119. Freedom In the Church - Abuse

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a great time to be a part of the family of God. And we're so glad that you're a part of the family of the For Freedom Ministries. And we are here to expose legalism and give hope and help through the gospel through Galatians 6.1. And so For Freedom Christ has set us free. And we are excited to have you here with us and a part of what we've got going on. We are in our In the Church series and excited about going through this. Man, Brett, we've had some good feedback from our last week episode. And looking forward to this week and also next week with an interview. And, man, great interviews coming up and so excited about what we've got in the future. But, Brett, we are in the middle of, man, time is flying by in the end of January. And I don't know how the weather is where you're at, but we had 14-degree weather last week, two weeks ago. And we had 70-degree weather at the end of last week. And then today, this morning, I get up and it's 14 degrees again. So as you can hear from me, I'm congested. Weather's changing. Allergies are coming back. My body doesn't know what's going on, whether it's spring or if it's summer. But, man, it's been crazy. How are you guys doing? Are y'all staying healthy? Are y'all staying good in y'all's end? Well, I'll tell you what. You're right about the weather. It's just going back and forth. It's just killer on the allergies. It's killer on the sinuses. Like a few weeks ago, I got over strep. And then as soon as I got over strep, I got a little virus that affected my inner ear. And then now I've got sinus issues. And on top of all that, you know, January is coming to a close. But another thing that's affecting me is my New Year's resolutions, which so far I have been faithful to. I have been going to the gym every day, lifting heavy weight to failure, really putting in the work there, intermittent fasting, stop eating at three. And when I do eat, it's salad, you know, just try my best to get in shape, get healthy. I've got a lot of stuff I want to do. And if I want to put more mileage on this body, it's got to get right. But I have just had a time trying to adjust. You know, I've had some headaches and whatnot. Of course, that's going to happen when you change your whole routine. Your body's got to get used to a new way of living, to get used to eating healthy and all that bad stuff that you used to eat. And so we're, you know, working through that. And then, like you said about the weather, you know, it's it's you know, it's 30 degrees one day. And then the next week it's in the right now it's in the 60s. And in another week, it's we're supposed to have another freeze come through. And just that temperature changing back and forth is just really heck on, you know, our bodies and stuff. And so it is taking some getting used to. Yeah, I've if you've watched our live stream at all, which I'm sure most of us haven't, our music lady hasn't been there. And so I've been leading music and preaching. And this last week with congestion, man, I got to the end. And I mean, I legitimately was like whispering almost. It felt like because I didn't have a voice left. Voice was blown out. I know my wife shared on Facebook. I play the bass and I enjoy it. It's a hobby of mine. I've played it since I was a teenager. And so I don't go out and tell everyone I play the bass. But I thought, you know, this week because I've been playing a little bit at the church, just giving some extra sound there. I thought, you know, I'm going to play and lead at the same time. I'm a huge Mark Shurmall quartet fan. And I've been a fan of Mark Shurmall my whole life. And so getting up there and having the bass and leading and singing, it was just great. And my wife snapped a picture of it and put it on Facebook. I'm like, what are you doing? But it was it was great, man. It was it was fun to have. It's fun to be in church, man. I just love when you can go to church, have a good time and be around people that love Jesus, love each other. And it's just such a good atmosphere to be in. And we had some visitors Sunday and just had a great day and a great time and love nothing more than being in church. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Outside of that, before we get started, Super Bowl's coming up. We've got the Chiefs and the 49ers. And so we've got the Red Bull all about the old old Montana's teams playing against each other again. You got a prediction for that? Man, I don't know. I think the winner of the Super Bowl is going to be Taylor Swift. Like, I know you're a Swifty. Oh, big time. Yeah. He need to calm down. So, you know. But I don't know. I was I was you know who I really wanted. I wanted the Lions to go. Oh, I did, too. I wanted it so bad. Lions to be there. And before up until halftime, man, I thought they had a shot. Man, that was that was a rough watch. That second half. I was watching video of that game. And as the Lions fans were walking up, leaving the stadium, the 49ers fans felt so bad for them that they were patting them on the back. And, you know, they were being nice to them and they weren't getting in their face because even the 49ers fans like, man, this is bad for them. But that's what I wanted. I wanted Chiefs and the Lions. But I, you know, Taylor Swift aside, I think this I think the Chiefs might win. Yeah. So I think the 49ers are going to win. I think they're playing really good football, even though they had a horrible first half. There's something special going on at the 49ers right now. So I'm going 49ers. Something about the Lions. We'll share this. I know this has nothing to do with our podcast and you can skip forward two minutes if you want to. But the last time the Detroit Lions won a playoff game on the road was in 1957. OK. And in 1957, they played the San Francisco 49ers. The Lions trailed 24 to 7 at the half. The Lions did. Yeah. They stormed back to win the conference title and would go on to win the national championship that year, defeating the Browns. 