Exodus 22:22 You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.
Deuteronomy 10:17-18 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. (18) He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
Proverbs 30:20 “This is the way of an adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.”"
When there is a crime, there is a victim and a criminal. It is just that simple. If your house was burglarized, would you believe for a second that the burglar is a victim too? Well, many people actually buy into that kind of thinking.
Isaiah 5: 20, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
When an abuse victim approaches her pastor or a member of her congregation to share her story of abuse at the hands of her husband, it is likely she does so at great cost to herself. If her abuser finds out that she has “betrayed” him, she is likely to pay. How she pays will depend upon the level of abuse and the type of abuse she receives from her abuser. Yet, fully aware of the dangers to herself but unable to “go on like this” anymore, she takes courage and approaches anyway. Sadly, instead of finding a place of refuge, she is likely to be disbelieved or to be sent back to her abuser with commands to “try to understand him more” or to “figure out what you are doing that sets him off”. If she happens to mention the “D” word, she will, in many churches, be told that it is sin to consider “destroying her marriage”. Rarely does anyone stop to consider that her story might be true and that, by sending her away, we have come to the aid of the abuser.
It is so easy to accuse, castigate and condemn without ever stopping to think that we might be wrong in our accusations. When we are dealing with an abuse victim, our failure to listen, to believe, to come to their aid just might lead to them suffering severe injuries or even death.
We must take the time to really listen to the wounded ones who come our way. Go out on a limb and believe the abused woman. What if the story she is telling you is true? How must your denial of it come across to her? If you were the one who had been greatly wounded by someone and you took the chance and confided it, how do you think you would feel if the one you confided in refused to believe you?
To read in full, please go to Coming to the Aid of the Abuser by Anna Wood.
Consider this: what if you got up tomorrow and, suddenly without explanation or warning, everybody around you told you that the sky orange: not orange at sunrise or sunset but orange around the day-lit clock? And, what if, when the day finally ended everyone told you the night sky was green? The first day you might laugh it off as a colossal practical joke but what if you got up the next morning, and the next and the next and the next and every single morning you were told the daytime sky was orange and every single evening you were told the night sky was green? Finally, in frustration, you’d ask them how they could possibly believe the sky had changed color. What if they then “reminded” you of some calamity that had occurred, something so grand, so awful, it had altered reality and then chided you for forgetting the event and then, pointing to the sky, said, “And it’s been like this ever since”. And, yet you saw, as clearly as you ever have, that the daytime sky was blue and that the nighttime sky was dark blue or black. What if you protested, trying to make others understand only to be told “You’re crazy! the sky is orange, I tell you, orange!”? You alone disagree and, because of that, you alone are the one everyone thinks crazy. Finally you begin to feel like everyone else might be right: maybe you really are crazy. So, after a long period of being laughed at, of being accused of craziness for not accepting their version of reality, sadly believing you somehow forgot this sky-changing calamity, you begin to accept that everyone else was right and you alone were wrong; in defeat you admit that the daytime sky is indeed orange and the nighttime sky is green. And, yet, every morning thereafter when you look at the sky, you wonder if you really are crazy because no matter how many times you tell yourself the sky is orange, it still looks blue to you. Finally, one day, able to bear it no more, you simply quit looking at all.
That’s called crazy-making and that is what abuse victims face day-after-day, year-after-year. We are told black is white often enough that we begin to doubt our own version of reality. We clearly see one thing but our abusers tell us quite another. When we deny their version of reality (no matter that it is faulty), it is we who are told we are crazy. Quite often they tell others, too. Finally, after being continually browbeaten, in defeat, we accept the sad truth: we really are crazy. Black really is white.
Crazy-making.
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” That Bible passage comes from verse 18 of Psalm 34. Maybe you know what it’s like to be brokenhearted and crushed in spirit. If you’ve ever been abused sexually, physically, or emotionally, then I know that you know. Abuse of any kind crushes you down and leaves you broken. And when this has happened to you, especially as a child, there are no easy answers. It’s a real struggle to come to terms with what happened, and, strangely enough, it can be even harder if you have any kind of belief in the God of the Bible.
If you’ve been abused in any way, I want to acknowledge your pain as being very real and legitimate. You may try to keep that pain filed away in the back of your soul somewhere, but you and I both know that it’s still there. From time to time, it re-emerges to haunt you again – even if you thought that you’d dealt with it through counselling. You have your pain and you have your questions. And again, you may have your secret doubts about God and his love for you.
