God is Our Protector, Our Refuge, Our Everything

 

1Timothy 6:12(NIV)

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

When life don’t come easy and its’ challenges seem to get heavier and heavier – do you sit on your hands or do you fight for faith like never before?

I was raised in a Christian household and family with strong women of God.  They demonstrated daily a relentless faith in God through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and life didn’t always come easy. They dealt with some heavy-duty challenges. At a time when child-support wasn’t enforced and in some places wasn’t even thought about, some of them raised their children alone. Their example of strength left an indelible mark on my life, because these women didn’t ever appear to me to be deterred or discouraged. They kept it moving and created for all of us a safe and loving haven. They couldn't have done this had they not known that God's love is real, and we can depend on it come what may.  

In 2Corinthians 5:7(NIV), God tells us, “For we live by faith, not by sight.” This verse doesn’t mean that we walk around with our physical eyes covered, but God is telling us that we can’t limit His power and blessing based on what our eyes see. The conditions and circumstances may look bleak to our eyes, but God sees what the situation will become through our faith and prayers. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that our faith is evidence of what we can’t yet see. Even though our prayer request has not yet manifested in our physical world, it is a done deal in the spiritual world. In this way, faith is the title deed to what we’ve prayed to receive. In the realm of God, He’s already released the blessing, and it’s our responsibility to continue believing, trusting, and doing what we’ve been called to do until it manifests.

When it comes to dealing with adversity, sometimes we interpret having strength as maintaining a certain amount of control over things. We think we have to know all the facts or know what’s going to happen before we can trust. Well, God tells us to trust first! He wants us to depend on Him to lead, guide, and direct our steps.

Ephesians 3:20(NLT) tells us, "Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." How many times have people told us that we couldn’t do this, or couldn’t accomplish that? How often have people tried to put us down, or to influence us to quit pushing when the odds were stacked against us? We serve a God who has no barriers! His power is limitless! Our Heavenly Father is in the business of blessing His people beyond anything we could ever ask or think. He far exceeds our expectations, but you and I are not left out of the equation when it comes to this verse. God tells us that His mighty power is working on the inside of us. He wants us to know that some important spiritual work is happening deep in our souls through His Holy Spirit who dwells within. Even though we may not sense it, we are commanded to trust God’s perfect work. Our responsibility is to bring what He's placed on the inside of us out in the open, by trusting His love and walking in it.  

We serve such a loving Father. He grants us grace and mercy, and He forgives us for our sins, stubbornness, and unwillingness to abandon our worries and trust faithfully in Him. Many single parents face tremendous challenges, and it can seem at times that they come from every direction. You can feel like all hope is lost when you have mouths to feed and not enough finances to take care of your obligations. The enemy wants to use these trials to zap your strength by convincing you that God's not going to handle the situation, but this is not the truth. God is working in you! To see His power flourish in us, we need to turn our thoughts and feelings to what Christ is doing, not on what the devil is doing.  

Hebrews 11:27(NLT) tells us,“It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.” This is precisely what you and I must do! We can never make the mistake of drifting away from God's truth, not when the struggle is heavy, not when the blessing is on the way, and not when we receive the victory we’ve been waiting on. Our eyes must continually be on God and our faith must be rooted in His promises. 

Psalm 95:7(NLT) assures us, “for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today!” Don't just seek God when your life starts to unravel, or when tragedy knocks at your door, and don’t just seek Him for His blessings. Seek Him because you understand who God is. He is our Protector, our Refuge...our Everything! This is the way we must see Him all the time. He tells us to listen to His voice and never take our eyes off of Him, and we can be assured that He never takes His eyes off of us. He watches over us, and He will reward us as we place our trust in Him. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“God is Our Protector, Our Refuge, Our Everything”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

He’s Not Who You Thought

 

Psalm 34:18(NLT)
“The LORD is close to the brokenhearted;
he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”

Marriage is one of our most rewarding relationships. When it comes to human-to-human interaction, marriage is the relationship God established first; it is the foundation upon which families are expanded. God intended marriage to be sacred and uncomplicated. It should be stamped with His brand of love, unity, and peace, because that is the way He created and desires everything to work. The problems and complexities of the world have increased, and one of the downsides is that many of these issues have spilled over into our relationships with one another, particularly marriage.