31 to 27. Wow. OK. So they were down. By 14 by 17. Just like the 49ers were. 49ers come back in the second half. They came back. I mean, it was a repeat of 1957, almost to the exact score. Down to when they scored in each quarter. Wow. From the 1957. You can see that if you ever go to Wikipedia or whatever. But that popped up the other day on my news feed. And I was blown away. I'm like, dude, that is insane. That's crazy. If you're a Lions fan for life, you'd have known that. I'm not. I'm not. I'm a Dolphins fan. So, yeah. So, well, Ben, we've got a lot of good things in our church. We've got a marriage conference coming up in the end of the 17th in middle of February. And so if you're in my neck of the woods, we'd love to have you be a part of. It's free. We'd love to have you come out. We've got the RFP meetup coming up in November down in Katusa. Excited about that. I hope you guys are already making plans, asking off work. We'd love to have you down there. And then, Brett, we are going back to Israel. One year ago today, this week, we were there. We were in the Holy Lands. It's crazy going through my memories. Yeah. All the days that we were, because this whole week we were in Israel. And it's weird because you'll get half the end of, because of the way the days work, you'll get half of the end of one day and the beginning of the next day. Because I've got time hop on my phone. Oh, yeah. And that's how it does. So going back to these memories, man, it just gives me a taste for it. And I want to, I mean, if it wasn't for this, we'd already be, we'd fix it, you know, be over there in a couple of weeks. But I'm just, it's just giving me an appetite to go back, man. I just can't wait. Yeah, we're, I'm so excited. I just, just posted on our, on my personal page about having an interest meeting and already had a couple of people in our church say, you know, they're interested in going. And so we're looking at that, having a great group when we go in March of 2025. And so about 14 months away, plenty of time to start saving. If you're interested in going with us, man, we'd love to have you go. Our website will be active here real soon. It's so active. We just haven't shared the new link. We'd love for you to be a part of that and to sign up to do it. So, Brett, any other announcements, any other things we can, need to talk about? I think that's pretty much everything. You know, we've got a Katoosa coming up for the sake of the gospel and then Israel. And I think that's just about all the announcements we've got to go. We're in our new series about being in the church, freedom in the church. And I'm enjoying, before we started recording, me and James talked through a couple of subjects that we're going to, a couple of new subjects we've added to the list. We've had several listeners contact us and suggest things. And that's what we want you to do. We want you to contact us. We want your feedback. If you've got an idea that you'd like to share with us, feel free to share that idea. We're always looking for input for our listeners. So, don't be afraid to contact us with that stuff. But I'm really liking the direction that this series is going to go. Yeah. And, you know, it's been evolving a little bit as we began talking about it last year and began planning and praying about it. So, it has evolved into almost the complete first half of the year. So, we traditionally do from January to May, and then we take the summer off June and July, and then we do August to November, and we take December off. And so, right now, Brett, as I'm looking at the schedule, we have everything lined out except the last, all of the weeks of May. So, four weeks. We've got everything lined out except four weeks. So, if there's four topics that you are thinking about that you'd like for us to do, let us know. We'll research them. We'll go through it. And, man, we'd love to have four more topics or two more topics with some interviews to fill out this entire calendar year and just go through things in the church. We're going to be talking about music, dress, translations, Bible versions, preaching styles, outreach, COVID. We're going to talk about COVID in the church, parachurch ministries, service and structure, just some great things that we're looking at. And so, if you want to be a part of that, let us know. Help us out. And we'd love to continue on with that. And so, with that being said, Brett, let's jump into today's topic. Freedom in the church talking about abuse. What is abuse? How does abuse hurt us? How does abuse in the church look like and work with? One verse that has stood out to my mind as I've been studying through this, Romans 8, verses 35 through 39. Such a great verse. Great passage of scripture. Yeah, I'm going to read it. It says, It says, When we think about abuse, one writer says that this is Satan's silent assassin. This