistress’s husband at her mistress’s request, she developed contempt for Sarai. Sarai became enraged and sent her away. Pregnant and alone in that desert, life was hard for Hagar. She sat down and wept. Genesis 16 tells us the angel of the Lord responded to her. 

“And He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going/” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” The angle of the LORD also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.”…so she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “El Roi”—You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen Him who looks after me.”

God saw Hagar and met her in the hard. Hagar called God “El Roi,” the God who Sees! The God of Hagar let me know that He also saw me even when others didn’t. El Roi has many implications for us. He sees children abandoned by parents—either physically or emotionally. He sees a child, belittled and abused at school. He sees a girl trying to scrub away the shame of the perverted sexual violations perpetrated against her. He sees a girl trafficked for sex—drugged and held against her will. He sees a family displaced by war, earthquakes, and floods. He sees those grieving the violent deaths of loved ones. He sees parents whose children are starving, sick, or dying. He sees moms struggling with lost babies and those who couldn’t conceive. He sees babies born so small they fit in the palm, struggling to breathe while parents beg God for the life of one out of the womb too soon. He sees those saying good bye to loved ones as they slip into eternity and those grieving because they didn’t get to say goodbye. El Roi! What hope there is in our God who sees.

God gave me another monument through a Bible study I attended. The pastor asked what was difficult about waiting on God. I wasn’t sure why it was hard for me until the pastor shared a verse that pricked my heart. The verse said that God has His ears turned towards those who wait on Him. I was such a compliant child, that when I spoke someone’s name and they didn’t respond, I gave up. I assumed that when God wanted me to wait, that he wasn’t going to respond either and would withdraw from Him. That night I realized God’s silence didn’t mean He didn’t want to hear me. It meant that His ears were turned toward me and it was an invitation to keep talking to Him:

• Talking until the buried pain in my heart was healed and replaced with joy
• Talking until the compassion that had been stifled was resurrected and my heart grew passionate again
• Talking until the lies I believed were exposed and replaced with His truth
• Talking until my unbelief grew into faith
• Talking until my hidden sin was exposed and I cried out for His mercy to be fulfilled in me
• Talking until the desire to know Him became bigger than my desire to experience His gifts
• Talking until He fully had my heart, God is my Jehovah Shama--the God who hears.

God hears the cries of those facing injustice. He hears the cries of those abandoned or betrayed by parents, spouses, or friends. He hears the cries of those disappointed and those with deep wounds left by those who should have loved them, but didn’t. He hears the cries of those beaten down and trod upon. He hears the cries of those who have been lead to believe they’re never good enough, never smart enough, or never pretty enough and too much at the same time. He hears the cries of those who have born burdens way too big for their shoulders. He hears the cries of those who long for peace and freedom from abuses, freedom from pain, freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from addictions, and freedom from hatred. He hears the cries of those who hate their sin and want to be forgiven.

He hears the cries and the questions that rise from the depths of grieving souls and understands that those questions reveal broken hearts. He hears every prayer spoken aloud and every prayer muttered deep within the heart—even the prayers so full of anguish they are heard as nothing more than a groan. Oh, what hope there is in Jehovah Shama who is the God whose ears are always turned toward us.

God is not only a God who sees and hears, He is a God who acts! In response to the cries of the people He created and the pain He saw them in, He came to earth to reveal His great love. He took on a body of flesh and lived among people just like us---people in bondage to sin and people paralyzed by deeply wounded hearts. He spent time with those who had overwhelming needs no person could fill. He chose to die a horrible cruel death—suspended between heaven and earth to bear our shame, our guilt, and our ugly sin. We must never lose sight of the fact that our sin wasn’t placed on a cross, It was placed on the LORD Jesus Himself! He was the One who faced the wrath of God in our place. He died so that God’s unending grace, precious peace, unimaginable goodness, and extravagant love could be poured out upon us. He bore unspeakable abuse so that He could exchange His perfect righteousness for our sin. He came so that we could truly know that God is a God who understands when life is hard.

In the moments when we are overwhelmed by the hard, we can look to the monuments we have built and believe in a God who sees and who hears and who will act in ways that show us His love and His faithfulness.

We must always remember that the painful cross preceded the glory of the empty grave. We must remember to embrace the Holy Spirit, our Comforter, who leads us to repentance and to a deeper connection with our Savior. Jesus took our sin away and He is the One and only one who can heal our hearts and give us hope. Remembering what He has done will help us remain faithful in the hard.

We are blessed that the hard causes us to long for the completion of our salvation that occurs when we are face to face with our Jesus--when our pain and suffering will end and the tug of sin on our hearts will dissipate. We want to live in such a way that we can be used by God to reach people who are lost in the hard! We want to show them that His resurrection speaks of hop, power, and joy. We can only do this by remaining faithful and trusting Him in the hard. Do you believe in your heart of hearts that God sees you? Do you believe that He hears you? Can you trust Him in the Hard? I hope so, because He faced the hard for you and He faced the hard for me."   

God Meets us When our Faith is Small

He said to them, "Because of your little faith.

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith
like a grain of mustard seed,

you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,'

and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you." 

