Understanding God’s Heart for the Abused | Sandals Church

[Music] welcome sandals Church I'm glad you guys are here today we're gonna do something a little different today I'm joined on stage by my amazing wife of how many years did we decide 22 we yeah it's just weird as you age sometimes you lose a year we lost year what I really think it was is she was she was fishing for our 25th anniversary special so she was trying to make a little closer but we decided we're married 22 years and anyway it's been awesome and my amazing friend I don't know we decided for 12 years 12 years 12 ish 13 years we've been in a small group together and we've been on staff together and Christina Crowley is amazing personal let's give her her hand today super excited many of you recognize her from on stage or my wife as the leader of our cultivate women's ministry but I want to welcome you today and we're starting this series called The Good Life and let me just say some of you are guests and you're joining us here today for the first time and I just want you to know that God wants you to have a good life but that's his will for your life he loves you he cares about you and he wants to bless you that is all throughout the Bible the challenges many of us have not experienced a good life some of us have had a really really bad life and that causes you to question God and so what I want to just say first of all is we're gonna be dealing with specifically today the issue of sexual abuse now we're not going to get super into the details but some of the things will be difficult so if you have your children present you know you need to make that decision right now but we're not going to get like way down into the weeds with it but we're gonna discuss it so you need to make that decision as a parent right now before we get into this but let me just say this the number one question I hear when someone goes through anything that's awful a sexual abuse or anything else it's why did God allow this and you just need to understand that God has given us something that is very very precious it's called free will we have the choice to do good or to do evil with our lives and the reality is many many people choose evil and their evil decisions of does can actually destroy us or at least wreck our lives or at least what we wanted for our life and so I just want you to understand that that love demands choice free choice you cannot force love and so God wants us to love him as he loves us and so we must choose so knowing that that God wants the good life for you God wants to bless you literally the Bible says I put for you today blessings and curses he says I pray that you choose life God's rooting for you he's rooting for you to choose life but unfortunately some people have chosen something different for themselves and they've made this choice in your life and so today we want to talk about what is God's heart for the abused because before we get into this good life series we want to talk about some of us have had a very very bad life a very very difficult life and we have two very very brave women on stage with us today who are going to talk about what's happened to them and how ultimately they have found the good life in spite of the very very bad things that have been done to them by other individuals who've made choices for them so my prayer for you today is if you are a victim of sexual abuse or someone you know someone you love is a victim of sexual abuse then maybe this is some something that you can share with them to say hey these ladies found victory these ladies found hope these ladies found healing and you can too to the powerful name of Jesus Christ so let's just begin with a word of Prayer today before we begin our message and even if you're not a Christian today would you just honor us as we honor God we bow our heads just as a physical symbol of the fact that God's got and we're not so let's bow our head and close our eyes as we pray Heavenly Father we thank you for the fact that you are good lord the world is not always good and Lord people that we've entrusted ourselves to that we're supposed to protect us or watch over us we're not always good but you are and so father you are our good father who loves us who sent his one and only Son to die for us I pray that today you would reveal your heart for those of us who have been abused or know someone that's been a used so Lord just anoint my words god bless Christina and Tammy with confidence strength and wisdom to communicate Lord the truths that they've learned in spite of the just incredible awful things they've had to endure we pray this in Jesus name Amen so what does God want us to do as a church the first thing he wants us to do write this down is acknowledge the problem the Bible never sweeps sin under the rug it never ignores it it never pretends it does not exist matter of fact some of you when you read the Bible for the first time you will be like oh my god I can't believe this is in there read your Bibles I'm telling you sometimes it's worse than cable it just is you that was funny you can laugh it's all right you know you need to you need to read this and there are things in the Bible you're say I can't believe this person did this or I can't believe God allowed this to happen and let me just help you out if you're if you're learning to read the Bible just because the Bible describes an event doesn't mean that God is prescribing it sometimes it's descriptive but it's not prescriptive so what does it mean prescriptive when you go to the doctors you get a prescription the doctor says here take this do that the Bible has those things they're called laws be kind to one another love one another those are prescriptions when it describes how idiot people