Because marriage is so important to Heavenly Father’s agenda, it is no secret that the adversary tries to vehemently attack it. As a result of the adversary’s lies and attacks, many of us do not view marriage in the light that God intended for this beautiful blessing. Most individuals see it as a very difficult relationship to maintain, but in truth, marriage is not difficult, people are. Of course, marriage comes with its challenges, but this is the case with anything worth having. Marriage will stretch us to love beyond the threshold of our perceived capabilities. People have free-will, they have choices, and they can change very suddenly. This can be mild, or it can be extreme. But either way, one of the most challenging aspects of marriage is when you think everything is going fine, and out of nowhere, you see a side to your husband you never saw before. It’s one of the instances that causes us to stretch, but not to the point of being physically or mentally harmed.

Ephesians 4:31-32(NLT) tells us, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.” This is God’s instruction to all of us. He wouldn’t have told us to conduct ourselves this way if we lacked the ability to get it done. Heavenly Father doesn’t want anyone disrespecting another person. And by the same token, He doesn’t want any of us being disrespected by someone, especially in a marriage. The love of Christ should be in our hearts, and his love should surround our respect and adoration for our spouses. But sometimes our spouses surprise us with their lack of understanding about honor and respect. We see things we couldn’t have imagined or expected to see, and the person we fell in love with is not the person we thought we knew. But when it comes to violence and abuse, it isn’t just a matter of disrespect, it’s an abuser’s attempt to control, manipulate, harm, and devalue. No one deserves to be treated that way.

Violence and abuse in a relationship doesn’t just go away, as most abused partners will attest. It requires spiritual and emotional intervention, and the abuser must be willing from the depths of their hearts to change.

While dating, many of us fail to discern if the person has a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, or if they hold themselves accountable to Heavenly Father’s moral and spiritual standards. When a person refuses to be accountable to God for their conduct, it is a gigantic red flag. We really don’t have anything to work with when this is the case. It is one of the reasons that God wants us to grow in Christ to the point that we use good judgment and wisdom in our decision-making. When we listen to God, we don’t rush into things. Instead, we wait patiently, walk with Him, and move only as He guides.

The bottom line is that many spouses discover that they weren’t as prepared for marriage as they thought. The spiritual lesson from choices gone wrong is to begin to live our lives in such a way that we depend totally and completely on God in everything we do. He tells us in Proverbs 3:5-6(NLT), “5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” It doesn’t matter how old we are, we are still children to God, and no matter how many mistakes we make, He never holds them against us. He wants to help us, because He loves us. He’s our Heavenly Father, and we will never be too old to totally trust Him with all that we are.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“He’s Not Who You Thought”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Rest in the Power of God’s Love

Psalm 86:1-7 (NLT)
“1 Bend down, O Lord, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help. 2 Protect me, for I am devoted to you. Save me, for I serve you and trust you. You are my God. 3 Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am calling on you constantly. 4 Give me happiness, O Lord, for I give myself to you. 5 O Lord, you are so good, so ready to forgive, so full of unfailing love for all who ask for your help. 6 Listen closely to my prayer, O Lord; hear my urgent cry. 7 I will call to you whenever I’m in trouble, and you will answer me.”

“God didn’t save me from this man, so why would He save me now?”

When you are in need of help and protection, all you can think about is wanting it as quickly as possible. It’s devastating that the person you love is causing you physical and emotional pain. It feels overwhelming, and you desperately want relief, but you’re not sure how it will look. So much seems to depend on the willingness of the person that is abusing you to change, so the abuse will end. But you’ve been down that road before, and the promises that your abuser has made to stop his abusive behavior have never been kept. You hate what he is doing to you and the relationship, but you don’t know how to let him go.