There is grace and compassion from God for you. Even though you are broken. Even though you may doubt God’s love, you doubt his ability to have kept you safe when you were abused. Even though you are weak and broken, there is grace. Even though you are crushed. You’re sad and angry at the same time, maybe even angry at God. God can look past it all. God will give you grace, he will give what you don’t deserve. God is still there for you, even if you have trouble accepting it. There is grace for the abused.
Let me explain why that is. You can only understand the depth of God’s grace when you look at the person who most clearly showed God’s grace in this world. You have to look at Jesus Christ. When we’ve been abused, the temptation is to think that we’re alone, that our situation is totally unique. Perhaps in some ways it is. But just think for a moment about the suffering that the Lord Jesus experienced. He was physically abused horrifically in the last hours of his life. Having had all his clothes stripped off him, there was a measure of sexual abuse in what he experienced. But the worst part of his suffering was the emotional and spiritual angle. No pictures or movies can adequately capture it. He was rejected by God his Father. He was rejected by all his friends and disciples. Jesus Christ had done nothing wrong, yet he hung on the cross and suffered. He deserved none of this!
Why did Jesus Christ have to experience all this abuse? We ask the same questions about our own experiences. We don’t often find answers that will satisfy us. There are answers, but they seem trite. But with the suffering and abuse of Jesus Christ, we have a different story. There is an answer to why Jesus had to suffer. The Bible clearly teaches that all are sinners. Abusers and abused – all of us have fallen short of God’s holy standards. We have put ourselves into debt with God. The good news is that God sent Jesus Christ to pay the debt for all who believe in him. There was a sense in what happened with Jesus: it was for you! He took all that hellish abuse for you, so that youcould have a friendly relationship with God. You could not do that for yourself. God did not owe it to you to send Jesus Christ. He did it simply because he cared for you.
Do you see God’s grace in the abuse that Jesus Christ suffered? It was horrible, but there was no other way for you to be saved. Somebody had to step in and pay the price for your sins. The only way you could do it is if you were to go to hell yourself. You could spend an eternity in hell and you would never be finished paying for your sins. Instead, when you hold on to Christ in faith, his suffering makes the payment for you. The suffering of the Lord Jesus is the only thing that can make you acceptable to God.
The abuse and suffering of Jesus Christ makes sense. We can see God’s grace in that. God’s grace is that through the abuse of Jesus Christ, we receive what we did not deserve. Through the abuse of Jesus, we receive a relationship with God and the life that lasts forever.
Now, let’s go back to your own abuse and suffering. Where is God’s grace in what happened to you? I’m going to be careful here, because I don’t know exactly what you’ve been through. I don’t know where you’re at right now. I can only work with what I do know. I know that you’re not responsible for what happened to you. And another thing I know, and you should know too, is what we began with from Psalm 34: “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” The Lord is close to you. This means that God is relationally close to you in your brokenheartedness. If you are holding on to Jesus Christ for your salvation, God promises that he is close. Now maybe you don’t feel that closeness, but he is there. He also promises to save you – that doesn’t mean that he’s going to stop all the hurt and suffering in your life. No, we’re going to see that the promise is bigger than that.
When we believe that the Lord Jesus is our Saviour, we want to believe that life will be easier and make more sense. But it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes life becomes tougher and more confusing. We want to believe that we have a God who will stop every bad thing from happening to us. We want to believe that we have a God who is in control and who’s only going to bring good things our way. We want to believe that the story of Job in the Old Testament is just an exception. But here again, we have to look to Jesus. His path to victory was through suffering. He had to travel through the valley of the shadow of death. In fact, more often than not, Christians suffer. The so-called victorious Christian life with no struggles, with no suffering and all sunny skies is the exception, not the rule. I just mentioned Job, but you can read Psalm 73 to see the same thing happening. In that Psalm, a man wonders why the wicked seem to have everything going good, but the believers are suffering. What sense does it make? The answer doesn’t come until he goes to the temple. At the temple, he sees the sacrifices of all the animals and he’s reminded that eternal death is the punishment for sin. God points out that he needs to think “big picture.”