treated each other that's not a prescription that's a description of what people do the laws are the prescriptions for the problems here take this do this treat people this way and so we need to understand this and so today we're gonna look at a passage of scripture that is descriptive it describes the situation it actually describes a sexual assault that takes place but the Bible is not prescribing it it's simply revealing it so I want you to remember that as we read so let me set this story for you Tammy and I are big fans on Netflix of the crown anybody watch the crown okay awesome show we love it because we love watching how the Royals are wack right that makes us feel good and you know we're not rich or royalty but we're not that crazy so we like watching it and it's just a great show that we watch together so this is royalty this is the crown series in the Bible okay this is David this is his family these are his kids and this is what I want you to know these are some of the most important people in the Bible and the Bible reveals that they screw it up too so it doesn't try to hide it even from the royal family so David is king and he has a bunch of kids and their family is a mess so one brother falls in love with his sister and that's not good so his name is Amnon and her name is Tamar and so Amnon has a creepy friend and he goes to his creepy friend for some advice and of course what do you get what kind of advice do you get when you get advice from a creepy friend creepy advice some of you need to write that down and so they plot how how Amnon can get alone with his sister because culturally it was very very difficult to be alone or isolated with your sister at that time because you basically live life in different areas of the palace so Amnon plays like he's sick and he requests that his sister bring his favorite dish to him because apparently she was a good cook and so she knew how to make his favorite dish and she's gonna cook this dish and bring it to him to help him in his fake sickness so she comes over to provide this meal and Amnon kicks all the servants and all the people out of the house so he can be alone with his sister and again this is this is rough but this is what happens it's in your outlines then he said to Tamar now bring the food into my bedroom and feed it to me here so Tamar tuck his favorite dish to him but as she was feeding him he grabbed her and demanded come to bed with me my sister no she said no she cried don't be foolish don't do this to me such wicked things are not done in Israel she's saying this is wrong you should not do this she says where could I go in my shame and you would be called one of the greatest fools in Israel please just speak to the king about it and he will let you marry me but Amnon wouldn't listen to her and since he stronger than she was this is rough he raped her and then suddenly am nons love turned to hate and he hated her even more than he loved her and he said get out of here and he snarled at her brutal but very very real and here's the thing is I understand why the world has not acknowledged this I don't understand why the church has been so far behind our Bible acknowledges sexual assault I don't know why the church has had such a hard time being real about it and so here's the sad thing the church should have been the leader in speaking out against this and the truth is we're further behind that Hollywood and that's a problem we're further behind in corporate America is and we need to speak out against it just like the Bible has always spoken out against it because God is against it so this is tame our story but I want you to hear just just a brief portion of both Christina and Tammy story because I want you to know that this just wasn't a problem then this is a huge problem now and just to statistically put this in perspective one in four girls are sexually molested and one in six boys that's a problem it's a huge problem today and God wants to speak to it so I don't know who wants to go first but I just want to hear just a part of your story so we can just begin to understand what you've had to overcome so that many of us can experience the healing that you guys have experienced well my abuse started when I was four years old and lasted about two years my abuser was a very very close family friend which is very typical for sexual abuse to happen it's usually a friend of the family or a close family member that's had access to the child I actually didn't the abuse stopped simply because of location we had moved away from where we lived at the and I forgotten about it when you're that age you don't really have words to say I've been sexually abused you just know something's different and that's how I felt I felt like it really shifted me from being very childlike to now I was in this other room if you will I was never told don't tell but it was clearly understood I do remember that I remember knowing it wasn't okay but I didn't understand why I didn't understand words for it I didn't understand what to do with it and I was time went on I had actually I guess tucked it away and not thought of it when I was in middle school it came flooding back to me what had happened and went to my family about it and because it was such a close family friend nobody really knew what to do with it because it wouldn't just wreck our family it would wreck their family and a friendship and and so I I really resonate with the story of Tamar because it it it messes with the family as it did with ours and so a lot of my wounding actually came after the fact in the way that it was handled more so than the abuse itself my OBU started when I was 7 years old by a man who lived across the street from us and as I I think in hindsight how