Jesus, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.
1 Corinthians 4:5
“She will be so ruined and wrecked by love that she will run full force into the darkness. This will cause His light through her to expose into the world…”
–Heidi Baker
It all started with a vision that God gave me almost two weeks ago. I prayed that I was wrong, but the Lord had revealed to me that rape had happened to a little girl.
It’s not always fun seeing what God sees.
But He will let us into His mind so that we might weep with those who weep, that we may defend the oppressed, that we may enter into prayer as warriors until Earth looks more like Heaven.
Since we’ve been in Colombia I have seen this theme. A theme of sin, oppression, and spiritual warfare that needs to be addressed. In my research prior to Colombia, I had found the need to pray against guerrilla groups and drug lords. Never once was the darkness of sexual abuse presented to me. I was not prepared.
I have heard story upon story about the sexual abuse that has taken place among this city. The thing that makes it the hardest to hear is that, it is most often found within families. Yes…
SEXUAL ABUSE…. RAPE… MOLESTATION
… They are taking place inside “homes”.
It’s no wonder that it hasn’t been talked about. These are things we don’t talk about, am I right?
1. Those who have been oppressed, abused, victimized, objectified don’t talk about it, it’s a scary thing. This is understandable and there is grace.
I was able to talk with a friend of mine who had been molested, and they let me in to why they never spoke up. A) They thought the encounters would stop, B) They hoped people would sense that something was wrong, C) They hoped God would give other people the insight. They originally didn’t let people know because A) They thought people wouldn’t believe them or thought that they were the one who would be punished. This person was having the same thing happen to one of their friends, and no one believed their friend. B) There was a mental component of it. They thought that if they just finished school they would be able to get away from it.
I asked this friend how people could help. They simply said that if people thought that something was wrong, check up with the person. There were many of times when people thought something as wrong with my friend, but they never asked. Create a safe place for people to talk!
2. The church doesn’t even like to use the word “sex”. So attaching it to something as awful as abuse, we are even more likely to refrain from talking about it. Church, Beloved, we have to be better about talking about sex in the way it was designed to be seen: Beautiful and a form of worship. We also have to be better about bringing the darkness to the light. We need to be on the forefront fighting for a restoration of this practice. It has been corrupted by people who use it maliciously and outside of the context that it, as a gift, was given to believers for. We as a church have enabled the distortion of this word “sex”, because it is the “unspeakable thing”, we have not treated it as good, we have not treated it as beautiful. We have helped in furthering the connotation of sex as “this is an ugly, abominable, disgusting, dirty, horrible thing”.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
Isaiah 5:20
