Making all things new…

Sisters in Christ is currently undergoing some amazing changes!  I’ll share more soon but for now suffice it to say – God is doing some exciting things with and in and through this ministry. 

When Sisters began in 2004 it was with the vision of helping post abortive women find help and healing from the wounds of their abortion.  God gave us the means to do that through the Bible study, A Journey to Grace.  Since that time He has continued to open doors for us to work with sexually abused women as well and then later He brought men and teenagers to us who also found healing in Jesus through the Journey!  The Lord has used this ministry and this Bible study in ways we could not have foreseen in the beginning.  But all along  it has been HIS ministry and we, submitting to whatever direction the Lord desires to take us, are in awe of all that He has done and what He has given us a glimpse of that is to come!

It is an absolute honor and privilege to serve Christ as He calls us to serve those who are wounded and hurting.  We are excited about continuing to do that in the new ways and opportunities that God is giving!  After the Thanksgiving holidays I will have more details for you about some of the upcoming changes!

 

Deanna’s Journey

 

Deanna’s Journey

  In 1988 when Tim and I entered the abortion clinic, we had no understanding of the destruction that we were about to set into motion. We didn’t think of this as ending the life of our child, we were only thinking of saving our own lives. For the sake of our reputations and our convenience, we believed that abortion was the only option. We gave no thought to how it would affect us individually or as a couple.

 We’d only known each other for a year, and while we’d been good friends during that year, we’d only been dating each other for a few months. We didn’t think about the future of our relationship because we didn’t think there would be a future. I was 21 years old that spring and Tim was 23. Neither of us had finished college, and both of us were working a dead end job at a local restaurant. In our eyes, at that time, it looked even more hopeless to think of adding a rushed marriage and a child to the picture.

 

For Freedom

It was for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

A Journey to Grace is not about simply talking about the wounds of our heart. It’s not about learning to just live with those wounds, enduring the pain and just trying to get by. A Journey to Grace is about the healing of those wounds and learning to live free of the pain, condemnation, and shame. It’s about living in freedom. 

 

Crystal’s Journey

I was raised knowing Christ, but as a teenager I grew rebellious towards my parents and after high school I drifted away from the God I knew as a child. I moved to a town far away from my family and began a relationship with a young man I met at college. When I became pregnant our first thought was to have an abortion. We both thought we were too young to have a child. We had “plans” for our lives that did not include raising a child or being tied-down. A traditional lifestyle was something that we thought was ridiculous and out-dated.  

The friends I had were young women who considered themselves “modern” and “progressive” We believed that we were liberated and free thinking people who weren’t caught up in the “old fashioned” ways of our parents. All the women in my age group that I was friends with had had abortions. We told each other that it was okay to have abortions – all the literature we read said it was good, the doctors we saw didn’t try to stop us, the government made it legal. It was a simple medical procedure – nothing else – and it would solve our problem for us. For the right amount of money we could go on with our life as if nothing had changed. 

 

Depression – excerpt from The Journey

Depression  is a step in the process of mourning.  The definition for depression is the condition of feeling sad or despondent, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, despair

The following is an excerpt from the Journey with questions asked and answers given by a participant in the Journey for healing from sexual abuse.

“As you wrote about your depression as a result of sexual abuse, did you recognize a lack of quality in your life?”

The participant responded – ” A lack of quality in my life?  What does that look like after being sexually abused?  I’ve had to be somebody else just to get through the day.  Hiding behind masks required a lot of my energy and daily, I was left with exhaustion and weariness.”

“Due to depression caused by your sexual abuse, have you developed any addictive behaviors?”

The same participant responded – “I am addicted to my masks.”

_________________________________________________

As a prisoner of depression, this precious woman struggled with trust.  Trusting God with her heart seemed impossible, and as a result, she wrote,

 ”I never felt I could accept all God wants to give me and do in me because I felt like He wouldn’t want to if He really knew me.  I knew that He saw and already knew my life, but it was my heart that I’d held back from Him.  It was my heart I feared He would reject.  The bottom line was that I didn’t trust Him with my heart.”

Out of her great struggle to trust God with her heart and give up the masks that had been her crutches for most of her life, she wrote this poem:

As You Were

As you were long ago opening the sea

slaying giants and keeping an ark afloat.

I need you to be for me

as you were with David and then Noah on that boat.

 

Now I’m facing a giant

one that’s mocked me all my life

my puny little pebbles

are a tiny spark in a cold dark night.

 

As you were – always for someone else

I never believed you could be

I never believed you would be

for me

 

As you were so long ago

as you were just yesterday

I’ve seen you’re work with my own eyes

but always in someone else’s day

 

As you were, would you dare to be

as you are…

 even in me?

 

 

 

 

Catherine’s testimony

I was raped when I was nine years old by someone I trusted to care for me. I didn’t feel like there was anyone I could tell so I pretended it didn’t happen, hoped it would just go away and prayed that it would never happen again. Even though it didn’t happen again the destruction and devastation that began that day continued within me for many years.

