“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” –Peggy O’Mara
A father’s likes, for example, sports, politics, music, or cars, etc., becomes the language in which a father speaks to his children and which they speak to themselves.
The fact that many fathers do not listen with their hearts is why so many sons and daughters remain disconnected from their dads. His children may not like sports, politics, or music, etc., and therefore have nothing to say. I meet so many people obsessed with sports, politics, drugs, drinking, etc., because this is the only way that they can relate to or speak with their fathers.
Many people have no idea as to why they like or do these things, and rarely make the connection that they do these things because this was their father’s language – this is how they’ve learned to gain their father’s approval, acceptance, and his attention.
My father’s language was politics and technology. I found myself learning all I could about current political events and the latest technological gadget, so I would have something to say to my dad. I wanted my father’s approval — his acceptance and respect, so I learned his language. The sad part is that my relationship with my father was always in the shallows and never at the level and depth of heart and soul. Sadly, this became my language also between my own sons and daughter.
One day, I inspected a water-damaged home in Antioch, California, with the homeowner and his family present. All the decorations in the kitchen, family room, and master bedroom were covered with San Francisco 49er’s paraphernalia – I mean, it was everywhere! After I was completed with my task, the husband asked me:
“So, do you watch sports? … what do you think of those 49ers?”
I replied:
I don’t watch or like sports all that much.
His facial expression intimated shock and amazement!
I further replied:
… You like sports because this was the only way you could speak with your father and gain his attention and approval.
I glanced at his wife, and her face suddenly lit up with shock!
She quickly replied:
“MY GOSH, THAT’S SO TRUE!”
The husband just stood there, with his mouth opened, with the expression as though his best friend had just died!
You begin to learn how powerful for good, or evil, our father’s likes, especially when they become the mechanism of speech or language with their children. Right? Just as Peggy O’Mara wrote,
“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.”
The Bible points this out in the last book of the Old Testament, and in the very last two verses:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” –Malachi 4: 5-6.
Do you see?
If the fathers do not turn their hearts to their children, the earth will be cursed. What curses the world is silent fathers and fathers that do not speak from their hearts. This, in turn, causes children not to speak from their hearts also. Instead, their relationship with their dads is in the shallows. Very little, to no life pass from the father to their children. Sadly, this lack of transaction creates an emotional and relational deficit from generation to generation.
Proverbs 4: 23 puts it this way:
“Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.”
If you’re a father, change the language from sports, politics, or anything that keeps your relationship with your kids in shallow places and listen and speak from your heart. From your heart flows the springs of life. Your kids can’t live successful, healthy, and full lives without the spring of life from your heart. Your words and language matter. It’s a matter of life and death!
We dads have the power of life and death in our speech with our kids, young or old. Our words have the power to build or destroy the future of our children. It is never too late to speak from our hearts.
Help build your children’s future and speak the language of love.
“Fathers, don’t irritate your children and make them resentful; instead, raise them with the Lord’s kind of discipline and guidance.” – Ephesians 6:4
When strangers or acquaintances abuse us, it hurts, but not as much as when it’s a sibling, mom, or dad. You see, all of our identity and self-worth are derived from family but especially from our parents. When their abuse is emotional, spiritual, verbal, physical, etc., it attacks the core of our identity.
Toni and I are battling 35 years of abuse with her family, and especially with her parents.
Toni’s father was a pastor for most of Toni’s life. What she encountered as abuse was spiritual and religious in nature, steeped in legalism and perfectionism. Her mother told Toni and her siblings to deny their feelings. To go against instinct – to submit beyond question. To fear fear. Accept failure but to keep quiet. To compromise inner truth for outer fakeness.
My story was filled, as you may know, with physical and violent abuse. I dare say, I prefer the abuse that I endured more than what my dear Toni, has endured, and still does to this day!
I’ve asked a question several times over the years when speaking at men’s retreats and gatherings.
“Which would you rather have, a broken leg or a broken heart?”
Everyone in the room, shouted:
“A broken leg!”
This is because most of us, sadly, are well acquainted with the deep pain of a broken heart and the countless years of suffering.
My wife’s heart, while broken during her adolescent life, is undergoing healing over her adult years as she walks with God. Her healing could be accelerated if her parents would join her in her healing journey.
Yet, her parents want her and me, too, to “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.” This silence and blindness to evil has allowed the unmitigated reign of evil over many in her family. It’s painful to watch, but prayer gives us our only hope.
However, religious abuse is hard to see, because it looks socially acceptable—it looks so spiritual! Sadly, the abuse that Toni is suffering has wreaked havoc on her innocence. Her frailty. Her femininity. On her mind. On her heart and soul. This caused her to feel spiritually dirty most of her life and hyper-subjective.
Because her abuse was from religious parents, it locked her into a prison of impossible expectations. A perfectionism that not even God would impose. Right? God’s perfection is imputed or placed upon us by the works of Jesus. Toni was expected to be perfect by religious means and not by divine decree. Sadly, this is the story of many children who are fathered by ministers.
So, how do we forgive mom or dad, or both?
“Honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land and that it may go well with you.” – Deuteronomy 5:16
Remember, this is God’s command with no prerequisites. It’s his 5th commandment—smack-dab in the middle!
One reason God gives us this command is because parents, by design, are to be “lesser gods” to their offspring. The fifth commandment can also be applied to God.
Honor [God] so that you may live long in the land and that all my go well with you.
So, when we dishonor our parents, we also dishonor God, and we put great risks to our well-being and life expectancy.
But what about abusive parents? Are we to honor our abusers?
Here’s the question: Did God give us our parents, or did God give us to our parents?
It’s important to know, for several reasons.
The Allmighty of Scriptures is the Sovereign God. He’s the divine architect and the builder. He is motivated by nothing else than his will and purpose. Also, scripture is quite clear that God is very relational, right down to the individual — the individual parent and child. It boggles the mind, or at least mine, that God thought of you, me, and our parents before space and time!
“Before the creation of the world, he chose us through Christ to be holy and perfect in his presence.” – Ephesians 1:4
“The Lord formed me from the beginning before he created anything else. I was appointed in ages past, at the very first, before the earth began. – Proverbs 8:22-23
You see, we simply cannot deny that God put us into the care, good or bad, of our parents. We also can’t deny that God, intimately knowing you before earth began, appointed you to your parents. God is involved in both choices of parents to children and children to parents. There is nothing random about it! We had no say in the transaction.
Rather, God, in his wisdom, has appointed us to our parents, knowing fully that he will establish the commandment to honor them without hesitation and reservation. And that this commandment comes with a two-fold promise — all will go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.