That’s hard to do when we’ve been abused. It’s even harder to think big picture when the abuse is ongoing. It’s not easy to have an eternal perspective. But this is what faith is about. Even though things look off, you have to trust God’s promise that he is near you, even though you can’t understand how that’s being worked out. Because of Jesus Christ, God is working in your life, even through your abuse and sufferings. You have to think ahead in faith. Though it’s incredibly hard to do it, you have to think along the lines of what we read in Romans 8:18, “I consider that the present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” The present life is suffering and abuse. It’s real and it weighs us down. But there is a future. The future is glory and it will be revealed in us. This is God’s promise to you. He makes another promise in verse 28 of Romans 8, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” And then a couple verses further, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
If you’ve been abused, you probably don’t feel like God has been much for you in your life. Again, here’s where faith comes in the picture. To grasp what I’m getting at, you need to think of yourself differently. We like to think that we’re quite intelligent, understanding people. We’ve reached a level of maturity. But as Christians, we come to see ourselves differently. I used to live in a BC town where there were a number of mentally handicapped people. One of them was a young woman, perhaps in her twenties. She had a caregiver who took her out every day. Without her caregiver, she would likely never have been able to get out of bed, eat proper meals, and so on. She was totally dependent on her caregiver. She trusted her caregiver to do the right thing for her each day. I suppose she may not always have understood why her caregiver did certain things. But yet she trusted her. We see the same thing with infant children and their parents. They don’t understand, especially in the midst of pain, but typically they go on trusting. They know that their parents and caregivers are really for them. When we think about God’s closeness to us, we need to think in these terms. Hard though it may be, we need to see ourselves as entirely dependent on God and his goodness. As we do that, we will not only know about God’s grace, we will also experience it in our lives.
And as we experience that grace for ourselves in relation to God, we will also be more ready and willing to share it with others. One of the biggest steps an abused person can take is to extend grace and forgiveness to the one who abused them. Maybe you’re not ready for that yet. It may take some time. But as you meaningfully reflect on God’s grace for you in Jesus Christ, at some point you’ll want to share that grace with the person or people who’ve hurt you. They don’t deserve your forgiveness, do they? But when you give that forgiveness, what are you saying about God? You’re saying, “In giving Jesus Christ, my God has been so gracious to me, I will extend the same grace to you.” In that way, God’s goodness gets amplified in this broken world. More people will come to see and appreciate the depth of God’s grace for sinners.
If you’ve been abused, there is God’s grace and healing for you in Jesus Christ. May God bless you with his grace in the Lord Jesus.
http://yinkahdinay.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/gods-grace-for-the-abused/
Let me come in where you are weeping, friend,
And let me take your hand.
I, who have known a sorrow such as yours,
Can understand.
Let me come in – I would be very still
Beside you in your grief.
I would not bid you cease your weeping, friend,
Tears bring relief.
Let me come in – I would only breathe a prayer,
And hold your hand,
For I have known a sorrow such as yours,
And understand.
by Grace Noll Crowell
If I can put new hope within the heart
Of one who has lost hope,
If I can help a brother up
Some difficult long slope
That seems too steep for tired feet to go,
If I can help him climb
Into the light upon the hill’s far crest,
I shall begrudge no time
Or strength that I spend, for well I know
How great may be his need.
If I can help through any darkened hour,
I shall be glad indeed.
For I recall how often I have been
Distressed, distraught, dismayed,
And hands have reached to help, and voices called
That kept me unafraid.
If I can share this help that I have had,
God knows I shall be glad.
I have also found freedom. I have discovered the truth. I want to you discover the same.
Sometimes it takes a little jolt to get us out of our dysfunctional mindset so that we can renew our strength and find the determination we need to break the cycle.
Have these thoughts crossed your mind?
Lie #1: This must be normal.
You assume that your relationship is typical of most relationships. Even though you are hurting constantly, strategizing ways to get him to hear or understand you, trying to prove you are worth loving, you tell yourself that it’s a misunderstanding, a phase or he’s just going through a hard time.
Fear, anxiety, confusion, isolation, diminishment, sarcasm, manipulation, name-calling, shame and blame are not the automatic responses of someone who is just having a bad day. Doesn’t it seem illogical for a man to attack his greatest ally, his best friend, his mate? It should, because it is.
You believe that if you try harder, the abuser will come to appreciate you. In truth, the more he abuses, the harder you try. That’s what he appreciates.
Lie #2: He’ll change.
Then why hasn’t he?