At nine years old I hadn’t had my first boyfriend, first crush or first kiss. I hadn’t even had the first thought or desire for those things. But I had been raped. I was just beginning to learn to navigate socially in school and in the neighborhood. I was beginning to seek out and develop my own friendships when I learned that trust was something I could not risk in any relationship. 

 

You Don’t Have to Hide

 

 

 

Adam and Eve were the first of many things. Notably they were the first to think they could not only hide their sin from God, but that they could hide themselves from God as well. But the LORD found them out, and He called them out, just as He does with each of us.

 

Psalm 139 is an amazing Psalm of David, a declaration of God’s all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful presence! God, who in one moment breathed life into things that had previously never existed, knows us. He is with us and His great gift is in allowing us to know Him! Yet often in those secret and shameful things we believe we can hide from Him. In our time of greatest need, as we are withering and dying in the sin of abortion and its effects or the wounds of sexual abuse, we believe the lie that we not only CAN hide from God, but that we need to. In that hiding we come to believe that we are not known by God, that somehow He has overlooked or forgotten us. 

 

Do You Want to Get Well?

 Why should you take the time for another Bible study? You’ve already got a stack of Bible study workbooks and notebooks on the bookshelf and yet somehow you are not really that much different than you were the day before the first one. How is this one any different?

The truth is there is no Bible study that will “do it” for you. There hasn’t been a Bible study written that alone could change your life. Apart from your desire to seek the truth and the work of the Holy Spirit in you they are all destined to be dust collectors on your book shelf.

The difference is something only you can truly answer. It’s an old question that Jesus asked long ago to a crippled man who could not get himself to the healing waters in time to experience the healing he so desperately wanted. In John 5 this crippled man tells Jesus that he doesn’t have anyone who can help him into the pool when the water is stirred. This man wanted something very good – he wanted to be healed. Yet he was looking for help in every direction except in the direction of Jesus, the only one who was capable of helping him.

Abortion and sexual abuse are deep wounds within us. The pain is difficult to ignore so we try to cover it up with so many other things in our life so that we don’t have to experience the shame, and the condemnation and the pain day in and day out. Somewhere mixed in with our attempt to cover the pain we are really hoping we’ll discover a way to make it go away, to fix it, to fix us. Like the man by the pool waiting for someone who could help him we neglect to look to the ONLY one who can truly heal us – Jesus.

The truth is that any healing work is between each of us and Jesus. The one who can heal asks the question – “Do you want to get well?” and the outcome depends on our answer to Him. When we are willing to cooperate with Him and allow Him to use the truth of His Word, through the Holy Spirit, to penetrate deep into our heart then the real work of healing can take place. If you are looking for a warm, fuzzy, fill-in-the-blank Bible study then A Journey to Grace may not be what you’re after. But if you want to learn to LIVE and walk out this life in Freeedom, with Hope and Healing, experiencing Forgiveness, Joy and Peace and knowing Jesus as never before then this might be the one.

 

The Walking Dead

 

I’ll wake up, I’ll go to work, I’ll come home, I’ll go to bed and I’ll do it all over again the next day and the next and the next….

 

I do not want to go on living. I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up again ….ever.

 

I wish I’d never been born. I wish God would not make me live anymore.

 

These are comments from people who are adults functioning around and among us every day in this world. These are not people that you would recognize as depressed or in despair. Yet the weight of the pain and wounds of abortion and sexual abuse have led them to this existence. Because they have believed the deception of the enemy that they have no worth, no value and no purpose, they exist and walk and work among us but they do not truly live. They are the walking dead.

 

Jesus said “the thief comes ONLY to steal and kill and destroy”. The enemy has a very focused purpose and pulls no punches in his relentless pursuit of our destruction. That thief has stolen much from the life of those who have believed his lie about abortion and from those who have been victims of sexual abuse. He’s stolen their hope, their dreams, their very life. His ultimate intention is to absolutely kill and utterly destroy – either through the sinful actions of others or through the deception by which he entices us to sin.

 

Jesus also said “I came that they might have life and might have it abundantly”. That word might does not for a moment imply that God hasn’t quite made up HIS mind about it! It has more to do with our choice, our desire to seek and to follow Him. Our Risen Christ has a very focused purpose for our lives as well! None of His plans for our life have included trudging through another day or wishing we’d never have to face another day! Because Jesus defeated death and the grave we have HOPE that we can truly live and live abundantly.

 

When we think of living we often immediately think of breathing, functioning, moving. But just waking up and breathing another day is NOT living. The life that Jesus was talking about was far more than just waking up and going through the motions. That word abundantly involves a life of superior quality, beyond measure, and completeness! That is the life that Christ came, died and rose from the dead to give us – a life of superior quality that is complete and beyond measure!!