But still, the question of forgiveness for our mom’s and dad’s abuse is unanswered for millions of hurting children of all ages, churched or unchurched.
I do want to address child abuse for those children who are still adolescent. It is not dishonoring to mom or dad if you seek help. This is for those children who are being physically or sexually abused by one or both parents. Speak to a pastor, teacher, school counselor, or coach. These people are required by law to notify Child Protective Services. Your safety is of utmost importance!
But for adult children, whereby we have moved out from mom’s and dad’s house, or perhaps they’re deceased. It’s not that forgiveness is optional. Rather, it is a necessity! Forgiving them is also about honoring them.
Many years ago, while living in Antioch, California, I invited my mother over to have a conversation. It was my plan to recall all the abuse that I had suffered by her hand.
It was just me and mom, sitting together in my home office when I began to unload on her. I was not angry or hard on my mom. I spoke from my heart and carefully described my hurts and scars.
Beginning at age 18 months old, I recalled quite accurately the violent physical abuse my little body suffered in the fit of her rage. I continued each remembrance, each story, as though it had just occurred; from 18 months through my 18th year! At the end of each story, with tears of remembrance traversing my bearded face, I said:
“Mom, I forgive you.”
… My mother just sat there, emotionless, and then replied:
“I don’t remember any of that.”
While her response was painful, I was not completely dispirited. You see, because my forgiveness wasn’t just for her, it was for me, too. While my exchange with mom was difficult, it came from my heart, not to condemn her, but to restore her—to restore us. To move the offense out of the way between mother and son. So that I could love her again. I didn’t need her permission to forgive her, as it was me letting go of all her hurtful acts.
Another twelve years would pass before my mother confessed and agreed to her abusive behavior. Her awakening happened just a few short days before she passed on Mother’s Day, May 11, 2008. It was just my mom and me again, but this time we met in her home. Unquestionably, God was there with mother and son. Both our hearts were tenderized by her battle with pancreatic cancer and softened by God’s mercy and grace. I again forgave my mother, and she humbly accepted my forgiveness as I accepted hers.
How do you know you have forgiven? When you can love them again.
It’s humanly impossible for us to forgive those who have treacherously abused or wronged us. Forgiveness is only possible through God’s grace and empowerment from Jesus Christ. And through Him, we can love again those who have wounded us with broken bones and shattered hearts. It’s called Agape Love — the love of God working in and through us.
My mother didn’t deserve my forgiveness, God required it of me. He knew it would bless me with a good and long life on earth. It was my opportunity to honor my mother. Grace, mercy, forgiveness, and God’s love are what triumphed here. It is what empowered me to do the impossible, which was to forgive my abuser—my own mother.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” – Isaiah 49:15
Just a few days before my mom’s death, God rembeberd me, and my mom, too. He rescued us both!
Here’s another helpful verse of Scripture written in the last Old Testament book and in the last two verses of the last chapter of Malachi:
“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” – Malachi 4:5-6
God softened my heart, and in turn, he softened my mother’s heart. Because of heartfelt forgiveness, my land is no longer cursed. My life is free from bitterness, resentment, and hate. I can honestly say that I miss my mom. She would be 92 years this past February, 25, 2025. Without a doubt, she’s basking in the presence of God, fully forgiven!
What about you? I encourage you, too, to forgive. Even if your parents and abusers are dead. Even more so, forgive them. You see, if they have died, then they’ve met the judge, and justice was measured upon them. All that is left for you is to forgive them and let them go so that you, too, can live well in the land.
Unforgiveness harms no one but yourself. It rots away your present life and eats away at your future. That’s the definition of a cursed life. Kick pride out of your life. It’s killing you! Humble yourself, and God himself will lift you up!
Now you know what to do when parents abuse.
Have courage, my dear friend, trust in God’s Word, and hold tightly to His promises. Though mom or dad may have forgotten you, God never forgets!
Forgiveness is your pathway to living a long and healthy life in the land!
If you do nothing, it won’t be long before you, too, become an Inhuman. Stand up today. Tomorrow will be too late.
inhuman. / (ɪnˈhjuːmən) / adjective. Also: inhumane, lacking humane feelings, such as sympathy, understanding, etc; savage, cruel; brutal, not human – lacking pity, kindness, or mercy.
The rise of Inhumans is not futuristic dystopia. It’s already here! It is unmistakably all around us and in our faces. Caged merchandise, bold shoplifters, the elderly beaten in broad daylight, smash-n-grab mobs, and perverted justice are just the tip of the iceberg.
The rise of inhumans has led to the September 10, 2025, martyrdom of Charlie Kirk. The August 22, 2025, brutal stabbing death of Ukrainian, Iryna Zarutska. The fatal shooting of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were killed in DC on May 2025. How about Frank and Maureen Olton, ages 76 and 77? They were brutally murdered in their home in Bellerose, Queens, in September 2025. Tragically, the list goes go on and on.
Our once great cities smell like sewers. Roaming hoards of homeless; drug addicted, and walking dead are everywhere, and in every city and town.
The controlled mass media and deep-state operatives of both parties are intentionally benefiting from whatever crisis promotes their narratives and agendas. They do this by design and intention to advance their power and lessen our liberties.
A culture of death gives the globalists cover to treat us like human chattel—beings without worth, without souls, and without meaning.
Take HBO’s, “Real Time,” hosted by Bill Maher, for instance:
“People who aren’t pro-life, there pro-choice. They don’t hate women. They just made that up—They think it’s murder and it kind of is—I’m just okay with that. I am, I mean, there are 8 billion people in the world. I’m sorry. We won’t miss you. That’s my position on that.” – Bill Maher, April 13, 2024
The state has no use for autonomous, self-governing individuals. Neither does Hollywood, for that matter.
The State needs nothing more than a collective, hives of human bots – humans separated from their humanness, led only by lust and animalistic instinct. How about the seven or more migrants that assaulted two NYPD officers? These criminals were released without bail, then fled New York and are headed to a sanctuary city in California!
When the video gaming industry develops games glorifying death and mass shootings, the value and meaning of life is diminished.
When millions of babies are aborted out of convenience and birth control – when they are slain, dismembered and tossed in the trash, or left alone without intervention to die, or their precious body parts are sold to the highest bidder, the value of life is tragically diminished!
When Hollywood continues to produce film after the film of murder, death, suicide, and gun violence after gun violence, the value of life is lessened.
When politicians cry out for gun confiscation, leaving the innocent defenseless, the value of life is threatened. Creating soft target groups by creating “gun-free zones” only entices those sold out to the culture of death to act out their heinous and demonic manifestos.
