Tuesday: Loss of Trust, Continued
Another way that trust is lost is through family violence. Unthinkable as it is, research reveals that the home is the single most violent place in society. Family violence touches all kinds of families, including Christian homes. Violence is an assault of any kind—verbal, physical, emotional, sexual, or active or passive neglect—that is committed by one or more persons against another in the family.
Violence
The Bible includes accounts of family violence, even among God’s people. What are your thoughts and feelings as you read these verses? Why do you think these stories were preserved in Scripture?
2 Kings 16:3, 2 Kings 17:17, 2 Kings 21:6
Abusive behavior is the conscious choice of a person to exercise power and control over another. It cannot be explained or excused by alcoholism, stress, the need to fulfill sexual desires, the need for better control of anger, or any behavior of the victim. Victims are not responsible for causing the abuser to abuse. Abusers distort and pervert love, for “love does no harm” (Rom. 13:10, NIV). Professional treatment can facilitate change in an abuser’s behavior, but only if the person takes responsibility for the behavior and seeks such help. To those who will open themselves to His presence, God is able to do exceedingly abundantly to help abusers stop abusing, to repent of their attitudes and behavior, to make restitution in every way possible, and to embrace the qualities of agape love to heal their own hearts and to love others (compare Eph. 3:20).
| Try to put yourself in the place of someone traumatized by violence. What words of acceptance, comfort, and hope would you like to hear? Why is it important to provide safety and caring acceptance rather than offering advice about how to live better with the abuser? |
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One of the great truths of life is that there are times when life just doesn’t make sense. We have all experienced times in life when experience defies logic and leaves us with a complete lack of understanding.
Life can absolutely be beyond our ability to comprehend and beyond our ability to control. Trust means that you lean on God at all times, in all situations and in every possible way. Life is never fair, never totally free of pain and never beyond difficulties.
Some Powerful Examples of Senseless Situations
Do you think Abraham understood why he was promises numberless descendants when he had no son? Do you think that Joseph understood why he was sold into slavery by his brothers? Do you think that Daniel understood why he had to spend the night in the lion’s den? Do you think Paul understood why he was stoned, beaten and shipwrecked? Life doesn’t make sense but God makes sense out of life.
Trust in God is not just something we talk about in church and move on. Trust in God is the only thing that gets us through where the rubber meets the road. It is in those days when life defies our logic. In those days when life just does not make any sense. These are the times, that we need to trust God the most. We need to trust God when life just gets tough because if we don’t trust him the tough stuff, we don’t trust Him at all.
Trust is not about logic, it is a matter of faith. We may go through hard times, we may have days filled with heart ache and pain, we may have days when life is beyond our control. Life is never beyond God’s control. When we lean on our own understanding, we gain only what we can do for ourselves. When we lean on God, we gain His limitless resources.
There have been more than a few days, when I have clung to the promise that God will never leave us or forsake us. God made the promise that He would always be with us. When God makes a promise, He keeps it! If God never leaves us, we can trust Him in every situation and in every trial. God always comes through in every problem and every trail, even when we barely get through. The power and presence of God gets us through the tough stuff of life.
One of my favorite verses of scripture is in Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.
Violence, breach of trust, and instances of man's inhumanity to man are things that I unfortunately have experienced and about which I can speak volumes. I pray everyday for healing and that God will take "the mess of my life and turn it ito a message and the tests of my life into a testimony" God is a Healer! Amen.
The explanation for today's violence is the lack of love and greed (money, power, fame). In contemporary society we can clearly see that, and unfortunately, it seems that we are convinced that with truculence we can respond to this effectively. How wrong and miserable we are. We may think that security is the way to go, even more important than education and love! As a family, if we place material things and physical/emotional pressure ahead of examples of love we are doomed to fail as society! How 'basic' we have been when we focus our efforts in creating more and more jails! For sure, the lack of education has brought the world to this massive amount of people with no moral and raw values, mirrored by our own leaders! We need to get back and rethink our ways and try to restore as little as possible the faith in logic! Because evil has no logic! Our only hope is in a miracle, a miracle that perhaps can be recovered by faith in a superior Force, faith in the miracle of Love that needs to start within our own individual hearts first!
God Bless you abundantly
I’m very glad for today’s lesson. As a professional, I have dealt with many kinds of abuse - and yes, even in the church. Please understand why I am not using my name for this post.
If we acknowledge that the church is filled with humans, then we might be more willing to believe that awful things can happen and not make the victim’s journey even harder.
I have been accused of being “unfair” to the abusers because I was involved professionally and told that “it’s just not true” by those who didn’t live in the home and just didn’t want to hear hard things about someone. It has, at times, made my attendance at church uncomfortable because many matters were kept private, so the gossip mill didn’t really know what was being disclosed, but the facts were worse than anyone could have imagined. I was bound by professional silence, so I neither could agree that it was not true nor give details to explain why things were happening.
My spouse thought that it wasn’t possible to be an Adventist and do wrong because by “being an Adventist” one was, by definition, a committed Christian. You can imagine that it was also an interesting time in our home, especially since I couldn’t say anything.
Unfortunately there are many who “are Adventists” but who have either never really surrendered to Christ or whose hearts have grown cold, and yet they are Elders, Deacons, Deaconesses, Sabbath School teachers, even Pastors and school teachers. I’ve seen far too much and it’s probably an indication that I’ve been involved too long and also that it’s time for Christ to come.
Again, if we have humans we will, unfortunately, have erring humans. Praise God that forgiveness and renewal are possible through Christ for all of us and that not everyone is a horrible abuser.
And the best thing you can say to a victim is “I believe you” and then ask how you can be a support to her or him.
I just don’t understand people in the church today. A man is abusing his wife saying it’s jealousy.
The abusée gets married twice now and wives end up leaving him.
No body is helping in the church.
Friendship compromising selfishness, that’s all I see now after being beat up by an abuser while pregnant.
After giving birth he hits me in the head, twice kicked me on my stomach.
4 months after a cesarean I fall on my back and this man left me after all these abuses.
Come on brethren, why this institution tolerates sinners?
Why did Jesus say to the sinners, "go and sin no more"?
So what as been told in the church today should not be different if we’re followers of Christ.
I’m very disappointed. I know it is temporary and God's reward to me is everlasting.
I hope you understand and make a difference because we’re the light of the world and we shouldn’t do worse than them.
Great lesson. God bless and thank for this opportunity. Remember Jesus is coming soon
IF you have been doing good things all the time, and then you do a wrong thing once, then people will forget the good things you did earlier, why?
We live in a fallen world but it doesn't mean we should wrong all the time.
Only God can rebuild us at once and we start trusting each other.
God be with the participants. On this site