God Never Called This Love - The Truth About Abuse and Faith
- JILL | INNER HEALING COACH
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- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
There is a question you have probably never said out loud.
Not to your pastor. Not to your closest friend. Maybe not even to God.
But it lives inside you.
Can I trust God again after everything that was done to me in His name?
Is my faith broken beyond repair?
Does He actually want me to endure this pain to prove that I love Him?
And if I walk away from the marriage, from the church, from everything I was told was required of me, will I lose God too?
I want to answer that question today.
Not with theology designed to keep you in your place.
With the truth.
The truth I had to find my own way to after years of being told things about God that were never His words. Never His heart. Never His design for the women He created.
God is not for abuse.
He was never for abuse.
And your pain is not something He requires you to endure to prove your love for Him.
What They Told Me
I was told to pray more. Be more. Submit more. Have sex more. Deepen my faith.
And when I finally reached the place where I could not stay any longer the Catholic Church made sure I heard one message above everything else.
If you leave you are going to hell.
And I want to tell you what that did to me.
It did not make me love God more. It did not strengthen my faith. It did not produce the change in my marriage that they promised it would.
It produced fear.
And fear kept me in a place that was destroying me. Fear kept me further from God. Further from the truth that would have set me free so much sooner.
Because here is what nobody told me.
Fear is not of God.
2 Timothy 1:7 says God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
What I was living inside was not faith. It was bondage dressed up in scripture.
And there is a profound difference between the two.
What God Actually Says About Your Pain
I need you to hear this clearly and completely.
God does not ask you to suffer to prove your love for Him.
He is not sitting in heaven watching you be destroyed inside a marriage or a relationship or a situation that is taking everything from you and calling it faithfulness.
He sent His son to set captives free.
Isaiah 61:1 says He came to bind up the brokenhearted. To proclaim freedom for the captive. To comfort all who mourn.
That is not a metaphor for enduring abuse with a good attitude.
That is a promise of actual freedom.
And you are allowed to receive it.
Not after you have prayed enough.
Not after you have stayed long enough.
Not after you have proven yourself worthy of it.
Right now. Exactly where you are.
What Prayer Was Never Designed To Do
I prayed for years while things got worse.
And I want to tell you something that I wish someone had told me before I spent those years waiting for a change that was never coming.
Prayer is one of the most powerful things a human being can do. I believe that with everything in me.
And prayer does not override another person's free will.
God Himself does not force people to change. That is not a limitation of His power. It is the nature of love. Real love does not coerce. It does not control. It does not override human choice even when that choice is causing devastating harm.
Galatians 6:7 says a person reaps what they sow.
Every person is accountable for what they plant. And you cannot pray away a harvest someone is actively choosing to grow.
You cannot pray away a harvest someone is actively planting.
So, when you were told that if you just believed more and prayed harder and stayed longer God would finally force a change that was never His to force, that was never the truth. And it was never fair to tell you that it was.
Can You Trust God Again
This is the real question underneath everything.
What was done to you in God's name was not God.
The theology used to keep you silent was not His theology.
The guilt placed on you for leaving or for wanting to leave was not placed there by Him.
Men and institutions misrepresented Him to you. And that misrepresentation cost you years of your life and pieces of yourself that you are still rebuilding.
That is real. And it deserves to be grieved.
And God can hold that grief.
He can hold your anger at what was done to you in His name. He can hold your doubt and your exhaustion and your inability to pray anything more than His name in the dark.
That is not weak faith. That is honest faith. And honest faith is exactly where He meets us.
You Are Safe To Walk Away
You are safe to leave.
You are safe to set a boundary.
You are safe to tell the truth.
You are safe to stop enabling someone whose choices are destroying you.
You are safe to walk away from a situation that God never designed for you to survive forever.
Proverbs 4:23 says above all else guard your heart for everything flows from it. That is instruction. And sometimes guarding your heart means making the decision that everyone around you will call a lack of faith.
It is not a lack of faith.
It is wisdom.
Your identity, your agency, your sense of self were never supposed to be the price of your faithfulness.
God wants you whole. Not hollowed out. Not silent. Not surviving.
Whole.
Watch This Week's Video
Everything I have written here goes even deeper in this week's video. Let what you have read settle in you first and then let the video take you further.
You Are Allowed To Receive Your Freedom
Have you been honest with God about what you actually need?
Not the prayer that sounds most spiritual. The real one. The one that says I am exhausted and I am afraid and I need you to show me the truth even if it is the thing I have been most afraid to see.
That prayer He will answer.
Because the God I know is not the God that was preached to keep you small. He is the God who sees everything that was done to you in the dark and in the silence and in the places where no one else was watching.
And He has never once asked you to stay in a place that is destroying you.
He is asking you to trust Him enough to finally walk out of it.
With your identity intact. With your agency restored. With wisdom and discernment leading you forward.
That is the God of Isaiah 61. The one who binds up the brokenhearted and proclaims freedom for the captive.
And you are allowed to be free.
The Inner Healing Journey Method™ is where that work begins. Not more endurance. Not more performance. Real work with a woman who has had to find her own way through the intersection of faith and abuse and the courage it takes to choose her own life.
Everything is at innerhealingcoaching.com.
And if you are a man reading this, a husband, a father, a pastor, a leader, Raising Her Worth was built for you too. Because the culture we create around women and the protection we offer or withhold shapes everything.
If you know a woman who is carrying this silently send this to her.
She does not need more guilt.
She needs to know that God is safe even when the church was not.
And she does not need anyone's permission to find her way back to Him.
God bless your healing. God bless your courage to finally tell yourself the truth. With love and respect,
Jill Inner Healing Coach Founder,
Inner Healing Journey Method™ and Raising Her Worth
Helping women reclaim their worth, restore their voice, and walk in healing.
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