When the crazed Leftist and democratic mayors demand prisoners to be released, police departments are defunded or abolished, and law and order are replaced with crime, chaos, rape, and murder, America suffers.
When emerging politicians preach the end of the world in 12 years, and the only way to avert disaster is financial ruin, and depopulation, we become nothing more than “carbon footprints,” and the sanctity of life is abolished.
It’s times like these when one realizes that we’ve lost the Republic, and the conservative voices of the elect, no matter how loud, does not affect those that govern.
We have reached the bottom of degeneration, and the voiceless innocence of the unborn has once again been lost. Those of you prefer the freedom to choose death versus the inconvenience and responsibility for life, which has signed the death certificate for our nation.
Furthermore, in our crazed ignorance and selfishness we have devalued our own lives, which, when it too becomes inconvenient for the State, will also be quietly and clinically euthanized for the greater “good” of those that worship death.
When it is of more value to kill your body to harvest your organ or eliminate your “carbon footprint,” it will be done without your consent. The State, and not your doctor, is in charge of your “healthcare” now!
Do not be deceived and be so naive; abortion is indeed birth control and has little to do with “family planning.” Nearly 60 million abortions have occurred since 1973, and it is a holocaust and not healthcare. Even though the hideous nature and actions of Planned Parenthood are laid bare for the world to see, nothing changes.
To those who’ve remained silent against the murder, dismemberment, and trafficking of the unborn’s body parts and organs shall bear the same fate as those who practice such evils.
Hundreds and thousands of innocent people being murdered in a heinous “dark age” fashion, we call it something other than what it is – we call evil everything other than what it is.
The death culture, which is unfortunately being utilized and funded by key governmental agencies, including the likes of George Soros, promotes the devaluing of life to expand and to justify greater top-down control over free people.
To the 278 million so-called believers and people of faith in America, where is your light? Where is your salt? Do you not realize that if judgment comes, and indeed will, it comes first to the House of God before it comes to the houses of unbelievers?
Get your affairs and houses in order and prepare yourselves for terrible days ahead. The Left is pushing our country into civil disorder until death, and violence floods our streets.
History is full of stories of bloodied kingdoms and failed nations. We will be no exception.
Unless you speak up and rise from your slumber, they’ll keep it up until our liberties are gone, all the while we stand silently by in the culture of death.
If you do nothing, it won’t be long before you, too, become an Inhuman. Stand up today. Tomorrow will be too late.
The rise of Inhumans is here and it’s not a Marvel comic book series!
The riots you’ve engaged in throughout America’s major cities, universities, and college campuses are not necessarily battles against migrants, legal or not, or Israelis vs. Palestinians.
The real battle is for your mind and the corruption of your youth. The riots are merely symptomatic of how far the Leftist and Marxist ideologies have replaced your free thinking and commonsense. They’ve simply melded communistic ideologies and Islamic-jihadism into a deadly potion of hate.
You don’t see it, but we do — you’re so consumed with hatred and racism that its made you ugly!
Your minds have been assaulted, and your wills, your voices, and bodies are under psychological control. You’ve been duped into believing that their “end” is justified and that you’ll be accepted by taking up their “means.”
Don’t you see?
They’re appealing to your hurts—to your betrayals—to your brokenness caused by loved ones. They’re penetrating your wounded psyche, so as to impregnate your mind with Marxist and Islamic ideologies, which become fertilized by your anger, fear, and pain, until you explode and rage against society, or any antithetical political person, or group.
You must be aware by now that “Free thinking” and “tolerant” Leftist and Marxist people don’t exist. Rather, they coddle you and corral you into a groupthink mentality, which is how they mass produce you into a homogenous collective, whereby you become tolerant of each other but intolerant of everyone else.
Their expectation and plan is for you to cause division and that you use your feelings and misguided passions as weapons against neighbors, friends, coworkers, and family—those people you’ve once loved. The Left lurk in the shadows, wooing you into their darkness. They get to keep their tenured positions and ranks as “professors,” “educators,” and “politicians,” while you do their dirty work!
Leftist and Marxist ideologies demand the enslavement of your body, soul, and mind — your freedom of thought and action is an illusion. They’re only after you and your new comrades as the uninformed collective to incite riot until riots become revolution and rioters become revolutionaries.
ANTIFA and RUP are not fighting against Fascism, but for Fascism. Whether you accept it or not, ANTIFA and Raza are the cloaked and masked soldiers of the Fascistic political Left. Many were homegrown and millions illegally imported via mass “migration.” You are actually destroying freedom, liberty, and our Constitutional Republic. This will not bode well for America’s future and for your’s, too!
They instill fear and apocalyptic doom into your psyche in order that they may channel all your youthful energies towards their goals of societal collapse. You become their puppets all the while creating an illusion that you’re in control. But you are not. You and your comrades are under their power and (man)-ipulation.
The Elitists Cabal has bewitched you into dehumanizing ordinary people as animals, ready to be slaughtered. They have turned you into mechanized-mind-numbed robots, hell-bent on revolution without just cause or logical sense. You are in an alliance of all that is evil against all that is good. They’ve redefined their evil as the “collective good” so that you may believe their unrighteous intentions are a righteous and worthy cause.
Don’t give into their Incideous puppeteering — they’re trying to develop you into an army of lifeless and mindless puppets, so that you can kill life without remorse. You are being prepped for a bloody revolution.
Here’s a historical fact … After revolution, the uninformed collective is always murdered off. The Insidious Cabal, after gaining their power, will have no more use for you. They’ll kill you to prevent you, as their former revolutionaries from becoming soldiers for a more noble cause against them!
Rioters and Revolutionaries, just stop for a moment and question what you’re doing and for whom you’re doing it. Please understand that you are losing your humanity and humanness, all for the sake of another man’s revolution and for their madness for power and control.
Just watch the videos of your comrades and fellow rioters, committing assault and battery against fellow citizens, politicians, and authorities, scaring students, parents, and administrators. These people are simply standing against the slaughter of 1,400 Israelis and the kidnapping of the innocent. They simply want the criminal element of illegal immigration to end. Honestly, who’s more inhuman, those that riotously beat and murder others and damage private and public property, or those who simply support the innocent and the laws of our nation?
You are merely powerless and useful pawns in the eyes of the elitists, and they have no respect towards you — absolutely none at all!
You are not making history, but as their lemmings, you’re destroying it!
R.I.O.T. for Truth through the power of love and not hate. Make your life about the Righteous Invasion of Truth rather than the disastrous father of lies and the rise of a Communist State.
