Unholy Charade - Jeff Crippen

Unmasking the Domestic Abuser in the Church

Author: Jeff Crippen Page 41 of 88

Twisted Theology Produces a Den of Abusers Parading as the church

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On November 18, 2021

In Churches/Church Response

With remarkable frequency we meet abuse victims, mostly Christians, who originally met their abuser in a local church. Or in a Christian college or similar setting. In the church! Why? How can this be?
Well, the answer is not only that abusers are exceptionally deceptive, but churches far and wide have embraced such unsound, twisted theology and warped handling of the Scriptures that evil, unregenerate people are readily embraced and pronounced “saved.” This is why, as we have said before, how we answer the apparently simple, but not so simple question—”Just who is a Christian?”—sets the course for what follows.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:5-9)

I know of a professedly “Christian” organization that repeatedly announces its “Christian” mission. It hammers that mission statement home to all of its employees and insists they get on board showing “the love of Jesus” to the world. And yet all kinds of vile language is habitually practiced and tolerated in this “ministry”. People who are in no way Christian, who don’t even profess to be Christian, are told to get on with the mission.

What does this tell us? It tells us that this “ministry” is in fact essentially universalistic in doctrine. That is to say, everyone is capable of being a Christian. Everyone is a Christian — as long as they mouth the “mission.” And this is precisely what is going on in so many local churches today. People who have not repented, who still walk in sin, but who mouth the right “Jesus” words on Sunday (or on Facebook) are pronounced saved and born again and the rest of us are told that the only real sin we could commit is to call such counterfeits on the carpet. That, you see, would be judgmental. And we must not be judgmental you know.

So what happens? The local church becomes the field of play for the wicked looking for an easy target. The soul of the wicked desires evil; his neighbor finds no mercy in his eyes (Prov 21:10). Here comes young Sally who has been taught all the typical distortions about love, forgiveness, patience, and submission and BAM! He sees her, gets his hooks into her, and you all know the rest of the story from there.

Jesus came to a den of thieves like this and cleaned house. It’s long past time that we do the same. To refuse to repent and throw out the soul-thieves, is to participate in their evil and to be condemned right along with them.

Isa 1:10-17 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! (11) “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. (12) “When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? (13) Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. (14) Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. (15) When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. (16) Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, (17) learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.

You Must be Born Again

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On November 15, 2021

In Biblical Teaching

This post is a text I received from our friend Christy. She lives in the “Bible belt” where everyone is a Christian, you know. She wrote this to me because she is seeing, correctly, that being a victim of domestic abuse does not mean the victim is a Christian. If any of us are going to hear Christ’s voice, the voice of the Good Shepherd (see John 10), then we must be born again. Here then is what Christy wrote in this regard:

So I grew up with that arminianism teaching. It was easy peasy Christianity. Most of my adult life was in the United Methodist Church in North Carolina. Went to the Billy Graham museum like everyone else and was in awe. So I probably was in church for 20 years and never heard the full counsel of God, never heard the depravity of man, the doctrines of grace, original sin, the Kingdom of God, etc.

In 2015, I escaped my abuser and found Christ Reformation Church. I started listening to your sermons and can’t stop! I’m finally understanding the effectual call to saving faith and repentance.

I went through so much anger with the church for not teaching what’s in the Bible. I had no clue. I was so ignorant. Here I was teaching 3rd grade SS, doing VBS, committees, all these dead works. At one point I was doing work for 5 different churches because I was afraid to say “no” to God. Everyone took advantage of me. Church was so much work, it was so hard. It wore me out.

Here I was, I had “accepted Jesus” and thought I was saved. What a crock!!! If God had not sent me a wicked evil “Christian” hiding in the church, to make me question everything, I would still be sitting there in that pew with a smile on the outside, but nothing but a miserable guilty sinner on the inside.

What REALLY got my attention, and this is my point- The teachings that I needed to hear were the foundational ones. The Genesis ones… Original Sin, Pollution, The Fall, The Consequences. I can’t tell you how SHOCKED I was when I first heard you and Martyn Lloyd-Jones tell me that I was born with a polluted evil nature. I wasn’t good. I was guilty and didn’t even have the ability to chose God. WHAT??? That was astounding to me.

