Jesus calls us to be light in the darkness, exposing those things that are not like God no matter where we find them, even in those organizations we greatly love. We are called to sit apart when those who stand together are disobedient to Him.

We damage the dignity of others when we refuse to wait for them—whether they need to tie their own shoes or they are struggling to find words for the indescribable. We bestow honor on another when we consider them worth waiting for.

A truth-teller disturbs, alerts, awakens, and warns against indifference to injustice and complacency about the needs of human beings. To be silent about injustices in this world is to be a partner with those who carry out violence, evil, and corruption.

A survivor who has never known safety or dignity talks with you—you treat them carefully, respectfully, kindly, and with gentleness. Have you changed them? No. But in that moment, in your Christlikeness, you have, by His Spirit, brought a small shaft of light into their darkness.

When we use God’s sacred Word in a way that harms another, commanding them to do wrong, manipulating them, deceiving them, or humiliating them, we have spiritually abused them.

Many trauma survivors have lived in terrible isolation, thinking their secrets were too horrible to be told. To attend to the struggle of another by listening is to bestow honor on that person.

When the church shows grace to an abuser in response to a few approved words and some tears, we have done added damage to the victim, risked the safety of others, and left the abuser with a disease that will rot their soul.

Using our position of authority to get our own way, serve our own ends, crush others, and silence and frighten them is an ungodly use of power.

It dishonors victims of abuse when we are silent about their experience or pretend it did not occur or was not important.

I know with certainty that there is hope for the darkest of stories because the Light of the World has come. His name is Jesus, and He brings life to dead places, forgives sins, and heals the broken and wounded.

When you sit with a griever, your work is to be with them where they are, not drag them out where you are more comfortable.

God’s Plea to His Body:

Christlikeness is visible in character, not merely words.

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Proverbs 31:8, 9

We must not assume that our family, church, community, country, or organization is always right just because the people in it use the right words. We must never agree to “protect” the name of God by covering ungodliness.

A good portion of Christendom today seems to serve their political beliefs. It seems the political system has become so important to us that we act and speak in ungodly ways to protect what we have labeled godly. Our politics are not our Christ.

Jesus pursued the vulnerable, protected the little ones, and poured out compassion on the ‘least of these.’ Any dismissal of abuse, any baptizing of evil, any cover-up, or denial of truth is nothing like Him.

When you feel overwhelmed in exposing truth, remember this: people are sacred, created in the image of God. Systems are not. They are only worth the people in them and the people they serve. And people are to be treated, whether one or many, the way Jesus Christ treated people.

When you sit with someone who is suffering, grieving, or sorrowing, you are sitting face-to-face with a grief that your Lord has carried. There is no tragedy that you will encounter in another’s life or in your own that He has not borne.

Suffering people often need others to have faith and hope for them. Admonitions to hope or trust often result in despair; if the sufferers were able, they would do so. It is often helpful to say, “I know you struggle to hope right now. I will hope for you.”

Never imply that the adult survivor is to blame for their childhood abuse. Nothing a child has ever done, no matter how provocative, is justification for abuse. The abuser ALWAYS carries responsibility for the abuse. It is a criminal act.

News around the globe has exposed not only that there are wolves in the fold but also that we, in the name of God, have allowed them to remain in place among God’s sheep by complicity, cover-up, and deceit. This article written 5 years ago sadly remains as relevant today. erlc.com/resource/whe...

Silence in the face of evil can be a kind of abuse of power, for in staying silent about someone else’s pain, we have nullified our God-given power to speak truth.

The work of redemption in broken places is a hard and dark place to go, but it is also a place of great beauty and hope. Shackles fall away, crippled feet run, stooped backs stand straight, truth is embraced, and hopes bloom.

In an abusive system there is no safe place, no binding of wounds or healing for a broken heart. Power is used in God’s name to protect the system rather than the victim. Power is used to oppress and protect the manmade structure rather than the people they are called to lead.

We must never respond to one’s trauma story by reducing trauma to an experience you can simply get over with the push of a mental button.

The greater the pain, the greater the destruction, the more ravaged a life is by disease or trauma—the greater the care and nurture that should result from the body of Christ.

