00:00:00.960 Hello, everyone, and welcome to MilMac Musings, where Allison Miller and Gerard MacLellan reveal the intersection between God and science for living wholeheartedly. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Mill Mac Musings, the podcast for our ministry, Destined for Glory. Gerard MacLellan and I are here today, and we're going to talk to you about the evil behind sexual abuse.

00:00:28.380 We're going to dive a good bit deeper into that topic today, and we hope that you will glean something from this that will help you grow and help you find freedom. You know As we begin, I was just thinking when you were introducing us. So thank you. We're looking at the evil that's behind abuse. And we've been talking for the last number of weeks about sexual abuse and the evilness that's behind it.

00:00:54.840 So I just want to read a quote that really kind of gets us started. And this is from Dr. Diane Langberg's book. We all have been directly or indirectly taught things that are laced with lies. We live our lives based on those lies until God uses some means to expose them and teach us His truth instead. If you have grown up in a home or family system full of lies and deceits, the impact has probably been profound.

00:01:22.200 Yeah So as you look at this sexual abuse and what it does to people and how it inhibits the inner child who is going through this. And you know it happens to anybody. You know When you look at it, there's going to be some quotes down the road we'll look at. You know The person themselves, they're just so confused. You know It was a great example. Well, it's not a great example. It's something that illustrates what can happen. You were raped, then you come down for dinner.

00:01:52.680 Right. You hide it. You push it down. Yeah You just go on as if life is normal. And that's just not normal at all. That's not the way God intended it at all. As we move forward to some other quotes and we also want to talk about the particular sexual abuse and the evilness behind it. Anything no matter where we find it that does not bear such fruit is not of God.

00:02:19.980 Even more important, lies, deceit, and evil do not come to us just from people who couldn't help it, or didn't know better, or didn't mean it, or were a little drunk, or anything else you might choose to call it. Jesus tells us that lies, deceit, and evil comes to us from the enemy of our souls, the father of lies. Listen to what Jesus says about this deceiver. He was a murderer from the beginning. And that's so true. Yes.

00:02:46.620 And hopefully, people will go and look at what we have talked about with evil. It really shows you the vastness of it and how much greater it is than people think. But we do have the winner. We are God's children. But you know we want to help you to start the journey to come to this to where we are. But it's not like we have it all figured out.

00:03:14.340 It's just that we are on the other side of where we came through the abuse with Christ to the other side. And so we want this to be a part of helping you and coming alongside. Do you have any thoughts? Well, I mean, the enemy of our soul is all about confusion too. And so he leaves us you know if you grow up in a home like this, you're left being very confused. You don't know the difference between good and evil.

00:03:41.760 You really even lose, as we talked about last week, your sense of self is just shattered. And so he is the father of lies, the enemy is. And he is and always has been a murderer. And that is his intent, is just to take away everything that God has for you that's possible for you to live in this life.

00:04:06.240 And so by keeping you down and believing the lies that happened to you through these experiences are what keep you from being free and living wholeheartedly. So that's what we want to do and help you to see that Christ has a victory. He does. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah And we just have to embrace that. And again, we have to come out of that prison and walk with him to do that.

00:04:34.260 And another thing, too, that I'd like to bring up is that as a child, children look at their caregivers in a different light than we can imagine because they look at them as they can do no wrong, so it must be me. You know So you're looking inwards saying, "Okay, it's me that's the issue of the problem." So how devastating that is for people who've had sexual abuse and who are looking at the person who's doing this, perpetrating this act on them, and they're looking and say, how confused, like you mentioned, but thinking that there's something wrong you know I find there's something wrong here, but what is it because he's right.

00:05:14.940 No, I mean, he's the adult or she's the adult and they're the one perpetrating on the child and the child is just really at their Yes. And so, yeah, thinking about it in those terms, it's almost like you lose sense of trust. You know, you don't know how to trust anybody anymore because those are the people that are supposed to be safe for you. Those are the people that are supposed to be caring for you and making you feel comfortable.

00:05:45.960 So you know this is a tactic of the enemy is to cause you to lose trust for those people. Right. And it's the lies and deceit that's all part of that terrible. And children believe many lies. You know I mean, things happen to them. They don't know. So they believe many lies. And they almost become altruistic also. They want to fix everything. They want to control what happened. And so they're trying to do like, "What did I do wrong? How can I fix this?" Right.

