Anger raged inside of me, as someone I loved shared that church abuse not only had wrecked her faith in God but that she had not even told me half of what had happened to her.
We are living in a time when the airways are pregnant with offense.
As a believer in Jesus, who has traversed an extremely uphill battle in my own healing journey, understanding how to walk in forgiveness, yet also how not to spiritually bypass my God-given emotions with the purpose of making righteous judgments and decisions has been like a giant pendulum, often swinging one way and then another.
Story after story of horrible trauma and abuse, especially sexual, most often by church leadership or on church property, that should be most of all safe places, fill the news. Church leader after church leader has fallen and will continue to, as God has promised a great cleansing of His house will occur in this season.
Beyond that, people have continuously been pitted against each other. And many times, my ears have been filled with blanket statements of “All Christians are …”, or “All gays are…”, or “All white people are…”, or “All black people are…”, or “All politicians are…” Fill in the blanks.
We seemingly are blinded to the battles that are raging in the unseen realm. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against powers, against world forces of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly supernatural places.” Eph. 6:12
Personally, I’ve processed through many instances of deep, dark trauma, as well as bearing the story of many other precious souls as we together look to Jesus for healing.
So, many times, it has felt like it would be easier to just not know one more story. To bury my head in the sand or turn my head the other way, to have even kept my own heart sealed up – sometimes seems like it would have saved so much heartache for myself.
Yet, the pain is there. The ache is there. Hiding from it doesn’t produce anything good. Just more delayed pain.
The hidden places – it’s where lies live. In the darkness. In the dark recesses of my soul, where I’ve not let the light in yet, not let the story be told. It is where I still can be held captive.
Freedom comes through Jesus. Freedom comes from letting His light in, His truth in.
One of my life verses has been “I acknowledged my sin to You, and my inquiry I did not hide. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord (continually unfolding the past til all is told), then You instantly forgave me…” Psalms 32 AMP Classic
I know the best way is to step into the light. So, I am…
For the past two decades, I have asked Jesus to come into some very horribly dark places in my past. My father had been a pastor when I was growing up, yet he invited every perversion possible into our home – to the point that I was forced to live two, very different lives – the life of the good, little Christian pastor’s daughter who presented very well, made good grades, and sang in the choir and the life of the shatter child who was forced to participate in satanic rituals and was trafficked to whoever my father wanted to make a quick buck with. And it’s not just my story. It’s the story of many, many precious ones.
Many have asked me how could you even have stayed in the church all these years? Stayed a Christian even? When so many, seem to leave their faith for so little, in comparison?
Well, that is a complicated answer. For many years, it was because I was afraid not to. Afraid God would zap me, like my fire and brimstone pastor/father taught me. Beyond that though, as a teen, I met a real God, a real Holy Spirit, and on my healing journey, I met the “REAL JESUS.”.He’s not anything like my father growing up had taught me. Jesus is kind, good, patient, real love, real compassion.
On the healing journey, I also learned the power of forgiveness. The power of releasing people and horrible things that had happened to them into the hands of the only one who could hold such offense. God.
I know many people have different opinions about forgiveness. Some think you must ask for it. Others almost say “I forgive you.” to just bypass the wrongs that have been done, with no consequences. Neither of these is what I’m talking about.
See, Jesus on the cross offered forgiveness to anyone and everyone who would receive it, but He doesn’t force it on anyone either. They have to receive it. “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” Stephen later followed His example. And even in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have sinned against us.”
It doesn’t mean that there are no consequences to those actions though. Someone who commits a crime still may need to serve some jail time. And the foundation of the throne of God is justice.
So…
Justice means making a wrong, right. Oftentimes, part of the consequences of wrong behavior is having to make whatever you did wrong, right to the best of your ability.
There is something really powerful about forgiving or releasing people and evils done to us into the Righteous Judge’s hands because only He can rightly judge. I know this. I’ve seen Jesus walk me through this time and time again, and it releases me. It helps me to heal.