 

That is the very life that so many women who have come to Sisters in Christ have not experienced. Yet on a Journey to Grace these women have found that life and are really living it – often for the first time! Those whom God has led to Sisters have at one time been content to live out their days as the walking dead because they have become convinced that there isn’t anything more or better for them. The enemy has deceived them and they have believed that they deserve nothing more than waking up and breathing another day. But on the Journey, Jesus has shown Himself faithful time after time and has brought life – real life – and brought it as only He can – beyond measure and of superior quality!!

 

Where does the Journey begin?

The Journey to Grace begins when you wake up one morning and realize that even though you begged God the night before to not make you wake up to another day, He did.  It begins in the night when you realize that it has been months or years since you were able to sleep without fear, without nightmares, without scenes of the most painful periods of your life playing in your mind like an old movie.  The Journey begins when you realize that you’ve died more than you’ve ever really lived.

For someone who has been sexually abused or experienced the devastation of abortion these are just some of the symptoms that play out in our minds on a daily basis.  What would be a normal fear or bad dream to most people is magnified in intensity and depth for those of us who have been wounded by abortion or sexual abuse.  Often the Journey begins when we’ve finally grown so weary of trying to keep it all buried, and pushed down within our heart.  When the realization is finally clear that real living involves far more than just waking up and breathing and a desire to really live begins to creep in, the journey can begin.

Sadly, far too often, the men and women who are suffering after abortion or sexual abuse find their life has spiraled out of control and into many forms of addiction.  Drug or alcohol abuse, pornography addiction, or sexual addiction are not uncommon.  The desire to numb ourselves from the pain takes many different forms but for those of us who need more than a denial and a refusal to face the pain, other addictions are easily found. 

Anger, withdrawal and difficulty with relationships all walk hand in hand with the post-abortive or sexually abused.  The anger and the rage infect every area of life whether it’s relationships with family members, close friends or a cashier at the store.  The anger and the rage that simmers within is impossible to contain for long and always ends up exploding and wounding anyone within reach.  The anger and the fear of letting anyone get close enough to see the truth of what is inside of us leads to withdrawal in relationships.  Although there may be a deep desire for the intimacy found in our relationships, the lack of trust and constant anticipation of betrayal sabotage any opportunities for truly close relationship.  The anger and the withdrawal make any relationship  difficult  to maintain and since there is such an abundance of energy spent on trying to keep the anger in check and trying to conceal the deeper wounds, there just isn’t enough energy to put into working on these relationships.

Innocence, purity, trust, dignity, self respect these are all things lost at an early age in the life of the person who has been sexually abused.  These are also some of the things lost in the life of the person who has experienced the pain of abortion.  These things are often replaced by shame, guilt, fear and anger.  Jesus said in John 10:10 

 the thief comes ONLY to steal, kill and destroy

This is evidenced by the lack of quality in the life of someone who has experienced abortion or sexual abuse.  The hope lies in the rest of that statement that Jesus made – “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full”.  Jesus is the one who has come to heal these wounds and set us free. 

This is where the Journey begins.  It begins when you see that God never intended for you to go through this life just waking up and breathing, existing with no real hope or purpose.  The Journey begins when you are willing to reach out for the hope of that full life that Jesus promised. 

It begins here, today. 

Are you ready?

 

What is a Journey To Grace?

A Journey to Grace is a Bible study.  It is also very literally a spiritual journey.  A Journey to Grace is a tool that God has used many times over as He’s brought healing and freedom to the lives of women, men and teens. 

What started as a nine week Bible study to bring women to the healing of the wounds of their post-abortion experience has grown, out of necessity, into so much more.  Today A Journey to Grace has been adapted to help women, men and teens find freedom, healing and life after abortion, sexual abuse, sexual addiction and other traumatic, life altering experiences. 

A Journey to Grace is not a book you order and sit on your couch filling in the blanks until you declare yourself free at last!  A Journey to Grace is not a “warm fuzzy” fill in the blank Bible study.  It’s far more that.  On A Journey to Grace you’ll be assigned a leader, someone that you will meet with regularly who will walk this Journey alongside you.  Your leader has also been on this Journey at one time and knows the way to help you find freedom and healing.  Your leader will be the one to ask you the hard questions that are often too difficult to ask yourself.  Your leader is the one who will not only walk through the workbook with you each week but will also help you learn to apply the truth of God’s word to your life as you begin to learn to walk in freedom, & victory with Jesus.

If you were suffering with a life altering illness or perhaps one that would end your life you wouldn’t seek treatment from a first year medical student would you?  You’d find the best doctor and the best hospital that you could afford to get treatment.  You’d put your hope and trust in a medical team that had a proven track record of expertise and success.  Wouldn’t you?

The truth is that if you are post-abortive, if you have been sexually abused, if your life has become consumed by sexual addiction then you ARE suffering with a life altering illness and one that will definitely end your life – if it hasn’t already.  The one who is the HEALER, Jesus, is the one you need and He is the one you will find on A Journey to Grace.

 

Snapshots of grace