A Savior That Understands

During this time of year, our Passionate Heart groups have begun to take a look at our own lives and how we have responded to our abuse. Many of us have struggled in our relationship with God and find it difficult to trust God because we know that God is fully capable of either preventing or stopping their abuse. This is especially true for those whose abusers claimed to be believers and/or were leaders in their churches. Many of us have also wanted God to expose the abusers for what they are and cause each one to own his actions and apologize without us ever having to confront or tell. Many of the women in the group say that if they could ask God questions they mostly would ask, “Why?” Some want to know why they were abused, but others really just want to know why God doesn’t stop childhood sexual abuse.


This week we have looked at how our abuse has impacted our relationship with God and how we have viewed Him. We try to provide a safe place for all of us to share honestly what is on our hearts and on our minds so that we can begin to let go of our tendency to mistrust God and withhold our heart from Him. We desire the women in the group to become able to fully trust God and become passionate about Him and the life that He has called them to live. We’re honest in telling them that we don’t have an answer to the “why’s,” but we do encourage them to take their questions and their emotions and share them honestly with God.


This week we discussed Chapter 16 of our curriculum, Growing a Passionate Heart. The Chapter essentially is a call to recognize that Christ truly understands what it is like to have been abused. The Scriptures make it clear that Christ’s appearance was so marred by his beating that He no longer resembled a human. The Word also makes it clear that He was despised and rejected by others and was even a man from whom others hid their faces. He was a man of sorrows and was intimately acquainted with grief. He bore our grief and our sorrow and yet the people around Him considered Him smitten and afflicted by God. He was wounded, crushed and chastised for our sins. He was oppressed and He died a violent death, literally crushed as an offering for our sin. Christ went through pain that was very similar to our pain. He was stripped of His clothes and hung naked and exposed on the cross. Not only does He understand the pain of being physically wounded, He understands the emotional pain of having others blame Him for things for which He was not responsible. The Lord understands the heart-wrenching grief and sorrow of rejection. He understands what it feels like to have those closest to Him turn their backs on Him when He was facing His worst emotional pain and His greatest fears. He understands the feelings associated with being oppressed and what it’s like to suffer the pain and the consequences of someone else’s sin. Jesus even understands the feelings that we have when we say that we feel forsaken by the God who could have protected us, and chose not to, for on the cross He cried out, “My God, why have your forsaken me?” The truth is Christ was abused so that you and I could be saved as well as healed. The cross, itself, is proof that God pours out His wrath on sin.


I hate childhood sexual abuse. I believe that that is the Father’s heart being manifested in me. I still cringe when I hear women’s stories and still find myself having to lay my anger at the abusers at the foot of the cross. Yet, I am also vey aware that the Bible talks about the fellowship of suffering. We can begin to understand another’s pain by experiencing something similar. Because of what we have been through, we have been given a much clearer glimpse of the suffering Christ endured on our behalf. I know as I have come to grasp that truth, I have been more curious about God and the way He chooses to operate in our lives. I have grown to trust Him more and hunger and thirst after Him with a desire to be able to love as passionately as He does. I have also come to understand that the story He began in the Garden of Eden is still being written and it is a story of redemption and healing. His love and His grace and His power are enough to fully redeem our lives and restore numb and dissociated hearts to the passion He created us to feel. I encourage you to pour out your pain and your anger and questions to Him. Don’t let those things you refuse to acknowledge keep you from the intimacy with God that can heal your heart.

Our leaders have taken a couple of months off to rest and to prepare as we begin putting together our next Passionate Heart Groups. We are fortunate enough to have two groups again this next year. I have had the privilege to meet with the leaders from both groups and am really excited that each one of them has decided to serve in this ministry. They are beautiful women who have been working diligently on their own recovery and they have a passion to see others find freedom and healing from the pain that they have experienced at the hand of perpetrators. They truly are humble women who understand that only God can heal wounded hearts and that He alone has the wisdom that we will need to lead these groups. We have begun to pray for each of the women who have signed up and we are anticipating getting to meet them in person and watch what God will do during our time together. We continue to pray right up to the start up date that God will call the women He wants in each of our groups and that they will have the courage to be obedient to contact us. We know it is never an accident that a woman shows up in one of our groups. If you, by chance, are reading this and wondering if this group is for you, I encourage you to read the other posts and to pray and ask God His plans for you include participating in one of our groups. So often, we try to simply do the Christian thing and forgive those who wounded us so deeply without even realizing how our abuse has impacted our lives. Our groups will give you a safe place to talk about your past, help you look at how it has impacted you, and then help you to move towards a deeper level of forgiveness and living the passionate life that God has called you to live. A part of God’s grace is His healing and restorative work in our lives…the desire to be in one of our groups could be Him starting that work in your life.

