Reaching Hurting Women Ministries
Walking in Victory with Jesus Christ™
This blog ministry is dedicated to reaching women who are hurting in some way.
I’m struggling to find words that will minister to you because I’m in need myself.
These last two months have been incredibly busy for our family and business. All good, but none the less, I pushed myself past physical, mental and emotional exhaustion to complete spiritual emptiness.
Instead of sharing lame words of encouragement I will ask for your prayers.
Photo Courtesy of 123RF Stock Photos
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| Fantasy shock waves send out ripple effects into the reality of our lives. |
In today’s culture many see sexual fantasies as normal and harmless. Women who read romance novels or watch soap operas, who meet people anonymously on Internet chat rooms or are addicted to pornography, spend large amounts of time in fantasy.
As a recovering sex addict I know the power fantasies can have. For years I lived in a continual state of fantasy. It could be a simple daydream because I was attracted to someone, all the way to a full blown sexual fantasy where I planned every step needed to get that person in bed and what I would do once I got them there. Looking back I don’t know how I functioned in my daily life.
Over time I learned if I focused on a fantasy long enough I was able to make it come true. The ripple effects of my fantasies became extremely destructive, not only to my own well-being but to my marriage and my entire family. Sadly my fantasy life became so pervasive it sent shock waves that destroyed the reality I was constantly trying to escape. I lost my job, my car, my family and even my freedom for a time.
Dreams and vision can be good if our focus is healthy and lines up with God’s will for our life. We must be careful that what we imagine is what we really want. Our fantasies may come to pass, bringing with them unknown ripple effects, sending destructive shockwaves that could take years to repair. It took over 10 years to repair the damage made due to one particular fantasy I pushed into reality.
Don’t think for a minute that you can get away with these “harmless” fantasies. If you continue giving them power in your life, it’s only a matter of time before they will take over.
We must make a covenant not only with our eyes but with our mind. Let’s be committed to live out what Philippians 4:8 tells us ~ think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy.
Photo courtesy 123RF Stock Photos
As a part of my morning devotions I focus on a particular step as it relates to the month on the calendar.
October is Step 10…
Anyone who has planted a garden knows the work required to keep it healthy. We must remove rocks and weeds, nourish the soil, plant the seeds, water them and then guard them from bugs. Most gardens once belonged to the weeds first before we began planting other flowers or vegetation. And those weeds want their space back and are willing to fight for it. Continuous care is needed to keep the garden free of weeds that will take over if allowed.
The life of recovery is much like that garden. Our lives were once ruled by weeds, our addictive habits and unhealthy behaviors. But Praise God, He has planted a new garden in our life. He pulled all the weeds and instead has planted some beautiful things in their place. He has used the 12 Steps as tools and has showed us how to do things differently. But we mustn’t let our guard down. As long as we live, we will have the weeds, our past behaviors, trying to creep back in. That is why Step 10 is critical. We must be diligent and continually take personal inventory to see if we have allowed any old habits to sneak back into our lives.*
*Excerpts taken from The Twelve Steps for Christians.
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Step 9:
Made direct amends to people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 9 is a culmination of the forgiveness process: forgiving ourselves and others, receiving forgiveness from God and others. But before we can forgive ourselves fully, we must first acknowledge the pain others have suffered because of our actions. Once through this process we will be closer to our goal of peace with ourselves and peace with others.
By taking inventory with Step 4 we’ve purged ourselves of hidden secrets and wrongs doings but maintained balance by looking for the good as well. In Step 5 we pressed through the shame confessing our faults to another person. Now armed with the list of persons we harmed from Step 8, we prepare to personally make amends for the things we have done.
There are going to be people that we can’t make amends to for various reasons, but where possible we must take this important step. A commitment to changed behavior can be an acceptable substitute when personal contact to make amends isn’t appropriate.
While painful and difficult, the amends process is critical in the healing process. Prayerfully seek God’s wisdom and discernment before making amends. Phone calls and letters are perfectly acceptable ways of making contact when face to face isn’t possible.
Some basic guidelines:
Remember God is a God of restoration. He will give you just the right words and timing to say what needs to be said. Give it all to Him!
If you take your gift to the altar and remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift on the altar. Go and make right what is wrong between you and him. Then come back and give your gift. ~ Matthew 5:23-24 New Life Version
This summer I attended a women’s workshop to wrap up of the Christian Virtues class I took in the Spring.
For one of the exercises, we paired up with a partner to practice sharing and listening skills. The goal was for the sharer to communicate a problem to the listener, who would then reflect back the problem and if possible, help solve it. The partners then switched roles and repeated the exercise with a different scenario. Some scenarios were fictional, but my partner, Sue, and I chose to use situations taken from our lives.
The situation I chose to share was from a pivotal and extremely difficult time in the 1990’s. When it happened I never shared my personal pain with anyone. Instead, I hid my pain, allowing the enemy to pull me into a downward spiral that lasted more than a decade, nearly costing me my marriage and my family.
During the workshop sharing exercise, Sue heard my pain without judgement, then gently offered me guidance and God’s love. More than fifteen years after the fact, I learned a valuable lesson:
If I would have done this years ago, I could have saved myself and my family lots of heartache!
Both are important roles we will play several times in our lives with various friends and family members.
How good are we at listening?
Most of us not good at all.How good are we at sharing our feelings and pain?
Not much better.How can we improve?
Practice.
God loves us and puts the right people in our lives at just the right time. The challenge is to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, so we can recognize the person who needs our listening ear or feel that gentle nudge when it’s time to share our own struggles.
By internalizing our pain to avoid embarrassment today, we may set ourselves up for future suffering.
We must be willing to share our pain, open up our vulnerabilities and risk bring judged in order to receive potential inner healing.
Don’t go thru your pain alone!
