There is no easy road to recovering from abuse, but spiritual healing awaits—beginning with a relationship with Jesus Christ. Dr. Stanley explains how only God can restore the health of those who have been abused and that He will make them whole again as they grow in His love. For more messages from Charles Stanley, including this week’s broadcast, go to https://intouch.org/tv
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male announcer: In Touch,
the teaching ministry
of Dr. Charles Stanley,
reaching the world with the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
Next on “In Touch,”
“When We Are Abused.”
Dr. Charles Stanley: Three
times the night before the Lord
Jesus Christ was crucified,
He said this to His disciples.
He said, “Love one another.
Love one another.
Love one another.”
And then,
throughout the epistles,
we find the writers of the
epistles saying things
like this, “Accept one another.
Care for one another.
Comfort one another.
Be devoted to one another.
Build up one another.
Encourage one another.
Forgive one another.
Be patient with one another.
Be hospitable
toward one another.
Be subject to one another.
Stimulate one another.
Serve one another.”
All through the Scriptures, God
is giving us instructions about
our relationship to each other.
And when you think about all
that is said in just those
phrases that I’ve given
you–love one another,
serving one another,
encouraging each other,
stimulating one another–all
of this makes something very,
very clear, it is never,
under any circumstance,
justifiable to
abuse someone else.
Abuse doesn’t fit who
we are as believers.
It is never the will of God
for His children to be abused.
And that word today has
become a very popular word.
We hear about
children being abused,
parents being abused, husbands
and wives abusing each other,
governments abusing people.
And the word simply
means to harm someone,
to injure then in some fashion,
whether it is a physical abuse,
sexual abuse,
whether it is verbal abuse
or emotional abuse–
it doesn’t make any
difference what it is–
none of that fits into what
Jesus said when He said,
“Love one another.
Be hospitable
toward one another,
encourage each other,
care for one another,
comfort one another.”
And so, what I would like to
do in this message is simply to
share with you some
things that are helpful,
I hope, to people
who are being abused.
In every church all over this
land and in every nation on the
face of this earth, there are
people by the millions and
millions and millions
who have been abused,
who are being abused, who have
no earthly idea what to do and
how to deal with that situation.
So, in the thirteen,
fourteenth, fifteenth,
sixteenth chapters of John–this
is where Jesus said to His
disciples, “Love one another.”
And so, instead of taking a
passage of Scripture in this
message and expounding it,
I want to give you
some suggestions
about how to deal
with this whole
problem of abuse.
But I want to begin by
distinguishing between
abuse and discipline.
Now, let me say this, that there
are a lot of people who have
been abused and some
people would term
abuse different things.
For example, if
someone is just criticized,
they say, “Well,
you have abused me.”
I’m not talking about simple
criticism, but I’m talking about
that verbal or emotional abuse
that is really damaging in a
person’s life.
Now, when we think about abuse
and we think about how people
respond to it, people respond
to it in all different ways, and
some people will live all of
their lives and never even
question whether they
have been abused or not.
They will, somehow, wonder
what’s going on inside of them
and never be able to
identify what the root cause is.
Some people know that they have
been abused, but never have the
courage to face up to it.
People, especially who are
sexually abused early in life,
they cover it up.
They keep it covered
because they’re embarrassed,
not realizing that when
this happens, they–
it will come out, some way
or the other, and it will spew
out on people around them.
You cannot cover
those kind of abuses.
And so, when we think about
the distinction between
abuse and discipline–
let me just say that discipline
is always directed toward a
person because of their
behavior, always directed toward
a specific behavior,
whereas abuse has nothing to
do with that person’s behavior.
It has to do with something on
the inside of the abuser like a
volcano that comes spewing out.
It is anger,
hostility, fear, bitterness,
resentment,
whatever it might be,
but it’s coming out.
And what it does, it attaches
itself or respo–reacts toward a
person that has nothing to do
with that person’s behavior.
It’s something on
the inside of them.
It is a predisposition that is
there and–just looking for an
excuse to express
itself on someone else.
Behavior alwa–rather,
discipline always has the best
behavior of the
other person in mind.
It has, as its purpose, to
correct something that the
parent may know is not wise
in the life of that child,
whereas abuse is not concerned
about someone’s behavior or
someone’s best interest.
