Daniel: Our guest today is Mark Phelps. He is the son of the late pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr. Fred Phelps was the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for their thousands of picket protests against the US Military and the homosexual agenda. Mark Phelps has come forward to testify about what it was like to be inside of the church the process of healing he had to go through in order to overcome the negative impact his father had on him and his family.
Folks, it is possible to know Jesus Christ in an intimate way. And this is what He wants! He wants for us to identify with His heart and to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We need to be transformed! Folks, we are talking about it.
We are having an incredible discussion with our special guest, Mark Phelps, who is the son of the late pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr., founder of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church known for their thousands of picket protests against the US Military and the homosexual agenda.
Mark has been telling us about recovering from years of abuse. Mark, I want to get into, now, some of the elements of what recovery meant for you. And you said it meant relearning terminology. In other words, that love meant something else other than evil and that was a change in your definition. You had to face your fears. What about forgiveness?
Mark: Forgiveness is so central to the process and I want to be careful to define my understanding or what I have experienced as opposed to some other kind of forgiveness. All of the effects of behavior and treatment is gone from my soul. I have no animosity, no hate. I have love for my father and I was able to pray for him while he was alive, not knowing his condition, not knowing his state.
Forgiveness is about working with the Lord to remove any effects from what you have experienced, whoever it is who has hurt you or mistreated you. It is not that the person has come and said; and I know there are people that disagree with this; if you wait for someone to change their behavior, to say they are sorry, or to come to you and apologize, in many cases I’m sorry to say you are going to be waiting until you die. But you can work the effects of the hurt through your soul; through your mind and your heart; you can work it out of your being; the very core of your being. You can work out all of the hurt and the effects of the damage of it until it is no longer there.
The Lord is the one who enables you, the one who equips that. The Lord provides the power and the strength for that work and for you to be able to forgive. That’s how forgiveness happens. But you have to give it to Him and you have to participate with Him in it. That is how you can heal and forgiveness is so central to that process. You can’t hold that hurt; you must not hold that hurt; whatever that is that you are holding against the person who hurt you. You cannot hold onto it and expect to be whole.
Daniel: You said something intriguing; you said ‘you have to participate with Him in it’. What does it mean to participate with God in forgiveness?
Mark: The practical aspect of this, to me, is (I’m saying this in prayer to the Lord) ‘Lord I’m hurt! I’m overwhelmed by this. I can’t see up from down. I can’t see clearly at all, it’s like I’m in a fog. And I want to forgive this person. I want to resolve. I no longer want this to be the condition of my heart as it relates to this person who has hurt me, and to this situation. But I need your help!
You have to start. You have to feel the pain. You have to work on, for example, hurt is masked by anger. Usually when there is anger it is because there has been hurt. I mean there is a whole process of understanding but it is not apart from; I just don’t believe it is apart from the Lord. You have to verbally and viscerally, by your volition; by your will; the process starts with our will. The heart catches up folks. But the starting point is the will. It’s the mind saying ‘that’s what I want to do because Lord, that’s what you have asked me to do’. And the Lord knows what I need! And you have to start with the willingness and the readiness to do it. And you will get to the emotion. And when that emotion resolves, eventually forgiveness can come in the heart.
Daniel: Wow, that’s so powerful. Now some people would say ‘now listen, yeah sure, I get it, I know I need to forgive, but I just don’t feel like I’m going to mean it when I say it so why should I say it at all? Why should I say it at all if I know I’m not going to genuinely mean it from my heart?’
Mark: Where else can you start? I mean you have to start where you are. The Lord starts with us where we are and we have to start where we are. Corrie Ten Boom is a wonderful example; I mean for those who are seeking and desiring and they still don’t feel it; and there are all different personalities I know and we all work differently but in essence, that’s what this is, it’s a starting point where you are. And if you want to see and read about others that have been hurt who are available publicly to read and know about, maybe that can help. But the Lord will give us the willingness too. But you have to start where you are, I think.
Daniel: Now, all though you were the subject of extremely unfair abuse, did you also find that you had to forgive yourself, at any point?
Mark: Yes! At all points, yes, because I participated! I was there in the room watching my father beating my sister with the oak mattock handle until she has an open sore on her rear end for a year; hitting her about the face, twisting her arm behind her back. And seeing him beat my brother. I saw my father have his private detective hold a gun to my brother’s knee. I am with my father on the mission to go kidnap my older brother back home after my father has given my older brother permission to leave home and live with his private detective. My father has his private detective come out to the car after we have kidnapped him back out of the private detectives home, come out to the car, and I’m looking from the back seat into the front seat on the right side and I see the gun. And I see the gun being held against my brother’s knee. And I hear the detective threaten my brother that he will shoot him in the knee if he ever tries to leave home again. And I just sit there! And I am watching all of this and I am a part of all this. And after my father has severely, savagely beaten my brother Nate, then a week later my father is mad again and he asks me to beat Nate, and his bruises have not even healed yet from the last beating. And so I beat him! Because if I don’t, I’m going to get beat!