is what Satan wants to do to destroy our mentality. He wants to destroy us physically, emotionally, spiritually, verbally, sometimes to abuse. Satan has his different weapons, his different daggers. It looks different in every single person. But all of a sudden, abuse comes in. Abuse begins to work in our lives, work in other people's lives. And there is a real victim here. And we're going to look at abuse in several different ways. Again, we're going to use this as a broad topic. Because abuse can be mentally. It can be physically. It can be sexually. It can be spiritually. Those are really the big four categories that you can go through when it comes to abuse. And so instead of us addressing each one of those four categories, our goal today is to sort of give a talk through what abuse is, and then how we can work through abuse. How we can work through if we have been abused, or if we know someone in the church that has been abused, and how that looks in our life. And so, Brett, what are some of your opening thoughts as we begin to go through the thought of abuse? Like you said, there are so many different forms of abuse. Physical, sexual. But then, you know, people don't realize the emotional abuse that can be put on someone. The spiritual abuse that can be put on. And, you know, some put on people. You know, sometimes when a victim comes forward, it could be years after the abuse happened. And when that happens, people's knee-jerk reaction is to say, oh, well, that's not real. It didn't happen. Why didn't you say anything while it was going on? Well, the thing is that in abusive situations, there's fear in there. There's fear that, you know, if this comes out, it's going to ruin my life. If this comes out, you know, it's going to make the situation worse for me. And other times, there are people that are in abuse, and they're so indoctrinated. And this goes especially with church, spiritual, emotional abuse. They're so indoctrinated in the church that they're in that they don't realize they're being abused. And this is kind of some of the things that I went through in my situation. I thought I was being treated the way the Bible said I was supposed to be treated. I thought I was being treated normally. I didn't realize that I was being emotionally abused and spiritually and verbally abused. I didn't realize that until I had got out. Hindsight 2020. I looked behind and said, man, all that stuff that I went through that was wrong. I don't need to emulate that. I need to speak against that. And so, you know, we just need to be real careful on victim blaming because, you know, sometimes fear is a big thing. And, you know, when you put on that badge of, okay, yes, I survived this. Well, that stays with you. Or some people can feel it will stay with you the rest of your life. It doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to become your identity. And this really is Satan's silent assassin. Abuse is a big deal. It's something we got to talk about. It's something that the church and Christians have swept under the rug for too long. And we have to bring awareness to the situation so other people can realize, man, I'm in an abusive situation. I need to get out of it quick. Yeah, absolutely. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you said one thing. You said manipulation. Manipulation. Oftentimes, manipulation is a way that is a term that we've heard recently in the political years. A pred quo. Right. Yeah. Where this for that. You do this and you'll get that. And all that is is manipulation is, you know, I'm going to give you this. And in order for me to give you this, I'm going to need this in return. We do this as parents all the time without even realizing it. You know, go clean your room and I'll give you a cookie. Go do this. And we'll. And all of a sudden we are in doctrine and programming our kids to respond to manipulation. And then all of a sudden they get into the real world. They get into a situation where someone uses manipulation. Well, they're used to it. Right. We've trained them to be accepted to manipulation. And oftentimes we. We're going to use the term grooming. We're grooming our kids to accept this manipulation that happens in the real world. And it falls back on us as parents as we must parent right. We must lead well. And one of the things that if you are a parent, if you are wondering, you know, how do I know if my child's been abused? How do I know if my friend has been abused or if there's something there? One way to do this is observe what's going on around them and how they are. Watch for changes of moods. Look at their activities. Look at what they're participating in. Are they withdrawing from things? Where is their. Are they just apathetic about life? Do they not care anymore? All of a sudden, these symptoms begin to come up. They begin to be absent from work or school. They begin to not be a part of things they once were a part of. And so you can begin to say, OK, why is this? Is this a red flag? Is this just someone going through a rebellious state or is there a legitimate red flag that is popping up that you can begin to address and be there to ask? Be there to be that person to go to and say, hey, why are you withdrawing? Why are you pulling away from people? And you be proactive. Step in there. Be their advocate. Step in and say what's going on. And begin to have compassion, show grace. And ultimately, if you think there's abuse there, report it. Go