It is getting something
out that is on the inside.
Discipline is rooted in love,
love for a person that desires
the best for them, and therefore
that discipline is exercised.
And so, there’s a great
distinction between being abused
and being disciplined.
So, let me just begin
by saying two things.
Number one, I am sure that I
don’t have any earthly idea what
abuse is like compared to most
people, so I would not tell you
anything about myself to say,
“Look how awful my
background was,”
but simply to say this: I share
it because I want to say to you
that if I’m willing to share
it, you ought to be able and be
willing to share maybe things
that have hurt you in your past
that you need to deal with and
you just don’t think you can
tell anybody.
Yes, you can, because sharing it
is part of the healing process.
When I was about
nine years of age,
my mother married
the second time.
My father passed away when
I was nine months of age.
And so, she married a man that
she thought would make me a good
father, and about two weeks into
that marriage, she realized that
something was really wrong.
And the tragedy is–of
my mother’s marriage
the second time–was that all
of my stepfather’s brothers and
sisters told her what a
wonderful man he was and what a
wonderful husband he would make,
only for my mother to go back a
few months later
and question them.
And this was their response,
“Well, yeah, we knew he
was like that, but we thought
if he got married,
he would change.”
What a devastating
lie to tell my mother.
But it was
devastating, and it was a lie,
and they knew
better, but they told it.
Don’t ever make up something
because you think things may get
better if
somebody does so and so,
because, usually, they don’t.
And so, it was the beginning
of a horrible marriage.
And times when I was challenged
in ways that I never thought I’d
be challenged.
Always criticized.
Always felt I was a third party.
And oftentimes got in fights.
My mother always defended me.
And I’m sure that I was not
physically abused, because my
mother would’ve laid down her
life quickly before she would
have allowed that to happen,
though we did get
in some brawls.
And so, by the time I was a
teenager and I had seen some
things go on, like my mother
being choked, and knowing that
if I had had the
privilege, at the moment,
no telling what I would have
done to my stepfather if I could
have at that moment; loading my
gun at night and placing it
in the corner of the bedroom
where I slept, by the bed,
and locking the door because
I didn’t always know what was
going to happen, and I know that
may sound like,
“Well, that doesn’t
sound very Christlike.”
Right.
You’re right.
But I was saved when I
was twelve years of age,
but I was scared.
And I didn’t know
how to respond.
I never read any books
about any of this,
because to my knowledge,
there weren’t any written.
There were no
seminars, nobody to tell me,
“How do you grow up in
this kind of a situation
and circumstance?”
And I was not the only member of
that family who was
treated in that way.
The worst thing about leaving
home to go to college was
leaving my mother
in a bad situation.
And I would not even describe
all the things that went on,
except to say this: If you think
that growing up in difficult
circumstances does not
have any effect on you,
you’d better think twice,
because, you see, all of us
have a tape in our mind,
and that tape has on it all the
things that you and I began with
from the time of our birth–
maybe even before our birth–
and either we recognize that,
identify what’s on the tape and
deal with it, or we suffer from
it all the days of our life.
And thank God, thank God for
people in my life who have given
me direction in years past who
check out my own life and to be
sure that I don’t have any of
that hostility and anger and
bitterness and resentment left
over from things that happened
to me, because I
have dealt with them.
But I say all of that to say
I know nothing about abuse
compared to what so
many people suffer here,
not only in this country, but
I think about people who have
suffered such horrible, horrible
abuse in other nations of the
world, the way the governments
have treated them and the way
people have hurt
physically, sexually,
spiritually, mentally,
emotionally in ways that most of
us will never
begin to understand.
So how do you respond
to all of these things?
Well, let me say–and I want
to give you a number of things.
And you may just jot them down.
And you may not
need them at all.
Wonderful.
I hope you don’t.
But I’ll tell you one thing.
You either live
with someone who does,
or you work around
someone who does,
or you have a friend who does.
I guarantee you, you don’t have
to reach much further than arm’s
length to find somebody around
you who is suffering from abuse
and does not know
that that’s the problem,
who will go through
life unable to relate,
can’t ever be satisfied,
walking out of situations,
things don’t get
right, they run away,
whatever it might be, not
realizing that all of that stuff
and junk was there, was given
to them many years ago–
or maybe not so many years ago.
