Tag Archives: healing

Healing for Sexual Assault

Blessed are the Pure in Heart

I was studying the Bible in the Book of Matthew and arrived at Chapter 5 verse 8. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”  I wanted to know how a person could really purify their heart enough to see God.

I had been listening to a teaching tape on the beatitudes when I heard the author of the teaching series direct us through a series of prayers and proclamations that would help up to get “pure in heart”. I was eager to get my heart cleaned up. I wanted to see God and live to tell about it.

One of the definitions of “pure in heart” is “unstained with the guilt of anything” This is an act of God. This is not something I can do. So, in thinking about my question at the beginning of my story, going to God to get His perspective was my action that led to Him purifying my heart and conscience.  Heb. 10:24 says “our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”  One of the meanings of “evil” conscience is freedom from a conscience that accuses us of guilt.

Agreement with the Scriptures and Prayer

As I progressed through the prescribed list of activities, I could tell that I was making some progress and I felt a sense of relief as I confessed sins, forgave people for ancient offences and gave God control over my life. Somewhere in the process, the instuructor announced that we would be pure in heart if we had come into agreement with the scriptures and prayed. Now we should be able to “see God”.  Then he asked us when in our lifetime had we wished we could have seen Him.

Suffering from Guilt and Shame

Immediately the spring of 1982 came to mind when a stalker succeeded in luring me into a trap where he was able to kidnap me and take me to a place where he was able to brutally sexually assault me. For years I had been plagued by the resulting nightmares, fear of someone coming up behind me, and many other results of the trauma. I also suffered from guilt and shame wondering how I’d gotten myself into such a situation.

I instantly remembered the day as if it was yesterday. The perpetrator was before me, 6’2” tall, 240 pounds. He was someone I had known briefly and spoken to three or four times before. His countenance was dark and foreboding and his previous conversations with me terrified me enough to ask him not to contact me again. All the way to his destination, I prayed for an open door. I was not able to find a way out and now I saw the room I was in. I saw the window, the door, and the furniture in the room. I felt the terror all over again as I heard the man demand that I take my clothes off.

In the safety of my own home, I asked God to show me where He was then. Instantly, I saw Jesus appear in my memory and the next few minutes were all replayed in slow motion. As the man swung his hand toward my face for refusing to obey him, I saw Jesus put His hand up and absorb most of the blow. I saw the Lord’s hand vibrate from the force in that strong arm. The blow connected with my face, picking me off my feet and throwing me into a corner of the room where I landed on the floor.

The Lord turned to me, pointed to me and gave me permission to stop fighting.

All of a sudden, I knew things I didn’t know before. I had not been seriously wounded in that encounter. I had no whiplash, no bruising, no soreness on my back, shoulders or head where I’d landed. Furthermore, I knew that the Lord wanted to minimize the effect of the noise on children who were within hearing distance of where I was.

Then I saw Jesus take a chain and wrap it around this man from head to toe. While I was wondering what that was, I heard Him say, “I bind the spirit of murder.” Then He announced that He had given me eternal life and no one could snatch me out of His hand. I had been given to Him by His Father and no one was able to snatch me out of His Father’s hand. ( I found this later in John 10:28)

Not My Fault:  No More Guilt

At that point, the terror I’d felt for years disappeared. The details of the actual rape scene that followed was fast forwarded and  relegated to the place of the unimportant. Then I saw the Lord put a white sheet over me and wrap me in it. He told me it wasn’t my fault and he restored to me a sense of innocence that has lasted for more than twenty years. All the emotions from the trauma were replaced with peace and calm.

At that point, He asked me if I wanted to see this man as He saw him. I agreed. I was at the foot of the bed we’d been lying on and this huge hulk of a man shrunk before my eyes into the body of a two-year old, and with a child’s voice begged me to tell him he was loved. I felt compassion for him instead of the outrage I’d experienced before. I was able to forgive him from my heart and have prayed for his salvation since then.

The Lord then showed me that He commanded the man who intended to rape and murder me, to take me back to my own vehicle where I was able to go home. When at home, I rocked in my rocking chair for weeks and months, and Jesus let me see how He rocked with me while I recovered over the course of the next weeks and months and how  He brought people alongside of me who prayed for me and loved on me.

The perpetrator came to my home about three months later to ask for forgiveness. I talked to him through an unlocked screen door with words of forgiveness. I refused to allow him to enter. I said I was not obligated to trust him again even though I forgave him. When the guy tried to force his way into my home, he could not open the door even though it was not only unlocked, but also would regularly fly open in the wind. He tried several times while I went to my phone to dial the police. He left before I could find the number (this was before the days of 911). This too was an act of God protecting me. I never saw the fellow again and have never been threatened or molested since then.

I feel safe and secure knowing my life is in God’s hands now.

Memories are No Longer Painful

Since I received that healing, my memories are no longer painful. I sleep without nightmares and do not fear I will “get myself into trouble”, but can rely on the Lord to keep me safe. The incident was not wasted. I have been able to help many women find healing for similar situations since then.