I think that a lot (most UMC church for sure) don’t teach total depravity. They don’t lay a foundation of man’s original condition. I’m just wondering how many people out there think they have heard the full gospel, but really haven’t (like I was)? I think most churches think it’s too offensive to teach the Fall. This is soooooo vital. How can you become a new creation when you don’t even know what you changed from?

So my idea for your consideration would be to do a little bible study series that you can point people to (like you to with 1 John) that would be like MLJ “Great Biblical Doctrines”. Except you wouldn’t have to go though the whole bible like he did (he spent 3 years, hehe). Start at the beginning and really hammer the depravity. Go back and listen to how great MLJ teachings were. Funny when you first hear this stuff you are shocked. Then later on you love it so much and can’t get enough. We love hearing how wicked we were because God saved us from the wrath we deserved.–

And there it is. You must be born again. Apart from the new birth, you will not have faith to believe God’s promises. You will not be able to hear Christ’s voice. You will be without hope and without God.

And a third Piece of Wisdom (from Lynn)

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On November 10, 2021

In Abusers, Counseling

Here is a third excerpt from our friend Lynn’s comment last week that is well worth highlighting here in a separate post. Here it is:

Charm and charisma are super deceptive. Charisma is not character. The more charming and charismatic someone is, the higher of a risk you are in being taken advantage of – especially in church settings. They flatter. They deceive. They coax seemingly harmless information out of you that becomes a weapon to harm you once they’ve gotten what they’ve came for. I’ve learned to be very skeptical of those with charisma. Few may have good motives, but most don’t. They use that skill to get what they want and then move on to their next target.

Boundaries can save your life. They are the litmus test for how genuine your relationship with the other person is. If the other person balks when you set a boundary, you’ve seen where their care for you ends and where their own agenda begins. It’s healthy for you to say no to the people and things that do not serve you. God doesn’t require you to punish yourself by staying in a marriage, family, job, or any other relationship with someone who is abusing you. Make a plan to walk away if that’s the only way for you to get free. It will take wisdom and strategy if you find yourself in that place to get free, but it is so worth it. It’s made a world of difference in my life in the last 3 years.

Mutual reciprocity is a mandatory requirement for my relationships. As someone who tends to give more than I get in my relationships, I’ve decided that the relationships that I will invest in require both parties to be giving and getting from the relationship. I can’t be the only one calling, texting, and keeping the relationship alive. Those who love you should be willing to make an effort to contribute to the health of the relationship. Are there times when one person might do more than the other? Sure. But if it becomes a pattern, then be careful, it’s revealing the character of the other person and how they feel about you.

I could write much more about these points, but let me just comment on the last one because it is one that has been a repeated trap for me. When we have to be, as Lynn said, the one keeping a friendship/relationship alive, when WE have to be the spark plug that must fire if anything is ever going to happen, then something is terribly wrong. This is not the mark of a healthy relationship. I know that I have often kept blowing on the embers simply because I sensed that if I didn’t, the fire would die out. But then, what kind of friendship is that? A toxic one.

Lynn ended her comment with these words:

Trust your gut. If you get a weird feeling from someone, pay attention to it. Your body is trying to warn you. It knows something’s wrong. One of my biggest regrets is ignoring those warnings and having some very painful emotional, spiritual, and financial abuse as a result of it. When you want to belong and be loved, it’s easy to dismiss those warnings. We are wired for human connection. The challenge is for those of us who’ve been chronically abused, is that our baseline is screwed up. What we know to be “normal” is actually abusive. Fortunately, we don’t have to stay there. Just like how we learned the bad patterns as children, we can learn new patterns and rewire the brain to respond to them instead of the bad ones.

In Christ, there is freedom from that abuse. The scriptures help us renew our minds so we can grow in wisdom and become spiritually mature. In prayer, we communicate with God sharing all of who we are, asking for his wisdom, justice, and righteousness to prevail, trusting that no matter the outcome – whether it’s here or in eternity – the abusers will get their just end.