And now they’re
having to deal with it.
So, the first thing I want to
suggest is simply this,
and that is, as you think in
terms of dealing with things and
how to deal with them, number
one, to seek God’s guidance.
“Lord, what would
You have me to do?”
Now, listen.
There is no pat answer as
to what to do in an abusive
situation because all
abuse is not the same.
All of it is not
motivated the same way.
And so, to say to somebody,
“Well, just get out,”
that is not always the answer.
And some people will use
that word, “abuse,” today
as an excuse to
run or to escape.
We’re talking about the kind of
abuse that brings great injury
and great hurt.
And so, here is a
person, for example,
who is physically being
abused
and physically being
inflicted and injured.
Then to say to that person
to stay within that situation?
No.
Or someone, for example, who is
being emotionally abused.
You may say, “Well,
they should just leave.”
Not–you can’t say
that to everybody
for the simple reason–
that’s why we say,
“You ask God what
you ought to do.”
And remember this.
Listen carefully.
God will never tell you to
do anything that violates the
living Word of God.
Secondly, pray for the abuser.
Pray for the abuser.
You say, “Well, I prayed
and prayed and prayed.
Nothing has happened.”
Well, let me give you
something specific to pray for.
If I had known this when
I was a kid growing up,
I would’ve known how to better
to respond to my stepfather.
But I didn’t know this,
and that is, pray for God to
show you what motivates that
person to act the way they act.
Why does that person
abuse someone else?
Why do they treat someone
else and try to injure them?
Well, a lot of
years went by,
and so, I went to see my
stepfather and my–they lived–
my mom was still there then and
they lived together–
always did till he died.
And so, I went to see him to ask
him to forgive me for my wrong
responses to him because
I’m sure I responded wrongly.
And on several occasions, it
could have been a disaster.
And so, I went to
ask him to forgive me.
And I sat down across the table
at lunch, and I said–
I called him by name and I said,
“I just need to ask you to
forgive me for some things.”
And immediately he said,
“Aw, you shouldn’t d–“
I said, “No, just
let me finish.”
I never accused him of anything.
I just said, “I need to ask you
to forgive me for some things.”
And then as we began to talk, my
stepfather told me about this.
I wish I had
known this years ago.
He said–it just came out.
It’s not something he
intended to tell me.
He said, “You know, when
I was a boy,” he said,
“I wanted to be a doctor.
And I told my father I wanted to
go to college and be a doctor.”
And he says, “He
wouldn’t let me go to college.
He made me stay on
the farm and work.”
And he said, “I had
to work on the farm,
and he wouldn’t let me get off.
He wouldn’t let me go anywhere.
He just made me work every day.”
He said, “Until
finally I just left.
I just picked up my
little stuff and I left.”
He left.
He got him a job in–cooking
in some little Podunk
restaurant somewhere.
He always had menial jobs.
He never did anything
much to make any money.
But here’s what happened to
him, and here’s the reason.
I want you to listen carefully.
Because his father wouldn’t
let him become a doctor,
wouldn’t let him go to
college, he developed a root of
bitterness, resentment,
anger, and hostility.
You can never keep
these poisons to yourself.
They will always erupt.
There are–it’s like a volcano.
Ultimately, it’s coming out.
And so, what happened?
He just spewed it on
everybody around him.
What he was feeling toward
his father, he spewed on me,
my mother, his
brothers, his sisters,
and everybody else, our
friends, people he worked with.
He spewed all of that on them.
Now, that’s what happens
when the poison of bitterness,
resentment, hostility, and
anger is on the inside of you.
And let me say this, if
you refuse to look back,
if you refuse to deal with
it, you are going to hurt and
destroy the
people you love most.
While you cover up what has
happened in your past, you are
destroying the people who
are living in your present.
It happens every day and it
brings great hurt and turmoil.
And that’s why
just to hold it down,
push it down, deny it,
refuse that it’s ever happened
or it’s ever been there is
devastating to people who love
you with all of their heart.
The third thing I
would suggest is this,
and that is, not to blame God.
Do not blame God.
The one thing Satan would
love for you to do is say,
“Well, God did this.
Here’s what God did.
God wanted to correct my life
and God wanted to get rid of sin
in my life and so He caused my
parent or my son or my daughter
to abuse me.”
Listen to me carefully.