And what about my mother?! I stood and watched while he beat her. I know I’m just a child, but this is about the emotion and about the heart! I should have been screaming bloody murder from the time I was five years old. But you see I was terrified!! I didn’t even know that I didn’t know. And when you get to that point in the healing process and you start to understand it and realize what you have done, every step along the way you have to forgive yourself.
Daniel: But you are telling me and you are telling our audience that with Jesus it was possible to forgive your dad.
Mark: It is possible! It’s probable! The Lord is so good. The Lord said ‘with a mustard seed of faith’. With the least bit of faith and moving towards the forgiveness, who responds? He does! Who is good? He is! Who is right? He is! That’s who our Lord is! I mean I can quote you a verse: ‘He who gave up His own Son for us all, how shall He not also freely give us all things!’ What is all things? It’s not more money! It might be in a certain circumstance, but it is our souls and our hearts. We are souls with bodies and the Lord made us. And He is magnificent! He understands us! And He understands every detail of our hurt. I was reading again last night about what He went through for our sake. He has endured everything that He endured and He is ready to respond to our need. We bring it to Him, even the first step, and He is already responding. He is way out ahead of us! He is ready to heal us! He is going to make us whole!
Daniel: Now something that I have noticed, personally working with people, is that sometimes it helps significantly when a person stops and, as awkward as this sounds, forgives God. I’ve actually seen it where this is a huge breakthrough for people who, while they don’t necessarily want to believe it was God’s fault and they know theologically maybe it doesn’t make sense, but inside of them they are blaming God! And it’s holding them back and it’s keeping them in bondage and acknowledging that often times allows significant breakthrough. Did you find that at any point this was part of your journey?
Mark: Oh Dan, it’s unbelievable! All of a sudden I would find myself and wham! I would be feeling: ‘I didn’t have anything to do with this. HOW! Oh how did this happen to me?! How could I find myself in this situation?! God, how could you allow this?! How could you allow this to be this way?! How could you allow this to go on year after year after year? And I learned God is not going to be broken by us being honest with Him! And He is not going to punish you for expressing your feelings to Him! But you have got to believe that all of that abuse at some point, and at many points along the way, it will occur to your heart: God, why didn’t you do something?! Why did you allow this to happen?!
I don’t have an answer for why He leaves us here on the earth after we are saved except for what we are talking about here. He knows, we don’t; He knows how things work, we don’t Dan! He came to seek and save the lost. And somehow it has to happen the way it is happening, for now, until eternity. And God knows what He is doing. I don’t understand it and I can’t explain it. But I know He came to seek and save the lost and He is close to the broken hearted it is the truth. His word speaks truth! And that’s who He is and even though we are going to be angry at Him, if we are in touch with reality, because this is a harsh world we live in. This is a very painful world we live in. But God is good and the pain we experience here is nothing compared to what the glory is going to be. And God is also with us in our pain and He is never going to leave us.
Daniel: That’s a powerful statement that you just made, that God is with us in the pain. This is a break through that people have told me about. That God has come to them and given them a revelation that, no, I wasn’t standing off watching you get, you know, something terrible in your life, and just folding my arms. People have had a revelation that Jesus has actually suffered through it WITH them. And that is the compassion of God. Compassion means to suffer with. And then what happens is, God, if we let Him, He turns around, and the Bible says He will work all things to the good of those that love Him and that are called according to His purpose. And here you are. Now your testimony is going to go out to thousands of people that are hurting, that are bruised, that are broken, that are abused, that don’t see a light at the end of the dark tunnel, that don’t know there is hope for them, that hear your testimony, and they are going to realize that will name Jesus Christ that is the solution that they have been waiting for, the healing that they have been hoping for, and it is real because, you know what, there is a real testimony behind the message.
Daniel: Today we have been talking all program long with Mark Phelps, son of the late pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr. of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. They are known for their thousands of picket protests against the US Military and the homosexual agenda. And you know, when we left off, we were talking about the central point of his testimony which is forgiveness. And Mark was talking about forgiving his dad, forgiving himself and forgiving God. Mark, why is forgiveness so powerful?
Mark: To not forgive keeps you, I believe, keeps you no less, to me, than imprisoned. To not forgive keeps you stuck, keeps you rotating over the same hurt, the same emotion, the same rage (whatever your emotion might be) and it actually affects you physically. But I think most importantly it affects other parts of your life. It affects your relationships and it affects your ability to function. I believe to not forgive takes your strength.