Yet, Jesus, God, gets angry. Scripture is clear that the Holy One, who is perfect love, hates evil. For those who say that we are to live unoffended, well, Jesus didn’t. He was certainly offended at evil. He was especially offended at the Pharisees, and He let them know it by calling them “Sons of their father, Satan.” and other unpleasant names. He was offended at the evil in His day.
Evil, and violation of God’s moral laws, make Him very angry because it hurts us. He loves us, and anything that hurts us hurts Him. I don’t believe that He wants us to bypass those emotions, stuffing them away, in order to live this peaceful life all the time.
Hearing about a child who has been molested by a pastor should shoot your anger out the roof. If we don’t have a reaction to evil, no one will be motivated to do something about it. The reaction of anger and disgust is appropriate, and justice for the victims should be dealt to the abusers. By-passing our emotions, which are God-given, can swing us into complacency, which will then allow these atrocities to continue. That’s not the heart of God.
He wants us to feel those things, to take action if need be, like to report it to the police, but then to release the people involved to Him, because again, He is the one who can handle them.
Ephesians 4:25-26 AMP says “Be angry at sin – at immorality, at injustice, at ungodly behavior, yet do not sin; don’t let your anger cause you shame, nor allow it to last until the sun goes down. And don’t give the devil an opportunity to lead you into sin by holding a grudge, or nurturing anger, or harboring resentment, or cultivating bitterness.”
I have been able to walk this out better when the offenses perpetrated were against me than I have when someone I love that has been wronged.
So, I didn’t even see this coming. I was enraged when I hung up the phone with my loved one. I wanted to go hit a tree or throw some toilet paper against a wall. I knew something was very wrong inside of my heart, so I attended a prayer meeting, to ask for help.
One woman timidly said, “Jesus, show her what’s in her inner temple that needs to be cleansed.” And that simple prayer did the job.
In the last several years, we have walked through two major church crises. The first one had felt like an ugly divorce of church family that we loved dearly. Offense, selfishness, egos, and division had set in, which led to a hurtful split.
The second had appeared as if a con artist (not a judgment, just the best one-word description I could think of to describe how it felt) had taken the pulpit and had twisted the meaning of spiritual authority to the point that all had to bow to his wishes or be excommunicated. And that’s exactly what happened. We began to try to speak up, and our family was excommunicated, along with many others as they spoke out throughout the past few years.
At the time that we had left the church, we had tried to address things Biblically by going to the elders for help, when we had been denied access to the pastor. At that point, we were shut down by the elders as well, so leaving felt like our only recourse. In recent months, the tables changed.
I thought I had forgiven these people and released them to Jesus many times. But when I hung up that phone with one that I love dearly and heard the depth of pain she still carried and saw the path of destruction it was leading to, I raged inside.
The pastor of that former church had recently been fired, and we had responded with a letter, explaining the hurt the church leadership had caused because the current leadership had requested it. I decided to reread the letter I had sent, to see if there was a clue as to what needed to be cleansed in me.
And then I saw it like a laser beam… Blame.
I had judged the entire past and current leadership at that church as being the ones to BLAME for the choices of those who had been hurt.
Everyone has choices to make. Even when evil is perpetrated on us, we all have a choice in how we handle that. What I had done was lay all the blame at the feet of the church leadership as a whole, not just the pastor who had just been fired. And it was flat-out wrong to do that.
Shocked that I had so easily fallen for the same hook, line, and sinker, I quickly begged God to further show me what I had done. I could still feel the weight of the rage in me.
That following weekend, I listened as a friend spoke on “offense” at a women’s conference. As she spoke, in her southern accent, I clearly heard her say, “Don’t let ‘a-fence’ build up.” Over and over, that’s all I could hear was “a fence”, and then it occurred to me that whenever I hold onto “offense”, it creates “a fence”, which separates me from others. In order to have unity, we have to be willing to tear down “the fences” that we have built and be a bridge builder, not an “a-fence” builder.
