I've started reading He Loves Me! by Wayne Jacobsen again. It looks promising. That, in conjunction with the intellectual books I'm reading about the Bible's veracity and hermeneutics and exegesis and common questions about Christianity and whatnot... hopefully it will give me a full, rounded picture that I can draw some answers from.
The first chapter is about "daisy petal Christianity". Some excerpts that stuck out to me...
"What about you?
Have you ever felt tossed back and forth by circumstances, occasionally certain but mostly uncertain about how the Creator of the universe feels about you? Or perhaps you've never even known how much God loves you.
In a Bible study recently, I met a forty-year-old woman who was active in her fellowship but admitted to a small group of us that she had never been certain that God loved her. She seemed to want to tell me more but finally only asked me to pray for her.
As I did, asking God to reveal just how much he loved her, an image came to mind. I saw a figure I new to be Jesus walking through a meadow hand in hand with a little girl about five years old. Somehow I knew this woman was that little girl. I prayed that he would help her discover a childlikeness of spirit that would allow her to skip through the meadows with him.
When I finished praying, I looked up at her eyes, brimming with tears.
'Did you say 'meadows'?' she asked.
I nodded, thinking it odd that she had focused on that word. Immediately she began to cry. When she was able to speak, she said, 'I wasn't sure I wanted to tell you. When I was five years old I was molested in a meadow by an older boy. Whenever I think about God, I think about that horrible event and I wonder why, if he loved me so much, he didn't stop that from happening.'
She's not alone. Many people carry scars and disappointments that appear to be convincing evidence that the God of love does not exist, or, if he does, he maintains a safe distance from them and leaves them to the whim of other people's sins. (Exactly!!)
I don't have a stock answer for moments like that, as if any could be effective in the midst of such pain. I told her that evidently God wanted her to know that he had been there with her, and although he didn't act in the only way she could understand true love to act, he loved her nonetheless. He wanted to walk her through that defiled meadow and redeem it in her life.
He wanted to give her measure of joy in the face of the most traumatic event of her life and turn what had destroyed her ability to trust into a stepping stone toward grace. I know that can sound almost trite int he face of such incredible pain, but the process has begun for her. Eight months later I received an excited e-mail from her telling me in 270-point type, 'I get it!'
Does that mean she understands why it happened to her? Of course not. Nothing could explain that. But it does mean that God's love was big enough to contain that horrible event and walk her out of it."
Okay, I'm sorry, but instead of instilling and encouraging hope within me... I feel this visceral rage bubbling hot in the low caverns of my belly.
I am SO SICK of that phrase (and its variations) that "God was there with you, and he'll redeem it". The hell he will! If he was there... why didn't he do something?
I mean, really. What sane, even peripherally caring person would stand in the same room as an innocent someone being attacked and molested and do nothing? It's just not going to happen. And then, after it's over, they come over with words of comfort and tell you it's gonna be okay? I don't know any survivor who would buy that for a nanosecond.
And yet, we expect that God, who is bigger and better than his creatures (supposedly), has some divine justification for doing the exact same thing?
Horse feathers.
But wait, there's more. This section is actually more than mildly intriguing.
"Truly God has never acted toward us in any way other than with a depth of love that defies human understanding. I know it may not look like that at times. When he seems to callously disregard our most noble prayers, our trust in him can be easily shattered and we wonder if he cares for us. We can even come up with a list of our own failures that seemingly justify God's indifference and beckon us into a dark whirlpool of self-loathing.
When we're playing the he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not game, the evidence against God can appear overwhelming. For reasons we will probe throughout these pages, God does not often do the things we think his love would compel him to do for us. He often seems to stand by with indifference while we suffer. How often does he seem to disappoint our most noble expectations?
But perception is not necessarily reality. If we define God only in our limited interpretation of our own circumstances, we will never discover who he really is... (Okay, you've got me intrigued. Now what?)
...He does love you more deeply than you've ever imagined; he has done so throughout your entire life. Once you embrace that truth, your troubles will never gain drive you to question God's affection for you or whether you've done enough to merit it. Instead of fearing he has turned his back on you, you will be able to trust his love at the moments you need him most. You will even see how that love can flow out of you in the strangest ways to touch a world starved for it.
Learning to trust him like that is not something any of us can resolve in an instant; it's something we'll grow to discover for the whole of our lives. God knows how difficult it is for us to accept his love, and he teaches us with more patience than we've ever known. Through every circumstance and in the most surprising ways, he makes his love known to us in ways we can understand.
So perhaps it's time to toss your daisies aside and discover that it is not the fear of losing God's love that will keep you on his path, but the simple joy of living in it every day."
The first chapter is about "daisy petal Christianity". Some excerpts that stuck out to me...
"What about you?
Have you ever felt tossed back and forth by circumstances, occasionally certain but mostly uncertain about how the Creator of the universe feels about you? Or perhaps you've never even known how much God loves you.
In a Bible study recently, I met a forty-year-old woman who was active in her fellowship but admitted to a small group of us that she had never been certain that God loved her. She seemed to want to tell me more but finally only asked me to pray for her.
As I did, asking God to reveal just how much he loved her, an image came to mind. I saw a figure I new to be Jesus walking through a meadow hand in hand with a little girl about five years old. Somehow I knew this woman was that little girl. I prayed that he would help her discover a childlikeness of spirit that would allow her to skip through the meadows with him.
When I finished praying, I looked up at her eyes, brimming with tears.
