Monthly Archives: June 2019

A Fresh Start

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I was asked recently to pray for a woman that has been in an abusive marriage for over 25 years. Her husband is abusive in many ways, including habitual infidelity. She’s tried to leave the marriage several times, but each time he has begged for forgiveness and made promises to change his behavior. She has taken him back and continued to suffer through his abuse and cheating. His years of affairs have produced more than one child outside of their marriage. The child support for those kids has diminished college funds and financial support for the children they have together. Now that she’s in her fifties, and after all the lies and everything she’s been through, she says she’s finally going to leave him and give herself a fresh start.

When we think of the word ‘fresh’, we automatically think about newness or something that is different. The mere mention of the word inspires good feelings. We get excited about the possibility of leaving the ‘old, worn out, and no longer useful’ behind us. The harsh reality that stares all of us in the face is that newness doesn’t get it’s beginning from the external, it is birthed internally first. Real and lasting change begins in our hearts and minds. This is an astounding truth that most people ignore.

There are many reasons that a person will remain in an abusive relationship. If children are involved, the abuser may contribute part or all their financial support, making it more challenging to leave the marriage or relationship. Also, both pride and fear can be deterrents to leaving as well. When the abuser has some degree of affluence or prominence in the community, pride can become a stronghold. Fear of abusive retribution and retaliation, as well as the fear of a withdrawal of support, is also very much part of the reason why many people remain in abusive relationships. But these are not the root cause of why a person stays, they are what’s on the surface.

The truth is that God has empowered every individual of sound mind to achieve and accomplish whatever they truly want to do. When we’re relentless or passionate about something, most of us find a way to get what we want done. So, there has to be something deep-seated in someone’s mind and heart to make them feel as though they are unable to be set free. This isn’t a judgment. I was bound by four walls of self-doubt, self-condemnation, and insecurity for many years, so I know the entrapment of a mindset of powerlessness very well. I personally believe it is its own hell, a prison that ensnares countless numbers of individuals who believe there’s no hope.

In 1Timothy 6:12(NLT), God tells us through the Apostle Paul, “Fight the good fight for the true faith. Hold tightly to the eternal life to which God has called you, which you have confessed so well before many witnesses.” God’s Word is true. It is the Source of any truth that exists in the earth. A thing may be factual, but facts change all the time. Truth is eternal, and it is this fight, the fight to stand on our truth in Christ, that is the greatest fight of all.

Instead of fighting to stand ground on the truth of our strength, ability, and liberty that Christ gave his life to make available to us, we fight for the thing that enslaves us. We fight our strength, ability, and liberty when we don’t believe in them. Jesus Christ tells us in John 8:32 that only the truth will set us free. And the truth is that we will have to give up the mindset of powerlessness for a mindset of hope.

Hope is the first step to a fresh start, but it will require something that only the Lord Jesus Christ can provide in order to back it up. We need the power of the Spirit of God, and we must invite Him to do a work on the inside of us. Without this, we slip back into old ways of thinking and behaving and continue to allow ourselves to suffer. We must acknowledge that we are indeed in a fight, and we will need more than the armor human understanding and skill can provide. We need the whole armor of God, and He freely offers it. He tells us in Ephesians 6:11 to put it on, and therein lies a true fresh start. ■

Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

“A Fresh Start” written by Fran, edited by PMB for DomesticAbuseAwareness.Org ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Untangling A Tangled Mess

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My father was a military guy, and he liked order. This rubbed off on my sisters and me. We all tend to get a little antsy when things aren’t in their proper places. I think I’m more tolerable of untidiness than my other siblings. Sometimes I leave dishes in the sink overnight and can go a couple of days without hanging up my clothes, but I recognize and appreciate the discipline of order. When I don’t have it, I’m not as comfortable. The procrastination anxiety of having too much on my plate to manage will ultimately drive me nuts. So, I try not to let things get too out of hand in my living space. I enjoy that ‘feel-good’ sense of calm that you get from cleaning up and having things tidy. If only life could be that way most of the time, we’d be all set.

One can appreciate the ability to compartmentalize, because that’s what we do in life. We can have order in one area, but total chaos in another. We can have confidence in what we’re doing in one aspect of our existence, like our jobs for instance, but when it comes to other areas, we can’t figure out what’s up and what’s down. Very often, this seesaw effect is most apparent in our relationships because intimate connections reveal our greatest vulnerabilities. We’re not perfect. We’re going to make ‘big time’ mistakes. This comes with the human experience. It is important, though, to forgive ourselves for those mistakes. It is equally important for us to recognize, especially in our relationships, that we are in a process of development.

If life proves nothing else, it bears witness to evolution and progress. Life is an ever-changing and evolving dynamic. As believers, this means trusting the reality that life doesn’t end because our physical bodies die. We are born once physically, and then born-again spiritually. The first birth gives us life on earth, and the second birth gives us life in the Spirit through Jesus Christ. The second birth is an eternal reality. Jesus Christ always knew what he came to earth to do, and he also knew the suffering he’d have to endure to make the second birth a reality for humankind. In John 3:14-16, he spoke of his death to Nicodemus and said that he had to be lifted up and crucified on the cross. He said that everyone who believes in his mission, sacrifice and resurrection would receive eternal life.

Eternal life is life that never ends. There’s little to no reason to become better humans if we have no hope of life beyond what we can see day to day. Because our hope is in Christ, we understand that life affords us a choice to become better versions of ourselves through God’s love, and not through negativity or hate. We can choose better because of Christ and what he accomplished, and we can be present in the moment knowing that we are WORKS-in-progress.

God has designed life in such a way that the more we comprehend that it’s Him who does the untangling of life’s messes, the more progress we make. We move ahead by leaps and bounds if our mode of operating is one of not interrupting what God is doing in our lives. He’s teaching us a new and better way of handling life’s hiccups, and the lesson is that we should not use our words and thoughts to block His flow and further tangle things. We block God’s work through doubt and negativity. These are groove killers. They take us out of the realm of faith, and therefore block the process and the progress.

All it takes is one time—just one time for you to speak positive words of hope unrelentingly over a troublesome situation. A commitment to do so will get you hooked by the results it yields. This is achieved by saying what God says, and He says that through the faith of Jesus Christ, all things are possible by believing and trusting Him. Jesus Christ said in Mark 11:23 that we can speak to a mountain and tell it to move and be cast in the sea; if we command this with no doubt in our hearts, that mountain is outta here. If we believe, and don’t doubt in our hearts, we will have what we confess by faith.

This isn’t always an on-the-spot or overnight reality. It’s a process, just as we are a work in process. It takes a lifetime to get some things right down here, and just as we must be patient with our own self-growth and development, we must be patient as we continually apply faith, and not fear, to the situations of life.

God will make our crooked paths straight. If we confess and think anything that doesn’t jive with this truth, then we’re thinking and confessing something that is contrary to who He is and what He has said in His Word. Doing this, falsely thinking and confessing, is dangerous business, and we should want no part in it.

God wouldn’t give us these powerful spiritual tools if life were always easy. We wouldn’t need them if we didn’t make mistakes and if we didn’t need to learn to walk by faith. God has given us His Word so that we walk in the Spirit and in the grace of all that He’s made available to us. Let’s believe that God will untangle the tangled messes of our lives, and let’s trust Him with all our hearts by speaking and thinking in alignment with His power and love. ■

Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

“Untangling A Tangled Mess” written by Fran, edited by PMB for DomesticAbuseAwareness.Org ©2019. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!