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How Abuse Damages Your Faith
The damages of abuse are well-documented and include PTSD, mood disorders, physical illnesses, and a host of relational difficulties. Less discussed are the damages an abusive relationship can inflict on a victim’s relationship with God. Often a good deal of spiritual abuse accompanies any other type of mistreatment and can really hamper a person’s belief in and relationship with God. Because our relationship with God serves as a basis for both deliverance from the abuser as well as healing from abuse, the enemy often targets a victim’s faith. For most of us, our experiential belief trumps the intellectual assent of our religious beliefs. What this means is that our experiences…
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The Unruly Ruler: The Challenges of Leadership
It took me a bit to decide how I wanted to write about the redemptive gift of ruler. While any unsanctified gift can lead to incredible harm, the ruler, if immature, leaves a lot of pain in his or her wake. Ask anyone if they have been injured by someone in authority and stories begin to pour forth. Don’t get me wrong. Rulers are no better or worse than anyone else. But by their very nature, they have a tendency to take charge. A ruler often influences more people than most of the other gifts. Because of this, the ruler gift, if unsanctified, has the power to negatively affect lives…
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Five Signs that Reconciliation is Impossible
Reconciliation is a world of its own apart from forgiveness. So I hesitated when someone recently asked me, “How long do I need to keep forgiving?” Because I realized the real question was about reconciliation, I didn’t respond with the standard seventy times seven answer. I suppose we don’t really ever stop forgiving, but knowing when to end futile attempts at reconciliation can be important, even life-saving. I used to be a champion reconciler. What that really means is that I went through the motions of apology and apology acceptance as if they meant something. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. I figured that if someone apologized to me, I…
Healing Through Art & Words