'Did you say 'meadows'?' she asked.
I nodded, thinking it odd that she had focused on that word. Immediately she began to cry. When she was able to speak, she said, 'I wasn't sure I wanted to tell you. When I was five years old I was molested in a meadow by an older boy. Whenever I think about God, I think about that horrible event and I wonder why, if he loved me so much, he didn't stop that from happening.'
She's not alone. Many people carry scars and disappointments that appear to be convincing evidence that the God of love does not exist, or, if he does, he maintains a safe distance from them and leaves them to the whim of other people's sins. (Exactly!!)
I don't have a stock answer for moments like that, as if any could be effective in the midst of such pain. I told her that evidently God wanted her to know that he had been there with her, and although he didn't act in the only way she could understand true love to act, he loved her nonetheless. He wanted to walk her through that defiled meadow and redeem it in her life.
He wanted to give her measure of joy in the face of the most traumatic event of her life and turn what had destroyed her ability to trust into a stepping stone toward grace. I know that can sound almost trite int he face of such incredible pain, but the process has begun for her. Eight months later I received an excited e-mail from her telling me in 270-point type, 'I get it!'
Does that mean she understands why it happened to her? Of course not. Nothing could explain that. But it does mean that God's love was big enough to contain that horrible event and walk her out of it."
Okay, I'm sorry, but instead of instilling and encouraging hope within me... I feel this visceral rage bubbling hot in the low caverns of my belly.
I am SO SICK of that phrase (and its variations) that "God was there with you, and he'll redeem it". The hell he will! If he was there... why didn't he do something?
I mean, really. What sane, even peripherally caring person would stand in the same room as an innocent someone being attacked and molested and do nothing? It's just not going to happen. And then, after it's over, they come over with words of comfort and tell you it's gonna be okay? I don't know any survivor who would buy that for a nanosecond.
And yet, we expect that God, who is bigger and better than his creatures (supposedly), has some divine justification for doing the exact same thing?
Horse feathers.
But wait, there's more. This section is actually more than mildly intriguing.
"Truly God has never acted toward us in any way other than with a depth of love that defies human understanding. I know it may not look like that at times. When he seems to callously disregard our most noble prayers, our trust in him can be easily shattered and we wonder if he cares for us. We can even come up with a list of our own failures that seemingly justify God's indifference and beckon us into a dark whirlpool of self-loathing.
When we're playing the he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not game, the evidence against God can appear overwhelming. For reasons we will probe throughout these pages, God does not often do the things we think his love would compel him to do for us. He often seems to stand by with indifference while we suffer. How often does he seem to disappoint our most noble expectations?
But perception is not necessarily reality. If we define God only in our limited interpretation of our own circumstances, we will never discover who he really is... (Okay, you've got me intrigued. Now what?)
...He does love you more deeply than you've ever imagined; he has done so throughout your entire life. Once you embrace that truth, your troubles will never gain drive you to question God's affection for you or whether you've done enough to merit it. Instead of fearing he has turned his back on you, you will be able to trust his love at the moments you need him most. You will even see how that love can flow out of you in the strangest ways to touch a world starved for it.
Learning to trust him like that is not something any of us can resolve in an instant; it's something we'll grow to discover for the whole of our lives. God knows how difficult it is for us to accept his love, and he teaches us with more patience than we've ever known. Through every circumstance and in the most surprising ways, he makes his love known to us in ways we can understand.
So perhaps it's time to toss your daisies aside and discover that it is not the fear of losing God's love that will keep you on his path, but the simple joy of living in it every day."
Unknown | September 19, 2013 at 6:17 PM
Hi Cassandra, I can relate to a lot of what I've read here. I want to respond with how God helped me to heal, but first I'll share some about me. I don't know what pain you've gone through, but I want to share with you how God walked me through mine.
I was hurt as a child by more than a few people and in several ways. My life was changed when I was about 5 and was molested. I blocked the molestation from my memory. Blocking the memory resulted in a fragmentation where I was separated from my own emotional growth. Others were changing around me, growing emotionally, but I wasn't. And children being the way they are, knew that something wasn't right about me. Some sensed weakness and attacked me. I reacted to one of these attacks, a physical attack, by choosing to give up on life. In the core of myself, my spirit stopped participating in my own life. Of course my spirit was still functioning, because if it wasn't I would die physically, but as far as relationally goes, after I made that choice to give u, I could no longer access my spirit for relational purposes.
After I became a Christian God put me through some very hard things designed to get me to the place where I would not resist Him. God needed to humble me to the point where, when He healed the fragmentation in me, I would not reject my own 5 year old emotions, but would accept that I was 5 years old emotionally and BE who I was. I did, and God grew me up quickly.
Now, as far as God walking me through my healing goes, He brought hurtful events back to my mind. I had read a book that told me how to deal with the memories of abuse. First I would forgive the person for what they did to me. Then, and this is the key, I would repent for the wrong way I reacted to the words or event. For instance, after I forgave the person who hurt me in the occurrence I described above, where I had given up on life, I said "Lord, I repent for giving up on life, I choose life. I know that I may get hurt again Lord, but Jesus I choose you. Help me to continue to choose you, you're worth it Lord."
When I would get hurt again, (and the devil will try to hurt you again where you just got healed), I would, by an act of will, still choose Jesus.
John and Paula Sandford have 2 good books you can get for cheap, used at Amazon. They're called "Healing the wounded spirit" and "Transformation of the inner man."
God bless you sister.