00:06:15.900 So following up in that quote of what Jesus thought of the enemy, you also have to well, I always say have to, but you have to understand that evil, they're nothing but lies and deceit and everything that comes along with that. So a child is being taught that lies are true and the truth are lies. Yeah And that's so sad. I mean, so you carry that as we talked about the inner child.

00:06:43.440 As you try to get through the horrific abuse and safety, your inner child is there. And as we've talked about many times, that inner child, based on shame, pausedness, and we call a lack of attachment pain as well, they move forward in that inner child in relationships based on what they're doing at that age. And when you're 30 or 40, you're still reverting back to that age to deal with things.

00:07:12.660 And that's where we have a lot of trouble because when you're looking at people and they're not acting in a way that just seems to be normal, so does well, normal, to see that if they have a way of reaction or if there's something bothering or they have just anger or anything like that, this is where, as caregivers, as people come alongside as counselors, we step back and see, "Okay, there's something underneath, underlying here." And it's not like we know it all.

00:07:45.360 We're just saying, "Okay, we're here to walk out with you," to help you, to understand that, you know, to start to begin to understand what the truth is and what truly is a lie. So that's just something I think that you know as a ministry that we want to focus on to help people. There's always an underlying issue to what we have going on with our emotions. And as we walk it, you know we walk it out, but we walk it out every day, too.

00:08:13.680 And as we joke around sometimes and everybody knows we're not perfect. But when something happens and Geb, we said this before, you're able to look at it and say, "Something triggered this." And what is it? So then you can step back and then try to work within yourself. And really, at that point, you want to have the self-love, the self-compassion, of understanding. It's okay, this is all right.

00:08:42.720 We're going to get through this. And then to have that, to walk it out, which makes it much easier. Oh, yeah. It really, really does. Yeah. It's totally different from having that trigger and then that flashback and you feeling like you're I mean, you do feel that way anyway, but feeling that way and not knowing how to come out of that. That's scary. That is scary. So that's why you have so many dysfunctional relationships. Right. You know? Yeah. I'm just going to read another quote.

00:09:09.240 Those things that produce produce death rather than life come from the enemy of our souls, no matter how they appear or are presented to us. That's powerful. Yeah. It really is. And that's what we're trying to say that the enemy has produced this, this evilness, and the people who have embraced it. And again, some of that is a lot of that's from generational mirroring. That's all they saw. But it's abuse of power, and it's abusive of what God intended for the family design.

00:09:38.040 And the family design is for us as parents to be nurturing, kind, and to help instill the truth of God. So from generation to generation, that's how things will be. But unfortunately, because of the enemy and what we have talked about before, the vastness of evil has created this, I guess, deceit, this veil. Right. And unfortunately, people are just stuck in that prison. Yeah And it's hard to get out if you can't if you don't want to dig in and do the work.

00:10:10.080 Right. And doing the work, again, is hard. And it brings about triggers and nightmares and other things that will stressors, that will continue to begin to haunt you in a way. But the great part is when you write it out, when you with safe people, that's what you need to be with. Because what you've gone through, obviously, is not safe people.

00:10:35.100 So when you're trying to tell people, you have to do it in a way that will be with people who are safe, who are with you, who have empathy with you, who are walking this out with you, and who know what you're going through, because they're listening, actively listening to me. Right. And when you do that work with a safe person, and they're helping you in that, as you do that work, you actually start beginning to be reconnected to your true self, who you really are, the way that God wired you, the temperament.

00:11:06.240 Exactly. You know And as it was supposed to be in the beginning, but then you learned all these other behaviors. And now, as you're doing that work, you get this freedom that is allowing you to be who you are, and there's just nothing better. I'm going to read another thing based on what we're talking about. This battle in part is about truth. Truth is not a little thing. It is a crucial thing because truth is at the core of who God is. Anything that is not true is not of God.

00:11:37.320 This means that when we pretend, minimize, and deny truth, then we are not in the light. Yes, the light exposes, and yes, that can be excruciatingly painful and disruptive. So that's exactly what they were saying. And we've mentioned before that you may have a distorted view of God, but God is truth, and God is love. And the enemy is what distorts things, and what brings in this evil, and what brings in chaos into a family, and what brings in dysfunction into a family dynamic.

