Encourage Yourself in the Lord Your God
Sometimes people feel overwhelmed by the events of their lives and just want to give up on life. It seems, at times, that the Lord is a million miles away and we wonder if he even hears our prayers. There is great encouragement to be found for times such as these in the book of Zechariah. This book, when read with the plight of satanically ritually abused persons in mind, reveals the great love of Jesus and his desire to rebuild the shattered lives of abused persons.
To begin with, the name Zechariah means “Jehovah has remembered.” Your abuse may have happened many long years ago, but God has not forgotten. He knows how much your life today is still impacted by what happened long ago. He understands about programming and dissociated parts that can still control you at times. Well-meaning Christians may say that “everything is under the blood…just suck it up and get on with your life,” but God understands you can’t do that…because he remembers. He not only remembers, but he has plans to bring you out of your predicament. You will find his plan for you if you remain faithful to him even though it may take years before you see these plans unfold.
One reason it is so difficult to find help when you’ve been satanically ritually abused is that people don’t know what satanic ritual abuse is, or if they know, they believe it is rare. The Devil has managed to keep his most evil deeds hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Well, guess what? …that veil is being removed! Every day the news is filled with stories of all manner of murders, white collar crime, government corruption etc. And child sex-abuse scandals are myriad from the Catholic Church to the Penn State locker room. More and more people are coming forth telling of their abuse.
The most recent one I heard was reported on one of the Rochester, NY local news programs. A man was arrested for sexually abusing a nine-month-old baby girl to the point her internal organs were damaged and required surgery. No one reported exactly what he did to the baby, but it had to have been Satanism because that’s what they do to infants. That is the first report of that nature I’ve heard on the news. The lid is coming off. All the secret stuff is coming out into the open and, in my opinion, it won’t be long until satanic ritual abuse will be talked about openly. This will help those who have been abused because their stories will be more believable and more people will come forth to help.
Getting back to Zechariah…this book is about the people of God who had been in exile for many years returning to their own land to rebuild the temple. The foundation had been laid twenty years prior to this but then the work had stopped. The people were discouraged, but God sent his prophet Zechariah to encourage them. In chapter four, is a verse that says, “Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, ‘Grace, grace’ unto it.”
The scripture doesn’t make clear just exactly what this mountain was, but it was an obstacle that seemed insurmountable to the people who were trying to rebuild the temple. Think of the temple as being what you want to build…your life fully restored from the effects of abuse. The mountain represents the pile of rubble of your life as you see it now that you want to put back together again. You don’t know where to begin or how to get the help you need.
The Lord says to you, “Grace, grace.” But just exactly what is grace, you may ask, and how is that going to help me? Grace is God’s unmerited favor on your life. God knows what happened to you, and he is angry about it. He watches over you and will fight for you. He does things for you that you don’t recognize as being from him. He has enabled you to survive horrendous abuse that would otherwise have totally destroyed your life and your sanity. He has much more grace to pour into your life, if you will put him first and trust him.
I’ve noticed that God is much more lenient with SRA persons. He lets them get by with things I would get clobbered for. For example, he knows that they had to develop tremendous tenacity in order to survive. Tenacity is a good quality that becomes stubbornness in the face of life’s difficulties. SRA persons are often stubborn people. I’ve noticed how gentle and understanding God is with them because he knows what they’ve been through and how it affected their life. He gives them time and opportunities to trust him and yield to him or those around them. I have seen that stubbornness just melt away in the milieu of God’s love and faithfulness.
Sometimes abused persons get angry with God and blame him for not rescuing them out of their situation. Some wonder why they had to have been born into an abusive family. God understands your feelings. He created humankind with free will. If he intervened every time someone started to do evil towards another person, there would no longer be free will and we would all become puppets. In God’s whole plan for eternity, which is to have a vast family of sons and daughters just like Jesus, we have to be free to choose between good and evil. We have to choose God of our own free will or our love will mean nothing. If we didn’t know what evil was, we would be immature and our life would not have the depth or capacity to truly enjoy God.
Over many years of ministering to SRA persons, I have seen time after time how that which the enemy meant for evil worked out for good in their lives when they chose to trust God and seek him in all things. I remember one woman who was very bitter towards God because of her abuse. One evening in Group, she was crying out to the Lord because of it. Suddenly she received a prophetic word in which the Lord said that if she had not been abused, she would never have come to him. Just think of that! She has lived a life of torment for 50 years, but that is far better than being cast into the darkness of hell separated from God. Besides that, she is getting better.
