2004.09.D.10. Undoing Church Abuse - A True Story Created by James3 on 8/30/2019 6:13:40 PM Undoing Church Abuse - A True Story
Greetings
The message about praying for those who despitefully use one is something that it seems to me I need to hear again and again.
I hope this helps
Warm regards and blessings
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----- Original Message -----
From: "ANZAC Prophetic List" revival4@pars.net
To: anzac@welovegod.org
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 10:18 PM
"UNDOING CHURCH ABUSE - My own Journey out."
-By Steven Corgan.
[An extract from his book - "The Deeds of the People Conquerors"]
In my own life I suffered a great deal of anguish, inner turmoil, and depression from not knowing how to cope with the rejection and misunderstanding I experienced after running head on into some pretty powerful People Conquerors. By powerful I mean politically powerful in the church world. I spent countless nights lying awake grieving over lost friendships, lost support to our ministry, and loneliness because of being shunned. I went over and over the situations and events, looking for some explanation or rationale to the irrationality of the People Conquerors. Often my first thoughts in the morning were a rehearsal of the previous night's grief.
In the midst of this despair a good friend, Cheryl Skid of Women With A Vision, shared with me a prayer strategy that has worked marvelously in bringing healing and leaving these last remnants of abuse and codependence behind. Like so many great truths it's something very simple that you may already know, but perhaps have overlooked as I did.
I began to pray for and bless those who had abused, intimidated, manipulated, misunderstood, wrongly judged or falsely accused me. It was hard at first not to pray condescending judgmental prayers like, "God, bless them in spite of how rotten, wicked and unjust they were to me." Accusing your abusers and reciting the abuse before God doesn't help you or move you closer to wholeness.
Satan is called the accuser of the brethren, and in our prayers we certainly don't want to agree with him.
Instead of focusing on my hurt and abuse I began to bless the abusers in my prayers, especially in the areas where we had conflict or that I knew were important to them or that they were looking to God for success in.
For instance, the pastor of a church we used to attend had spoken disparaginly of me both publicly and to other ministers, injuring friendships and causing loss of financial support for our ministry.
I knew that this same pastor frequently had trouble sleeping at night. He would often tell his congregation of the "devil's attacks." At first I thought, "No wonder he doesn't have any peace. He's so full of fear and insecurity. Look how he treats people." One night I couldn't sleep. I lay there rehearsing the injustices, hurts and offenses by this man when it occurred to me to pray for peace, rest and sleep for him. As I prayed, the storm in my own heart subsided and the most divine peace came, allowing me to sleep soundly.
I knew this same pastor had many strengths and good qualities that I had minimized, while at the same time maximising his obvious defects. Remember when Jesus talked about judgement and said that we should remove the beam from our own eye before worrying about the speck in our brothers eye? Often our brother's speck becomes a beam in our own eye. In other words we maximize someone else's faults and minimize our own. We like to look at ourselves through rose-colored glasses but we examine other's flaws with a magnifying glass. We focus on another person's defect (speck) until it becomes magnified out of proportion. In our own distorted vision and perception the speck becomes a flaw (beam) even too big for God to change.
I began to thank God for all of this pastor's strengths and good qualities and to pray for even more increase in those areas. I knew that these things were gifts and blessings of God on his life, in spite of the other areas of insecurity, abuse and control that I had experienced. In just a few days the pain and frustration associated with my bad experiences passed from my life, never to torment me again. And a few months later he sought me out to apologize and ask my forgiveness. Not only did my prayers help him, but they also worked a miraculous change in me. I know now why Jesus told us to bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and pray for them which despitefully use us.
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