00:12:12.360 And as we grow within the family, and we don't get the help we need, and we're burying these unprocessed emotions, the saddest part of how it hurts us I mean, it really, truly makes me angry yeah that we have been walking in this hurt and this unprocessed emotion of shame and guilt and other things that are part of the emotional process. And we don't have to. No.

00:12:41.520 But the other part of that too, Gerard, is a lot of times people don't understand that they are walking in shame. They don't even know that that's what that is. So as we talk through this, hopefully, you know some of the things that we're sharing are going to enlighten you and help you see areas where you might be denying the truth, or you may not be you know really facing what happened. You're minimizing it. You're making it feel like it wasn't that big of a deal. When in reality, this is a big deal.

00:13:12.360 You're God's child. It is a big deal, and he wants you free. That's so good. You are God's child. Thank you. That's awesome. That's really good. And the confusion that lies there about not understanding that and I was in that for so many years. I just can't tell you how distorted it is to think of the wrong way of how God sees us. And it just creates such a dysfunction in our lives and within our families, too. Right.

00:13:41.280 And so it's sad. It's sad. But we're here to help. And it's all God working through us and through the people in your lives. So we're just happy that you're here. This is a very important one. Do you want to read this? Sure. Okay. You will not heal from the evil of sexual abuse by pretending, denying, or lying about it. It is not possible. And that just goes back to what we were just saying a moment ago. You can't pretend it didn't happen or deny that it happened.

00:14:11.400 I mean, you can. You can, but you're not going to heal from the evil that happened to you. And that's the saddest thing, people who don't take that journey. Yeah To be able to do it and to get to that point where you can start to begin to live wholeheartedly. There's just nothing better than that. You come out of this dysfunction. You come out of the lives. You come out of the hold of the enemy. And this is whether you go through trauma or complex trauma.

00:14:42.600 And we're not saying it's easy, as I've said many times, but we just want you to realize the depth of this deceit. And we want to bring the light into this so you can bring in the process to be healed and whole. We know how embedded it is. We understand. I mean, it started when you were a child. So it's very embedded, but you can heal from it. And the destruction that came about from being so confused.

00:15:12.960 It's a terrible thing. And then you not knowing how to handle it. And as we've talked about before, people not believing you. You know So all of this leads to just the confusion inside you and to the unprocessed emotions. It just like you were saying earlier, it just keeps us those buried. And for me, when I kept my emotions buried, it would be a matter of I'd stifle them, stifle them, stifle them, stifle them, and then there would be a trigger. And it would be.

00:15:43.200 Regurgitation. Exactly. Because when I did that, then I had guilt, shame. I'm like, "Why did that happen? How could I do that? I'm a bad person." And it's not that you're a bad person. It's just that these emotions. God didn't design us to live this way. No. Can we just pause for a second and explain the difference between shame and guilt?

00:16:07.260 So my understanding of shame is that shame says, "I am bad." And guilt says, "I did something bad." Well, you know if you're a child of God, you are not bad. You weren't created bad. You were created beautiful. You were created to love, to be loved, and to be free from that.

00:16:36.840 Do you want to expound on that, or? No, I can just for a minute. Sure. So from my perspective, when I was going through the shame and guilt, they were kind of mixed. You know I didn't know which is which. Me neither. And I was thinking, "Okay, well, I'm bad because of what I did. And because of what I did, I did something bad." Right. It was just going to a circle. A circle, yeah. But the shame is you know when I think of shame, I can think of all the time so for me, I look at it from this perspective now being here.

00:17:10.380 What a waste of time that was. Oh, yeah. You know And it's what happens to you that does this. Because you don't have the answers, you're not understanding what's going on, the confusion, why did this happen to me? And then as you have that inner child, you take your defense mechanisms from that and you move forward with it. So you're just so confused. Yeah. And it makes you want to hide. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah. You don't want anybody to know anything. Right. So you just put on the mask.