much she actually really lured me in it was a day where he'd asked a bunch of the parents in the neighborhood if their kids could come over and help him in the backyard lay some stones plant some flowers and at the very end when we were done I remember being the last girl to walk out of the backyard gate and he closed the gate and began to kiss me and then took me into his garage and molested me and I remember that being the first time I ever felt like fear the first memory I have of fear being really alone I was frozen I couldn't talk just it was just an outer-body experience it's just so crazy and then after that that began a long journey for me from about the age of 7 to 16 of being then abused by a babysitter my best friend's father a family member a family friend it just and they were all people that I knew they were all people in positions of authority in some way in my life so for me my story that was kind of the abuse I think that you know what's done to me and then that translated into things I did abuse really to myself just promiscuity and obviously being sexualized so early in life it just led me down a really bad path body image struggled with an eating disorder I remember in the ninth grade just everything kind of hit the fan and that being the year I just wanted to end it all and so I had a suicide attempt in the ninth grade and really didn't think about my abuse anymore until my early 20s where I kind of picked it back up and started working on healing a team R says where could I go in my shame can each of you speak to how shame has manifested itself in your life what is that that look like in your life shame is man it's a dark place for me if I had to put word picture to it it's just this dark cloud that is in your soul like it's just in there and I remember just feeling like it was something that I could kind of control but it really began to overtake me and shame moved from a feeling of like I feel ugly I feel dirty I feel guilty I feel in love to actually an identity it was no longer a feeling it was I am ugly I am worthless I am unlovable I am damaged and so shame really shaped how I saw myself what I believed about myself and because I felt so gross on inside I think I overcompensated on the outside myself protected really kind of had this mantra of I've got this I don't need you nobody's safe I'm gonna control everything you know when you've been out of control you don't want to be out of control again so I'm just gonna control what I can and it was just overwhelmingly damaging to my relationship with myself God and another's it there was nowhere I felt I could run from my shame yeah that's so good I I think exactly that Christina shared for me shame came in that I knew I was different now I think as an adult I can look back and at the time I think I'm the only person in the world who's experienced such a thing but it changes you from the inside out and what I know is that I was a different person on the inside then on the outside on the inside I knew I had this thing that I knew about shame for me really played out and what I would say was embarrassment I had this thing that I was so embarrassed about on the inside and so what I did is I made sure that I didn't put myself in any position to them as much as I could control for any embarrassment on the outside so I didn't go out for sports or try new things or put myself out there because in case I wasn't good at it then I might be embarrassment and I was already managing all of the embarrassment that I absolutely could so for me and that's actually something I still carry with me today as you know because we work on all the time it's okay to not be perfect at something it's okay like let it go laugh at yourself because I couldn't because I just I was managing all the embarrassment I could possibly have which was my shame especially if you're a parent I want you to make a note here but even if you're not a parent you need to listen to this what destroys people's lives is not the event it's the meaning we attach to the event it's why you can have two kids who experience sexual abuse and one will thrive and the others life will fall apart meaning is important and so here's how we've really got to deal with shame the victim should never feel shame that's what the perpetrator should feel that's where it should go something shameful did happen but it's not the victims fault and I can tell you how many times Tammy and I have talked and I literally have to remind her I need you to go back to the age you were the adult is responsible and we've had to go to that you have to because a lot of times we judge our past based upon the maturity that we have well I mean it doesn't work that way so watch the meaning that you attach because it can destroy your life for example some of you got molested and that's the event and it's terrible and awful and the meaning you attached is God's not real or if he is he doesn't care God is real and he does care it's it's a false meaning to the event and we have to be very very careful and so that's our job as a church is to come come around and attach healthy meaning to the event no this is not on you this is not your fault this is that person it's what they did was shameful it's not you and so we need healthy community to help us do that which is why the next point I want you to write this down God wants us as sandals Church to create a safe place for healing now unless this is your first week at sandals Church you know we're not perfect amen yeah amen some of you who got flipped off in the parking lot you know that right yeah that wasn't your number one that was not that finger it happens we have imperfect people that attend our church we mess up we make mistakes it happens sandals is a