A Second Vital truth (from Lynn)

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On November 8, 2021

In Abusers

Here is another great insight taken from Lynn’s recent comment. Like the first, I want to highlight this one because it is so important. Here you go:

A big part of why I was so vulnerable was I longed for a place to belong and people who would love me for me, not what I could do for them. Growing up where love was transactional and the bar to meet it was constantly moving left me feeling unloved and unworthy of love. While I knew that God loves me, it’s taken me a while to believe it because many who profess the name of Christ aren’t saved. They don’t want to do the work of loving the brethren because that requires real effort, commitment, and sacrifice. They want their comfy lives where it doesn’t cost them much to be a Christian, while the victims of abuse languish. Or they use their generosity as a tool for manipulation and control.

Fierce loneliness and desire for human connection was a tool that the enemy exploited for a long time in my life. I’d share personal information too quickly in a relationship in order to try and make genuine connections. That choice left me vulnerable to untrustworthy people who used that information to get their own needs met at the expense of my own.

Oh man, how many times I have blown it in regard to this trap. When we follow Christ, we are not going to be popular. Like, for instance, the Apostle Paul – we can find ourselves quite alone and that loneliness can make us very vulnerable. Add to this toxic mix that wicked people will act like they love us when in fact all they are doing is using us because they see us as being in a position to do for them. As a pastor I have fallen for this one over and over. And guess what? The second you become of no use to them, you are dumped – in the blink of an eye. “Fierce loneliness and desire for human connection is a tool that the enemy will exploit.” Truth! Beware.

Some Very Important Points (from Lynn)

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On November 3, 2021

In Biblical Teaching, False Teaching

Lynn, our friend who follows this blog, recently made a lengthy comment in response to the post which asked if we are stupid if we repeatedly get duped by evil. I want to highlight the points Lynn made in several articles so that each one gets maximum exposure. Thank you Lynn. These points helped me quite a lot as well.

So here is the first:

It is critical that you diligently study the Bible and compare what anyone else says to scripture. Test the spirit of the person to see if they’re from God. Getting the right handling of the core doctrines of faith is key, but you mustn’t stop there. It’s about the practical application of those doctrines that reveal the heart of a person. Become wise about the nature of evil, what it looks like. Many of us have been trapped by twisted theology that has kept us in bondage because we didn’t fully understand the nature of evil and how it parades itself as an angel of light. Be willing to mine your past experiences to see what lessons you can learn from them so that you stop repeating the patterns that are resulting in you being abused. Knowing what not to do is just as powerful as knowing what to do.

This is why I increasingly have been encouraging abuse victims and others to go to the Christ Reformation Church youtube channel and start going through the 1 John Bible study series there. We also have other video series too but 1 John is a great starter because it will help you sort out all the false unbiblical, well, garbage, that most of us have been taught in church.

It really is true – we MUST study Scripture ourselves and compare what others are claiming the Bible says with what we ourselves read. You can also grab a copy of my book Wise as Serpents off of Amazon and read it as a help in wising up about evil. For example, a huge barrier that keeps victims in abuse is that they have been told that their abuser is a Christian, just like he claims. He isn’t, and the Bible plainly says so. Once you realize that, other things start to become much clearer.

Here then is the first point Lynn made. The next post will have another insight into lessons she learned in the school of hard knocks.

I Have Married three Abusers — Am I stupid?

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On November 1, 2021

In Victims

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” (John 4:15-18)

Over the years in this ministry to abuse victims we have been fairly regularly contacted by victims who are not only presently married to an abuser but who have been married previously to other abusers. And in most cases they are asking themselves, “Just how stupid can I be?” Or, “What is wrong with me?” Or, “Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life?”  These questions and more.

I suspect many of you who follow this blog can relate very well to this scenario. And many people who are ignorant of abuse and abusers will be quick to answer those questions  — “Well, yes, you must be stupid.”  “Yes, there surely is something wrong with you.” But in reality all that has happened in most of these cases is that a wicked, deceiving person came along, identified some vulnerability in his target, capitalized on it, and deceived her (or him).  All of us have had that deception dupe us in some relationship or other and most often more than once.