Ask for God’s Perspective

Perhaps you have been the victim of a trauma similar to mine. If you are still alive, it is because God intervened to some measure. He is not mean because He “let it happen”. If you are angry at God because of what man has done to you, may I suggest that you can ask Him to give you His perspective. Misplaced anger can keep you from receiving the healing you need.

By the time I received my healing, I did not blame God for what one man did to me. I was in fact very thankful to Him for intervening. There is more to the story, but that is enough this time.

What is Truth?

These were the famous spoken words of Pontius Pilate just before he gave consent to have Jesus crucified. It’s a good question. One that many people ask today.  What is truth? I found that truth is not just some statement of fact, but also a person.

Can a person really be the embodiment of truth? In the Bible, Jesus said to Pontius Pilate “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me.” (NIV version, emphasis added.) When I read that, it explained why sometimes when I was remembering a painful memory, when I would ask for the whole truth in the matter, I would see Jesus helping me, giving me insights, or protecting me from more harm than I actually received.

I’ll give you an example:

When I was in my first year of grade school, I was very nervous and uncertain. All through my school years, with the exception of grade 11, I was a C average student and I thought I was dumb. There were three or four students who had failed that grade and were repeating the year with us. One day, as an adult, when I was really struggling to learn something, that feeling of being dumb and fear of failure overtook me and all I wanted to do was quit and forget all about this idea of ever learning something new. I stopped what I was doing and took stock of my feelings. My stomach was in knots, my shoulders were very heavy as if I was carrying 30 extra pounds on them wrapped around my neck and choking me. I sought the source of these feelings, looking into my past to where they all began and I landed in my seat in the classroom of my first year in a one room school house in my home town.

Now I know that memories are not always accurate for details, but they are more like a composite of how we perceived the event. In my case, I was sitting in my desk believing I would never learn anything here and I would never measure up. The teacher rewarded the fast learners with toys to play with while us slowpokes would labour to catch up. I never got a toy during the whole year. I really believed that was because I was slow, not too bright and useless.

When I asked for the truth, I “saw” Jesus show up in my memory, squat beside the desk and give me a toy to play with. He assured me that speed of learning was not related to intelligence and that intelligence was not related to value or worth. He opened a book before me and showed me pictures of animals that have been created, each one with its own measure of intelligence and speed and yet every one of them was a valuable member of the world and would be greatly missed if it was extinguished from the earth.

Then Jesus kissed me on the forehead leaving a mark on me and assured me that I would grow up and bless a lot of people if I don’t give up. Peace washed over me. Joy trickled in where defeat had been, and in just a few minutes I was back to work with renewed energy to learn what I needed to learn. My learning power is still not super fast, but I am less easily discouraged than before.

Forgive and Forget: does it really work?

Some people get impatient with people who are wounded. They get tired of hearing the stories of those who never seem to get over certain things.

“Forgive and forget,” they say.

“Move on,” they say. “

“Let it go,” they say.

If it were that easy, don’t you think they would have by now? I do not believe people really like misery as much as the impatient seem to think they do. As a matter of fact, I think that those who get annoyed or grumpy toward their wounded friends or relatives are more triggered by the pain of others than they might realize.

I have found, that when the one who is annoyed examines their own lives, they will find the patience to listen to others when they deal with their own pain which causes so much irritation.

Back to the question of whether or not “forgive and forget” works. It is true that forgiveness can be an integral part of healing. But is forgiveness healing? Not at all. Forgiveness can lead to healing but healing and forgiveness are 2 different things altogether.

Let’s look at a Biblical definition of forgiveness: According to Easton’s Bible Dictionary Forgiveness is: one of the constituent parts of justification. In pardoning sin, God absolves the sinner from the condemnation of the law, and that on account of the work of Christ, i.e., he removes the guilt of sin, or the sinner’s actual liability to eternal wrath on account of it. All sins are forgiven freely ( Acts 5:31 ; 13:38 ; 1 John 1:6-9 ). The sinner is by this act of grace for ever freed from the guilt and penalty of his sins. This is the peculiar prerogative of God ( Psalms 130:4 ; Mark 2:5 ). It is offered to all in the gospel. (M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. Public Domain, copy freely.)

As you can see, it is not necessarily the removal of pain but rather the removal of sin and it’s punishment. Not all pain is caused by one’s own sin. Neither is all pain caused by the sin of another.

Next let’s look at the definition of healing: To restore a person or wound to health; cure a person or disease; of a wound become sound or whole. (the Concise Oxford Dictionary copyright 1952 public domain).

It is therefore clear that they are not the same.

I would suggest from my years of experience in the healing prayer ministry that although some can forgive without healing as an act of their will, when healing comes it is much easier to forgive. Healing is the restoring of a person to wholeness. When we are made whole in an area of woundedness, the ability to forgive is a natural by product of the healing and peace is the result.