I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to forgive because part of your soul is imprisoned when you don’t forgive. And the Lord emphasized it by saying if you don’t forgive in effect you won’t experience my forgiveness of you. I’ve forgiven you but you are not going to experience my forgiveness if you are unable to forgive those who have hurt you. It is an incredible experience to work through hurt and to forgive and then to realize at that same moment that the Lord has forgiven you. It makes that realization of His forgiveness very real. I want to emphasize the importance of forgiveness particularly to those who have been spiritually abused, since we have been talking about forgiving God, where God’s word has been used to abuse or pastors have done the abusing. It is so important to me to emphasize that the Lord did not abuse you.
I played the piano from the time I was five years old for my father’s ‘church’. I had played all those old Christian hymns and for the longest time I was unable to play these hymns. But I want to tell you, I am able to play them now and I am peaceful and at rest to hear the wonderful words of the old hymns. But they were used in the midst of my abuse. The Lord can heal the spiritual abuse even when His word was used to abuse you. You just have to blindly hand it over to the Lord. It is so important to me right now to express how strongly I feel. There is no hope on the earth like the hope of Christ and I don’t want people to turn away from the Lord our Savior because of what a human being has done with His word or how a human being who was supposed to be a shepherd and a pastor has hurt them. It just breaks my heart to think of it. And I know people that have been hurt by God’s word and they are so hurt by it, they are so lost in it, and there is a way to recover from that and I am hoping that people can recover from it. That’s why I want to write a book and communicate about that.
Daniel: And this is a real problem! And there are people in our listening audience who have been significantly wounded by figures in the church. I mean I’ve talked to people. As a matter of fact you are talking with one of them right now! And I had to go through my own healing. I didn’t go through physical abuse and different things like that, or sexual abuse from church leaders. But you know the things that I did go through were extremely disappointing and after God healed me I wrote a book called ‘Wounded by Leadership’. This book was to address the problem because it is a real problem folks. And if you have been abused by leadership in the church you are not the only one and God, He will heal you from that. He will be your salvation from that. He was with you in what you went through. And you will find out that God wasn’t really the motivating factor behind your leadership. You know what He was with you through the suffering in the midst of those things.
Mark, before I ask you a couple more questions just at this point I want you to pray for our listening audience for those people who are suffering, for those people who need to forgive that have been through the abuse. Because there has been an anointing on this program and I want to give you an opportunity to pray for these people.
Mark: Father we thank you for your grace and your love and we know that people are hurt and are hurting. And it’s serious Lord. It is not insignificant. The pain is central and core to their lives and they are going to atheism or they are going to psychics or they are going to drugs, they are going wherever, I don’t know where all, but they are going away from the Lord, away from you! And Father I am asking you now in Jesus name to have mercy and to be gracious and by the work of your Holy Spirit help them to see that Christ is what you have done for us and religion is what man has done to mess it up! Help them to see that you are not the one that has betrayed them, you are not that one who has turned your back on them, and you are not the one who has hurt them. And it is serious business for you Father and I am asking you Father, in Jesus name, to work by your great power to reach these people who are hurting and draw them back to yourself through the Lord Jesus. Help them feel your mercy and your compassion and your love Father. I pray in Jesus name.
Daniel: Amen. That was really good. Folks if you are out there and this has touched your life, receive that. Receive that and give Jesus a chance to prove Himself in your life.
Listen Mark, I want to ask you a couple more questions in wrapping up this interview. 1. How did your journey to heal from all of this impact your marriage?
Mark: It changed my marriage for good. My wife has always been there but my healing and recovery work made our marriage a marriage! It made our marriage a marriage. And my wife would tell you now; if you asked her, she’s not here right now where I am; but if you were to ask her, if someone were to ask her, she would tell you that I love her and that she knows she is loved and she knows now that she has a husband. It made all the difference in our marriage. She endured it. It was never physical abuse, but certainly emotional abuse. But she got through that and she knows the difference.
Daniel: What about your family; your sisters, your brothers? How do you relate to them now and what has become of their lives?
Mark: The only person I have real contact with is my brother Nate. I have contact with him every week or more often and I tell him I love him on a regular basis. He is working on his life doing some important work to help heal people who have been hurt by religion. He has gone to atheism and he is doing a lot of work to try to help the people who are a part of the LGBT community to know that they are human beings whom God loves.
I have not had any contact with my sister Katherine at all for 40 years. I just pray for her life. I have a little contact with my younger sister and a couple of my nieces.
My family is on my heart every day and I pray for them and I am not sure I’m the one . . . God is amazing and I may be the one He uses to minister to and reach my family. But as far as my family is concerned I am the enemy. I left and immediately became the enemy and I have most likely still remained as the enemy because I was so mean and so hurtful to them. I was like my father to them. The only thing I know to do right now, until I have meaningful contact with one of them if they want to communicate, the only thing I can think to do is pray for them. And the Lord is able. I’m not.