church it's a church for everybody that's just who we want to be we want to welcome everybody that means we have broken angry people and sometimes they flip you off on the way into church it happens one time it was a police officer that was awesome to explain that to the officer but listen we do want to be a safe place for healing we want to be safe and I have to tell you how important this is you know I'm married a person who was sexually abused think about that from the age of four to six right she should have been watching Sesame Street and this is her life think about Christina these are these are two women that I love and care about in my life I need to be safe for them Christina I've been in small group together Christina and I have also had another woman our small group whose sexual abuser was her dad so think about that the one guy in your life that's supposed to protect you love you provide for you care for you is the one that victimizes you and I'll never forget when this other woman came to our small group she brought her son and Christina you and I've talked about this as well as Tammy she would introduce her son to me this way this is pastor Matt and he is safe he is safe it's so important that as men especially as men that we are safe that women can trust us that we are their protectors men are not always the abusers but we usually are we must learn to become safe so how to create a safe place for healing the example I'm going to give is not safe this is descriptive not prescriptive and just so you know many of you were abused and you told your family and they didn't handle it well well guess what that's how it's handled in the Bible not well so her brother Absalom who by the way is her oldest brother he's first in line to the throne he's the Prince he asked her is it true that Amnon has been with you well my sister listen to what he says keep quiet is that good advice no keep quiet for now why because he's your brother we don't want the word to get out that we got a funky family and that's what happens a lot of times when abuse occurs in a family the family circles the wagons and they don't protect the victim listen to this next piece don't worry about it let me translate that get over it move on that is not helpful now before we're too harsh on Absalom I think he means well he's not trying to be insensitive he's actually trying to be protective and and some of your families are doing the best they can they just don't know what the best is and that's part of the healing that needs to take place families don't know what to do with this or how to handle this especially when it's someone who's loved and revered in the family that's being accused but look what happened to Tamar so Tamar lived as a desolate woman in her brother Absalom's house does that sound good no that's not a safe place that's not a safe environment and just so you know if you read the story it gets worse for two years Absalom plots and plans how to get even with his brother and do you know why listen to me if you're a father David was a man after God's own heart it's what the Bible says he was a lousy dad and I don't mean to disparage David but it's the truth because David did not lead his family well his son Absalom took justice into his own hands you know what he did he killed his brother Amnon murdered him and this caused a division in the house that was so great ultimately guess what it did it divides the kingdom the entire kingdom chooses sides Absalom or David sweeping this under the rug taking vengeance into your own hands none of these things help it what we need to do is we need to create a safe place now certainly AB Amnon should have been dealt with but it should have been by the authorities it should've been it by David so let's talk about creating a safe place for healing and the first thing I want to challenge you to do is to listen you've got to be a better listener look what proverbs says proverbs says the wise listen to others you know what proverbs says about foolish people they're always doing this and so just know this victims are terrified to tell they're scared to death to tell think about how tragic that is a crime is committed against you and you're afraid to tell so we all need to be good listeners so I'm gonna ask my wife to speak to this and she's gonna be very gentle because I'm not he's been the best listener and those are laughs that's laughter of love but she's gonna share yes you have yes okay yeah I can really identify with Tamar story because mine was very similar of let's just keep quiet about this we don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable which made me feel absolutely uncomfortable and to me at translators like this doesn't matter or you don't matter enough for other people to feel uncomfortable and so as I've been on the journey to healing one of the things that I'm most passionate about is actually helping other people become safe places to be real I often refer to that as being a good heart handler because for someone who's experienced abuse one of the way shame plays out is if I tell somebody they're going to be disgusted by me they're going to leave they won't I'll be rejected and so that's really where the enemy keeps that shame alive and well in people however the way that that is dispelled and that God does a real healing work is when it's received well and there's actually statistics and studies that prove that the way that someone's confession is received actually has such great power in to the detriment of their future if it's not received well they tend to have a lot of emotional psychological relational issues as an adult or if it is received well then they tend to be much more emotionally healthy and so the listening part that being