Look around. Reach out… God has given you a friend who will understand and walk with you.
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.~Proverbs 17:17 NKJV
There are many ways one can be A Prisoner of the Moment here are some:
1. Distracting ourselves with things of the world prevent us from being present.2. Focusing on a memory or fantasy prevents us from being present.
They all do the same thing, keep us from dealing with who we are, where we are and what we’re feeling.
There is only one thing worth being concerned about. ~Luke 10:42
In my personal recovery walk I focus my daily devotions on the Step that coincides with the month of the year. For the month of August I’m focusing on Step 8.
Step 8: Made a list of all persons we harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
In Step 8 we start to grow up. We begin doing things that mature people do–taking responsibility for our actions and the wrongs we committed.
Prior to this we have focused mostly on ourselves. In Step 4 we took our moral inventory. In Step 5 we admitted our wrongs. In Step 8 it’s time to look beyond our self to see how we affected those around us.
Step 8 is a very humbling experience. We must recognize our part in the harm that has been done to others. Removing our need to blame others and accepting full responsibility for our actions.
Like our personal inventory, remembering the faces of those we have hurt, can be a very painful process. We must write their names down, carefully considering our relationships and how we harmed them.
Total honesty with ourselves is important in making restitution and going forward with peace of mind. But along with the pain of recognizing the damage we have done, comes a welcome relief that we’ll no longer cause these injuries to our self and others.
Once the list of those we have harmed is prepared, we must ask God for the willingness needed to make the amends. With His help and in His time we can.
Do to others as you would have them do to you. ~ Luke 6:31
Real Sex ~ The Naked Truth About Chastity
by Lauren F. Winner
Published by Brazos Press 2006
183 pp
Wow! …Is the best place to start with Lauren Winner’s hard hitting book Real Sex ~ The Naked Truth About Chastity. I’ve taken a long break from reading, so it took me a bit to get into; but once in, I couldn’t put it down and plowed through it in one day.
Ms.Winner beautifully and intelligently takes on the subject of sex: sex in our culture and the community, sex before and after marriage, sex and single adults and most importantly sex and the church. Real Sex is conservative yet honest, direct and engaging, intellectual (keep a dictionary handy) and best of all–completely scriptural!
Real Sex is a must read for every Christian adult, single or married. Parents, read it and share what you learn with your teens and tweens. There are excellent discussion questions in the back of the book for small groups or family talks around the dinner table.
Ms.Winner teaches us valuable lessons about how our culture and the Christian church view sex and deal with chastity. She raises some great points that will leave your thinking about what we should do differently. We would all do well to step up to the challenges she humbly puts forth. This book would be an great resource for single and married adult ministries as well as youth ministries across America.
In the last 6 years I’ve read numerous books on sexuality, secular and Christian. But I have yet to find a more relative book that speaks directly to my testimony and the ministry to which I have been called. Blessings, gratitude and applause to Ms. Lauren Winner. I am now a huge fan!
I highly recommend Real Sex~The Naked Truth About Chastity and intend to use it regularly as a resource for my ministry…
Continuing my goal to work The Twelve Steps, one Step for each month of the year; focusing on Step 7 for July…
Step Seven:
Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
Step Seven is critical to the cleansing process and will prepare us for the next stages of our recovery. In the first six steps, we became aware of our problems, looked at ourselves honestly, revealed hidden parts of ourselves and became ready to change.
Step Seven is the opportunity for God to remove these hidden areas. If you are anything like me, your list is long and painful to reflect on. That pain may bring us to our knees, but what better place to humble ourselves before the Lord in prayer.
We must not hold anything back. It is only in surrendering everything to Him, that we will find true healing and freedom. We must take the inventory list and give each item to God; only then will we experience the serenity that brings the true joy we seek.
Going down the list of shortcomings can cause us to dwell on our self. To take our mind off self, we can meditate on Christ’s presence in our life, on being free to live life following His example. We will soon begin to care more for others and put our self in proper perspective. We will begin to understand who we are and find joy in becoming the person God wants us to be.
To truly humble ourselves in the biblical sense, we must see ourselves as God see us. This can be difficult when our entire life as been spent seeing our self as worthless. By reading and meditating on God’s word regularly we will find the value God sees in us and His plan for our life. We must empty our self like Christ did, surrender to God’s will, serve others and thereby fulfill God’s plan for our life.
It takes faith and courage to ask God to remove our shortcomings. We must trust that God hears us when we pray and believe He wants to answer us. We may not feel or sense an immediate change, but in thankfulness we can go forward confessing that God has heard our request and has begun the change in us. In time change will come to our sight.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. — Psalm 51:10-12
Originally posted January, 9, 2009
Having been out of town the better part of the month, I’m late posting June’s 12 Step work. Better late than never 😉 Blessings…
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Getting ready for God to remove character defects in itself is a process. Some character defects are like old friends, comfortable and available.
We can’t even get ready with out God’s help!
In Steps One and Two we realized our powerlessness and found God’s Power to be greater than ours. Step Three we turned our life and our will over to God. Steps Four and Five we admitted hard truths to God, to ourselves and to another person.
Now in Step 6 we wait for God to do some internal work on our hearts. It’s not an action step on our part, but rather preparation that will enable us to become ready to release our character faults when the time comes in Step 7.
This is not quick work. Most of our character defects have been deeply ingrained in us since childhood. These patterns of behavior were often used as coping mechanisms in a traumatic environment. It will take time and practice to switch from our comfortable character defect to trusting God and allowing Him to be completely in control.
We must see our faults not as comfortable friends but harmful behaviors that have begun to control our lives. Once we know the truth about our faults and what must be removed; we can overcome our fears and with God’s help, gather our self in readiness to go forward in recovery.
Humble yourself before the Lord and He will lift you up.~ James 4:10