God never, under
any circumstance,
ever instigates, institutes,
initiates in any fashion
any kind of abuse.
That is not of God.
That is totally opposite
of everything God says.
He says, “Love one
another and serve one another,
encourage each other and build
up one another and care for one
another and comfort one another
and be patient with one another
and submit to one another.”
That has nothing to do–that’s
totally opposite from abusing
each other.
And so, Satan would love for the
person who is being abused to
think, “God is doing this
to me for a specific reason.
There must be something in my
life that God wants to correct.”
No, God will take advantage,
and He will use that–
if we’ll allow Him–
to our advantage in our life,
to grow us up and mature us,
but He is never the cause.
He is never the instigator of
any kind of abuse whatsoever.
That is not the
purpose, the plan,
the will, the desire,
or the method of God.
The fourth thing I would
say is to forgive the abuser.
Now, forgiving the abuser
isn’t something you d–
you say, “Well, I just can’t do
that because you don’t know
how I’ve been treated.”
Now, listen to me carefully.
Now, I know this is hard and I
know that some of you would say,
“Well, yes, but you haven’t
been treated the way I have.
That’s absolutely true.
I’m sure that’s true.
“You don’t know the kind
of emotional, physical,
or sexual damage
it’s done in my life.”
I’m sure I don’t
understand that.
But this much I do know:
that harboring anger,
resentment,
hostility, and bitterness–
listen, an unforgiving spirit
is worse than
a cancer on the inside.
An unforgiving
spirit is like a well,
like a spring of poison.
And what it does, it penetrates
every single facet
of a person’s life.
An unforgiving
spirit is absolutely,
listen, absolutely
unjustifiable.
You cannot justify an
unforgiving spirit.
And then, number five, I want
to say, is equally important,
and that is, to forgive the
one who allowed the abuse.
Now, there are young people who
grow up and they’re adults today
who say, “My mother stood by,
and she knew what was going on
and she let it happen anyway.”
And so, the
unforgiving spirit, oftentimes,
is just as much toward the
person who stood by and allowed
it to happen as the
person who did the abusing.
And so, it’s easy to
blame someone else.
Now, what we have
to ask is this:
Why did that person stand by?
And it may that you’ll have to
go back to one of your parents
and say, “You know, I’ve held it
against you all these years for
you allowing this
to happen to me.
Would you just sort of tell me
why we just put up with that?”
And, somehow, more than likely,
you’re gonna find out that
there was, in their mind, a
legitimate reason, or in their
thinking, they felt so
inadequate and so scared that
they didn’t even know how to
handle admitting that a husband
or a wife was abusing a child.
I’m simply saying these are
some things that you need to
consider when it comes
to dealing with abuse.
The next thing I would say,
which would be number six,
is to choose the
truth about yourself.
And the best way to find
out what the truth is,
is to get in the Word of God and
find out what He says about you.
And you know what?
When somebody
says, “You’re no good,
you don’t count, you’re not
worth anything,” you just
let that go in one ear
and out the other,
because that didn’t
come from heaven.
It came from the pit.
But, you see, it’s damaging,
because everybody needs to feel
a sense that they
belong, a sense of value,
that they’re worth something,
and to feel competent.
Those three attitudes are
essential to every person’s
emotional health: a
feeling of belonging,
a feeling of worth, and a
feeling of competence.
In a family–one of the greatest
advantages of the family is that
you belong, and somebody thinks
you are worth something that
they would marry you and
live with you, and that you are
competent, that you can take
care of and you can provide.
And in the church, we
all belong to this family.
And we all value one another.
We all have different gifts.
We’re different but
we value each other.
And we believe that
each other is competent.
That’s why you have
a place of service and
that you’re capable.
And when you eliminate a
sense of belonging, that means
“I’m–I don’t belong,
and so I’m rejected,”
a sense of worth,
“I have no value.
I’m worthless,” and
“I’m not competent.”
And, my friend, you have a
person who is emotionally
damaged, deeply, deeply damaged.
And so, when you and I begin
to believe the truth about
ourselves, what happens?
We begin to step out of the
horrible results and effects of
this kind of abuse.
Then I would say, number seven,
and that is to open yourself up
to godly healing.