a receiver of real because it's not just important for us to be real it's it's important for us to be good receivers of real and here's what that looks like as pertains to listening is when somebody's sharing with you about an abuse that they've had to actually listen that's not your time to go I totally understand and let me tell you I've been through something similar and now it's about you it doesn't look like well God gives us more than you know never gives us more than we can heal because the person may be questioning and wrestling with why did God let this happen to me when somebody is sharing something with me that I know is dark for them the first thing I try to do is bring light to them by acknowledging the bravery and courage that it took for them to get that out because the power happens in they got it out and I'm still sitting here I might say something like thank you for trusting me with that I know that was so hard acknowledging the humanity and her like I'm so sorry that happened to you because in this moment it's about them I'm here for you I love you I believe you and then also to ask good questions not questions like tell me more about that what was it like where like the details are not the point that person it may have been everything they have to get it out there and that's all they have here's what listening doesn't look like it doesn't look like making it about you especially I want to say this to parents out there that's that's so hard to hear that something happened to your child but when you become this breakdown of emotion now the victim ends up being the caretaker to how you feel instead of how they feel which can be very damaging there's a time and a place to deal with that but it might not be there it's not a time for judgment did it happen did it not happen we're not the detective when we're being a receiver of real we're being a safe place to be real and then just to really in those questions ask things like how can I help you is there anything else I you need to tell me what do you want your next steps to be like and let them really be able to go on that journey with you in that way I think it's just so important and in that way you will be such a huge part of someone's feeling journey amen so first thing we want to do is we listen the next thing we do is we report please circle this you are all mandated to report every single one of you listen you're not the judge you're not the jury and you certainly are not the detective your job is to report I've had people tell me this pastor I want to tell you something but I need you to promise me you won't tell anyone do you know what I say to that I love you I care about you but I cannot make that promise I cannot do that because if you tell me something that I am morally bound to tell I must tell it so you you need to tell people that when they say I want to share something with you and there's no way you can tell anyone you say if there's any way possible I can keep this a secret I will but there are some things that you cannot keep a secret and here's why look at the next verse we're gonna talk more about this passage next week but it says love does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out sins power is in secrecy God's power is in the light if you want to heal let me challenge you you need to reveal and here's why statistically we know that if a person abuses one child most abusers abuse between one and nine kids what that means is it's not gonna stop and we may not be able to prevent what happened to you but we can prevent what happens to someone else we need to report this we need to do this because it's important we love rejoices when the truth wins out and there are hard things that we have to talk about Tammy and I have had to talk through hard things difficult things things that she didn't want to share but we had to talk about him because love rejoices when the truth wins out and we need to do that so we create a safe place by listening and by reporting and Christina I think that you have something special to say especially about this issue about how important it is to report absolutely for me when I finally told my parents about my my first two abuses they protected me from the abusers but for whatever reason they were doing I know the best that they could at that time but I know that they didn't tell the police and I've always wondered how many other kids how many other boys or girls were affected and abused at the hands because they didn't turn him in and so it's just we have the opportunity to help save lives you know to help be a voice of protection for others and so as hard as it is as scary as it is if you can report it's just essential but I also know for a lot of us our stories sometimes we remember things years later or we don't know where the abusers are and the other part of reporting is us reporting our story us telling our story for me that was the beginning of my healing when I started to disengage from the shame when I started to come out of hiding and really started just talking about what happened and figuring out what was the next step and the next step I cannot tell you the empowerment that comes when you tell your story and that might seem absolutely terrifying but there's something that happens I mean it's it's true when we bring things into the light especially within the church we have the power of Jesus Christ we have the love of other people to come and surround us and so I just I just really really really want to encourage you in here if you've never told someone please let this be a day let this be a moment that you don't let pass by and know that there is victory as much as we're talking about this and it's so hard to have our faces and our names attached