to the authorities. Go to the police and say, hey, I've got a legitimate concern here. It may be wrong. Maybe there's something. Maybe I'm not right. But I would rather err on the side of caution. And something's not looking right in this situation. Will you investigate it? Nine times out of ten, the police are going to investigate it. You have to remember that, you know, if you're seeing these signs, you've got to remember that this person is getting beat up. You know, if not physically, verbally, emotionally. In our schools, bullying is bigger now than it's ever been. And so you have to be aware. And when you you have to give the opposite attitude, you've got to give love. You've got to give compassion. You know, your concern for this person has to come across loud and clear. And what you said, I think, is just so important. And I just want to be an advocate for this is just you've got if you see think something's going on, especially some kind of child abuse or some kind of physical sexual abuse. You have to report it. You know, you are mandated reporter, especially if you're a pastor or anyone that's dealing with any type of abuse. When you hear that, you have to report it to the authorities. And so that's just something that that we have to do. And a lot of times people want to blame the victim that, you know, it's it's your fault. And part of my testimony and, you know, I probably have mentioned this on the podcast already, but I'll go into it again is, you know, I was, you know, physically abused as a child. And my dad found out that I was being physically abused and he he kept me, didn't send me back home. And so then we got the lawyers involved. We went to court and I went back to my situation with my stepdad at the time. And he, not my current, but my one I had to and said, if you get up on that stand and you tell the truth, they're going to take you away from your mom and they're going to take you away from your dad, which was a straight up lie. I was being manipulated. And so I got up there on the stand and, you know, I have these adults with their eyes on me. You know, I'm just a little kid and I've got their eyes on me. And so, you know, I said, ask the lawyer to to send the adults out of the room. And the reason why I wanted the adults to go out of the room was because I knew my dad was going to be in there and I didn't want to look at his face. And when I lied on the stand because they he had manipulated, he had manipulated my stepdad at the time, had manipulated me into thinking that if I told the truth, I wouldn't see either one of my parents. And so I wanted my dad out of the room where I could lie. And so all the adults left the room. I lied to the judge. I told the judge that my mom had had spanked me, that it wasn't him. And it, you know, it all, you know, I straight up lied to the judge because I was being manipulated to do so. But I've been through that. And so there's one thing I can't stand is threatening a child, manipulating a child, that physical abuse. I've had a taste of that in my past. And it's just not justified when you manipulate children like that. Yeah. I hate that. I hate to hear that. One of the things that I'm going to say later, but I'm going to say now because you brought that up, is if you say nothing, nothing can be done. If you say nothing, nothing can be done. If you know that someone is abused, if you know that something is going on and you don't say anything, no one is going to be able to do anything because you didn't speak up. You didn't, you didn't do your duty in protecting that other person. And I'm going to say that later in another area. But again, I want to say it now to, to help us as well. One of the things that as we talk to abuse, whether it's current, recent, or took place even years ago, victims often believe, and you'll hear this so often. If you watch documentaries, I watch documentaries all the time, Brett, you will hear people say, well, there's something that I did wrong that had, that is the reason this happened to me. Or it's my fault. But if I, if I, if I wouldn't have went to that party, if I wouldn't have done that thing, then this wouldn't have happened to me. And oftentimes that's not the case. Oftentimes the case is the abuser was doing things to this person and making them feel like it was their fault. Uh, I was listening to a podcast, uh, just this week and, uh, uh, thinking about having them on here. Uh, don't know if I'm going to endorse them yet. I'm still listening to them. Uh, but one of the ladies that's on this podcast said, uh, if it's a minor, it's always wrong because minors can't consent. Minors cannot consent to anything sexually. And so whether a minor comes onto you or not, it is always the adult's fault because a minor can't consent. Right. And oftentimes that adult will make it feel like it's the child's fault. They did something wrong. And so they're getting punished or that that's what they need to do. And so they will oftentimes victimize someone in order for them to feel right. Uh, but abuse is never biblically justified. Uh, and so we have to understand that when we go through abuse, we have to understand that, uh, there is grace in God's word. And, uh, we're still going to transfer over to this at this point of, uh, okay, what if you are being abused in church? What if it's spiritual abuse? What if it's physical abuse? What if it's in a school, uh, public school, but it's in a workplace, you're being