Now, I want you to listen
very carefully to what
I’m going to say, and I speak
out of experience, and I speak
for the benefit of
multitudes of people, I hope.
When I say, “Open
yourself up to healing,”
what has to be healed?
Well, if you were physically
abused back yonder somewhere,
more than likely, if somebody
broke and arm or cut you or
something, you–that’s been
healed and you’ve gotten over
that and you think, “Well, hey,
you know, I’m over that abuse.”
No, you’re not.
That’s just the outward sign.
Because if someone
emotionally abused you,
you never did see
that, but you felt it.
You see, the healing process has
to take place in our memories.
What do I remember?
What did I feel?
What was I feeling
when this was going on?
You may have felt dirty if
you were sexually abused.
Or you may have just put your
mind in neutral and tried to
just be in some kind
of ethereal something
somewhere while
it was happening.
Or you may have felt,
“I must deserve this.”
Or you may have felt hatred,
bitterness, and hostility toward
the person who was doing it.
Those memories have to be
healed, or those memories
are like poison.
And so, God is willing to heal.
Now, Jesus Christ, who is the
source of our strength for every
need that we have, He
is willing to heal that.
But now listen.
It may be that you may need to
talk to somebody else about it
and get it out.
Maybe it’s something that
you’ve never shared with anyone.
Maybe you never even thought
about the fact that that’s part
of something going
on inside of you.
But let me say this, and I want
you to listen very carefully.
Sometimes you may need to
go to some godly counselor.
Now, listen carefully.
You be sure the person who
is your counselor is a godly
counselor and not
someone who simply says,
“I’m a Christian,” or who hangs
out a shingle that they’re a
Christian counselor, because
let me tell you something.
If a person is not
a true, godly counselor,
here’s what they’ll do:
They’ll say, “I’m a Christian.”
You won’t hear much about the
Word of God in that counseling.
You won’t hear much of–or
anything about Jesus or about
the Word of God, but what you’ll
have is you’ll have ungodly,
worldly psychology and
counseling that has nothing
to do with the
principles of Scripture.
And when you allow those things
to perpetrate your mind and your
emotions and your will, you will
end up in worse shape than you
were before you ever went to
that counselor because it will
cause confusion and it will
be trying to put together the
principles of Scripture
with ungodly counsel,
and all it does is
lengthens the time,
multiplies, and deepens the
hurt of those around you.
The next thing I
would simply say is this:
Choose to just move
forward in your life.
If you’re a person who’s
been abused and you say,
“Well, here’s what happened to
me; therefore, I can’t.”
Don’t say that.
You can do anything
God wants you to do.
And this is why Jesus
Christ, in your life,
is so absolutely essential.
He, within you, will
enable you, listen,
to be healed of your abuse.
He will enable you to
pick up those broken pieces,
those shattered parts of your
life, and He will put them back
together in the
most beautiful way.
And He can make you as–listen,
he can make you as if you never
suffered any abuse whatsoever.
He can heal you of bad memories.
He can put the broken
pieces back together.
You can move on in
life and do what?
God can accomplish in your
life everything that He
chooses to accomplish.
And no matter what has happened
to you, here’s what you can do,
you can know that Romans
8:28 is right and true,
that no matter what’s
happened in the past,
that you can pick up the
pieces and move on,
and that God will do this:
He’ll take all the
hurts, all the injury,
all the pain, all the suffering,
and all the heartache.
You know what He’ll do?
He’ll work that in your life
in some fashion to make you a
blessing to someone else
because we’re all servants.
So, don’t just
look back and say,
“Well, this is the way
I was treated, therefore–“
therefore nothing.
“This is the
way I was treated.
That may be what
happened to me in the past,
but this is who I am now.
And God is my Savior,
my Lord, and my Master,
and He says, in Christ Jesus,
that He will enable me to do and
to accomplish and to
achieve everything
that He calls me to do.”
“I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me.”
Listen, no matter what’s
happened in the past,
the past, listen, the past
cannot hold you back from doing
what God wants you to do
unless you allow it to happen.
You can be healed of the
effects of that abuse.
He will free you and liberate
you from what’s going on in your
life right now if
you’re willing to trust Him,
surrender your life to Him.
And listen.
The omnipotent Christ, who
lives within you, will keep you,
provide for you and heal you and
make you someone whom He can use
to bring glory to His name.
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