For all my life, I have either been in abuse or healing from it. At a time when people are dealing with retirement and believing they are nearing the end of their years on this earth, God has turned my life around and He is just beginning to give me life. Obviously, He isn’t going to turn back the clock and give me all those years back, but what He has done is set me free from abuse, from an abusive, victim mentality.
To be honest, I’d spent so many years dealing with abuse that I never considered there was any other lifestyle. I assumed once abused, always abused. What I didn’t count on was the cause and effect of Jesus in my life. And that thought got me to thinking. The Bible says in John 8:36 “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
What exactly does that mean? How does it apply to my life? I was searching online, and I ran across this article by John W. Ritenbaugh, about John 8:36 and how it applied to the lives of the Israeli people, who are God’s chosen people. We have been blessed to have been grafted in, so this concept also fully applies to us.
John talked about God choosing and establishing the descendants of Abraham and rescuing them from their 400+ years of bondage in Egypt. He brought them out of bondage working through Moses. He set them free from slavery. But as you read through the Bible, these people never stayed free. They were constantly turning their backs on God and living however they wanted which always got them delivered back into bondage.
I thought about that. Abuse is bondage. And if God chose to bring His people out of bondage, then He can bring us out of abuse and out of that victim mentality, not to mention all kinds of addictions. Nicotine, drugs, alcohol, overeating…the list could go on and on.
So, if we look at the history of the Israelites, it doesn’t seem as if they learned their lesson very well. Whenever they turned to God and chose to live according to the laws of God their enemies were defeated, and the Israelites prospered. Yet they always seemed to find themselves being overtaken by their enemies. In their case, it was actual countries that came and subjected them to bondage and slavery. For us, it is the things of this world. 1 John 2: 16 “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
In the article by John W. Ritenbaugh, he said “ God chose to illustrate our enslaved condition through His rescue of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from their bondage to Egypt…However, the Israelites never truly learned the lesson of what having the liberty to choose required of them. John 8:31-37 gives evidence of this when Jesus confronted them about it nearly 1,500 years later… John 8 proves that, despite possessing both biblical and historical records—as well as being taught by the very God of creation right in their presence—individual Israelites failed to choose to be free of the spiritual slavery to which they were currently in bondage. Why? They never overcame the slave mentality that their ancestors learned in Egypt and which they succeeded in passing on to successive generations.
Like their ancestors, they were slaves of sin and passed the same self-centered thinking processes on to their children. They persisted in the same old, carnal ways. They were each unwilling to make the changes in their thinking that God demanded after He called them out of Egypt. Why, despite their advantages, did they not change? John 8 is proof of how tightly bound we are to the anti-God carnality ingrained in our hearts. The Jews ended Jesus’ teaching session with their violent intentions toward Him so filling their hearts that He escaped only because God intervened to protect His life. They grasped that He was telling them that they had to makes changes in their thinking, but they could not bring themselves to make them. They could not change because they were deeply enslaved by a deadly combination of factors. Simply stated, they did not believe who He was and what He said. Rather than submit to them, they fought against these truths.”
Wow! That is so very true! In my own life and in the world today. WE NEED TO CHANGE OUR THINKING! In fact, that is one of the ways God used to bring me out of the victim mentality. He made me start thinking about my thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10: 5 “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;”
Jesus told me to think about what I was thinking about. They were mostly negative, and they all were at odds with God’s Word. They were all lies from the devil. They told me I would never get out of the abuse. This was my whole life and things would never change or get better. Really? That is not what the Bible says. So, what do we choose to believe? I chose to disagree with those thoughts and concentrate on what God’s Word says. Sometimes it seemed impossible and so far out of reach but as I took one step at a time, stopping the old thoughts and refusing to think on them, and then speak out loud Scriptures from the Bible, it took a while, but today as I write this, I no longer live in defeat.
Jesus truly has made me a new creature in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5: 17 “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new”. He will do the same for you. No, it isn’t a magical formula, and He isn’t a fairy godmother who waves his wand, and we ride off into the sunset. Just like the Israelites had a part to do, so do we. It isn’t easy. I know that. And sometimes, God steps in when we don’t think we can make it, but it truly is all about turning to Jesus and letting him show us a better way.
I don’t intend to discredit the struggle. It is real. But with God, all things are possible. Who do you believe, whose voice do you want to hear whispering in your ear? The Bible says that God is good. In our bondage and slavery, we can’t always see that. Jesus took me, He blessed me, He broke me, and now He is giving me as a testimony of what He has done. God is good! But our thinking dictates the direction we take in this life.
The Cross and the Blood of Jesus is what saves us, but our thoughts also dictate the direction we choose to take to, whether to victory or to bondage.
Staying Set Free