Was the Samaritan woman at the well a loose woman who went from man to man? That is usually what is claimed, but surely there is a very high probability that she was the victim of deceiving, using men and she was an easy target for them.  Why? Might I suggest it was because she was “thirsty,” but she was looking for the wrong kind of water to quench that thirst.  John 4 is the record of that day when Living Water met her and she was never the same again.

Yes, I would suggest that a victim who has been duped by abusers several times does need to look within herself. Not to blame, but to try to understand what it is that is making her so vulnerable to evil ones. Does she fear being alone? Does she believe she is just rather worthless if a man doesn’t want her? Maybe she is just too naive about evil? Often she is just plain too “nice.” None of these possibilities is sin, but each one is certainly dangerous.

It seems to me that a woman who has been repeatedly abused in a sequence of “marriages” must be somewhat similar to the traumatized rape victim. Through deception and guile the rapist drew her in, used her by force, and cast her away. Or if she is still with the abuser, he is killing her slowly, just as a rapist so often murders his victim.

We know numbers of women who have been through this chain of abusive marriages, and I am sure that they could be greatly helped by our readers, especially those who have had the same experience. What have you discovered about why this happened to you? Did you have some awakening moments when some truth jumped out at you that helped you? How can a victim of this serial abuse make some changes to break out of this cycle of being a target?

More Thoughts on Getting Free from Victimhood

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On October 27, 2021

In Counseling, Getting Free

I want this blog to be a safe place for victims of abuse. A place where they will be believed. A place to tell their stories. To learn about the nature and tactics of evil so they can better understand what has been happening to them and get free.

But I also want you all to be free. Not just physically free of your abuser but emotionally and I suppose most importantly, spiritually free. And there is a trap that keeps us from freedom if we get sucked into it. Many abuse victims do. It is the trap of perpetual victimhood. Of embracing being a victim as one’s identity. It can sneak up on you and won’t even realize it.

One of my friends survived horrid abuse, was ex-communicated from her church for getting free of her abuser, and still suffers many physical ills as a result of the abuse. And yet, she is free to enjoy who she is in reality – in Christ. Here are some things she wrote to me recently about the trap of spinning our wheels and permitting an oppressor to continue to keep us in bondage because we adopt the name “victim” for ourselves rather than finding our real personhood in Christ. Here is real wisdom. Listen and remember: these words are coming from people who want to see you healed and free and who want to warn you about this danger. Don’t conclude that we are in any way denying the wickedness of what has happened to you.

My friend said:

Some victims have a need to stay stuck and to be babied as victims instead of growing up in Christ. They are carnal and desire to embrace what has happened to them and live by their “feelings and emotions”, rather than handling it how God would have them handle it.

If you ever offend this perpetual victim, you automatically become an abuser. They lack truth and don’t know who the real enemy is behind abuse and then they make their identity about what happened to them instead of what God says about them. I was like that, but God changed that. Thank goodness! 

Victims who are held down by Satan cannot stand for the Word to be used adequately to bring them to forgiveness and out of bitterness. It’s a work of Satan playing on suffering and on the poor me syndrome. I understand needing time for the light to come on and work through things, but it’s actually become an excuse for such people to be bitter and to sin – to even abuse others themselves.

They want a message that makes them feel good about remaining stuck. They need victim strokes. I get it, but pretty soon such people get weird about it and everyone is an abuser and everything is abuse. The focus is no longer what God can do to heal us and use it for good, it’s about everybody having to pay them back for what they suffered. That’s because their identity is in what happened to them, not in Christ. 

Remember how your abuser made you feel? How you had to be constantly tip-toeing around and walking on egg shells lest you get blasted or accused, blamed or worse? Now, we must take great care that WE do not start doing that ourselves to others. And that is exactly what will happen if we choose perpetual victimhood.

And what do you suppose is going to happen if a perpetual victim launches out into counseling others? They aren’t free themselves. They have not embraced an identity in Christ. So all they are going to do is bring those they counsel into the same bondage they are in. This is why we discourage people who have been abuse victims from launching out too quickly into their own ministry of helping other victims. I understand the desire to do so, but we must be quite sure that we are really healed and free ourselves before we can lead others into freedom.