A couple of days later, I still sought Jesus to show me further what was in my heart, because the feelings of deep-seated anger still rose in my heart every time I thought about the church situation. All of a sudden, I saw Jesus, in my mind-eye, gently offer His hand to me. I looked down to see myself sitting on a throne, a seat. With great compassion, I heard the Lord say, “Sweetheart, you’ve slipped into the judgment seat.” He had tears in his eyes as He continued. “This seat next to you would be much more comfortable.” I glanced beside me to see another golden, padded seat next to me. Both appeared very similar in size and design. I took His hand, to reseat myself as He suggested. “This is the mercy seat. It’s a much better position to view life from.”
I burst into tears, profusely asking forgiveness for taking the judgment seat. He smiled at me and said, “The mercy seat is the much wiser choice to sit in, to view life through, and to make judgments from.” I nodded and quickly sat down in the mercy seat. I had chosen this seat many times before in my healing journey. It shocked and saddened me that I had made a gravely, wrong choice, without even consciously being aware of it.
The next day, I determined in my heart to revisit the church property from where the hurt had occurred. I decided to go to the gym first to help get out some frustrations I was still feeling. I randomly hit play on YouTube, and these words began to play.
“I’ve been the judge. I’ve been assuming that I know what’s best. Forgive me. Father, forgive me. I sought my own justice. I said in my own heart, I’ll do it my way instead. Forgive me. Father, forgive me. Back to the mercy seat, Lord, I am running. I’m running…” – Lyrics to Mercy Seat by Kim Walker-Smith, Jun. 2024
I was stunned. I listened to it on repeat the rest of the day. I could feel the shift in my heart, and the weight of the judgment lifted. It was like a fog dissipated from my eyes, a clouded lens was removed that I had been viewing the world through. Finally, I could see clearly again, which I didn’t even realize that I hadn’t seen clearly before.
That is the nature of deception. When you are deceived, you can’t see it.
I followed through with a prayer walk around the old church property. Immediately, I jumped into my own thoughts and petitions, but I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit in my heart, say, “Stop and listen to what I have to say.”
So, I did. And I heard the words of a compassionate Father who loved that land and the people on that land who had served Him well, who did still have pure hearts and yearned for a genuine move of His Spirit. I also felt His deep hurt over those who had been hurt and even those who had been deceived into hurting others.”
I questioned whether or not I should walk a lonely trail that bordered the back fence and ran along the property line. As I did, a huge white hawk with black stripes swooped over my head and landed at the entry to the trail, seemingly waiting for me to come. As soon as I reached the entrance, it swooped again into the forest behind the building.
This time as I walked, I came into agreement with all the Lord had said, and as I reached the end a huge rock graced the path, so I sat on it and quietly whispered a prayer to see the hawk again, if I was on track. I decided to release all the remaining judgments and pain that I felt I needed to while sitting on the rock. With tears streaming down my face, I listed off offense after offense not just towards me but toward all those I love as well. Again, this was not about holding accountable those who had done wrong or not. That had already been done and was at that point out of my hands. It was about releasing what had been done and the people who through it had come from to Jesus and allowing Him to judge it.
The moment I finished, the hawk swooped in front of me once more and off of the property. Peace filled me. As I walked back across the parking lot to my car, I could feel the presence of angels coming to fulfill the purposes that God had intended all along. I slipped into an unlocked prayer chapel by my vehicle and left a simple note on the table that read, “I forgive you.”
As we face so many painful exposures going on in our world right now, which is only going to increase in the days to come, because God is the one bringing it, the posture of our heart is super important. In our inner court, are two thrones – the Judgment Seat or the Mercy Seat. It’s up to us to decide which throne to sit on, to view our life through, and to make decisions from.
Choose wisely.
Featured Image by lohannaps from Pixabay
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