Matthew 17:20



The last few weeks I have been writing about spiritual abuse for a big project I am doing and it's been tough to do research on this topic. One of the most vulnerable places in this world is the church. There are several reasons for this. First, when most people seek out a church they are really looking for God. They may not realize that they are equating the church with God but they most often are. Second, it is also vulnerable because most people know believers are supposed to love and they come into church expecting the church to love better than the world, but. Sadly, that isn't always the case. Third, we are called to live transparent lives and to confess sin to one another. But not every church member is trust worthy and the information we share isn't always treated with respect. Fourth, we are called to confront and to forgive one another. Many people in the church find it hard to forgive, hard to apologize, and most of us hate to confront. These are very vulnerable actions that come with risk. After all, we can't control others and can't force them to repent, apologize, forgive, or hear our criticism even when it is bathed in love. In fact, the church is just full of growing people, not perfect people as we often expect.

Out of all the kinds of abuses I have studied, spiritual abuse has made me the most angry, because it strikes at our most vulnerable need--the need to know our Creator. Spiritual abuse has been around for a very long time. It was addressed in the Old Testament and it was addressed strongly by Jesus. Spiritual abuse takes place when churches aren't structured correctly and leaders place themselves between people and God. It takes place when legalism is present and people add stuff to the finished work of Jesus. It takes place when leaders or church members misuse the Scriptures to shame and humiliate others.

One of the things I read in my research brought back memories of being a young adult and trying to figure out what this thing called the Christian life was all about. I went to pretty good churches, but I was so spiritually hungry that I would watch religious programing and didn't realize that some of it was not true to the Word and some of the teaching was a breeding ground for spiritual abuse. One of the things I hate most about spiritual abuse is that it tends to bind people to shame rather than to show them the heart of God. One type of abuse that occurs is the misuse of the promises found in God's Word. I remember seeing some of that on the television programs, but have also heard stories from people first hand who have had some pretty ugly things said to them concerning promises. The verse above is one of those verses that gets misused and thrown into people's faces. Some people teach that you can ask for anything and, if your faith is strong enough, you will get it. A reading of Hebrews 11 should help us see that isn't always so. Many people in that chapter received great blessings for their faith, but others who were commended for their great faith died waiting for promises to be fulfilled.

I've heard several stories of people who were either struggling with cancer or had children that did. I have heard of a case where a person was prayed for and by the time he got to the specialist no cancer was found and I have no problem believing God chose to do that. But, I have also known people who prayed hard and believed hard and their bodies or their children weren't healed. Some of them received notes or visits from friends who said they must not have believed hard enough or were told that they must have sin in their lives preventing a healing. I get angry just thinking about those comments. Who are we, to judge people for the ways that God chooses to work? The above verse indicates it only takes a little faith to see God work. A story found in Mark 9:14-29 has some interesting things in it.

In this story, Jesus came found His disciples in a debate with scribes. Jesus asks what they are arguing about and it wasn't the disciples or the scribes who answer, it was a father. He had brought his
deaf and mute son to the disciples to be healed of a demonic spirit who had tortured him most of his life. When the demon manifested, it would cause the boy to seize and would cause him to fall--sometimes he had even fallen into fire and into water. I cannot even imagine what this father had gone through in trying to protect his son and to find healing for him. He had asked the disciples to cast the demon out and they couldn't so he says to Jesus, "If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us!" Interestingly, Jesus doesn't immediately turn to the son and heal him as I expected him to. He deals with the father and the issue in his heart first. He does this by reflecting the mans words back to him, "If you can!" Then he tells the man, "All things are possible for one who believes." The desperate man cries so honestly, "I believe, help my unbelief!" and Jesus heals his son by casting out the destructive demon.

Jesus was kind and compassionate towards the hurting. He is omniscient and He knew how long the man had suffered with his son. He knew the man has spent years watching the demon torment and destroy the son he loved. He knew the man had even just witnessed the failure of his own disciples to cast the demon out. Because of this, I don't believe, like some might, that his tone was harsh. His purpose in talking with the man was to help him see that with all that he had been through his view of Jesus had become tainted. He wanted the man to see that the long suffering he had watched his son endure had become a stumbling block to his faith. Jesus lovingly was drawing the man to Himself. He was not just healing the son, he was healing the heart of the father so that his faith would be restored and strengthened. 

If we are really honest, most of us would have to admit that we all have had things that have hindered our ability to fully trust God and His ways. Maybe it was years of praying for a mom to give up her drugs so she could love and care for children. Maybe it was years of praying for safety from a sexual predator that never seemed to be heard. Maybe it was years of watching a child be eaten with cancer that medicine couldn't stop. Maybe  it's the longing for a husbands safe return from battle, but being presented with a flag at his grave instead. Maybe its watching a beautiful young daughter starve herself to death because she believes she's defective, too much, not enough, unredeemable, and a host of other lies. Maybe it's besetting sin for which we repeatedly seek God's help, but find the tentacles of the stronghold of sin draining our hope away. Maybe its our own intellect combined with our inability to accept that God's ways are not our ways, so we choose to hold on to what we think is reasonable and be come skeptical.

The possible hindrances to faith are many and Jesus knows that and he knows each of us individually. Maybe, what we might perceive as a lack of response or inactivity on God's part have really been His grace and His love in action. Maybe He's waits to answer the obvious so He can deal with the underlying issues of our wavering hearts. Maybe He hesitates to answer so that we will be brought face to face with the doubts that lie hidden under masks that belie our unbelief. Maybe He waits to respond until we are desperate enough to become radically honest with Him and with ourselves so that we cry out to Him as honestly as this man did. Then He begins to act in ways we see and His plans fully unfold--plans that may fulfill our desires or plans that may not. But, plans that will allow us to witness the richness of His love, His glory, and His grace--His grace that whispers into wounded, wavering hearts, "Your mustard-seed-sized faith has always been enough."