This can be your liberation day — This could be the day that your war ends.
There is a great Shakespearean quote from one of my favorite war flicks, “To End All Wars.” Released 2001, starting Robert Carlyle and Kiefer Sutherland. Based on a real-life story of Allied soldiers in Burma who were held captive by the Japanese several years before the ending of World War II.
During a touching and dramatic scene prior to their rescue, when all hope had been beaten out of the POWs, American B-24 bombers flew over the prison camp. Suddenly, like large fluttering snowflakes, hundreds of leaflets from the Allied forces decended down onto the camp.
On each of the leaflets held a message of hope and liberation, announcing the end of the war and the impending arrival of Allied forces. The reaction of the Japanese soldiers was to immediately abandon the camp and retreat into the jungle.
The POWs bewildered, as their captors fled, being severely weakened from malnutrition and abuse, couldn’t believe what was happening. As the significance of the moment dawned on the terribly broken men, a fellow POW began quoting the following:
“For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition from this day to the ending of the world. But we in it shall be remembered; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” –Henry V Act 4, Scene 3, St. Crispin’s Day
I want you to know that while you may be suffering alone; confused, bewildered, dried up on the inside, and losing hope, your rescue is coming. You are not alone! While we’re not all held captive together in a prison camp, we are all together in spirit. Each tear we silently shed is our “bleeding.” It is what binds us together beyond space and time. It’s what makes us brothers and sisters. We all have our own stories as to how we’ve become broken, abused, and imprisoned. Your story does matter and is critically important!
It’s in the remembering and the telling of your story that could change everything — It did for me.
In the 2007 movie: “Reign Over Me,” starring, Adam Sandler as Charlie Finemen, a man who was completely lost because of the horrific and sudden death of his beloved wife, Doreen, and his three little daughters, Geena, Jenny, and Julie, in one of the doomed hijacked planes of 911.
Charlie runs into his old friend, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle). The two had shared a dorm room while at a dental school, for two years, and now, nearly five years later, and having lost touch with one another, they bumped into each other by chance, on a street corner in New York.
Alan Johnson, surprised at Charlie’s state of grief and lost-ness, tries to help his old friend recover. He ends up getting Charlie to see his therapist friend, Angela Oakhurst (Liv Tyler).
Charlie finally consents to see the therapist. Charlie seems not to be listening to Angela’s recommendations and asks if his counseling secession could be over. Angela consents and says:
“If you want it to be, Charlie.”
So, Charlie gets up from the sofa and is nearly out of Angela’s office when he is stopped by her. She gives him one last piece of advice:
“Charlie, before you go, I’d like to say something. Look, the fact is you had a family and you suffered a great loss, and until you discuss that and we can really talk about that, this is all just an exercise. I can be patient, Charlie, but you need to tell someone your story. It doesn’t have to be me, but someone.”
Charlie did begin to tell his story to his friend, Alan Johnson. Although painful, it began the recovery of a long battle with grief and loss, whereby through this tragedy, he had developed PTSD.
I strongly encourage you to find someone to tell your story to a therapist, friend, pastor, priest, or rabbi. If not, reach for pen and paper and begin your own memoir. As you may eventually discover, your own story is worth telling, and suddenly, your desert may turn into an oasis.
It’s never too late to start. I started writing my story at age fifty-four. The writing and telling of my story have given me a greater understanding and clarity that I did not have before I began to write.
Author and speaker John Eldredge responded in an interviewer when asked the following question:
Interviewer:
“Why is it so important for us to view our lives as a story?”
John Eldredge:
“We’ve tried to sort and solve our confusion with tips and techniques, principles — a truth here — a proposition there, but it doesn’t really work. I’m suggesting that we’ll get a whole lot farther down the road to clarity and understanding if we look at things through the lens of story.”
I had, tried all the empty “tips and techniques, principles; a truth here or a proposition there,” and have found that these things may offer some relief, but do not take us as far as we need to go in our journey. It is the telling or writing of your story and, as Mr. Eldredge has suggested, looking at your life and, “all things through the lens of a story.”
I have written my story in many articles that I have posted and published. They are all my jewels and pearls of life. It is my sincere hope that I’ve spread them before the needy, the brokenhearted; those in dungeons of despair and those imprisoned with guilt, and not to those who would cheapen them — who would embellish themselves upon my misery and that of others. But even so, to such people, I bid you come, and take what you want, for the greatest of my treasures lay not in Wall Street, or on Main Street, but in heaven.
I encourage you to consider your life as a “story”. It contains all the chapters of your life, with good days and bad days. With chapters of pain and agony and pages of suffering, chapters of recovery and joy and pages of contentment. Your story is made up of all your events of life and when you are brave enough to take a peek, you may begin to see there has been an Author all along, doing something in you through each and every chapter of your life.
And even though, at least so far, this has been a short version of my story and journey from severe child abuse and the development of PTSD early in my life, there has been and remains an Author and Artist throughout all the years of my life.
God has intricately woven and written my story, using all the chaos and heartache, loss and pain, seasons of happiness and great joy, months of loneliness and despair, years of poverty and wealth — the list goes on and on.
For nearly sixty-six years now, nothing in life or in the dying has changed this one important truth:
Christ is our only answer and our only hope!
Turn to Him, who is well acquainted with grief and sorrow. He bore it all, not for title or position, but that He may become a Savior worth trusting and a Lamb to gentle your condition.
Begin your journey of hope and healing and call out to the Abba of Jesus. He is the end of your search for hope and healing and the cure for your hurting heart and soul.
Trusting Him may just begin a new and beautiful story.
This can be your liberation day — This could be the day that your war ends.
Well, this is what I thought my name was—not because my mom and dad called me Shame, but somehow, in their inflection—when they used my real name—shame is what I had felt. Shame is my earliest memory—which, believe it or not, I was only eighteen months old!
In the spring of 1961, I was a toddler, sitting on my highchair in Paramus, New Jersey, about to eat my very first peanut butter sandwich. My mom had skillfully cut the crust away and segmented my sandwich into four small squares. I remember staring at the plate mom placed on my stainless steel highchair tray. I guess I’m supposed to eat it, so I curiously picked up a square, oozing with peanut butter, and touched it to my lips and tongue. My immediate reaction was to curl my mouth and retract my tongue in disgust while drooling the pasty peanut butter from my mouth to my chin.
Without provocation, my mom grabbed the sandwich square, mauled it into a ball, grabbing my chubby cheeks so hard it forced my mouth to open. She then, with an angry face, tightly gritted teeth, she began shoving the sandwich into my little and nearly toothless mouth, pushing so hard it caused me to choke, gasping for air! Suddenly, my gag reflex kicked in, and I threw up milk and whatever else made it to my stomach all over the highchair tray!
