Overcoming Abuse

Summary Scripture:

Psalm 34:18

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

Abuse

1. To use wrongly or improperly: misuse.

2. To trick or deceive.

3. To injure by maltreatment.

Webster’s Dictionary

Abuse is a very sensitive subject. People do not want to deal with it or even talk about it. But the church cannot be afraid to deal inside this area. God is more than willing and able to bring healing and deliverance to those who are victims of abuse. In Mary Banks Ministries, God has raised Lifesavers International to deal with these issues. God is concerned about every aspect of your life. You are important to him. God is concerned about how we feel, think, our desires, etc. We must believe this. He did not put us down here to find our own way or to do our own thing. We were created to do and fulfill the purpose of God. But there is something more powerful than man operating on this planet.

Think about it, what makes a grown man rape a three-month-old baby? What kind of pleasures can one get out of that? Something is going on and we need answers, because our

homes can be affected at any time. No one is off limits. There is an enemy out there and he does not care about you, your children, your spouse or anybody. He has come to destroy you, and everything associated with you. We are indeed living in a hostile generation. Children are killing children. Little boys are raping other little boys; and little girls are turned out and caught up in lesbianism. Satan is systematically dulling our senses. The church is losing its compassion, mercy and urgency to win souls. People just do not care.

The Negative Effects of Abuse: “Why Me, Lord?”

If you are one who has been affected by abuse, and if you are like me, the question was, “Why me?” I spent years devastated trying to answer why. I felt I didn’t deserve this, and this “why” became so important to me that it ruled my life. Abuse has some very devastating effects. I grew up very selfish and mean-hearted. In my quest to answer that question “why,” I became too important. It was all about me. I internalized my pain and I felt no one understood this thing that happened to me. The man who abused me has gone on about his business and never said he was sorry, so I felt I

had to look out for me. I didn’t care about anyone or how they felt. I was bitter, very hateful and unloving. Over time I became desensitized to any regular God built-in emotions. I came to a point where love did not move me. You know you have a problem when you know someone loves you and that does not move you.

So, I started looking back over my life to when I was abused, and I realized I had not made any progress. Twelve-years after my abuse I saw I was still back there. I realized that I was doing something wrong. I wanted to be happy, but I wasn’t. I wanted to love, but I couldn’t. I wanted to be free and vulnerable to love. However, I was still mean and hateful to the point that I wanted retribution. I wanted someone to pay for what had happened to me and quite a few people did. We cannot think that we can have all these negative dispositions and it does not touch people. It touches everyone

with whom we are involved. Until we forgive, our relationships will be dysfunctional because we always go into relationships looking for what someone can give. Then as soon as they step on your toes, you get rid of them. My heart was never vulnerable. Men did not have a chance with me. People can and do deal with abuse differently. There was another destructive pattern I noticed in my life. I

saw that in the relationships I had, I had become an abuser, not physically, but verbally and mentally. I had become just what I hated. Abuse brings trauma to the soul.

St. Luke 6:37

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:

Forgive

1. To excuse for a fault or offense: pardon.

2. To renounce anger or resentment against.

3.To absolve from payment of. Webster’s Dictionary

So, I sought the Lord and I went on a search. If I could just get the answer to the why, I felt I could go on with my life. However, I had to be willing to accept God’s answer and not that which my mind could drum up. I needed to be content with the truth. There were some things I had to accept. We must open our hearts and let God speak to them; and trust

Him to take us further. God judges the disposition of every man’s heart. In my heart, I truly wanted to be free. I was tired of being miserable and I hated life. I saw life through the abuse and everything I saw was negative. I don’t care how good something was, I was going to find the negative in it.

B: Born in Sin . . . Shaped in Iniquity

So, in my search for the why, I went back to the beginning of God’s Word. We know the story of Adam and Eve. God created them and gave them instructions about the tree in

the Garden. He told them they could have anything in the Garden, but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to leave it alone. Why is it that human beings always want what they are denied? It does not matter what God gives us, we want more. Adam and Eve had the whole garden and the earth, but they could not leave that one tree alone. That one act of disobedience caused all the sin we see happening in the world. So, I went back to why. I used to blame God for what happened to me. You know the world does this too. People could be sinners, but when something goes wrong they always want to blame God.

One day I looked in the mirror and said, “Lord I want to know what is going on inside of me, something is not right.” I was not right inside; and this is what we all must deal with. The outer shell is nothing, for the real us is not the flesh, but the inner man. You could entertain someone everyday who hates your guts, but you would never know it because they always have a smile. If the inside of us is not right, we can forget the outward facade.

Let’s go back to the Garden. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:16-17 So much happened in that simple act of disobedience. When Adam and Eve took of the fruit, that marked the entrance of

sin into the world. Everyone born afterwards was born of the similitude of Adam in sin.

Romans 5:19

For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

Psalm 51:5

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Sin is the transgression of the law God gives us to live by. He sets boundaries in our lives. God knew that after Adam sinned man was no match for what was about to be unleashed

on the human race. All men born after Adam were born into the seventeen lusts of the flesh: lacisvousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, immulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

murders, envyings, drunkardness, fornication, revellings, adultery and uncleanness (Galatians 5: 19-21).

Ezekiel 18:4

Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

God’s Word is true. If He says it is going to happen it is going to happen. When Adam partook of that fruit, we died. Adam represented all of mankind. Adam should have interceded

for Eve after she had eaten from the tree. We would not be in the state we are in now if he had. But, he bent to the will of his wife, he partook of the fruit that marked the entrance of evil into the world; and death followed.