When we hear justifications, excuses, blaming, or a focus on the sins of another, we can be sure we do not have true repentance.

It is a grievous failure of those who claim to be the people of God when they not only fail to be a sanctuary for the traumatized but also create the need for one.

Faithfulness in unusual circumstances, public appearances and from the lofty perch of pedestals is really not too surprising. Faithfulness on an assembly line job for forty years, putting the same piece in the same place in the same way, is far more extraordinary. #LaborDay

If you want the survivor to grasp the faithfulness of God, then be faithful to them. If you want the survivor to understand the truthfulness of God, then never lie to them. If you want the survivor to understand the infinite patience of God, then be patient with them.

Christendom has used Scripture to sanction slavery, racism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other cruelties our God hates. Some corners of Christendom today have become less interested in truth and more interested in power.

When a child lives with unpredictable, terrifying, and relentless abuse, they experience themselves as perpetually powerless. Phrases like “it doesn’t matter” and “forget it” are common. They have learned that what matters to them does not matter to others.

When we use the word spiritual to describe abuse, we are talking about using that which is sacred—including God’s Word—to control, misuse, deceive, or damage a person created in His image. The pairing of those two words is diabolical.

Any discarding or trampling of the vulnerable is an assault on God Himself—no matter the spiritual or good-sounding words used as an excuse.

Scars are something people try to hide. Yet the victory of Jesus Christ, His kingdom, and His glory come by way of the scars, by weakness, and by suffering. Do you hear the hope in that for victims of trauma?

In your struggles with your abuse, fight to remember that God’s people act sometimes in ways that tell you lies about who He is. He is and always will be the God of the millstone for those who abuse and a tender Shepherd for those abused.

Many times as leaders, we ignore marriages saturated with sin and deceit without truth or care because we value the external appearance of marriage over the holiness of God lived out in hidden places.

We forget that anything done in the name of God that does not bear His character through and through is not of Him at all. In our forgetting, we are more loyal to the words of humans than to the commandments of God.

Know Christ so well you can discern what is unlike Him no matter the seductive or religious garb it wears. God is building His kingdom in the hearts of men and women, not in the externals we have come to love, protect, and praise.

The work of the church is not the call to ministry. Our true work is that of manifesting likeness to Christ in all things, whether in success or failure, criticism or praise. If numbers, growth, and fame were God’s measures, then Jesus would be deemed a failure.

Scripture can be twisted and used out of context to corrupt or to control humans who assume that a pastor is a trustworthy person. This power is intensified by the fact that many see a minister as speaking for God—indeed, a pastor may tell people that they are doing exactly that.

Repentance is hard. It means a complete change of our thought processes, our impulses & choices, little by little—over & over. It is not simply stopping a behavior. It is not words & tears. It is a slow undoing of deceptions—deceptions that allow us to feel okay about ourselves.

Great damage occurs when others use power to silence and cover up abuses theoretically “for the sake of God’s work”— in other words, they have withheld using their power for good and used their power for self-protection instead.

If any doubt creeps in when listening to a victim tell their story of abuse about someone you think you know to be fine, it is easy for the hearer to lean on their own capacity for self-deception and talk themselves out of considering the truth of what has been told.

The use of verbal and emotional mistreatment to silence a victim, coupled with power used to prevent exposure of an abuser, can have catastrophic outcomes in a person’s life. The combined abuses constitute a life-destroying tsunami.

It misrepresents God when we tell victims of atrocious, life-changing abuse to simply forgive and forget. Forgiveness of any wrong, let alone a life-shattering one, is never a “just do it” task.

It is no step toward the recovery of a sickly system to disguise the worst symptoms of that system to itself. Toleration of sin, pretense, disease, crookedness, or deviation from the truth means the system is not the work of God.

When emotional power and verbal power are combined in ways that speak to the deep longings of people’s hearts, the force is great. Add spiritual language evoking the authority of God, and you can manipulate vulnerable people in hideous ways.

If you are going to enter into the suffering of those who have been traumatized, you have to learn how to sit with and listen to fear, anger, and great grief with compassion and understanding. You will also have to learn how to do it for far longer than you prefer.