Like produces like. You don’t want to replicate your victimhood in someone else. Christ is Victor. He has defeated the devil. He wants His people to be free, and that freedom is only going to come when we see clearly who we really are in Him.

Rom 8:37-39 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (38) For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, (39) 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.

Words of Wisdom About Abuse

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On October 25, 2021

In Abusers, Counseling

My friend Joenne posted this on her facebook page and I asked her if I could post it here. This is truth here. Thank you Joenne!

October is Domestic Abuse Awareness month, so just a little food for thought. I am not angry, bitter or unforgiving toward anyone, God has simply made me strong in His power, has healed me and will continue to strengthen and heal me.

When people tell you that your abuser “never says anything bad about you” but that you “don’t have much good to say about them”, tell them this, because this is what good psychologists and counselors say about that:“Well, the abuser wasn’t abused or traumatized by anyone, in anyway, nor left with C-PTSD or emotionally abused to the point of breaking, so why would they have anything bad to say about the people who were their victims? Their victims didn’t do anything to them.” Then contemplate that perhaps you are just being manipulated and perhaps the abuser has plenty bad to say, they just don’t say it to you because they want to look good to you and keep you as their flying monkey.

Also contemplate the difference between human sins and failings and abuse. They are not the same. Abusers desire to make the failings of their victims equal to their abuse of them, but there is no comparison. Burning the toast, spending too much money, being weary, making a bad choice, being depressed, not wanting to be intimate with your abuser or just being angry at being abused, are not abuse, nor do those things cause trauma in someone.

The fracturing that happens to abuse survivors is mostly due to physiological changes in their brains, due to the abuse. It is not just emotional or spiritual. The brain itself changes when someone is being abused, especially in long-term abuse. Survivors of trauma need to talk about it in order to heal. Just be sure you are talking to one or two people you are safe with and don’t allow your brain to spew information to others who are only there to judge you.

People who have deep trauma may do things they would not ordinarily do, that even they don’t understand. That is because the brain is injured cognitively as well, when someone is deeply traumatized. They are living in a blinding fog, meant to actually protect the brain from further injury. So don’t be shocked when a trauma survivor does things you would not expect from them. Instead of getting into a religious and spiritually abusive mode, maybe try reaching out to them and love them like Christ commands us to. They will heal over time, much better if they are loved through it.

I had to have neuro-psychology testing done last year for the illness I now bear, in order to get a cognitive baseline to watch for advancing disease. They take a basic, but not in depth, history of your life. After I gave my history, the doctor said to me, “You know why you are physically sick and having brain issues, right?” I began explaining the illness and he stopped me and said, “It’s because you have had so much trauma in your life. We now know that deep trauma causes things in the immune system and brain to change physiologically, and that is why you have become so ill”.

I wish Christians were not so quick to judge outwardly, but to love people as they are commanded by God and stop throwing people away. I have learned so much from all I have gone through and while others may judge, God has healed and I am looking forward to the ministry He has prepared me for, to help others know the true Gospel so we can begin helping the wounded instead of making them sacrifices to our sinful spiritual abuse of them. What you intended to do to harm me, God intended for good and has used for my own good and His glory, to help many people and bring the truth of the Gospel and how to live it, to many. May God heal all survivors’ spirits. That is all.

Why Couple’s Counseling is a Disaster and a Setup

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On October 22, 2021

In Abusers, Counseling

Anything you say can and will be used against you.

Mat 26:59-61 Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death, (60) but they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward (61) and said, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days.’”

Most of you know by now, either from reading on the subject of domestic abuse or simply by hard experience, that the typical approach to “marriage troubles” is the prescription of marriage counseling. And that means of course, having both husband and wife come into the counseling sessions together. For healthy marriages in which the spouses genuinely desire to learn more about how God wants them to love one another, raise up their children in Christ, and so on – this approach may have some value. I say “may have” because so much of what is put off as “biblical counseling” just isn’t.

BUT, when you are dealing with an evil person as one spouse in a marriage, couple’s counseling is gasoline on the fire. It provides ammunition for the evil one to use against the victim. And let me tell you why.