abused as an adult. Uh, how do we handle abuse? What do we do and how do we respond when abuse happens? Brett, why don't you start with the first one? We got six things here that we've, uh, looked through and that we're going to talk to them here. I want to, I want to say a quick word. Or to somebody who may be going through abuse right now and just kind of feel like there's no hope. And I w I want to say a word to just say, there's always hope, you know, and some people, when they, they have this sense of hopelessness, they want to resort to desperate measures. And, you know, that's when we need to point them to the love of Christ, you know, as the good shepherd. Um, and I want to say, don't make permanent decisions based on temporal circumstances. You know, um, it's, there's always hope. Christ is our hope. And I think the first thing that, you know, we need to, you know, remind somebody who's going through this is that, look, you know, receive God's healing and grace. That's the first thing you need to do as an abuse victim. God's healing grace is, is, is there for you. Um, abuse, abuse, abuse shatters the heart, but grace heals hearts. You know, Psalm 147, three says, uh, who God who healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. Well, you know, healing, you don't get healed overnight. You break your arm. You're not going to be good to go the next day. Healing takes time. And there are many factors that depend on when a person heals and that, you know, the kind of abuse it was, how long the abuse went on, the nature of the abuse. But we have to keep turning to God for his grace because God will never turn away from us. He'll never, he'll never turn away from you. Hebrews 13, five, for he has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalms 46, one, you know, listen, God's grace will heal you, but that's where you need to have faith. The avenue to God's grace is our faith. Okay. Faith is a good thing, but faith, just for instance, faith doesn't save you. It's Jesus that you put your faith in. It's the foundation of your faith. Well, how you get God's grace, the avenue through that to get God's grace is your faith. So you've got to have faith that God's healing grace will be there for you because he's got plenty of it. Absolutely. I like what a friend of mine said at a funeral the other day, grab hold of God's amazing, abundant bowl of grace. It's like this Jethro bowl style family meal, massive bowl. It's like the bottom never runs dry when you're eating at grandma's house of her big old bowl of mashed potatoes or mac and cheese. It's like it's just never ending. And that is God's grace. Like it's never ending. It's always there for us. It's never going to run out. It's never going to stop being good. It's never going to stop being fresh. It's always there. And it's always for us. We just have the opportunity to reach out and say, am I going to take a hold of that grace? Because God's given it to us for so freely. Next one we'll look at is God's love is unconditional and unchanging. God's love is unconditional and unchanging. He loved us while we were yet sinners. I tell this to my kids all the time. My love for you doesn't change. It's not going to end. And God's love is so much greater than that. He loves us even when we were sinners. Listen to Jeremiah 31 3. The Lord has appeared to the age of to me saying, yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness, have I drawn you here? Satan's going to try to get us to doubt God's love. Satan's going to try to get us to say, you know what? God's love, he doesn't love you no more. You screwed up. You've messed up. You've really done something wrong. You don't deserve what God's going to give you. God hates you. You don't deserve this. I mean, look at the life of Job. What did Job's wife say? If God really loves us, why don't you just curse God so you can go ahead and die? Look what you're going through. And Job said, no, blessed be the name of the Lord. He gives and he takes away. He reigns on the just and the unjust. And when we begin to understand that Satan is a liar, Satan is not telling the truth. Satan is trying to, again, manipulate us so that we'll believe that God doesn't love us, that God's love is unchanging or changeable. But when we remember, even in an abuse situation, nothing can separate us from the love of God. That's why I started out by reading Romans 8, because that is such a powerful passage. When we begin to think through how much does God love me? God's love is unchanging. God's love is unchanging. It's just us grabbing a hold of his love and saying, God, I need that. God give me more of your love And he wraps his arms around us Like only he can And gives us the grace that we need in that situation So remember As Brett said Understand that God gives healing grace But he also loves us unconditionally He doesn't need us To change because he's not changing And so God comes And he loves us and he cares for us As a father loves his child You know Just to reiterate What you just said Satan's MO You start from Genesis You read through the Old Testament You read through the Gospels All the way to the end of the Bible Satan's MO Is to call God a liar When he's the liar But he calls God a liar He says God left you God abandoned you You went through this because God allowed it to happen But What he doesn't show us And what we need to think about and remember Is all the good things That he's That he has done for us