Don’t Refuse the Help From Jesus Christ

 

Matthew 11:29-30 (NLT), Jesus Christ extends an invitation. He tells us, “29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

“This last blow is more than my heart and mind can take – life keeps getting harder and harder, when is it going to get easier?”

One of the things that we have to remember is that we’re not alone, and God doesn’t abandon us to deal with problems on our own.  A yoke is a farming instrument constructed from a bar of wood. It was used to unite two animals, like oxen, enabling them to be steered and directed for work in the fields. As one might imagine, this was a heavy instrument, and a human being would not be able to maneuver well with this kind of yoke around his or her neck. Jesus Christ makes it clear that the yoke he wants to give us is easy to bear.

There is no question that we desperately need the yoke of Christ. We need to be guided by him. Many people struggle tremendously because they refuse his guidance, but we were never meant to go through life without him and without his help and guidance. Our earth experience is an opportunity to prepare our hearts and minds by growing closer to God and becoming better as we learn more about His love. He wants to be close to us, and he wants to help us.

Jesus Christ doesn’t want to move us about like puppets, but he is Lord! He is the only one that deserves this distinction. He tells us in Matthew 11:29 that when we take his yoke and place it on our lives, he will lead us into the kind of life that will be pleasing to God and fulfilling to us as well. He does this by teaching us about himself, because when we learn to flow like Christ, we move in God’s perfect harmony, and have wonderful communion and fellowship with Him.

God’s love is a magnet that will pull us closer and closer to Him, but we know that we have an enemy, the devil, and he wants to pull us away from God. One of the ways he does this is to bombard us with problems. If you feel as though you’re fighting alone, it can be exhausting, but the Lord Jesus Christ has already won the victory for us. 1Corinthians 15:57(NKJV) tells us, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In every situation, obstacle, or problem that we will come against in life, Christ has already won the battle. You might think to yourself, “Well, it doesn’t feel like I have the victory. I’m still dealing with the same situation, and I feel overwhelmed by it.”  Feelings and reality are two different things. God tells us in His Word to renew our minds to what He says. This means we’ve got to change our thoughts. As Christians, we don’t let our feelings dictate our reality. We believe God’s Word. He’s our Creator, and what He says goes. He has told us the reality of what and who we are in Christ, and our reality is victory!

We have a choice. We can either have faith in what God says about our victory, or we can be fearful and not believe Him; but we can’t be both. We can’t have faith and fear at the same time. The devil’s goal is to damage our faith in God, so that we do not trust in His love for us. When this happens, we sink low in our emotions and heart, and we stop doing things to uplift God’s Kingdom like giving and being a blessing to others. This is why the enemy tests our strengths, and comes at us with the things that get under our skin the most. We must recognize these tactics for the tricks that they are.

The peace and joy of the Lord is a reality! We don’t have to walk around disappointed, disgusted, and demoralized. Heavenly Father will turn our situations around so that He can receive the glory. Yes, what the devil meant for bad, God will turn it around for our good. But we have a part to play. God will not come into our minds and change things up. This is a responsibility that He has given to us. He tells us to change the way we think—to think on His goodness, strength, love, and mercy. If we will pray to Him with this kind of humility and faith, we will see the victory in our lives in every situation.

 Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 "Don't Refuse the Help From Jesus Christ”, 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.

The Suffering Only God Can Heal

 

“And I will rescue you from both your own people and the Gentiles. Yes, I am sending you to the Gentiles to open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people, who are set apart by faith in me.’ For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.”

Acts 26:17-18 (NLT)

“Being in this relationship takes too much out of me – I’m so tired of it.”

If you have experienced abuse as a child or have grown up in an abusive household, the trauma of what you saw and experienced impacts your entire life. Many adults that encountered domestic violence and abuse in some way as a child get up in the morning and begin their days feeling as though a dark cloud is hanging over their heads. They never associate the deep sadness and insecurity with what happened to them years ago. They may have many questions about why it happened or why they went through it, and they won’t let themselves get over the fear of not being protected, supported, or loved. The dark cloud is the heaviness of this fear, and it shows us that fear is indeed bondage, and the devil seeks to keep us enslaved.

We are born into bondage, because we are born in sin. Many of us overlook the heft of what that means, or we will not try to understand it. Since Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden, every single person that is born in this earthly realm was born under the enslavement of satan’s darkness. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi horror movie, but the imaginations of human beings couldn’t come up with something like this. Human beings in Biblical days chose to sin, and most of us are still choosing sin over obedience to God today. Romans 5:12(NLT) says, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.”

Some of us have had wonderful childhoods, filled with joy and happiness, and we don’t experience extreme hardship until later on in life. But some of us have had the innocence of childhood stolen from us because the devil wanted to prevent our destinies in the Will of God from going forward. We must not be blind to the reality that the enemy sought to utterly destroy us, and the devil did it by working through those who refused to live through the love of Christ the way they should have.