Life is very challenging sometimes, and at the toughest moments, we wonder why God has not kept abusive people away from us. In hindsight, we know we would have been so much happier if we hadn’t met the person or started a relationship with them. Some of us are angry with God for letting us go through the situation, but in truth, we are really angry with ourselves. Companionship was created by God to be a very lovely thing, and He established it with Adam and Eve from the very beginning. He wants us to walk together with a person who equals our capacity to love, but God also desires that we allow Him to help build this capacity within us first. Then we can rest in the power of His love and learn to love His way.

We all think we’re on point, and that we are healed and built up in all the places that count. Our choices for companionship show us that this isn’t exactly accurate. We sometimes choose individuals that mirror our weak places. And since we don’t acknowledge our weak places, but hide them, we sometimes choose people who do the same thing. If we don’t want to see something within our own selves, we’re not likely to readily identify it in anyone else.

We make choices out of our brokenness mostly because we don’t realize the extent to which we’re broken. We may not know it, but our hearts are torn into pieces way before abusive relationships begin. Often, we don’t recognize it until something makes us question our choices and decisions. It’s in this condition of seeing our need to become stronger and wiser that surrendering to God is the very best thing we can do. He will make us strong if we are humble and obedient to His Word.

James 4:7-8(NLT) instructs, “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world.” What does it mean to humble ourselves before God? Well, God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present. There isn’t anything He doesn’t know, and there isn’t anything He can’t do.1John 4:8 tells us that God is love. His majesty is beyond anything you and I can imagine. His sovereignty is absolute, and He is a God with no equal. There isn’t anything in all the universe that compares to Him. He’s God all by Himself, and He is glorious beyond glorious.

This is not just a lot of talk. God’s Kingdom is POWER! He’s all that and infinitely more. This is the truth! To humble ourselves before God is to recognize the truth! It is to know with every fiber of our being that God IS exactly who He tells us He is in His Word. We all think we know ourselves so well, but our Heavenly Father knows everything there is to know about us. He knows us through and through. He knows our level of spiritual maturity, intellect, and ability. He knows whether we are really in a place to be patient and to listen to Him, or whether we’re caught up in the emotion of needing to be taken care of by a man. The truth is that most of us make our own decisions and choices about relationships, and then ask God to bless them afterwards. We don’t wait for His clarity and would not listen to Him anymore than Adam and Eve did before they sinned.  

 We can never second guess the wisdom of God. Doing so runs the risk of us thinking that we know better than He does. God doesn’t let us down, not ever. Quite the contrary, He helps to lift us up! The psalmist cried out to God for help in Psalm 86:1-7 and like many of us, he did so after facing many hardships. He was not perfect, and neither are we. That’s why thousands of years later, his prayer is just as relevant today for all of us as it was when he first prayed it. God does not cause trials and tribulations to happen in our lives. They originate from the kingdom of darkness. Trials and tribulations come from the devil to attack us in our most vulnerable places, and the devil does this to cancel out our trust in God. We must not allow this to happen.

Heavenly Father knows that we want to be loved because this is the way He wired us. Loving someone and being loved by a quality person is one of life’s most fulfilling rewards. God wants this for us, but we have an enemy that does not want to see anything good happen in our lives, and we cannot be ignorant of this. The other thing that we must never be ignorant about is that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. When we stand in faith, we are not defeated and cannot be defeated as long as our trust is firmly planted in the Lord.

As believers, we know what the enemy means for bad, God can use it for our good if we are faithful to trust Him with all our Hearts. He tells us in Romans 8:28 that He will cause all things to work together for the good of those that are called according to His purpose. We must not think that God has withheld His help. Our situations show us how much we need Him. They teach us to surrender to Him totally so that He can free us from abuse, and free our minds and hearts from the thoughts and feelings that kept us in it. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

 “Rest in the Power of God’s Love”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Punishing Ourselves for the Past

All of us have made mistakes and haven’t always done the things we know are right. Some of us are carrying around the guilt of those things, and this keeps us from walking more fully in God’s extraordinary grace. Sometimes this guilt comes from things we’ve done, and sometimes it comes from things that have been done against us. In some ways, we may be punishing ourselves by feeling fear and sadness because our hearts were broken by someone we truly loved, or because someone violated us when we were powerless to defend ourselves. These are wounds that the enemy would like to keep open, so that he can continue to trap us in fear, shame, and self-condemnation. 