God does miraculous things for SRA persons that others do not experience. For example, one woman told me how an angel saved her life. She was up in the middle of the night with a pile of strong pain killers in one hand and a glass of water in the other. Just as she was about to pop the pills into her mouth and end her life, an angel tapped her on the shoulder. She snapped out of her dissociated state wondering why she was sitting there with all those drugs in her hand!
Another SRA friend of mine actually swallowed several Quaaludes along with a few glasses of vodka. It had no effect on her! This same lady had known the Lord as a child, but had strayed away as an adult. One day she went to a church where she heard a powerful sermon preached and an altar call offered. In her mind there was no way she was going to walk up to the front of that church! Then suddenly she felt a strong hand on her back pushing her forward. She obediently answered that altar call and something powerful happened in her life that day. A few years later, God sent us to pastor her church, and today she is totally healed of her SRA.
One SRA friend of mine was told she would never be able to have children. She had been forced to have babies when she was very young that were taken from her and sacrificed to the Devil. This was a cause of deep sorrow and heartache in her life. She had many things to be angry about and many people in her situation might even blame God for what happened. (I am amazed at how often people blame God for what the Devil does!) This lady was very faithful to God through her church. Whatever was asked of her be it teaching Sunday school or baby sitting during church, she did it all faithfully. She also was faithful in her daily devotions at home. One Sunday morning a prophet of God came to her church. He told her that she was going to have a son. She believed him. It was not long before she was pregnant and had a wonderful son who has been a source of great joy to her and her husband for many years.
I offer these examples of the grace of God on abused person’s lives in hopes of perhaps encouraging some of you who may be feeling despondent and hopeless about your situation. There is always hope. Our God is faithful. He is merciful. He has not forgotten you. He knows everything that happened to you and he loves you far more than you could ever imagine. His grace is available for your life too. Sometimes we experience his grace and don’t even recognize it as being from God.
Beware of some of the traps the enemy sets to keep you separated from the One who loves you the most. One of these traps is the temptation to be angry with God. One of my favorite Scriptures is from 2 Chronicles which says, “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, seeking to strongly support those whose heart is completely his.” That’s what it all boils down to…Is your heart faithful to God? He wants to do great things for you but he asks you to be faithful to him as best you can.
A few days ago I was reading a book by Arthur Pink entitled Gleanings in Joshua, where he was speaking about how God rewarded Joshua for his many years of faithfulness. There was one sentence that stood out to me… “Devotedness to God never passes unnoticed by Him.” I love that! Every little thing you do towards obeying God or developing a relationship with him, every good thing you do for those around you is noticed by God! He loves to give good things. He loves to bless us if we are willing to place ourselves in relationship with him so that he can do the good things he wants to do.
We can demonstrate faithfulness to God by setting aside some time to spend alone with him every day. I’m not talking about praying when you’re out driving your car, although that is a very good thing to do. There is a different dynamic, though, that takes place when we choose to get alone with God in our prayer closet…wherever that may be. Read your Bible every day. Demonstrate to God that you are willing to do your part in developing your relationship with him. He longs for deeper relationship with you and he is the only one who can heal you from your abuse. He is the only one who knows where all your dissociated parts are. He can sovereignly do things for you in your inner world even if you don’t have a counselor, but you need to spend time with him so he can do these things for you.
One more trap I want to warn you about is the trap of escapism. Wounded people look for ways to escape from the unpleasant emotions associated with their past abuse. Even if they don’t remember the specific abuse, they still live daily with the emotions from it. Television and computer games are probably the two biggest escapisms. Some people read books constantly or immerse themselves in work. Always having the radio on or keeping the TV on constantly, even all night, are some ways people keep themselves focused on outward things so they don’t have to feel their emotions.
God understands the need to escape. Just be sure you don’t spend so much time escaping that you don’t give any time to God. Try putting limits on your escapisms by setting aside a certain time every day for God and don’t allow yourself to let these other things intrude on that special time. Escaping may have a short term reward, but God’s rewards are eternal and far more beneficial. At some point you may even find yourself escaping into God! There is no better place to be.
You are God’s building. You are his temple. You may think your life is a pile of rubble, but God sees it as it will be. He desires to restore you to complete wholeness. Do all you can to spend time with him and demonstrate your love for him by your obedience. I suggest that you read the first few chapters of Zechariah. (The later chapters are very different and believed by some to have been written by a different author.) Then in your prayer closet, imagine placing the rubble of your life in your hands and holding them out before God. Let yourself hear the prophetic words, “Grace, grace!” over your own life. See yourself being fully restored in God. Then live each day thanking God for his grace that has seen you through difficult times and know he will take you through this day too.