As a person that has experienced the trauma and pain of domestic violence, you can’t afford to allow the truth of John 3:16(NLT) to slip by you. It is the foundation of your healing, and you must meditate on it and allow it to sink deep within your core. Jesus Christ said in this verse, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” The wages of sin is death. God sent Jesus Christ to the earth and gave him, His only begotten Son, as a sacrifice to die for us. When Christ died on the Cross of Calvary, he took our place. We deserved the suffering, punishment, and torture he endured, but we could not have withstood it.

The reality that we are born into a sinful world, with people, most that do not walk in the love of Christ, cannot be lost on us. It’s nothing to take lightly. It is the condition of the world and shows us the darkness of satan’s dominion. The Bible tells us that he is the god of this world. 2Corinthians 4:4(NLT) says, “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.”

Becoming born again through the Lord Jesus Christ transfers us from satan’s dominion to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Colossians 1:12-14(NLT) says, “12 He has enabled you to share in the inheritance that belongs to his people, who live in the light. 13 For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, 14 who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins.” Many believers are still in sadness because they haven’t fully understood what Christ accomplished for us spiritually, and it is precisely because they haven’t understood it, that they haven’t fully accepted it.

Being born again makes Jesus Christ the Lord of our lives. He’s in the position of authority and dominion, not us, and certainly not the devil. Our responsibility is to walk spiritually and by faith in him, but many of us don’t do this. We still have fear in our hearts from what happened to us, and this fear makes us want to be in control. The reality is that we can’t be in control, but we won’t accept it. So, what ends up happening is that we carry all the frustration, anger, fear, and anxiety of our pain into our relationships. Unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, we choose people as partners who mirror this pain back to us. They show us the depth of our anger and pain, but most of all, they reveal our refusal to let God take it away.

 The solution is to be healed through Jesus Christ. 1Peter 2:24(NKJV) tells us, “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.” Jesus Christ took care of our pain on the cross. He was crucified and because of his suffering for us, we are healed. He paid the price, and we have to stop trying to pay it ourselves, because this is something that we are incapable of doing.

 James 1:2-4(NLT) tells us, “2 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” God wants us to get to a place where we are not dependent on fear or pain to protect us. We cannot depend on a person, and we are not dependent on ourselves, to do for us what only God can do. The trauma of what we’ve been through leaves us with wires crossed that we are not able to uncross, but God can. If we seek Him first in all things, He will help us continually walk in His healing and blessings. He is forever and always our Source of all good things. We can depend on no other for what only He can provide. 

God doesn’t want us walking around fearful of what the next relationship brings. Doing so means that fear is still the master. Know for sure that the love of God through Christ must be the master, for God is the healer of broken hearts. The process of healing for those that have endured domestic violence and abuse is one where we become extremely conscious of our need to react and control. These impulses will need to be continually surrendered to Christ. We must humbly submit them to His Lordship in all our relationships in order to keep ourselves from turning to fear and fight or flight urges. Heavenly Father will place individuals of spiritual strength and maturity in our lives. We will need their help to remind us of our identity in Christ and help us to remain grounded in his healing power.

 Growing up, we may not have been supported in the ways we needed, but now that we have received salvation, we can be. As survivors of trauma, we can’t do it alone. It is important to recognize the kind of spiritual help and guidance we need from Christ and from others of faith to support us, give us good counsel, and pray for us as we seek to live through the healing power and victory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.■

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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.

“The Suffering Only God Can Heal”, 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.

 

Feeling Bad and Beating Yourself Up Isn’t the Answer

 

“For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.”
1Corinthians 4:20 (NLT)

“Something isn’t right in my life. I’m raising my kids on my own, they are acting out and every time I talk to my family, they’re always blaming me.”

For every choice and decision that we make in life, there is a consequence. Whether those choices and decisions are good or bad, the results will come back to us in the form of something we like or something we don’t like. This is God’s law, and it is immutable; it will not fail, and we can’t change it. Considering this, the most beneficial thing that any of us can do for ourselves is to be like Christ and think good thoughts, feel good feelings, speak good words, and do good things. Through the Apostle Paul, God says it best in Philippians 4:8(NLT), “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

Either because we don’t know God’s laws, or we slipped up and violated them, sometimes, we fall. We make a wrong choice or decision, and it takes us really far from the path of God’s righteousness and blessings. We might do something that nowhere resembles the kind of person we know we should be. As a believer of Jesus Christ, we might feel remorse for our wrong or poor choices, and that’s how we’re supposed to feel. If we do something that offends the Lord, our hearts should be convicted, it shows that the Spirit is working within us. But we shouldn’t remain in that place of remorse. Through the goodness, mercy, and grace of God, we have the solution through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! It is to repent and ask God for forgiveness. 1John 1:19(NIV) tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

God knows we are going to make mistakes, and He doesn’t stop loving us when we do. He has given us His Word so we can correct ourselves and get back on the path of His righteousness and blessings. When we don’t repent for thinking the wrong thoughts, feeling the wrong feelings, speaking the wrong words, and doing wrong deeds, we are still in the cycle of sin, where those wrong things keep cycling back to us. Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross to get us out of this kind of bondage. He showed us the way to live a more than abundant life, and it begins with repentance.