Romans 5:14

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

We did not partake of the fruit, but Adam did, so we all sinned. God gave Adam directives and instructions of what to do and not to do and he chose to sin. After this the conscience God placed in all men was held captive. The conscience is that part of us that knows good and evil. It does not matter what people say, there is a part of us that knows God is real. This is why He can hold us accountable if we reject Him. He has put a part of Himself inside all of us, and His truth is what wakes up that conscience.

The conscience was held captive in the body of sin and death. Nothing but corruption (evil) is in there, and if God does not come and redeem us out of it, we grow up contrary to God. This

is why we see little children growing up in homosexuality and children killing one another. All of this is a result of Adam’s sin in the Garden. So, I had to conclude that because of Adam’s disobedience all

mankind was put into sin. On my quest to find out what was going on inside of me, I got into the Word and found out that my thinking was wrong.

Suggestion - The sequential thought process by which one idea or concept leads to another.

II Thessalonians 2:10-11

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie . . .

Hitler believed his race was superior and that all Jews needed to be killed. He lived inside of a lie, which he became totally delusional in; and it led to the murder of millions and

ultimately his own demise. Hitler was driven by an insatiable desire for power and control. This is what happens usually in domestic abuse. The man or the woman wants the other to bend to their will, and if they don’t they are going to make them bend. This takes us right back to the Garden. The serpent told Eve that she was not going to die and that she was going to be as gods. He gave her

something to think about. Hitler went about establishing his ungodly desires at the expense of other human beings. He lived inside of a lie and that very thing he sought after so diligently became his own demise. If we seek after sin, it is going to destroy us.

C: Wrong Thinking: The Root of All Sin

With the individual who offended me I used to imagine all kinds of bad things happening to him. When the fleshy mind is hurt, it will devise a way to get even. If you cannot get even with the one who did hurt you, you go to the next best thing and all the other relationships in your life become tainted. I felt someone had to pay for what happened to me. One of the definitions of thinking is the working of the fleshy mind, which is what science calls the brain. Thinking is the mental process of the things we see, hear and feel. If a child is being constantly abused and raped and no one is there to talk to that child and tell them what is going on with them and why it happened, then that child must come up with a solution as to why this happened. We can then begin to live in that world we create inside our own imagination, and many can find it hard to come out. The imagination becomes just as real as one’s reality, it has great creative power. It creates emotions, desires and all kinds of things.

Consequently, when you cannot get the same responses in reality, you get frustrated with everybody in life. For example, you may be watching a soap opera and you see how Harry treats his wife. You want your husband to come home and treat you like Jane is being treated on the soaps. However, this is not your reality. Therefore, you get frustrated when your husband comes home and treats you the opposite of how Jane was being treated on the soaps. The television has been one of the most destructive tools the enemy has used to keep us bound and living inside our

imagination. We must live inside of reality. As devastating as abuse has been to some people, they will become the abusers. A lot of people are asking, “Why me, Lord?” . . . but God did not do this to you. When Adam sinned, God’s law went into effect. There are rules to live by and boundaries set. Men are evil, and therefore we have abuse, murder, crime and all manner of evil. We were all born in sin and shaped in iniquity. Therefore, the hurt and cycle of abuse just continues. We were Adam’s children and we had to also pay for that disobedience.

The scripture told us offenses will come. Hurt and pain are a part of human life. There is no way to get around this. The only thing we can do is submit ourselves to the Lord. He said

He will put no more on us than we can bear; (I Cor. 10:13).

Psalm 55:22

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.

Put your life in His hand and He will take you through the hard times. When we live how God told us to live, we can heal those who are hurt or have been abused. God is not to blame for the sin and chaos on the earth. You must stop blaming God. If you keep blaming Him, you will never turn to Him. I was a broken person on the inside and I hated life. I was depressed all the time, Satan had stunted my growth, and God did this for me:

Psalm 40:1-4

1 I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.

2 He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my

goings.

3 And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the

LORD.

4 Blessed is that man that maketh the LORD his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.

I had to make the Lord my trust and make myself vulnerable again. I had to see the man that molested me as a soul held captive. It used to bother me that he never came back and apologized. I felt he had gone on his way and did not care. This may not be the case. He may not know how to come to me, because he is just as hurt as I was and hurt me out of his weakness. The scripture says if you do not forgive, God will not forgive you. If you are going to get delivered you must accept all the Word, even when it goes against what you want to do. If your offender never comes back and apologizes, let him go in your heart and forgive him, because you are the one who is bound.

St. Luke 6:37

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven . . .

When I chose in my heart to open up to God and let His knowledge and truth fill my heart; that is when deliverance came. The Spirit of God, the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ are the only paths to a sinless society. You can go to all types of programs and they can put all kinds of reform in place, but nothing is going to deal with the sin issue but God. FLESH CANNOT PURGE FLESH. I could not purge myself. I had to make up my mind that I was going to do it God’s way or no way. You can be free by the grace of God and His Word. Submit your will and stop trying to do it your way. Your way has not freed you yet. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, pick yourself up and go on, don’t waddle around in self-pity. Find the courage to go on. God loves you and He is an expert at taking the negative situations of your past and using them for His glory. If people see that you can come out, they feel they can come out too. It is all about PURPOSE.

You are important to God and He thinks about you (Psalm 40:17). He loves you! He wants you to have a happy and healthy life, but we must look at life for what it really is inside of reality. Start giving your mind over to God. You must have courage to do it God’s way. God bless you,

Tanya Y. Thomas

Deuteronomy 31:6

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.