Suddenly, and shockingly, my mom slapped me so hard, me and the highchair nearly tipped over! For what seemed like minutes, or at least until my breath came back into my tiny lungs, I let out a blood curdling scream! While being confused and terrified, my mother slapped me again for crying. To this day, I still hate peanut butter sandwiches.
As an eighteen-month old toddler, I couldn’t process that event in any other way than to conclude something is terribly wrong with me. And this is what shame does; It robs you of your identity and lessens your self-worth. You don’t even know it’s happening, especially if you’re raised in a house of shame.
I have so many of these kinds of memories that it could easily fill an entire book! I will, however, share one more childhood memory of shame for context.
Don’t Pee Outside!
One summer day when I was a normal seven year old boy, one of my siblings tattled on me, reporting to mom:
“Tommy peed outside!”
My mom quickly called me inside to the kitchen, where she did most of her interrogations;
“Did you pee outside?”
—Sitting across the table was my mom’s best friend, Gloria Martin—
With fear and trepidation, I cautiously nodded my head, yes. My mom’s angry face was enough for me to repent, but by seven, I had learned that this was the precursor to shame and abuse.
My mother reached towards the left side of our kitchen table and grabbed a small pair of curved pedicure scissors. Simultaneously, she commanded me to pull down my pants. She then yanked down my underwear, exposing my penis in front of Mrs. Martin.
Mother grabs my penis, stretching it out, and with the scissors in her left-hand proceeds, or at least convinced me she was going to cut it off! I was brutally shamed and abused. Although, as a seven year old little boy, my faculty of reason was undeveloped. I could only interpret the abuse and shame that something is incurably wrong with me. That, and hundreds of days like it, might be the reason my name, Tommy, Tom, or Thomas, was replaced with the name, Shame.
I think chronically shaming a person is similar to murder. I’m not a forensic pathologist nor a psychologist, but isn’t murder when you premeditatedly end the life of a human being? Shame kills identity and destroys self-worth. Shame replaces the spark of life and light with darkness and a desire to cease living.
Several years ago, I was investigating a burned out office building in Berkeley, California. Everything was darkly sooted and smelled heavily of smoke and ash. I was there to measure the fire and smoke damage for an insurance company. As I was photographing each room, I entered one office that had several floor to ceiling shelves filled with books. All the books were heavily sooted and many soaked with water by the fire department. Except, one book, which stuck out a bit. Puzzled as to why this book was so clean, I pulled the book from the shelf. On the cover was a mother sitting on a chair with two small murdered children under one arm and a knife in her other hand. The title of the book:
“Soul Murder – Child Abuse and Deprivation” By LL Shengold – 1989
Needles to say, I had to read it!
To summarize the book a bit:
“Soul murder involves the deliberate traumatization or deprivation by an authority (parent) of his charge (child). The victim is robbed of his identity and of the ability to maintain authentic feelings. Soul murder remains effective if the capacity to think and to know has been sufficiently interfered with—by way of brainwashing – Paradoxically, in order to survive and adjust, some of these people so traumatized as children develop unusual strengths and gifts.”
While this book is highly clinical, I began to unravel and understand what eighteen years living in a house of shame and abuse did to me. Tommy, Tom, or Thomas was soul murdered and the imposter, named Shame had taken his place.
This is not a hopeless story. Yes, it had been a story of physical and psychological abuse and years of despair and deprivation. But my story is actually very much hope-filled. I hope the telling of my story may be the catalyst for you, too, to find hope and healing.
My Safe House
Almost every spy thriller or story of espionage has a safe house. Well, at ten years old, I had my safe house, too. Only, it’s not the safe house of spy movies, filled with firearms, passports, and bags of currency. Nope, my safe house was church!
Church was the only place my mother couldn’t hurt me—even if she was within a swift and accurate backhand to my face, she wouldn’t dare strike me. I learned that Church was not only a safe place for an abused little boy but also a safe place for fake and phony people, like my mommy dearest. Churches rarely will preach, if at all, against child abuse within the home. I think partly because far too many pastors abuse their own families for the sake of “ministry.”
One thing you learn in a shamed-based family is that sometimes moms or both parents will use their children as props. For some children, like me, being a “prop” can destroy your sense of “me” to where you are nothing more than an image or an appendage of your mother. If it sounds incestuous, then you’re correct because it is. It doesn’t have to be sexual in nature to be incestuous. For me, it meant that I, along with my siblings, were used for our mother’s psychological and physical pleasure. We were all adornments that added to our mother’s glittering image. We were less than human. We were little shame-bots who obeyed our mother’s abusive shaming tactics.
There was no greater day of the week for my mother to excel in her fakery than on Sunday. Sunday was my mother’s morning masquerade! She would dress us five boys with button-down shirts, ties, sports coats, spit-polished wingtip shoes, and our hair plastered perfectly with Dippity-doo hair gel of the Sixties and Seventies! My little and only sister was dressed like Shirley Temple! Boy, but we were a real hit in Church! We looked, and, albeit forcibly so, played our parts as the “perfect Christian family” like trained little monkeys!
The fake “perfect Christian family” persona only hid the shame and abuse of all six of us siblings. While Church was my safe house, just like safe houses in spy thrillers, sooner or later, the bad guys crash it. Somehow, my mommy dearest found a way of shaming me in Church with a look that said, “wait till I get you home!”
My New Name
With the name, Shame, so indelibly written into my psyche, a name and identity change were impossible for me. Even though I became a Christian at my safe house, Bethany Baptist Church in Martinez, California, nothing changed in the Koester House of Shame.
I want you to understand that it’s not the house of shame in a family or church that needs to change. We do. Yes, some churches can become a house of shame also. After all, churches are made up of families, too, and ideally, are to become one healthy family. However, like dysfunctional and shamed-based families, sadly, some churches and religious organizations can also be shame-based. You should remove yourself from a shamed-based family and church in order to get healthy.
When you get healthy and free from a shame-based culture, family, or church, you will make healthier decisions, and you’ll see more clearly. Clearly enough to walk with God and maybe a godly counselor and begin the healing process.
My New Life
As I began to grow in my faith and reading of Scripture, I learned that my real worth and identity come from my Creator, God. In spite of what many people believe, God is not the “great shamer” in the sky. He’s not abusive or unjust. When Jesus of Nazareth began his public ministry, he walked into a synagogue, opened up a scroll handed to him, and read the following from the Prophet Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good tidings unto those who are cast down; to bind up the wounds of the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those that are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; to order in Zion those that mourn, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of despair.”