Why do you believe he will change now or at sometime in the future? Because you love him? Because you’re so patient with him? Because he doesn’t mean it? Because he’s said, “I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again”? You believe it because believing that he knows what he’s doing and he doesn’t care is too scary.
In truth, you have stayed with him in spite of the fact that he is abusing you; therefore, the message he is receiving is that you really don’t have a problem with it. You are reinforcing that what he’s doing is acceptable.
Where is the incentive for him to change? You’re doing the same things you’ve always done; why shouldn’t he?
If he wants to change, why doesn’t he?
If he won’t change, then you must.
Lie #3: I Need to Protect Him.
Abuse is nurtured and fed by your silence. Part of the abuser’s power is in your willingness to keep his secrets. Stop keeping them.
Instead of protecting him, start protecting yourself.
Lie #4: It’s My Fault.
So, you are willing to believe your actions determine the way he responds to you. You pushed his button or hit the trigger that set him off.
Do you really hold that much power over his choices or behavior? If that is so, then why don’t you have the power to keep him from abusing you?
You have no power over him, and you never will.
You do, however, have power over what you will do.
What will you do?
To read in full, please go to http://ezinearticles.com/?Ten-Lies-Enablers-Tell-Themselves&id=4085423
(Statistics tell us that approximately one in three women are abused at some point in their life. That means that if you yourself are not abused then surely you know someone who is.)
If a Christian woman is abused by her husband, whether the abuse is emotional, physical, spiritual or sexual, it isn’t because
she didn’t submit enough,
she hasn’t tried hard enough,
she didn’t love him enough,
she didn’t spend enough time in prayer for her husband
and for their marriage,
that she didn’t study the Word
or didn’t believe the Word
or didn’t try to obey the Word with everything within her.
If she gets to the point where she is thinking about separating from her husband, or even divorcing him, after many hours of prayer and many hours of Bible study and more tears than you could ever even begin to imagine, it doesn’t necessarily follow that
she never loved him,
she is a feminist,
that she wants to be separated or divorced,
that she doesn’t believe in biblical womanhood,
that she didn’t long for a traditional marriage,
that she didn’t try hard enough to be a good wife,
that she isn’t a good Christian.
If you should happen to meet a woman who has been abused, you will probably think that she is
distant,
cold,
self-involved,
shy.
Most likely this is because she is
shattered,
broken,
alone
and confused.
If you have never walked in her steps, if you’ve never heard the words designed to destroy you coming from the mouth of the one who swore before God and others that he would love you forever, if you’ve never been, literally and physically backed into a corner with absolutely no way out, then you probably have absolutely no clue how
betrayed,
devastated,
shocked,
heart-broken
and hurt an abused woman feels.
If a woman has been beaten down, physically or emotionally, and she is brave enough to seek help,
go to her,
applaud her,
pray for her and with her,
and help her,
because, most likely, she has absolutely no idea what she is going to do next.
Her fear and confusion will be even more evident, more overwhelming, more devastating to her if she has children. Remember that and love her and love her children, also.
Comfort them,
pray for them,
listen to them,
do something kind for them,
let them know that someone cares
even if their daddy doesn’t.
Emotional abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse and sexual abuse of wives is real and far more common than most folks realize. It happens even in what others perceive to be “Christian” families. Even if the abuse is just aimed at the wife, the children will still be injured from the fallout. Frequently, though, it isn’t just fallout that hurts them; abusers of wives often go on to become abusers of children, too. Often abuse doesn’t stop with just words even if that is where it starts. If a man will break his wife with his words, many times, he will manifest force against her somehow, someway, sometime. It just might bleed out to the children, also.
Abuse isn’t the wife’s fault. It isn’t the children’s fault. No one deserves to be hurt like this.
If you know about a case of domestic abuse, consider that perhaps God has put you here with this family and has prepared you for such a time as this. If so, you have an obligation to
pray,
to love,
to be available to her as she tries to rebuild her life
and the lives of her children,
to listen
and listen again and again,
to cry with her,
to protect,
to defend,
to get her and her children to safety if need be
and to help her start over.
When it is over, when she has taken the step to protect her and her children that she never dreamed that she would ever have to take, remember that
she doesn’t need condemnation, she needs assurance that she is accepted and safe with you and in her church.
Keep in mind that…
her dreams are gone, help her to dream new ones;
her life is shattered, help her to build it again;
her children need love and guidance, see yourself as part of their healing;
she herself needs a friend, be one
and always, always pray for her and for her children.
