SWYC 2012: Unless the Lord Builds the House

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GYC Southwest

Nicole Parker

Turning Wounds Into Scars, Part 1

Father in heaven, we're so grateful that you have called us here to learn more about how the gospel applies to our lives and I pray that you will Enlighten us help each 1 of us Lord to understand more of your character and of how powerful and how loving and how wonderful you are.

Lord, I pray that you will speak through me to every person here, that they may hear the things that they need to hear to be able to apply them to life, both their own lives and other people who they're ministering to.

So today we're talking about turning wounds into scars.

That's kind of a picture that God has given to us of how he works to transform hearts, and particularly in dealing with abuse issues, the turning wounds into scars.

Sometimes wounds are just gashes, sometimes they're festering and have been there for a long time and are very painful.

In any case, whatever it is, God wants to turn our wounds into scars.

All right, let's start out talking about what abuse really means.

What is abuse, and why is it so damaging?

You know, chances are, in a group this size, there are several people here who debate it.

I don't know, because I wouldn't really say I was abused.

Yeah, some things didn't go so great when I was growing up, but I wouldn't call it abuse.

You know, you don't really necessarily classify what you've gone through as abuse sometimes.

So I want to clarify what I'm talking about here.

I'm not necessarily meaning if somebody beat you up continually or you went through all kinds of sexual assault and those kinds of, that's not the only thing I'm talking about.

Yes, that's abuse, But anything that warps our picture of the character of God by our interaction with others, especially significant other people in our lives, like parents or grandparents or teachers, people who are put in authority positions over us, those interactions can really damage people.

And we may kind of discount them later on and say, oh, it's not that big.

But I would encourage you to take it seriously because until you admit that something wounded you, you can't find healing.

You know, for me, there was a significant factor that happened when I was at summer camp.

For 1 week, I was at summer camp with some boy that I never saw before that, and I never saw him after that.

But that whole week, he tormented me by calling me Chinese girl and chink girl and continually harassing me, getting all of his little friends from his cabin to pick on me.

And it was all because when I was swimming, I came up for air coming up from under the water.

And my eyes were closed, and I bumped into him.

And so he went to all his friends and started telling them that I had tried to kiss him.

I mean, you know, it's what 10-year-old boys do.

I'm not going to say I was abused by him.

But it certainly was painful to me, and it made me for many years hate my eyes.

You'd say I had little pig eyes and things like that.

So forever I felt like I had these little tiny pig eyes, and nobody's gonna like me, and I'm ugly.

People's words and attitudes toward us shouldn't damage us.

We ought to believe that God loves us and therefore we are lovable, that God sees us as of infinite worth and therefore we are, but the reality is we go through a lot of trauma in life from relationships with other people.

That's because God created us as relational beings.

God is a relational God because God is love, and love is a relational word.

So God is a relational God, and he created us in his relational image as people who are impacted deeply by relationship with other people.

So if something that you went through, you may discount it as, that was just something trivial, I'm not going to make a big deal out of it, I would encourage you to examine those things that keep coming back to you as something that bothers you.

And not in order to blame somebody and say, that's the reason I have problems, it's that boy at summer camp.

But instead to allow God to heal you, to allow God to combat the lies that were told to you by that situation.

What that boy was telling me, the lies that were being told to me by the devil and by this boy in that situation, were that I was not of worth, and that I was not beautiful, but more than that, that because I was not beautiful, I was not valuable.

And, you know, whether or not you're beautiful doesn't really matter.

The anorexic starves herself to death because she believes that she is fat, not because she actually is fat.

So there's a level in which perception is reality.

And abuse warps our perception, not only of God, but of everything under the sun.

It warps our perception of ourselves, it warps our perception of others, and it's very damaging.

So that's why the gospel has been given to us to heal us, not just to save us eternally, but even in this world to redeem us and rescue us from the damage that sin causes.

You know, for example, I remember as a child, and some of you may know, Some of you, has anybody here listened to my testimony on AudioVerse about being abused?

Basically, I went through a lot of different kinds of abuse growing up, but 1 of the most significant things was that my grandfather sexually abused me and raped me.

So I went through a lot for many years and never told anybody.

When I was 10, he died and no 1 found out about it.

In fact, the memories were so traumatic that my mind repressed them.

And so I had all these anxiety disorders, panic attacks, and deep depression, but I didn't know any reason why.

Well, the reason why was because I was lying to myself.

The Bible says God desires truth in the inward parts.

But when we cannot cope with some of the intense emotional pain that we're dealing with, God allows us sometimes to not remember.

How many of you have ever used a pressure cooker?

A pressure cooker has a valve, an emergency valve that will blow off if there's something stuck.

You know, if the pressure inside of the pressure cooker gets too much, the pressure valve, it starts going, psssh, letting the steam off.

That keeps it from getting too much pressure inside.

If something sticks in that pressure valve, it can eventually cause some serious damage, right?

This pressure cooker has to blow up because of all the pressure inside of it.

I believe that God has given us sometimes a sort of emergency valve that the steam can blow out.

If there's something we cannot consciously process, if there's something that you've been through that you may not be capable of processing, you might not be able to feel it.

For example, when someone loses a parent or a spouse, you may notice that they're dry-eyed, right?

Now some people just collapse and are able to feel all those emotions immediately.

They're just, I don't know, I'm in shock, right?

That's sometimes a gift that God gives us to be able to cope, to be able to keep functioning for a while.

There's nothing evil about going into shock and not being able to feel the feelings, just going through the motions, let me plan the funeral, Let me get the person out of the burning car, even though I'm burned myself.

It's designed to protect us in emergencies.

But some people make a way of life out of shock, out of denial, out of I refuse to feel those feelings.

I just got an email last week from somebody who is going through that.

She says, I don't know how to face the fact that because of all these abuses I've been through, I literally cannot feel anything emotionally.

My emotions just shut off, both good emotions and bad emotions.

Can't feel anything to make me very happy.

Can't feel anything to make me feel devastated.

It's a matter of survival sometimes for a person to live that way.

And if you've been through severe abuse, you may find yourself going into that autopilot mode sometimes.

You can't think about it, you can't feel it, I just go on.

Some people will call that, I just forgave and forgot.

Well you can tell whether you've really forgiven by the effects it has in your life.

When a person truly forgives, they find healing and peace and freedom.

When a person goes into denial and refuses to face and cope with those feelings, if you do that long term, it starts to cause problems.

Ulcers, depression, anxiety issues, lots of major things that have been scientifically linked to repression or not being able to feel things that it's time to feel.

If people like for myself, I couldn't remember some of the things that had happened to me until I got to a safe environment.

Turning Wounds Into Scars, Part 1

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