A speaker shares how childhood abuse and a broken home led them to seek God directly through Scripture rather than through others' interpretations. They argue that honest, personal encounters with the Bible reveal God's true character and enable healing, especially within supportive Christian community.
Chapters
So here was this really, you know, a kid that had this awful home life. And yet at school, I was learning about God through a song, watching it on TV because, you know, my favorite show, you know, with the name like Barkley, The Big Valley, their name was Barkley. Nobody else, unless you're, you know, entering your golden years, would know the show, but it was fabulous. They were going to church and I thought, oh, I should probably be doing that. And I, you know, I'm a kid, you know, and my parents, you know, the few experiences I had in church weren't, but they go, I go back and I I look at that and I think God was always there. God was sending out, you know, feelers. Yeah. So when you approach God, approach him honestly. You can do that and let him speak for himself through his word. Don't let somebody else go on your vacation. Don't let somebody else introduce you to God. Introduce yourself. Say, okay, God, you know, I gotta have a talk here. Well, I've heard— I don't care what you've heard. So what? Let God introduce himself. The word of God is so real and so lively and so inner. It introduces his character. And I think this holds whether you've been abused or not. It holds for all of us. The word of God is such a vast, amazing thing. And if you make space for that, you'll know who God is. You'll know his character. And if you spend time with sisters and brothers in Christ, the healing is there. The victory is God's. And how he develops that and how he unfolds it for each person might look different. But it's there and it's there for you. And that's just so real. And everybody I talk to, it doesn't matter if you, you know, had a really sweet Christian upbringing. I mean, only in church can you get along with people so vastly different. And in the Christian environment we come from, like at Freedom in Christ, you come from all over, you have all different backgrounds. You can sit down with somebody you've never met before and have these wonderful conversations about anything. Anything. Sure, agreed, agreed. Because you're on a common level, because you have, you know, you have a common understanding about God because you went to the Word to get it. God spoke to you and you can share all this. And for the abused kid, that's that much more because we need so much more. We had so much less and now we have so much more and we have these big gaps and God can fill them. God will fill them. Amen. And you can't go back and forget the abuse never happened. And there is pain. There's pain there.