When I first read this, light came bursting into my darkened prison cell of shame! You see, Church is not an end to a means, but the means to an end of shame and abuse. Church is where I met the God of my Salvation and the Healer of my murdered soul! A good and healthy Church not only preaches the Gospel (“Gospel” is a Greek word used in the Bible, which means “Good News”). But a healthy church is a fellowship and family of broken people becoming whole together. It’s not a recovery group, per se; it’s a group of humble people living a restored and recovered life! Jesus himself promised that if we believe him, we will have life:
“The thief’s purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.”–John 10:10
“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” –John 11:25
Do you see how this is such good news to a broken, abused, and shamed little boy, as me?
God took away the imposter’s name of Shame and bestowed a new name upon me; I am God’s restored and Beloved Son! He healed my broken heart, set me free from captivity, opened my prison doors of shame and despair, and resurrected my murdered soul! My identity and worth is better than restored—I’m a new creation—fully pardoned for all my sins and clothed in Jesus’s righteousness. I’m no longer dressed to impress my mother, her peers, or her friends.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.” –Jesus of Nazareth, John 3:3
Religion, unfortunately, can be filled with do’s and don’ts; traditionalism, legalism, hierarchy, and elitism are its hallmarks. I’m sure many of you have had good and bad experiences with religion.
My story isn’t about religion, however. It’s about new life, freedom, and forgiveness. I have gained hope and a future that can’t be found in any of the world’s religions or cults. It’s about an intimate connection and communication with the living and real presence of an incredibly loving God!
I wasn’t seeking God, nor did I strain to appease his wrath or try to win his favor. God pursued me. He revealed himself to me in such an amazing way! Even though His Word and Holy Spirit convicted me, God didn’t leave me in my guilt and shame.
You can’t turn away from your sins. That would make you your savior. Without a Savior, you’re left in an endless cycle of rinse and repeat. The active ingredient is true repentance, which comes only from God.
You see, this is the difference between true salvation and religion. Religion leaves you in your guilt and shame, but true salvation removes the stain of sin, guilt, and shame. Religion offers bondage, but God’s salvation, through Jesus Christ, brings forgiveness, a clear and clean conscious, and amazing freedom!
Okay, on to the story of my second birth…
I was ten years old and in Sunday morning service in Martinez, California, at Bethany Baptist Church, “The End Of Your Search For A Friendly Church,” their sign read.
Like so many Sundays before December 20, 1970, I heard the offer of Salvation at the end of each service. Only this time, as we sang a hymn, “Just One Plea,” which convicted my troubled ten-year-old heart.
Nonetheless, I sat there frozen, wanting to stand up but was too afraid. Sitting at a distance, to my right, was my Sunday School teacher, John C. Morgan. At that time, he was 84 and a Christian for 64 years. I loved that man as though he was my grandfather.
As the song continued, I struggled to sing the following words:
“Just as I am, without one plea But that Thy blood was shed for me And that Thou bid’st me come to thee O Lamb of God, I come, I come…”
I looked towards John Morgan, and at his old leathered face; he gently smiled and motioned with his head in the direction of the center aisle. His gentle smile and motion gave me enough courage to stand up and walk my green mile to the altar, where I did business with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Whereby I confessed and repented from the sins of a lost and guilt-ridden, ten-year-old little boy. Can a ten-year-old boy be guilty of sin? Do birds fly? Any honest parent or sibling knows the answer!
I placed my faith and belief in all that Jesus accomplished here and in heaven. I wept every step of that short journey to the altar but found indescribable joy at the moment of God’s salvation.
I am so saddened that many churches no longer do alter calls, or they do them, but only with every head bowed and every eye closed. No, my dear brothers and sisters, let salvation be seen! Allow God’s lost sons and daughters their time of triumphant entry into God’s amazing grace, mercy, and love!
Praise God for his indescribable love to those who believe and obey his good news! Seek God through Jesus his Son, here, now, while he can be found. Confess your sins, turn from them, and believe in the Son of God!
This December 20, 2024, will be my second birth celebration of 55 years as a Christ-follower.
I am a child of the Most-High God, all because Jesus Christ, His Son, took upon himself all of the wrath of God in my place.
God is the secret behind my 44-year marriage. He guided me as a faithful father. He made me into a man of peace. He softened my heart. He healed my broken and abused heart. He forgave me all of my sins. And, very importantly, he calls me son and allows me to call him Abba-Father! “Abba,” means daddy or poppa.
“Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”’ –Galatians 4:6
Don’t fall for burdensome religion; fall in love with God. He first loved you–loved you enough that His Son, Jesus Christ, took God’s wrath upon himself, so you, too, can become His son or daughter! Amen
Toni and I often talk about life changes, boundaries, and priorities. But family always tops our list.
Watching our children grow up, getting married, and seeing them succeed in their careers is what brings us joy. But what’s much more important is their relationships with each other and their commitment to our family and to the families they’re building.
The older I get, inching closer to the end of life, the irony is that it forces you to live a more meaningful life now, or at least it should. To wait until retirement to prioritize family is a sad mistake that I think too many make.
We do need to die, in some respects, to those things which promote death and live more towards those things which promote life. It’s like choosing between bacon, which I love, but it fosters death, and beansprouts, which I hate but promote life. However, living life on hospital food is certainly no fun either. So, we strive for a balance. And, this is what my brush with death has taught me.
The movie “Click,” with Adam Sandler, has some great truths running through it, along with its great humor and satire.
Morty (The Angel of Death), played by Christopher Walken, tells Michael Newman, played by Adam Sandler, who’s fast-forwarding his way through life with an enchanted TV clicker:
Morty remarks:
“He’s always chasing the pot of gold, but when he gets there, at the end of the day, it’s just cornflakes.”
Towards the end of the movie (WARNING SPOILER ALERT), Michael finally gets it and cries out, in his throes of death:
Michael Newman: [dying] “Family, family… … FAMILY COMES FIRST.”
Isn’t it so true? Family should come first, and I can promise, in the very moment when life is quickly or slowly draining from your body, it’s family that first comes to your mind…
… I want to see our two grandchildren, with Josh and Jenny, grow up.
Oh my goodness, it’s Tessa’s 24th birthday, and I will miss it!
Tears began rolling down my face as I saw those moments of life fast-forwarding before me. That was my wake-up call at 2:30 in the morning, Friday, October 11, 2013, as I sat in triage at the Sonora Adventist Hospital all alone, and when the reality of “heart attack” was suggested by the ER physician.