to this but we're here because there's hope on the other side there's healing on the other side and it starts with owning your story or it will own you so tell your story amen next what do we do as a church so we listen we report and then we support then we come alongside and we're there for the person and we minister to them and we care for them you know Christina and I have been in small group I think for three years together Tami and I've been married for 22 years and I can't tell you how many times I've told Christina I want to I want to be safe I want you to feel safe because she's been disappointed and assaulted by so many men so I want to be that safe guy for you in your life I want you I want to be the brother that you need I don't want to be a loving protecting brother for Tamia I want to be a loving protecting man I'm your husband but they also need a community people to come around people to come alongside listen what the Bible says brothers and sisters and by the way this is how we're to treat each other as brothers and sisters are supposed to not maybe the way brothers and sisters treated you and your family because you fought all the time but we're supposed to be loving and kind and protective of each other it says certainly swartz encourage those who are timid people are scared to death to tell their story after our previous service I was out in the lobby and an 80 year old woman came up to me and she said thank you so much for dealing with this it happened to me and I told my parents and they didn't believe me she said I'm glad I came to church this sermon allowed her to speak on something for the first time she said thank you encourage those who are timid timid take care of those who are weak wounded people are weak we're a hospital right we're a hospital would you walk through Kaiser going get over it suck it up that's what we do in the church here's a Bible verse can you imagine beat be safe be caring be loving underline this next verse be patient with everyone not everybody's gonna heal in the same timeframe they're not and let me say this the more the abuse the longer the healing and so we need to be there for them now some of you are freaked out you're like okay that's why I'm never joining a small group because I don't know what to say I'm terrified let me just say this none of us know what to say but I know who does his name is Jesus write this down bring them to Jesus what does God want to do for abused people he wants us to bring him to Jesus when you read through your Bible every time somebody doesn't know what to do my kids did what do I do bring them to Jesus I've been hemorrhaging for 12 years what do I do go to Jesus I have a paralyzed friend who can't walk what do we do take him to Jesus when people are at the end of their rope they go to Jesus and that's what we need to learn to do and let me say this counseling is great it's great I would encourage you to go to counseling I would encourage you to seek help but you don't just need healing you actually need the healer that's who Jesus is that's the role of the church the church can introduce people to the healer I love this verse one of my favorite verses Matthew 11:28 and 29 jesus said come to me all of you who are weary and heavy heavy burdens that's what abuse is it's a heavy burden that many of you have been carrying by yourself Jesus says you don't have to carry that alone I will carry it with you I will come along side Jesus is the most amazing human being that ever walked the face of the earth because he's not just a human being he's God in human flesh he says I will give you rest take my yoke upon you and let me teach you Jesus says because I am humble circle this word and gentle gentle the most powerful being in the universe is gentle and you will find rest for your souls that's my prayer for you I guess my question to both of you is is how has Jesus been instrumental in your healing for me Jesus has really been my my detangler I would say my abuse and me were so amesh like this I couldn't tell where it ended and I began and and Jesus began to detangle that for me here's what he says about me and here's what he says about abuse and so that has been so freeing for me in the way that he has just been able to help me figure out what is the truth because we need experienced abuse everything is kind of gray like was it well you know what really happened who really believed what do we do with it and so for me I am one of the ways it's really affected me is I'm really black and white I'm really I don't do well on the gray and and Jesus is in gray he is he he speaks it how it is he speaks what's right what's wrong what's truth what's not and so for me he's been the replacer of lies with the truth and my detangler yeah I agree with everything that you said and Jesus for me has really been everything in my healing I mean counseling was essential and community has been essential but abuse attack the soul like the core of who you are and there's only one person who can get there who can repair in that place and this is the thing that I realized it took a lot of time but the shame and the lies and the things I believed about myself I I needed my maker my Creator to reshape my identity and so the thing that abuse does and and the enemy gets in there he really tries to steal our God intended purposes early whether this happened is if you were a child or any point in your life the enemy wants to get in there and just put you on a different trajectory and Jesus is the one who put me back on my path and said I have a plan for you there's a hope for you you were not your abuse there is hope there's a story beyond this and Jesus conquered sin death and the grave and so I I knew that with Christ he would get me