To Tell or Not To Tell...

“To tell or not to tell” is one of the biggest dilemmas that sexual abuse survivors face. Sometimes children are silenced by threats, both real and imagined. Sometimes the adults silence them because they did not know how to handle the information or who chose not to face it. Sometimes they were silenced by their own guilt and shame because they assumed that they were responsible for what had happened to them. Last of all some were silenced when they tried to tell a believer about their abuse and the person interrupted their story and told them they just needed to forgive, which just shut them down with all of the pain still inside.

We believe that for healing to occur that it is important for survivors to tell their stories in a safe environment such as a therapist’s office or in a support group that deals with this topic. There are at least five reasons that it is important to tell our stories. First, emotional energy is discharged when one tells their story. I had buried my emotions so deep that I actually had to tell it several times before I could tap into my stuffed emotions and release the pain, anger, and anxiety inside.

Another reason it is important for us to tell our stories is that if we can not verbalize it or even mentally acknowledge what was done to us and the impact that it has had on our life, the forgiveness we offer is shallow and the grace we are offering is really cheapened. It is like we have forgiven a concept rather than an actual sin perpetrated against our bodies and our soul. I believe that when we forgive like Christ wants us to with full awareness that it is truly an act of God in our hearts.

If we can face the truth of our stories then we can also make healthier choices for our families and ourselves. As the women in our groups share their stories with each other it is very common for them to all of a sudden realize that a behavior they had excused as normal was in truth inappropriate and unhealthy. When there is silence about abuse there is a huge potential for abusive behaviors or dysfunction that allow it to be perpetrated from generation to generation. In 2 Timothy 2, Paul warned people about men who were false teachers who were destroying the faith. He even named them by name, so it is okay for us to confront sin and report it to protect children.

Another reason to tell is that it breaks the silence. We were created like God with a need to communicate and relate. When we were silenced about our abuse we most likely began to be silent about all sorts of other things. God desires us to be free to be verbal and to be expressive.

Finally, we will never be able to fully understand God’s redemptions when we choose to deny, rewrite, or lie about our story. Every year as I sit and hear the women’s stories and then watch them grow it becomes more and more obvious how God has plucked them out of horrible circumstance and brought them together to do a wonderful work in their hearts and in their lives. God is not just a God who saves, He is a God who heals. So are you willing, as one lady in our group put it, to share your story to release the power of silence?

First Night

I remember the first time I walked into a support group to work on my past abuse. I looked around at the other ladies and realized that by being there, each one of us was telling the other ladies we had been sexually abused. I felt so alone. I felt a few tremors of terror and vulnerable rising to the surface and pushed them down as I was so used to doing. In fact I was so shut down that when some of the women cried that night, I truly wondered what their tears were about. I envied them at some level, because I don’t know that anyone in the group understood I was in as much pain as they were. Nor do those women know that I finally was able to get to my tears and experience the healing they had from crying. I remember at first it was hard for me to focus on my own stuff and not step into a caretaker role, which was how I had avoided my own pain. I remember doing all I could to protect my own heart from more pain that first night. However, it was not long before I was impacted by each of their stories and loved them and prayed daily for them. Out of knowing and loving those women, came my desire to lead A Passionate Heart group. Even though I never got to the deep pain until after the group, God used the precious ladies to help me get to it so He could heal it. I invite you to write on the blog what you feeling about walking into your group for the first time. You can use a false name if you like…just remember to respect the confidentiality of your group and only share your own heart. We are praying that God would reveal His tenderhearted compassion as He walks with us through this year of your healing journey.

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