Christ is Our Only and Certain Hope

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
(Rom 12:12)

Many of you have written to me and shared your stories of past and present suffering at the hands of an abuser. I greatly appreciate the privilege of being someone with whom you can share. Often, when I hear of the intense and prolonged trials abuse victims endure, I find myself wishing I could do more to help. I suspect many of you have experienced this wish as well.

Wicked, abusing, narcissistic people create horribly tangled webs of deceit, lies, accusations, civil and even criminal court actions, court filings battling for custody of children simply because the abuser must win. How is this web to be untangled? Many of these persecuting machines go on and on and on. What is our hope?

Help is to be found through becoming wise about evil, to learn about the mentality of entitlement and the abuser’s quest for power and control. To wake up to the weapons these evil people use against us. To get straightened out in respect to all the false, supposed “biblical” doctrines which keep abuse victims in abuse. We can find help in learning about trauma and its effects.

But in the end, what is our certain and ultimate hope? What is the real, final remedy? Where can we go for rescue that will never fail? Because unless we can find a Deliverer who will never fail us, who will with certainty one day put an end to this evil and make us free, there is no real hope. Who is that Deliverer? He is, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is very easy for us who have wised up to the evil of abuse, especially as it hides under a disguise of “Christian,” and creeps about in our churches, it is easy I say to forget Christ. To forget our real message of hope – to preach Christ and Him crucified. To set our hope and aim upon Him and His salvation. If we forget Christ, if we forget to keep our eyes upon Him, if we fail to point people to the perfect redemption to be found only in Him, then we are doing no more than applying a temporary salve to injured people. And the danger of this, of proceeding down a “therapeutic” path which leaves the real Therapist outside, is that we will only “help” people to remain in victimhood. Never showing them how to be ultimately free. We will fail to do what Bunyan’s character “Evangelist” did when Christian came out of the City of Destruction crying out, “what must I do to be saved?” Evangelist pointed Christian to that little gate off in the distance. He pointed Christian to Christ.

Knowing Christ is our only real hope. Putting our trust in Him and believing His promises to protect us from enemies “behind and before,” and to one day bring us safely home where evil abusers will never be seen again, there is the real thing. More and more and more I am realizing that the real therapy, the real help and hope for us is to be found in the Word of God. Therein we find Christ and this great and certain promise:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:31-39)