Now I think about You know My family that I have And my kids And I think about the situation That I'm in right now And the church where he has me at And these are all good things That God has given us But on even going further than that He has done something good for you Because he died for you He gave his son Jesus shed his blood He died on a cross He rose again We have salvation For eternity in heaven We have all the fruits of the spirit Love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, meekness All of these things that we have access to So these are all good things That God has done for us So never think that Oh where is God He hasn't done anything for me He has He's done all these things for us Because He loves us Right Now another thing Go ahead Go ahead Another thing that we want to mention Another help here in this situation Is do not remain In a place of danger You know If there's a current physical situation Or sexual abuse situation That you're going through right now You really need to remove yourself From that situation And what can sometimes keep us In these situations Is guilt And things such as that And if you're aware of abuse happening Especially to a minor You have to report it We've already mentioned that Even abuse You know Towards you That took place in the past You may spare other victims By reporting the abuse To someone Who can prosecute Like you said If you Like you said earlier If you say nothing Nothing can be done And listen I know I'm a pastor And I preach the Bible And I know Our stand on divorce Now there are There are Biblical exceptions For divorce I understand that But I'm talking specifically But you know Probably The abuse situation Between Never advise somebody To stay in an abusive situation Ever I will never advise that I'll never say Oh well He's your husband So you need to stay there And you need to pray for him And if there's a Physically abusive Any kind of Any kind Not just physically But any kind of Abusive situation I'm never going to advise Somebody to stay in that situation I'm going to say Look we'll figure it out later You know you need to Remove yourself From the situation Then we'll reassess And go from there We'll look at the word of God We'll figure it out But me personally I'm never going to advise Somebody to stay in An abusive situation Absolutely And you know One of the things And you hit on it Just for a second there I want to hit Before I go to the next point Is When We Report An abuse Whether it was Five minutes ago Or whether it was Fifty years ago The likelihood And I'm sure I can find The statistic for it I've heard it somewhere The likelihood of an abuser Only having one victim Is so small When we report something And we say You know what This Person at work Abused me Fifty years ago I just want to tell the police that Okay It's on the police's radar They're going to start looking into it And all of a sudden They're going to begin To look into it Or Someone else now Who maybe they abused Five minutes ago Begins to have comfort Moving forward Now there's a pattern There's a track record We can begin to put the pieces together Of how many actual victims there are But when we don't say anything We allow that abuse To continue to perpetrate We allow that abuser To continue to have More and more carnage Behind them Because we didn't step up And say something That's why it's so important To stand up And that's why it's so important To say Yes this person abused me Yes this happened in my life And don't be afraid Of the pushback Or the blowback Because you are going To help someone else out By you coming forward And so that's why It's important to come forward The next thing Oftentimes Brett We're going to want to take Matters under our own hands We're going to want to say I want to get justice But biblically We must trust God To bring justice One of the most horrific things That we can do Is have abusive injustice And Satan's going to say Well if you go to the authority They're not going to believe you anyways Again Satan's a liar He's going to try to get you Not to go To turn this person in He loves lies He's going to tell lies All the time And all of a sudden They're going to Begin to have us Believe in our mind That God's not going to be Bringing justice I've got to take justice In my own hands The truth is God will always Always bring justice In his time He loves you He always has And it's impossible For us to understand Why evil seems to triumph But what we do know Is that it's beyond Our understanding We can trust God To bring justice We can know That he brings justice A scripture here 1 Peter 2.23 Who When he was reviled Reviled not again When he suffered He threatened not But committed himself To do To him Sorry Sorry But committed himself To him That judged Righteously Recompense Romans 12 Recompense No man evil For evil Dearly beloved Avenged not yourself But rather give place Under wrath For it is written Vengeance is mine I will repay Sayeth the Lord We must trust The Bible to be true If the Bible is true About our salvation If the Bible is true About God's son Coming into this world And being born of a virgin And dying for our sins And then rising from the dead Three days later And the church being Started in the upper room And if the Bible is true About all those other things It's also true About God Taking His vengeance Out on those That Are evil And he says Vengeance is mine I will repay God's vengeance Is a whole lot