through that and so I just want to speak that over this entire place and I was watching please run to Jesus amen and I think this is this is really important for you to know about God especially if you've been abused Jesus has come to me he never forces himself on you ever isn't that amazing how awesome our God is God does not force you to love him he does not force you to choose him he invites you and here's why you need Jesus listen some of you have gone through pain that will never be fully healed in this life here's the good news about Jesus and why you need him because he doesn't just work in this life he works in eternal life and there are some things that Jesus is going to fully heal in the next life in the second to the last chapter in the last book in your Bibles Jesus is said to do this that he will wipe away every tear from their eyes all suffering and there will be no more death no more death no more sorrow no more crying no more pain underlying this all these things are gone forever they're gone that's why you want to be there and the one sitting on the throne you know who his name is Jesus he said look I am making everything circle this word new new the heartache of what my friends have experienced is at the age of four and six someone made a decision for them that can't be unmade here's the beauty in heaven it can think about this in heaven every terrible thing that you've ever been through will simply have been a bad dream because you are new noon and let me say this if you've been abused Jesus makes this promise nothing evil will be allowed in heaven nothing evil which brings us to our last point God wants us to warn the guilty and protect the innocent listen to me if you are a sexual predator listen to me this week I watched a father in tears in a court in the United States of America lunge at the molester of his daughter's a doctor whom he trusted he lunged at them and listen to me he was stopped by police officers and if you listen very carefully to the video you can hear the police officers trying to calm him down saying we understand we understand and the father is writhing and here's why because no matter how long they lock that predator up there is no justice on this earth but I want you to know if you've been abused you have a father in heaven and he is a lion and when he pounces there is no one that can hold him back no one and Jesus Christ's harshest words are this if you are ever going to cause or lead a little child into sin Jesus says this you would better be better off if you drowned yourself that's Jesus two thousand years ago Jesus spoke to people who abused children he said you're better off if you drowned yourself we warn the guilty and here's what I'm warning you if there's any chance at all that the gospel is real in your life and I believe the gospel is for everyone if there's any hope for you at all and you want mercy in heaven I challenge you to throw yourself at the mercy of the court repentance means you get real with the authorities about what you've done that's what repentance means the gospel is real if you get real but if you want mercy from God you must throw yourself at the mercy of the courts listen to me church our job is to protect the innocent our job is to come around those and to protect those and to make sandals Church safe safe that's our job to be safe and I want to challenge especially the men in this church be safe be safe and the women in our church be safe because we have little ones that are looking to us to protect them and we have a god who's commanded us to protect them in every sermon in this series and they all won't be this difficult I promise come back in every service we're gonna end during this series with a blessing and I want to end by praying a prayer of blessing over everyone who's either been abused or if you know someone or your family has been affected by sexual abuse and I'm gonna pray this blessing it's actually found in numbers chapter 6 verses 24 through 26 and let me tell you something the world may count you as a statistic but to God you are never a number and he prays this prayer over you in the book of numbers and do you know why because people count to God they matter so if you just bow your head and lift up your hand as I pray this prayer of blessing over everyone who's been affected or knows someone who's been affected may the Lord bless you and protect you may the Lord smile upon you and be gracious to you may the Lord show you his favour and may the lord give you his peace heavenly father we close this service by praying in the powerful and mighty name of Jesus Lord our world is wicked but you are good many people even people who've come in your name have been unsafe but you are safe we pray Lord Jesus that you would anoint this church with your protection that this would be a safe place that this would be a healing place that this would be a place where people can put their lives back together god I pray right now through the powerful and mighty name of Jesus that you would speak to every victim of sexual abuse and that they would know that this is a horrible chapter in their story but it is not the end of their story God you can rewrite their life if they trust you if they turn to you we pray this in Jesus name we love you Jesus and we know that your heart breaks for those who have been broken aim I love you sandals Church thank you so much god bless [Music] you

Channel: Sandals Church

Views: 18,264

Rating: 4.8313818 out of 5

Keywords: sandals church, sexual abuse, me too, #metoo, pastor matt brown, how to handle abuse, women empowerment, women in leadership, Tammy brown, Christina Crowley

Id: 0OoBNegwoDQ

Length: 49min 32sec (2972 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018