I have felt very powerless for a very long time. There were so many times I was put into a place where I was desperate for help, yet none came. I began to believe that the horror that was happening to me was all my fault, and therefore I must be very bad. And if I am bad, then God must hate me, because it certainly appeared that He abandoned me.
I have carried these beliefs with me for a lifetime, and they have permeated every aspect of my life. Anytime pain or suffering has come upon me, I blamed myself and my anger and resentment at God grew. Even as a Christian when I had experienced the love of God in life-transforming ways, suffering still brought me to a place of self-hatred and soon I began to blame God as well.
I started to believe that if God was good if He truly loved me and cared for me, He would rescue me out of every trouble and no evil would harm me again. Yet the fact that I was still being abused in Satanic rituals by people who were my handlers and masters made it very difficult to stop the constant suffering and torment. I would lie in a bed and cry and curse God and pray for death because I knew that my torment would end, and God would never rescue me.
I am the LORD, who opened a way through the waters, making a dry path through the sea.
Isaiah 43:16
It is so hard being a survivor and working so hard to get free from the occult ties and not even realize how deeply entrenched in it you still are. Dissociation can be so helpful to protect you while the abuse is happening, but it turns into a double-edged sword when you want to break free. Every instinct inside of me compelled me to protect myself at all costs, and if that meant obeying my occult masters and going to a ritual, then my denial would protect me from knowing what was happening so that I couldn’t stop myself from going.
I don’t know how many years I spent going into inner healing week after week, and still unknowingly going to rituals regularly. Jesus was helping me break down dissociation and free myself from generational curses and programming, but that didn’t stop the abuse. So when I would finally come to a point where I could face what I had been to a ritual, I was tormented by self-hate and rage against God.
Why wouldn’t God rescue me? Why wouldn’t He make the abuse stop? I had to wrestle over and over again with the truth of who God was, and for a time I stopped trying to know Him better and just tried to make it through every day. Eventually, I did come to a place where I was no longer being trafficked in rituals or taken away to be reprogrammed and I am now in a place with more peace and rest than I have ever experienced in my life, but I had to fight tooth and nail to get here.
I will lead blind Israel down a new path, guiding them along an unfamiliar way. I will brighten the darkness before them and smooth out the road ahead of them. Yes, I will indeed do these things; I will not forsake them.
Isaiah 42:16
So many people struggle with the same feelings of anger towards God for their painful circumstances. We often believe that if God loves us He will change our circumstances – He will make the pain stop and give us only joy and peace instead. That is not how God works because God has something much bigger in mind than just making us happy or comfortable. We have to remember that in order to give us freedom from slavery and death, Jesus had to die a horribly painful death. God works within the circumstances, not around them.
It took me a long time to realize that the problems I was facing, no matter how big, did not have to define me. Pain and suffering do not have to define me if I allow God to define me instead. God has chosen me before He created the world to have every spiritual blessing in heaven so that when I came into the world I would be armed with those blessings in order to face the harsh circumstances I was born into.
That means I was given the love and grace of God over my life, and the promise of eternal life with Him. God’s plan and purpose for me was to bring redemption to my life, and He gave me hope to sustain me through the hardships I endured. He has brought so much redemption to my past that I am an entirely new creation. I am not a victim, I am a saint. I am not powerless, I am strong in Christ. I am not hopeless, I am anchored in Jesus forever.
But in that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. You will silence every voice raised up to accuse you. These benefits are enjoyed by the servants of the LORD; their vindication will come from me. I, the LORD, have spoken!
Isaiah 54:17
The devil has tried and failed to take ownership of me and make me his slave. I have learned to endure and persevere through it. Where the enemy meant to make me a helpless victim, God has given me the gift to pray and intercede for others. Where Satan meant for me to be angry and manipulative, God has helped me to be humble and gracious. God has used every bit of the evil against me to form me even more into the image and likeness of Christ, and through that, I have come to know Him even more deeply.
God is good, and it’s His goodness that defines us when we allow Him to take our circumstances and use them as a refiners fire. Fire does not feel good while we are going through it, but on the other side is a purity that cannot be matched. God does not will upon us suffering and pain, but He absolutely can use them to show us the truth of just how good He is. God will never choose for us to be abused or suffer, but in this world of evil, we are going to face these things.
God’s original plan was paradise for us, not evil. Man chose evil over God, but God chose to forgive man and make a way for humans to prevail over the very evil we desired. God always makes a way for us, because He is a loving Father, and that will never change.
For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19
I know you are suffering or struggling with the things you think God has allowed, but I challenge you today to shift your perspective to a heavenly mindset so that you can see the truth of who God is. Look back on your life and see the times He has parted to the Red Sea before you, or helped you to walk on water, things that should have been impossible, but God made them possible for you.
But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31