Different than my vengeance It's going to look Different than my vengeance But when I trust The Lord The Lord Brings Healing The Lord Brings Grace The Lord Brings comfort And it's trusting In him To take care Of those things You know I've never Brad I've never been In this situation Where And you know We live in a Depraved world We live in a sinful world And I'm sure One day I'll This will I'll have to come Face to face But I've never Been a I've never Had a child Abused I've never Had a A drunk driver Kill one of my kids I've never Never had this But I think One of the Beautiful pictures Of grace And mercy That's shown Is that mother Whose son Was killed By a drunk driver That mother Whose son Was killed By a drug addict Or something That some Some bad story That happened And they've got The video Of that That person Being sentenced And that mother Standing up And giving her Advocate statement That mother Looking at that Person and saying I forgive you You took the Greatest thing From me And I forgive you Because the Lord Forgave me of my sins And I care about Who you are Man when you It tears me up I'm coming to tears Just thinking about it Right now Because I'm Thinking about my Own kid I'm thinking about If this were To happen to my Kid Could I forgive That person I should be Able to God's forgiven Me Why can't I Forgive them But to see that And then to see The person That did that Evil horrible act See that forgiveness And see their life Changed in that moment It's just such a Great picture Of what God's Done for us That type of Forgiveness You're talking about That kind of Forgiveness Does not come Naturally No Because Because so many People can look At somebody That does that I've seen those Videos And say There's no way That I could do That And they're right There's physically Humanly No way That you could Do that Because that Type of Forgiveness Is not Natural That type Of forgiveness Is supernatural Absolutely That type of Forgiveness Only comes Through the Holy Spirit Now Listen to me Bitterness Is a cancer Bitterness Will consume Your life Bitterness Makes you A slave To your Abuser If you Are bitter At your Abuser Then you Will be Their slave And they Will control Your life For the Rest of Your life You only Have freedom To If you Forgive them Now I'm not Saying to Ever trust Them again Because even Jesus didn't Trust certain People And it Says that In the Gospels But forgiveness Frees you From that Bitterness That will Destroy your Life You have To remember Just like James What you Said earlier I want to Reiterate We can Look all Through the Bible And we Can see That God Keeps his Promises Every promise That he Has made Us up To this Point Has come True And that Gives us Faith that The promises That he's Made for Our future Will also Come true And I Think The promise Of all Promises Past our Salvation Past our Assurance The promise Of all Promises Is in The end Where it Says He will Wipe every Tear away And to Me What that Phrase Means I will Wipe every Tear away What that Means is God will Come in Like a Superhero He's gonna Right Every wrong Everybody That That Will That That The abuser Will be Judged The abuse Will be Exalted And uplifted And God Is gonna Come in Wipe every Tear away Right Every wrong And as Christians We have Faith Beyond Human Comprehension That God Can do These things One of the Next Counseling Helps That we Have to Go over Today Is listen Just some Advice Study the Lives and The impact Of people In scripture Who've Experienced Abuse The bible Is our Guide Our manual You know If you've Been through It Chances are There's Somebody in The bible Who's also Been through It Listen Your abuser Does not Have the Final say In your Story God is The one That has The final Say in Your story And all Through the Pages of Scripture We see God Overriding The evil Purposes Of an Abuser And using A victim As a Special Part of God's Plan There are A few Examples In the Bible Joseph Joseph Was abused By his Brothers And Potiphar's Wife And the Jailers And God Used that In his Life to Exalt him And glorify God The Israelites Were slaves In Egypt Naaman's Wife's Maid Was a Slave A Jewish Slave She Didn't Have to Say Tell Naaman About The Prophet Who Could Kill His Leprosy Daniel Brought Just as A slave Into A Foreign Nation Made A Eunuch To Serve The Kingdom And But You Know All This Abuse God Used Daniel In A Mighty Way Esther The Apostle Paul Whenever Everything That Paul Went Through And Paul Talks About All The Abuse And Beatings That The Biggest The Biggest Example Of All Is Jesus Christ Jesus Is Just Our Example Of Suffering And Abuse But Listen He Could Have Escaped It But Yet He Chose To Endure It Because Of His Love You Know For Me And You And Listen This Is What I Love About The Bible It's What I Love About The Scripture Is God Doesn't Just Record The Good Things About People God Didn't Just Record The You Know The Great Things The Good Things The Clean Things God Records The Dirt God Records The Bad God Records The Embarrassing He Knows We're Not Perfect And I Believe That's Why The People In The Bible Aren't Perfect Either That's Exactly Right Man Brett That's So Good You Can't See It On You're Not Watching The Video Anyways But On My Bookshelf Over Here To My Far Left Over Here I've Got A Bookshelf Just Of Most Of Of Just Biblical Characters David Esther Joseph Jesus A Couple Other Book Studies Of Just Characters Of The Bible That Are Helpful For Us Just To Go Through Just