I wanted to exchange “I love you” with my wife and children again! I wanted to see who’d become my son, Jordan’s wife, and welcome her into our family.
I confess that not one of my projects, clients, or deadlines entered my mind while facing the prospect of a heart attack. Not one more contract signing or one more insurance settlement, which I have to face, is most likely what put me in the hospital in the first place.
As it turned out, it wasn’t a heart attack, but me, attacking my heart because of too many “yeses” and not enough “nos.” My physician told me that too much stress could cause cardiac arrest.
I need to say a serious “YES” to life and a meaningful “NO” to death. It’s the wrong choices in those subtle moments that can soon pile up into a health crisis. It is all those times when the tyranny of less critical things overrules the more essential things of life.
“Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no; anything more than that is from the Evil One.” Matthew 5:37 – Jesus of Nazareth
I don’t think striving to love your family correctly, keeping your promises, being home on time for dinner, or kissing your wife and kids goodbye in the morning has put anybody into the hospital.
Proverbs 4:23 says it best: “Guard your heart more than anything else because the source of life flows from it.”
It’s the redeemed heart where God lives that is our source of life. This, too, is where our families live and dwell. This is also where the love of our life resides. Work should never enter our hearts the way God and our loved ones do, for it will always push God, family, and our loved ones out! Guard your heart more than anything else! Not your reputation, ego, pride, or being right—but your HEART!
Our misplaced priorities will always attack what truly matters to our hearts and, if ignored, may eventually cause you to attack your heart, like I did.
So, my new motto for life:
“Family, family… … FAMILY COMES FIRST!”
In this, we find all the treasures of life, and it’s those relationships and memories that are worth living and fighting for.
After all, everything else, “at the end of the day, is just cornflakes!”
Many years ago, August 4, 1984, to be exact; God called Toni and I to Youth With A Mission (YWAM). We needed $4,500.00 tuition for the Discipleship Training School and traveling money from California to the city of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, some 3,500 mile distance.
We embarked on our cross-country journey with our two small children, Josh and Jordan. Toni and I had only $300.00 cash and a gas and oil guzzling, 1973 Chevy station wagon. Needless to say, we were over $5,000.00 short. Yet, we truly believed that God would provide.
On our way to Canada, and after driving all night, the following morning, an 18-wheeler hit our car clocked by a Nevada State Trooper doing 90 miles per hour! The truck burst into flames on impact, skidding 600 feet before it exploded, catapulting debris 100 feet in the air! The impact to our Chevy station wagon thrusted us while inside our large vehicle, up the steep embankment, some thirty feet!
The truck driver jumped out safely, seconds before his rigg exploded! Later, the State Trooper told us that the truck driver had dosed off, which was why he collided into our car. Miraculously, none of us were seriously hurt, even though our Chevy station wagon was totaled. Our trip to Canada appeared to be cut short.
I put my family up in a Motel 6 in Elko Nevada, using part of the $300.00 we had started out with to cover the hotel expense. Yes, my wife and I were confused and dismayed, but soon experienced God’s peace over the crisis.
Within 24 hours of the accident, we received a knock on our hotel room door. It was an insurance adjuster, representing the trucking company responsible for the accident.
The adjuster wrote Toni and I a check for $25,000.00! At that time, it was more money than I had ever held or seen! Way more than enough for our YWAM tuition and traveling expenses!
Since our car was totaled, we took a bus ride to Salt Lake, Utah, to eventually catch a flight. While staying at another hotel, It was the next morning that God took me to a passage of Scripture:
“Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you have forgotten me and turned your back on me, you must bear the consequences…’ — Ezekiel 23:35
This verse popped up three times within 24 hours! It took me a while, but I began to understand what God was saying. Because we had received such a large sum of money that our faith and trust shifted, ever so slightly, from God to the money. In other words, we put our trust in the gift and not the Giver.
Later that morning, I lost my wallet with all the money in it! That Ezekiel verse kept echoing in my mind. Fortunately, I had kept part of the $25,000 settlement in the form of a certified check for $4,500.00, the rest in cash. But the certified check was also in my wallet!
You see, it is so easy and subtle to shift our trust and focus in God to other things. Because God loves us and that he’s a good and faithful Father, he won’t leave us in our sins. He corrects every son and daughter he loves.
Two weeks after we had arrived in Quebec, Canada, the Salt Lake Police Department in Utah sent me a letter, asking me to call or write back and describe the wallet’s contents. I want you to know that I didn’t have time to file a lost wallet report, and nothing in my wallet could’ve led the police to our temporary stop in Quebec. I still have this letter!
It was an absolute miracle that the Salt Lake Police Department found Toni and I while staying on a dairy farm in Quebec, Canada! I still, to this day, do not know how they found us!
Everything was still there in my wallet, except the $20,500.00 cash. Fortunately for us, the Canadian exchange rate in 1984 was 130%. Turning that certified check from $4,500.00 to $5,850.00! Because we had repented and adjusted our hearts, God gave us back just enough. As a matter of fact, because of God’s faithfulness, we were the only students who paid the required tuition in a lump sum!
When God calls us to obedience, he also provides the essentials. For us, his essentials came after each stage of obedience. The miracles were His way of rewarding our faith. Just like a father rewarding his son for doing a good job—God delights in our obedience!
I want you to know that when God calls a man, our response is critical. If we ignore His purpose for our lives, He sees this as rebellion—as stubbornness, which, God can be quick to show His displeasure. Just like He did for me, when I shifted my focus to money and away from Him.
Author and speaker John Eldredge has written that God wants you and me to become His “intimate ally.” He invites you and me to join Him in an adventure—a mission, if you will—a divine purpose that He uniquely planned for us. His mission is so critical for us that He planned it in every detail before He laid the foundations of the earth!
Dudes, did you just hear what I said?
Whether your name is John, Gary, David, or Steve, God thought of you, planned for you, and created a unique purpose for you outside of space, matter, and before time began! Let that sink in for just a moment—you matter so much to God, that you were, and are, in His thoughts, before He created the world and before you were even a twinkle in you parent’s hopes and dreams!
What will you do with this information? Don’t you want to connect with God’s mission for your life and His glory?
I can promise you this; when you do discover God’s divine purpose for your life, it will blow your mind so powerfully that your only response is to weep, tears of deep satisfaction and humility!
That’s what happened to me, I know God wants it to happen for you, too.
When I was twenty-one, my father-in-law, Gary Waltz, took me out to lunch to depart some fatherly wisdom into me, as I was about to become a father. One of the things he spoke to me didn’t make any sense at the time. He said, “Tom, you may never become a good speaker, but you will become a great writer.” By the way, I also became a public speaker!
