“He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.”
Years after the abuse, as I worked my way out of the abuse maze, I tended to be very focused on myself. For a while, everything was about me. I focused on the healing and on the healing process. I wanted to be healed! I wanted to stop hurting!
One day as I was crying out to God because of the pain, He showed me the verse above and the wonderful system He has set up to make His salvation available to me. I already had salvation through Jesus Christ, but I was a hungry for a salvation from my past and from my pain, and God made me understand His plan in this verse.
I had to get my eyes off myself and put them on God. Healing had become the Holy Grail, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the focus of my life’s energies. I had to tell God that if He never finished healing me, I would still love Him. I turned my eyes away from myself and put them on Jesus and God. I grew to love worshiping God on Sunday mornings and in my own private times with Him.
If you can’t think of something positive to tell God, go to the Psalms and read one of those aloud to Him. Focus on a particular theme—You are faithful, You are holy, or You are righteous—and tell Him all the times in your life when you have experienced His faithfulness, His holiness, or His righteousness. Recount or read Bible verses to support your happy theme. Sing a new song to Him you make up on the spot. These are your thank offerings upon which God is going to build something tremendous. After a while, you will forget that you are doing all this in order for Him to do something for you. Simply worship and enjoy Him, which was probably His intent all along!
I also began to thank Him for the good things that had happened in my youth. For years into my adulthood, I could think of nothing good that had happened to me as a child. I viewed my whole childhood as a waste, as a wickedness happening to an innocent child. Then I began to ask God to show me some good things that had happened, and, of course, He did.
You ask God, too. You will begin to remember people who were kind to you and places where nothing bad ever happened. Happy times sandwiched between the evil will begin to emerge in your memory, and you will be so glad to see them there! Thank God for them and for the places in your life where He had been, things that you will now recognize as God’s cooling hand on your heated, young life. You will reclaim your past, the part of your life that was yours and not your abuser’s. It will be a wonderful exercise, and you will reap many blessings from it.
The Israelites wandering in the desert did not know that Jesus was with them. All they knew about was thirst, sand, manna, snakes, scorpions, and the lack of garlic! But read this incredible verse in 1 Corinthians 10:4: “…for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” This is amazing! He was present, and they did not even know it!
Worship God, your Savior. He will show you the good things in your youth so you can thank Him for them. He will show you where He was all those years. And your thank offerings will prepare the way (and your heart) for His salvation.
This a page from the book When God Roared. Each page will be published, one per day, on this website. We pray that God uses it mightily in your life to swaddle you in His love and heal your precious heart.