To Be To Look At Their Life And Say Okay How Can This Person's Life Help Me Such A Great Point And The Last Thing We're Going To Look At Is This Find Joy Through An Eternal Perspective This May Seem Impossible Okay In Your Moment Of Hurt In The Eternal Plan That's Laid Out But It Frustrates The Devil The Devil Knows What's Going To Happen And He Knows What The Future Holds As Well And When We Begin To Think Through The Future We Begin To Think Through What Happens In The Future I Mean Think About Paul And Silas In Acts 16 The Philippian Jailer Beat Paul And Silas They Were! Prisoners They Were Abused And Yet They Sang Praises To God They Worship The Lord In Jail Dirty Beat Up Hurt Bleeding In Pain They Still Worship The Lord They Still Found A Way To Think Through The Eternal Perspective And Say God's Greater Than This I'm Going To Worship Him And What Was The Result The Jailer And His Entire Household Came To Know Jesus Which Is Why Peter Or Why Paul Began To Go To Philippian By Went To The Philippian Place Was Because This Is The Philippian Jailer Okay Peter Encourages Christians Who Were Persecuted In Many Different Ways In First Peter Like This Yet If Any Man Suffers As A Christian Let Him Not Be Ashamed But Let Him Glorify God On This Behalf Because Through Christ We Can Give God The Glory Through Everything We Go Through So Important To Have This Eternal Perspective Of Knowing That God's Plan Will Work Out Differently Than What We Had Maybe Scripted Out For Our Life Okay The Abuse Are Going To Suffer I'm Sorry The Abuse You Have Suffered May Not Be Directly Related To Endure Suffering In A Massive Way I Want To Read One Last Passage Of Scripture 2nd Corinthians 4 And Just Sort Of Encourage Us With This For Which Cause We Faint Not But Though Our Outward Man Perish Yet Our Inward Man Is Renewed Day By Day For Our Light Afflection Which Is But Just For A Moment Work For Us A Far More Exceeding And Eternal Weight I Want To Encourage Us To Yes If You're Abused Get Away From It But Don't Live As A Victim Don't Live In A Life That Is Perpetually A Victim In That Mindset I Been There My Mom Left She Did Some Horrible Decisions Left My Dad Went Through A Nasty Divorce And I Was The Victim For Two Years Of Bitterness And I Lived In That Bitterness And It Ate Me Up It Ate Me Alive Bread I Couldn't Function I Couldn't I Couldn't Forgive My Mom I Said Things To My Mom I Wish I Could Go Back And Take Back I Can Never Take Them Back I I I through scripture, through help of other people, working through not just focusing on the here and now, but focusing on the eternal and focusing on what God has done for us. And when we can get that in our grand scheme of things, we begin to see God's glory work in our lives. We begin to see that God is gracious and merciful to us, even in our deepest place. And God has a way of healing for us. We don't have to stay and live where we're at. We have a step forward of healing. That Christ can offer. Amen. Amen. Such a good word. One final thought that I'd like to give, and I want to say a word to the Christian right now who is suffering or you've suffered abuse in the past or you're suffering abuse right now. Number one, God, of course, has a way of escape for you. But listen, the reason why you're suffering, I want to tell you that your suffering is not God's will. OK, but what you have to understand, according to scripture, we live in a fallen world world where humanity has free will. And God knows that suffering is going to happen. But here's the thing about Christianity. In Christianity, suffering isn't pointless. Suffering has a point. Suffering has a purpose. When you suffer in any capacity, you take part in the suffering that Jesus went through on the cross. He can he can relate to you because of your suffering as he was abused and he was torn apart and he was destroyed. And here's one more thing that I want you to think about. Well, when you suffer, you get a master's degree in suffering. So you can take that suffering that you went through and you can reach out to somebody else and you could pull somebody else out of an abusive situation. You can pull somebody else out of the pit. You can you can bring God's grace and God's salvation and God's love to another person who's suffering because you now have a master's degree in suffering that you can use to help somebody else because our God is that powerful. He can take something bad and bring good from it. And in this world, that's something that we desperately need. So listen, if you've suffered this type of abuse and you've come out of it, praise the Lord. But just don't forget, it's not pointless. It has a purpose. And maybe the purpose is so you can help other people who've been through what you've been through. Man, that's so good. Love that. Love that. Love that. Hope we've helped you today. I hope you're enjoying this series as we're getting started in the in the church. Next week, we'll be having an interview with Jim Neuheiser, an old friend of ours, and looking so forward to that. And we, Brett, I'm working on another interview as well, possibly having told you this about abuse. And so just trying to give some good information here and help us out in so so many ways. And so until next time, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. Found my new name. Found that good grace. Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. For Freedom Podcast.

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