The Path to Healing for Abuse Survivors

The Path to Healing

For Abuse Survivors

A Brief & Helpful Overview

The following is about you, the reader. It is what you will one day be able to say about yourself, as you keep prayerfully reading the links listed at the end of this webpage. It will seem to you a hopelessly impossible dream. Nevertheless, it is exactly where you are headed. It matters not that it is utterly beyond your ability to think this way. You will make it because you are loved by the God who is so powerful that he made the entire universe. Progress will most likely seem so slow as to be imperceptible, but as you persist, you will gradually realize that you are moving forward. Our inadequacy is irrelevant. All that matters is that God delights in doing the impossible.

You are slowly leaving tragedy behind and are on a path specially made by God for you. Your destination is not marred by human hands. It is the work of the miracle-working God of perfection, for whom nothing is impossible. Where you are headed is still out of sight and is nothing like anywhere you have ever been before. All these things make it seem utterly unbelievable. All you need do, however, is keep walking and you will one day reach it. You are actually much closer than you think. Wonderful things have already been happening to you but you will only fully realize what has happened when you arrive. You will then be able to say:

I’m a new person. The effects of the past have vanished. My whole life sparkles with pristine innocence. I’m in awe as I examine myself and see only dazzling purity and perfection. I’m so free I could turn cartwheels in sheer joy.

It sounds insanely egotistical to think that the Holy Lord sees me as the purest of virgins, exquisitely virtuous and as perfect as Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, it is a sober truth that leaves me flabbergasted. Regardless of the way I once saw myself, and no matter what has been done to me and what I in turn have done, I am totally innocent, utterly guiltless, morally perfect.

Despite having been accused in the past of awful things and having at times been overwhelmed with guilt feelings, I can in all humility revel in the knowledge that I am the ultimate in moral perfection. The most precious miracle the Son of God ever did has made me spiritually united to the God of perfection. This breath-taking event means that no baby, no virgin, no saint, no angel, not even the Lord himself could be any more holy than the person I now am. I am overawed to realize that in the eyes of God himself, I am breathtakingly attractive. No fairy tale is this amazing.

As carefully explained and confirmed in a link below, this is no harebrained escape from reality, but rock solid Bible truth. One of the many proofs that it is real is the way it has turned my whole life around.

The virtue and honor that now are mine have nothing to do with how I have lived. It is not the result of me doing any good, nor avoiding any sin. I am pure and holy solely because of Jesus. The Son of God, hating my sin, yet longing for the very best for me, was driven by a passionate yearning to make me spotless. Sparing no cost, he swapped places with me, trading his purity for my sin, taking all my sin upon himself on the cross, so that I could have all of his purity and lift my head high.

It is as though in the dim, almost-forgotten past, I was once afflicted with a disease that riddled all my skin with hideous blotches and blemishes. This made me an outcast, forced to rummage through trash for food. My hair became matted, my fingernails dirty and broken and I had only the filthiest, most disgusting rags to wear. I was filled with shame, wanting only to run and hide like a cockroach, but having nowhere to hide. Then, to my utter amazement, the eternal Son of God fell in love with me and wanted to make me his bride and his princess. I was scared. So many people have hurt me and let me down. He claimed to be utterly different to anyone I had ever met, but could I really trust him? Eventually I let him beautify me. Instantly, I found myself washed clean and dressed in the most extravagantly expensive, exquisite bridal gown and jewelry. I glanced in the mirror and could not believe my eyes. I beamed as I gazed in awe at complexion so fresh and flawless that it would be the envy of anyone in the world. Having felt certain that I had been ruined for life, the sight was breathtaking. I looked at my shiny hair and perfect fingernails. He had made me stunningly beautiful. Then the glorious Son of God honored me, not only in the eyes of those who had despised me but in the eyes of the entire universe, by marrying me.

Christ loved me, not because I was originally desirable but because of his miraculous ability to make anyone desirable, no matter how ugly and evil that person once was.

Vengeance

Those who have ill-treated me deserve an eternity in hell. They have sinned not only against morality, but against me and against God himself. In his overwhelming love for me, the Lord is justifiably furious about what they did to me. He has declared them guilty and has sentenced them to eternal destruction.

Nevertheless, though it is now like a nearly-forgotten dream, the truth is that I who am now so pure, was once wicked and so evil that I, like they, had deserved hell. My sins, though different to theirs, were as equally repulsive in the eyes of the holy Lord, and I was as worthy of eternal condemnation. This, of course, is no longer true of me. I am so free from every stain from my past that it is as if the former me were not me, but a completely different person. With all the shame of my past removed, I can look at my past and freely admit the guilt of that person who once bore my name but is no longer me.