Honestly, being a speaker or a writer wasn’t even on my radar. I was about to become a father, and that in itself was terrifying enough!
So, in 1981, my father-in-law spoke over my future, and in 2006, over twenty-five years later, it became true! Let’s take a look at a passage in Romans:
“As the Scriptures say, “I have made you a father of many nations.” This is true before God, the one Abraham believed—the God who gives life to the dead and speaks of things that don’t yet exist as if they are real.” Romans 4:17
God used my father-in-law to plant a seed of mission and purpose into my heart and soul. This mission was planned by God, our Creator, before He created our world!
So, back to the year 2006, around Spring time…
… I was about 46 years old when I had met a few people at a ministerial conference. I was there because my brother-in-law, Dwayne DeFount, known by most of you; he and I had started a men’s ministry titled Call To Courage. It was for that reason I was invited.
One of the individuals I had met was an editor of a bi-monthly publication titled America’s Good News, newspaper. We discussed nothing more than brief pleasantries and answered a few questions about our new men’s ministry.
A few days later, I received an unexpected call from a staff person from the newspaper. They invited me to become a columnist and to join the newspaper as a regular writer! I was shocked! I spoke to no one about writing, nor was it on my mind! I acted like I knew what all this meant. The staff-person explained what type and size font to use, how many words to include in each article, and the submission deadlines. Then the call ended.
As I hung up my phone, I placed my face into my hands and burst into tears! Tears, not of fear or sadness, but tears from an unexplored depth within my heart and soul! Those tears were of great humility and of purposeful fulfillment.
God had united His divine purpose and mission, for which He had planned before space, matter, and time existed, to be His writer! Now, do you see why it was so important for my father-in-law to plant God’s seed of mission and purpose into my life, so many years, prior? My father-in-law didn’t have a clue what and why he said that I was to become a writer, but God did.
Remember Romans 4:17?
“… Abraham believed—the God who gives life to the dead and speaks of things that don’t yet exist as if they are real.”
That is exactly what God did to me. He spoke those “things that were not yet, as if they are real!”
And this is why I’m here, speaking with you young men and even the older men here today. God has planned a mission or missions for you, too. I know this as I know the sun will rise in the East and settle in the West.
No man here today, in this place, at this moment and time is missionless or without divine purpose. As a matter of theological fact, you being here tonight was so ordered by God! This message was crafted, especially for you! You were and are in the mind and heart of God before He spoke the world into existence. In His timing, the seed He planted into the depths of your heart and soul is either being watered or harvested in you this night.
God longs for you to join Him in His adventurous mission for your life and for you to become His trusted and intimate ally. God trains the stouthearted during the journey. He looks for men, like you, who’ll not ask the faithless question about how? but will be brave enough to ask, when?
When God? I am willing. I know you are able. Prepare me as you have done with the men of Scripture. So that one day you will say to me, “… we’ll done my good and faithful servant.”
Oh, and remember to never trust the gift more than the Giver! Amen
“Be careful that no one fails to get God’s grace. Be careful that no one loses their faith and becomes like a bitter weed growing among you. Someone like that can ruin your whole group.” —Hebrews 12:15 (ERV)
A simple yet profound question from a friend has stayed with me:
“Tom, are you bitter or better?”
Life’s trials will come, but our choice determines our sense of peace. Bitterness isolates; betterness unites. By embracing God’s redemptive grace and forgiving others, we unlock a life of freedom, love, and meaningful relationships.
We are all confronted with hurt and pain from others. The choice to become bitter or better is available to all of us. The choice always comes down to two letters, the letter i or the e, b(i)tter or b(e)tter.
Bitterness is a collection of wrongs done by others, causing emotional constipation, psychological disfigurement, and spiritual disconnection from God and others.
The Holy Spirit wants to move us away from bitterness and leads us towards betterment. That is what God’s grace means here—the empowerment to avoid bitterness.
Matter of fact, the verse from Hebrews warns us to be careful that no one fails to receive God’s grace and that no one loses their faith. In other words, we need to watch each others back, rather than plunging knives into them.
Bitterness is the absence of God’s grace, as it displaces his presence, his wisdom, and conviction of the Holy Spirit. A bitter person is always looking to recruit people into their cesspool of bitter complaints. If you join them you’ll get drawn into their emotional quicksand with no one to rescue you!
We become bitter only when we reject God’s grace whispered to us by the Holy Spirit, and when we follow and listen to bitter people. Bitterness is a contagion; it is contracted through casual gossip and always corrupts the mind before it rots the soul. Bitterness has destroyed marriages, families, businesses, and especially churches.
Stay with God’s Word and his distinct and clear voice. Obey the Holy Spirit and become better. If not, you’ll destroy your faith, and walk away from God and the people who truly love you!
Even if you are bitter, you can become better. According to Hebrews 12:15, the antidote against bitterness is ensuring that not one person is missing out from God’s grace. Doing that leaves little time and opportunity for bitterness to take root.
When you stab yourself and others with bitterness, you also forfeit God’s grace that could be yours.
People will love a better you, but bitterness will drive even your closest friends away. Bitterness is a pill, whereby its side effect causes loneliness and detachment. Not only between those who love you, but even within yourself. Your bitterness makes you dangerous—a danger to yourself and others.
Bitterness grows within your heart and soul, like a destructive and evasive tree root. It enters into areas it doesn’t belong, causing emotional disfigurment, and psychological damage. But its damage is reversible. There is hope and healing!
Do you want to live a better life?
Then forgive the offense of others, and you’ll live a bitter free life.
I know—I know, you’ve been terribly hurt or offended. But your bitterness puts you in competition with God. You’re actually saying, “I know better than God,” and therefore you feel justified to condemn. That’s pretty tragic, don’t you think?
But the longer you hold onto bitterness, the more impossible it is for you to forgive. The longer you wait to forgive those who’ve hurt you the further away God’s grace becomes.
I don’t want you to miss out on God’s grace, I want you free and full of life, just like you used to be. I want you to find your faith again in God and to enjoy his presence in your soul.
I want you to love and to be loved again. I want you to stop the cruelty to your heart and soul!
Don’t you see?
Bitterness is not the cure—it’s a poison! The real cure may seem impossible, but it’s the only cure that will set you free and put you on the road to recovery.
The only cure to bitterness is forgiveness. Forgiveness is even more powerful if you were to lead in it. I promise that if you do, you’ll be right as rain and feeling better and not bitter.
Call To Courage 