00:17:41.100 And that mask is everything's perfect. Yeah. And it's just not. It's not. Exactly. And a lot of people within the body of Christ and who are called Christians, they are walking in they're talking Christianese. You know How everything is just wonderful. How are you doing? Oh, I'm blessed. You know And nobody knows what's going on behind the closed doors. Yeah And that's the sad part. And so many people have been abused and all the other things that we've talked about, and they're going around, you know pretending everything's okay.

00:18:13.920 They pretend everything's okay, and then they go home and they sit down at night, and they're all alone, and they're so sad, and they're not okay. No, they're not at all. And even families that are going through this, and the people that are part of the families or the children that are being abused or have been abused, nobody knows. And so that's the sad part is they're so close within a church environment, and there's nobody there to help them. So who do they turn to? Yeah. You know And so many people that's where the distorted view of God comes in.

00:18:45.480 They're confused. They say, "What kind of God is this if they allow them this to happen to me?" Again, God gives everyone a free will. And if they are perpetrating an act of sexual abuse, physical abuse, you know how that breaks his heart. Oh. Absolutely. Totally breaks his heart. It really does. And that's not from him. Not at all. He didn't make that happen to you. Right. And just like you said, it's because of man having free will.

00:19:12.660 And the scripture that talks about you know it's the evil that comes out of our heart that causes us to do these things. Whether it's a perpetrator or whether it's someone that's been perpetrated upon and then goes and does these things. It's all evil. And so we have a Redeemer. We do. And when you think about it, hurting people hurt people. And that doesn't make it right. That's not what I'm saying.

00:19:40.260 But we're looking for the underlying issues as to all of what's going on here. And again, evilness is a key player in all this too. The darkness to keep things in the dark is terrible. We want the light to come forth. And the movement that we're a part of is what's bringing this forward, to trauma awareness in the church, to really, truly help the people who are so in need of help. And when darkness comes to light, we've said this before, nothing can stop that anymore.

00:20:13.140 That comes to the light, and that's when you work it out, walk the journey with Christ. And we keep bringing Christ in because it's science in the Bible. They intersect here. And Christ is the King. Yes, He is. And He's the one whose heart is for us. So as we've mentioned a number of times, you understand what He did coming from glory to the dungeons of our heart to redeem humanity, and that everybody is equal at the cross.

00:20:43.020 There's no judgment for me. I can't say I'm better than anybody. I know that I'm the Lord's, and that's the most important thing. So when we move forward with the concept of how God is, we're trying to illustrate His love based on what you're seeing. And the world will say, "Well, why did this happen?" It, again, comes down to free choice and the evilness that's in the world who twists things. God's Word is absolute truth.

00:21:11.460 But when the enemy twists things and we ourselves are caught in that dungeon, that prison, we don't know which way to turn. We're blinded. And because of that, because of the enemy and his ways and wiles, he's the one who tries to keep us in that prison because he wants to separate us from God, the true living, healing God. Right. The one who came to heal the brokenhearted. Right. Right. Yeah. So true. I'm just going to read this because we talked a bit about it. The battle is huge.

00:21:40.800 Yes, the work of healing is grueling, but the Redeemer's here, and he is working. And we can't mention that enough. You know I just think in my walk, this is something that is so true. I remember when I was going through the relationship of complete abuse, I was screaming angry at God. Why is this happening? How can this happen? You know What do I do to get out of this? So you get confused.

00:22:11.940 And I'm a born-again Christian. It's just when you get caught in that type of abusive situation, as we've mentioned about, and I was an adult. You know But then the inner child, you know the safety defense mechanisms that came forth, I made decisions, meaning to move forward with things based on that, not about really truly understanding you know the walk with God and who he is. And I was born again.

00:22:39.180 I am born again, but that was something that really stuck in my mind as we were talking about the ministry and moving forward with this movement, that it's important to realize that God is our source. Yes, He is. Truly is our source. And then we have 0% left. But there's a lot that we've talked about. Yeah. And is there anything else that you'd like to hone in on and do a bit more?

00:23:08.100 Well, I'm thinking about evil and I'm thinking about how evil can operate through people. And just to you know your faith and your trust when you place it in Christ and you do this work and he begins to break down the lies for you, break down the walls that are built, tear down the lies. You begin to understand his way a lot more than the old way.