When we honestly share our thoughts and feelings with another person, that trust entails taking a really big risk. It assumes that the person we are sharing with will recognize the trust we are extending to them and they will guard that trust carefully, using it only for our good.

The wicked do not guard this trust. They use it as a weapon.

So, when a victim of abuse, for example, at the encouragement of a counselor (“speak honestly. Share what is on your heart. Tell your spouse what you are thinking”) when the victim opens up, it is like handing a loaded gun to the abuser. Just like the Pharisees searching and searching for some accusation, the wicked spouse’s goal is to accuse, blame, and shame.

Honesty, you see, is not always the best policy. The wicked are not to be entrusted with the treasure of our trust. And yet this is exactly what normally is encouraged in couple’s counseling. You can be sure that your honest words will be used against you. Especially if that honesty entails some type of confession of a sin or failure or mistake. Let me give you an example.

When I first came to this church here in Tillamook, it was a hotbed of counterfeit Christians. There was literally no peace from the very first day. The attacks began immediately from people who demanded power and control and who disguised themselves as eminently holy types. This all, needless to say, weighed me down. One day a fellow who had rarely attended the church and who really was unknown to me, committed suicide by overdose. I visited the hospital while he was still in a coma but of course was unable to talk to him. By this time, in this atmosphere of constant accusations and darts of attack, I was wearing a considerable degree of false guilt. So, the Sunday after this man died, at the beginning of my sermon, I told the congregation that I had not been diligent enough to visit them one by one, including this man who was now dead. Of course what carnal people like this really want is a happy social club, special attention from the pastor, and so on – they don’t want the preaching of the Word. But, I wore that cloak of false guilt and made confession of it.

Well, some months later during another Sunday service, the “leader of the pack” stormed up to the podium during the service and began to rant and rail and accuse me of not appreciating his efforts in building the church building and on and on he went, finally storming out while muttering it was time for him to leave the church. Of course what he expected was for everyone to come to his cause and give me the boot. That didn’t happen.

But what I wanted to point out here is that during this evil man’s rant, he said “why, HE (meaning me) admitted by his own mouth that he didn’t go visit the (dead guy) often enough.” So I was to blame for the suicide, you see. And this is exactly what happens when we share honestly with the wicked. They use our trust against us. They use our honest, humble words to try to alienate others from us and to put the blame for all the troubles on our shoulders.

And THAT is the primary reason why couple’s counseling is a setup. Don’t fall for it. Don’t trust the devil.

Christ Can Heal Us

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On October 20, 2021

In Counseling

Luk 8:1-3 Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, (2) and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, (3) and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means.

I want to ask you a serious question. Is there any ailment or trauma or damage evil has done to us that Christ cannot heal? I mean that question, as I said, seriously. Because even though we quickly answer “of course not” to that question, in practice we answer in the affirmative. In other words, we don’t really believe that He can. Oh, He might heal other people, but not me.

Now, the Lord for His purposes and for our good may choose to allow certain physical ailments to go unresolved in us. He did that with Paul’s thorn in the flesh, you recall. But I want to suggest something very confidently to you – We can be certain that Christ wants to heal us of spiritual maladies such as fear, anxiety, depression, deceit by the devil’s lies, hatred, unforgiveness, shame, false (and even real) guilt, and on and on the list can go. Christ came into this world to conquer the devil and set us free from his snares. Jesus wants you to be healed and be freed of these things. It is a certainty.

It is my observation that certain common schools of therapy in this world only want to make you cope. They give you meds and ongoing therapy sessions (often for years) in order to help you just get by. To enable you to function to at least some degree. But they never cure you. They never set you free. Only Jesus can do that! And He wants to do it!

I am sure that this is the message we are supposed to take away from this account:

Luk 8:43-48 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. (44) She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. (45) And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” (46) But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” (47) And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. (48) And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

We often recommend that abuse victims seek a qualified therapist who understands the dynamics of trauma and so on. But we do not recommend this as an end game treatment. Jesus wants you healed, He wants you to be free, and he is able to pull it off! His power is the power that raises the dead. Don’t think for a moment that He cannot or that He does not want to heal you.

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