To my utter surprise, admitting my former failures has been the most liberating experience I've ever known. Having mistakenly imagined that any admission of my former depravity would be my final devastation, I had desperately fought such an admission for years, only to now discover it is actually my key to freedom!

I had been so harassed by guilt feelings over things that were not even my fault that I barely had time to consider completely different sins that were my own doing. Having admitted to myself and to God that I, like everyone else on this planet, have been utterly depraved and deserve an eternity of hell, the Holy Lord completely pardoned me and made me divine royalty. What makes this so liberating is that there is now no truth that I will ever have to run from. The searchlight and the microscope can be applied to my life and nothing can ever be found that could make me more worthy of hell than I have already confessed to being and have already received forgiveness from. I’m free!

I had not deserved to be forgiven, but Jesus still forgave me. He did it not because of my goodness but because of his goodness. He has exalted me and made me godlike. Now he asks me to display the godlike virtue he has given me, by acting like him. He simply asks that I treat others as he has treated me, by forgiving those who do not deserve forgiveness – forgiving them not because of their goodness but as a manifestation of the goodness that is now in me because the Holy Lord placed it there when he made me pure.

Like those who have sinned against me, I had once sinned against God, abusing his kindness, violating his mercy. My sins stripped naked the holy Son of God and nailed him to the cross. For my sins he was humiliated and his innocence violated. For me he let himself be made a plaything to be gawked at, jeered at, spat on. For me he chose to be reviled and defiled, his holy person desecrated with vile, inhuman, despicable acts. For me he was tortured to death, and his body ripped open.

It cost Jesus the agony of crucifixion to secure my forgiveness, so it will not be painless for me to follow his courageous lead and forgive those who have sinned against me, but this is the path to Christlikeness. And, as an unexpected bonus, it is also the path to healing.

The Merry-go-round from Hell

I had not realized until I let go, that to hold on to resentment is to hold on to the pain of the past. To let go of my yearning for revenge is to let go of the ghosts of the past. Having released my stranglehold on resentment, my hand is now free to take Jesus’ hand and, with all the confidence and security he alone offers, let him lead me to a brand new life.

I have discovered that pain and resentment are hideous parasites that feed not only off me but off each other. My pain increased my resentment of God and/or those who mistreated me, which increased my pain, which increased my resentment, which increased my pain . . . I found myself on a frighteningly out of control merry-go-round that was anything but merry.

Now that I am free, I sense that firing my resentment were ugly and needless insecurities. Lurking below my consciousness was the fear that, at most, Jesus could only forgive minor sins. I did not realize that what drove my addiction to thinking evil of certain people was that the more I focused on their evil, the more my own sins seemed sufficiently minor to warrant God's forgiveness. But even then, guilt drove me to fear that the supposed smallness of my sins was not enough and that God would not forgive and forget my past. So half of me wanted to get my revenge on God and reject him before he rejected me and to despise him so as to convince myself that losing him was not such a devastating loss.

Now I see it was all needless pain. God really does forgive the worst sins. So I had no need to keep forcing myself to believe my sins were minor. If God freely forgives the worse sins, the extent of my past sins suddenly becomes a non-issue. It makes no difference, so I’m no longer inwardly compelled to make my sins seem small and the sins of some other people seem so unforgivable. I can forget all the oppressive mental gymnastics and get on with enjoying life.

With this resolved, my unconscious need to resent God and resent certain people, fizzled. The habit was still hard to break, but the guilt driving it was gone – as long as I kept my eyes on Jesus and his love for me. Whenever I let doubts about God’s love and forgiveness creep back, the horror merry-go-round begins again, but when I recall what Jesus has done for me, reality returns and all is well. So to enjoy my new life I need to keep pushing past distractions and doubts, and fix my eyes firmly fixed on Jesus and all that he has done for me. This can be a real battle at times, but whenever I do it, everything falls into place.

I laugh to remember that I used to think God was being unfair by asking me to be like him and forgive the unforgivable. Now that I have taken the plunge, I see that it is the only way to truly live.

Let me remind you that what you have read is what you will one day be able to say about yourself, as you keep prayerfully reading the links listed below. It does not matter that it seems to you a hopelessly impossible dream, it is exactly where you are headed because the powerful Lord of the universe wants it. Progress will most likely seem so slow as to be imperceptible, but as you persist month after month, you will gradually realize that you are moving forward. Our inadequacy is irrelevant. All that matters is that God delights in doing the impossible.

For heart-warming biblical proof of the sinlessness of everyone whose faith is in Jesus, see Rock Solid Bible Truth.