00:23:40.740 And that's part of the science of coming in as you are learning that new way. That's where neuroplasticity comes in where you're developing new neural pathways and you're learning and you're moving in that that is gone. That is no longer you, who you are. You are a new creation.

00:24:10.260 And so I just think it's so important to understand that side of it because if we don't, then we stay stuck. That's a good way to put it. We are stuck. When God comes into our life, and again, let's go back to neuroplasticity. Yeah And so it's neurons. So this is where the secular and the Christian world meets from the biblical and the science.

00:24:39.060 Not everything from science is secular. You know There's a lot of wonderful Christian minds out there that have brought so much to the science forefront. Yeah But when you're looking at the neuroplasticity and the neurons and how we can renew our mind into who we actually truly are in the love of God, and we get to understand His absolute truth. And there are no lies with that. God does not a God of life. And no matter what anybody does, nobody can change that trait. Right.

00:25:09.180 That's so true. And so again, that brings us into the light, his light. And we are his hands and feet. And when you see that in people who are coming alongside you, you will truly see the love of God. And some of you may not have seen that, and that's very unfortunate. Yeah But you will know it when you see it. And that's something that we want to bring. We want to help. We want to promote. And we will bring further information about this.

00:25:37.500 But it's one podcast at a time, just so there's one step at a time. Right. You know We are so sad, really. It does break our hearts. I mean, we've experienced this ourselves. It does break our hearts, too, though, that this is actually known as perhaps the greatest mission field of the 21st century. So it's sad from a perspective of we are so sad that so many people are having to experience these things, but it's also a wonderful area for us to be thankful that we're actually here and that we can help and be the hands and feet.

00:26:14.520 Right. And you know getting back to the Bible, when you look at how Jesus left the world, He left 12 apostles. Yeah And if you look at the Bible, a lot of people would say, "Well, was that the best plan?" But it truly was. The reason being is because of the Holy Spirit, the advocate. And he worked through those gentlemen, and look at where we are today. And you know we know that there's bad people out there, and we know that people really call themselves Christians that aren't truly Christians.

00:26:47.460 A lot of misguided people. Misguided people. That's a great way to put it. They're very misguided. And unfortunately, why is that? Because of the enemy. And we're saying this to mention to you that God is wonderful. And His plan is in place, and it's never changed from the very beginning of time. Straightforward to now. He's always working through humans. So as we come alongside you to help disciple you in a way to get you through what you're going through to the other side, you, in turn, again, this is our goal.

00:27:21.720 We'll be able to help other people within your sphere of influence, or it might be through another ministry, or whatever it is, or you might start your own ministry. It's all about helping people. And again, hurting people hurt people. So when they're healed, what would they do? Help heal other people. Exactly. And it's all about God working through us. But again, this is what we're designed to do. And it's an amazing how can I say?

00:27:51.420 I guess it would be just excitement yeah to be able to do this each and every day. Yes, it is. It's very exciting. It's wonderful to be a part of it. And it's wonderful to see when people break free and have a new life and are freed from all of this. I'm going to read one more quote before we head out. I've been struck again and again through the years with a tremendous battle involved for the clients who are trying often for the first time to put their stories into words.

00:28:22.020 Their struggle to find words is often slow and terrifying. At the same time, there seems to be a drive to give witness to the truth. And it has been very clear that giving voice to their stories and the depth of their suffering has been a major vehicle for healing in their lives. So again, we're seeing all this as part of a movement. And we have Dr. Lamberg, who is the forerunner of it. Yeah And we have Discovery Mercy. We have other doctors. We have our ministry, historic counseling.

00:28:52.080 Dr. Heiser. And again, it's all about bringing it all together for people to grasp it. And we're just fortunate enough to excited, fortunate, and blessed to be able to be here to bring this to you. Yes. Yeah. Wonderful. Do you have anything else you want to share? No. At the moment, I think I'm all set as far as this. How about you? I'm good. Okay. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you for your time. We know that it's very valuable.

00:29:21.000 And you can send us an email if you would like to. If you have any questions or thoughts or something you'd like for us to talk about. Nope This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. And we also have our website up and running, although it's still a work in progress. You can visit our website at destinedforglorymin.org.

00:29:51.480 Destinedforglorymin.org. Thank you again so much, and we pray that God blesses you today. And have a wonderful week. Thank you again for joining us.