Abuse. It happens in the church. Yet discover how the amazing power of God’s intervening grace brings healing and wholeness.

GYC 2011: Fill Me

<p>Abuse. It happens in the church. Yet discover how the amazing power of God’s intervening grace brings healing and wholeness.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

GYC 2011 Seminar: Healing from Sexual Brokenness

Steve Nelson

Nicole Parker

The Broken Image, Part 1

The Broken Image, Part 2

Call It Anything But Love, Part 1

Call It Anything But Love, Part 2

This message was presented at the GYC 2011 conference.

For other resources like this, visit us online at gycweb.org.

I'm going to try to share with you both of our stories.

How we got to the place of having this ministry that we have here today.

And I'm going to just try to, as best I can, share with you what brought her to the place that she's at today.

You know, we talk about abuse, and sometimes we get a little bit uncomfortable with this, Because it gets a little personal sometimes.

I certainly don't know your stories, but I imagine there's people who have experienced abuse here in this audience today.

I think Abuse, especially spiritual abuse, is probably 1 of the hardest things to recover from.

But thankfully we have a God that promises to see us through this.

Samantha was raised in a non-Christian home.

When she was 3 years old, her mother and father divorced.

And her mother dated a few men and finally she remarried.

And Samantha's life seemed to be okay for, well for a while.

On the outside, everyone looking in would have thought this was just a nice little family.

Here was a good father caring for this young girl and this mother and everything seemed okay.

Except what often happens in abuse homes, homes that have abuse, the outside, what the world sees, is completely different what's going on inside.

When Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted, the serial killer who actually cannibalizes people.

I know it's a little gruesome, but the neighbor said, really?

Samantha's stepfather, and I can share this story a little more in detail because he has passed away since the time of this story, so there's more things that could be shared that may be helpful to you.

He started at a very young age to abuse Samantha.

At first, it was just a verbal abuse, like, you're so stupid, you know.

He would do things to kind of torture her, kind of in a mental sort of way, these little games like buy her new shoes and then tell her he's gonna take those new shoes and burn them.

What happens is your self-esteem starts to slowly become eroded.

You slowly start to feel like there's nothing that you can do that's right.

When she started going to school, then it was a matter of you couldn't get a perfect grade, if you didn't get an A+, what's the problem with that?

There was extra credit, why didn't you do this?

And so it was 1 step after another, slowly degrading her as a person that opened up her vulnerability to where she would later become abused further on.

As she grew up into a teenage life, her stepfather, the abuse became more physical.

It started with he would find a way just to pick an argument.

And after the argument he would have to discipline her and then he would take off his belt and he would beat her and he would say, you know, it's because you mouthed off to me and those kind of things.

And the abuse became physical in that regard.

What she did find out later on, as she started to reflect back in the past, it wasn't just the physical abuse in that regard, it became more physical in the wrong direction, abusive that way.

This opened up a door for her to try and excel and exceed.

Because if you can't control your life at home, It's out of control, you can never do what's right.

She could do 1 thing right, and she could control the fact of what she ate, when she ate, and how she ate.

In fact it was to the point where kids at school started to tease her.

And back then, there was a song that went around the country.

And it was a group of rock and roll singers got together and did the song as a way to raise money for the Ethiopian children.

And so the kids at school, they made a poster, they drew of her and called her the Ethiopian poster child.

And they taped little nickels on the poster and, you know, as a way to try and ridicule her.

And through all this, Samantha got straight A's.

But she knew how to excel and exceed where she needed to.

Can we go a little louder or just talk louder or what do I need to do?

So through all this, she knew how to maintain that scholastic excellence.

You see, when someone's been abused, they don't know how to say no.

No doesn't mean no to a person who's been abused.

If your stepfather's gonna beat you and you say no and he does it anyway, it doesn't work, right?

Your world gets turned upside down Yes is whatever and no is definitely not no when you don't want it to be no She's about 16 years old and she was invited to a party.

She was assured with her friends that there were going to be a lot of people there and she went with her friend to the party.

She gets out in the country, is dropped off at the party and she got there and she found that she was the only girl.

There were 3 football players there and she wasn't in a safe place.

Against her wishes, against her protests.

They took her home, and she had no place to go.

How are you going to tell your parents, dad, I was just raped by 3 boys.

Dad, who's abusing you, is that gonna work?

Unfortunately, Boys, especially that type of guy, starts to talk.

Those words get around, and what ended up being for 1 abuse went to another, to another, to another.

And here's a young girl who wasn't raised in a Christian home, who's pleading for God to somehow stop this.

By the time Samantha and I met, she was 18.

I had no idea that there was ever this dark past in her life.

No idea that anyone could ever have that kind of dark past.

It really wasn't what I had understood the world I grew up in, fourth generation Adventists.

For the most part, I grew up in a good home.

There was some abuse, I'll share that in a moment, but you know, it wasn't like this.

We started dating and, excuse me, young ladies, young men, who you'll probably kind of understand where this is going because when you come into a relationship, you bring all your past with you, right?

You'd like to think, well, that's what happened, that's the experience I went through, but it really doesn't affect me.

Because when I looked at Samantha, she's a pretty girl.

She's doing wonderful things, but I didn't understand what it meant for someone to be in a relationship where they were treated this way.

We went on a blind date and a friend set us up.

She wanted to date my brother and so she worked with Samantha and she said, here, I got a friend you could go out with.

So we went out and we went to the beach in California.

We had a very nice day and right off the bat, we hit it off very well.

We had a lot of things in common we were connecting with.

But she told me very early on that I want to get married like now.

Series

GYC 2011 Seminar: Healing from Sexual Brokenness

Call It Anything But Love, Part 1

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Last Day Events, The Remnant, and Church Organization

04 The Shaking, the Sifting, and the Remnant Church

45m

Cross-Check: Finding Your Personal Story At the Cross

2. Cross-Words: Lord, Speak to Me… Please!

51m

GYC 2011 Seminar: Healing from Sexual Brokenness

Call It Anything But Love, Part 2

1h

Admonitions for the Last Days

2. New Theology & Half-Hearted Christians

47m

Plenary

We Love God So We Can Love One Another

1h 33m

GYC 2013 Seminar: Health Evangelism

01-Purposeful Healthy Living

1h

Sabbath School 2nd Quarter 2025: Allusions, Images, Symbols: How to Study Bible Prophecy?

12 Precursors

24m

Breakout Session #2

Never Good Enough

41m

Our Desperate Need of the Spirit is Now

03 The Difference Jesus Makes

55m

GYC 2013 Seminar: The Gay Puzzle: Loving Gays to Christ

06-Turn Around: Q&A

1h 16m

Addiction & the Devil's Battleground

Addiction & the Devil’s Battleground: Power to Heal

58m

Mark Finley - The Shaking and the Sifting: A Biblical Approach

True and False Revivals, Part 1

1h

Sound Doctrine