The devil bombards us with negativity and consequences to keep us from repenting, because the devil doesn’t want our relationship with God restored. To repent is to recognize we’ve been doing the wrong things and then to stop doing them. Repentance is a change of behavior. It is to wake up and realize that we have been given the power and authority of Christ to overcome. This is what God means when He tells us in Ephesians 4:23 to renew our minds, and in Colossians 3:10(NLT), when He tells us, “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” As children of God’s Kingdom, we can live by His power. We can overcome any situation by knowing His Word and walking in the example of Christ.  

It can be very discouraging when we constantly find ourselves repeating the same kind of sins that we swore to God we would never do again. If we remain stuck in feeling bad, we are stuck in condemnation, and this condemnation makes us continually feel sad and unworthy. It’s a cycle of reacting to our mistakes, not by correcting them through Jesus Christ, but with the self-punishment of continuing to feel bad. That’s condemnation. Repentance is recognizing the wrong action and correcting it. It’s not God’s Will that we let sadness and unworthiness takeover our lives. It’s His Will that we overcome the actions and behaviors that caused our trouble so that we can overcome them through Jesus Christ.

After my divorce from an abusive marriage, I felt sadness and shame. I felt condemned. I have no doubt that God wanted me and my child to be safe, but I still blamed myself in certain ways and regretted the choices I made. I had to seek God’s forgiveness for not knowing His Word to the degree that I could have, so that I could make wiser choices. None of us are perfect, and there are thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that lead us down the wrong paths and cause us to choose unwisely. Beating ourselves up and feeling bad isn’t the answer. The answer is growing in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, so that we can stay on the path of making good choices and decisions that please God. ■

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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.

“Feeling Bad and Beating Yourself Up Isn’t the Answer”, 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.

 

Shame and Abandonment Are Not Yours to Own

“Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.” Isaiah 61:7(NIV)

It is devastating when you’ve known a person for a few years, and suddenly, they reveal a side of themselves that you never imagined. This happens in many abusive relationships. Dating the person can be a very exciting time, and marrying them can be even more blissful, but it’s also possible to wake up one day, and all this has faded away. You have no idea how or why. The person you love may have become an unpredictable nightmare, and you just want your life to get back to where it was.

Our situation can feel very dire, and sometimes we grasp for solutions out of a sense of desperation. I personally know someone who tried unsuccessfully to help her husband become acquainted with the person of Jesus Christ. Feeling this was the only way he’d stop his violent behavior, she did all that she could to persuade him to let the Lord’s love into his heart, but he wasn’t interested in changing and resented the pressure. Eventually, her husband abandoned the family, leaving her to raise their three children on her own.

Abuse can rob us in many ways, and the residual is sometimes a tangled web of emotions that add to the confusion and shame we may be already experiencing. Emotional and mental healing should be our goal for ourselves, because this is what our Heavenly Father wants for us. Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross. He died for our sins so that the sins of everyone could be forgiven. We should remind ourselves every day of what Christ accomplished on the cross. It was a horrible and painful death, and his body was beaten to an unimaginable degree. 1Peter 2:24(NIV) says, “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” Our healing is possible because of the tremendous wounds our Lord and Savior endured. It is up to you and me to trust that through Christ we can be healed, and not only this, we can be better and become stronger.

In Romans 12:1, our Heavenly Father lovingly begs us to present our entire beings to Him. He wants us to give over our whole selves to His care so that He can transform us into the people He created us to be. Our God is all powerful and all knowing. He is magnificent beyond magnificence, and Jesus Christ told us in Matthew 19:26 (KJV), “with God all things are possible.” Even in the middle of fear, heartache, financial struggles, and abandonment, we must rise ourselves to a point of believing that God has a good plan for us, because He does, but we must begin to trust Him wholeheartedly.

Our emotional and mental healing begins with focusing on the Lord Jesus Christ. Giving ourselves to him totally and completely means surrendering those parts of us that need his healing the most. The Lord loves us, and He is faithful to keep His promises. He will guide us through His Spirit and again, the most important thing for any of us to do is to lean on Him and begin to put His Word into our minds and hearts. God’s healing takes time, but we must know that pain doesn’t last always. As quickly as seasons change, so can our circumstances. Nothing ever stays the same, and we must be willing to make some changes as well.

We can’t allow ourselves to remain stuck in guilt, shame, or feelings that come with abandonment. And we must not let resentment and bitterness take up space in our hearts. These feelings bring us low because they belong to the devil, they don’t belong to us. We can send them back to where they came from, and we can claim the victory and liberty that Jesus Christ has given us. You belong to the Kingdom of God! Your inheritance as a child of God is not shame or fear, it is the glory and victory of Christ! If you trust the Lord with all your heart, He will do for you the same as He did for the people living in Isaiah 61:7, He will heal your heart and give you a double portion of blessings. ■

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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.

“Shame and Abandonment Are Not Yours to Own”, 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.