 Many of us allow mistakes and pain from the past to affect us in the present by thinking about the situations and focusing on the harm they caused. This shows us that we’re still hanging on to it for some reason. God wants us to wear the sweet perfume of His grace and this requires us to stop punishing ourselves by rehashing the past. We’re giving negativity space and weight in our lives, and Heavenly Father wants to help us release it.

In Luke 7:36-39 (NLT), Jesus Christ demonstrates the liberty and grace he extends through the record of a woman who had made some serious mistakes. In this passage, one of the Pharisees, a group known to deplore him, invited Jesus to have dinner with him. Jesus accepted the invitation and as they were eating, a certain immoral woman from the city heard he would be eating there and brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. This woman had a bad reputation in town because of her deeds of the past. Understanding the times in which this takes place is crucial, because it wasn’t easy even for a woman with a good reputation, so you can imagine what it was like for a woman with a soiled one.

Some believe she was a prostitute, a label given to many women that were forced to make a living on their own because they didn’t have a husband. She might have come from a poor family with no pedigree and fallen in love with someone who promised to be her rescuer, but only used her for his pleasure. Heartbroken, but naïve’, perhaps she fell into this trap repeatedly. Men in the town began to talk, and because no man would marry her, she was labeled immoral. She was ostracized from good society, and no doubt felt life was a vicious cycle of which she had no power and no redemption.

She had heard reports of Jesus’ ministry and teaching, and an urgency to see him ignited her heart. When learning he would have dinner at Simon, the Pharisee’s house, she made it her business to see Jesus, and she did not come empty handed, but came ready to submit herself in the most humble way she knew. She brought an alabaster box filled with perfume, intent to perform a service that was typically relegated to the lowest servant in the house. Luke 7:38(NLT) tells us, “Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.”

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

“Punishing Ourselves for the Past”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

 Again, we need to know a little bit more about the times to see the heart of what this woman did. Hospitality was greatly treasured back then. It was extremely important to the culture. It was customary to do things like have a servant standing by to attend the guest by presenting a basin of water and towel so they could wipe their feet. They wore sandals and their feet were always dusty, so this washing of the feet was a common courtesy. It was also customary to greet valued guests with a kiss on each cheek and to anoint their head with oil. Simon had been a poor host to say the least. He had performed none of these hospitable protocols for Jesus, the Son of the Living God.

 When at a dinner table back then, it was common for the feet to be postured off to the side, behind the body in a sitting position on the floor. It is possible that this is how Jesus was sitting when the woman came behind him to wash his feet. Simon was incredulous that Jesus had allowed this woman to touch him. She dared not kiss his head, knowing how she was viewed, but kissed his feet and anointed them with perfume. Jesus rebuked Simon for his neglect of common courtesies and in Luke 7:47-48 (NLT) said, “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love. Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.””

 In Luke 7:50, Jesus told the woman that her faith had saved her, and to go in peace. This is the grace that he offers to all of us. We must stop punishing ourselves by rehashing old memories of hurtful situations in the past. By doing this, we are trying to keep dead things alive. Jesus took it all to the cross and we need to leave it there so we can walk in the liberty he freely offers.

 Take a piece of paper and write down all the negative things that have happened to you in the past that are still affecting you today. Be as honest and thorough as you can. Spill your heart openly to God on paper. Remember that the more you deliver over to Jesus—the more you ask and accept his forgiveness and restoration, the more love you’ll show him. Then, when you’ve written it all down, pray over it. Tell the Lord that you’re giving everything on that paper to Him, and that through his blood—the blood of Jesus Christ, you are released from them now! Tear the paper into the smallest bits possible and dispose of them in whatever way that causes you to have a new memory—one of being released from everything that has held you back or robbed you of joy. Go in peace.