Daniel: Mark I want to thank you so much for coming on the program today.
Mark: Thank you too Dan. I really appreciate it. I hope the Lord is able to help some folks because I know He has helped me a lot.
End of Second Radio Interview
I am Mark Phelps, the second son of the late Fred W. Phelps Sr. of Topeka, Kansas. After years of learning, and a prolonged journey of healing, I have decided to describe my life experiences growing up with Fred, and my journey of healing. I have learned that truth is very healing and freeing, and for those who have experienced abuse yourself, I hope my journey of healing may be helpful to you.
Showing posts with label healing from abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing from abuse. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Second Radio Interview - Part 2
Daniel: Our guest today is Mark Phelps. He is the son of the late pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr. Fred Phelps was the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for their thousands of picket protests against the US Military and the homosexual agenda. Mark Phelps has come forward to testify about what it was like to be inside of the church the process of healing he had to go through in order to overcome the negative impact his father had on him and his family.
Daniel: How did you cope with the environment in your mind? Here you are, your dad is using the Bible to preach on Sundays. You are told that Jesus is Lord and your dad is a religious leader. People come to him to get advice for their lives then you see him doing these things, and you are going through beatings. I mean, how do you cope with that?
Mark: Well, I disconnected to a large extent, is what I realized years later. But the main coping mechanism that I particularly, specifically had as one of the 13 children living there was I drew close to the abuser. I became the yes man. I became his executioner. He even had me beating the children, my siblings, during that last couple of years I was living there. I became everything he wanted. I figured him out and I became just like him. I became exactly the way I knew he wanted me to be and I figured out how to get safe after some horrible beatings I had endured. In a nut shell, that’s how I did it. And yet I was still terrified that I was going to hell the night I left because you just don’t get through that kind of stuff without that kind of terror, you know.
Daniel: Would you say that you drew closer to your dad then you did to Jesus?
Mark: I didn’t even know who Jesus was. My father took my older brother and I to a Bible Conference when I was 11 and I got saved. I’m sure my father must have been preaching something from the Bible about that, before this time, but the Bible Conference was the first time I actually heard the words. My dad never focused on the New Testament, or very seldom did. He focused on his doctrines; he focused on the Old Testament a lot. I certainly had not the foggiest idea that there was any such thing as a personal relationship with The Lord Jesus who loved me and gave His life for me to save me. I just knew He had died for my sins and I was overwhelmed by that and knew I was saved when I was 11. But I felt more guilt. I would regularly go through this 7-day guilt cycle. I would hear more about what I should be like on Sunday and then knew how I was the other 6 days of the week. I pretty much was in the business of extreme guilt.
I want to clarify . . . I didn’t draw close to my father. There was no intimacy or affection or closeness or relationship. I figured out how to stay safe with him which made him think that I was an ally. But I did not grow close to him at all! I just figured out how to stay safe around him. That’s all there was to that! I don’t know of a single human being who ever was genuinely close to my father. My father was an abuser all the years I knew him. People do not draw close, genuinely, intimately close, to an abuser! They are not capable and those around them are too frightened!
Daniel: So as you watched your dad’s ministry develop, how did he begin to branch out into this picketing and attacking different groups. How did you see that in relation to his character?
Mark: Well, I didn’t see it all because I was gone by age 19 but it fits perfectly. Basically the way I’ve been able to figure that out by watching and hearing things from the family; although they don’t have contact with me you can’t help but get some pieces of information. To put it simply there was a certain point along the line there where he did not have the need to abuse his children; his family. The other children were more compliant and they were doing what he wanted to do and he kind of lost his family as a venue for his hate. He no longer had the stresses as high as when there were a lot of children at home, and perhaps there was not quite as much financial pressure; I can’t be certain about this.
He had been an attorney and then he had his license suspended for two years and the family had no income for quite a while so he had all the kids selling candy for the church. He abused the candy companies by not paying them for their product after it was delivered and sold. So we would sell the candy and he would keep the money. He also had most of the children running every day, 10 miles a night, literally. At least the older kids; the younger kids couldn’t get that far in the time allotted each day for running at the track. But all the children were working from the time we got up in the morning until we went to bed at around 10 or 11 at night. We were going to school, selling candy, and running around the track. I think he had less of a need and less opportunity to be hateful as the children got older.
When he lost his law license in the early 1990’s; remember I left in 1973; but as I’m watching it, he ran for governor of The State of Kansas thinking that might be a venue in which he could function. He only got about 30 percent of the vote thankfully.
After that, he was so hostile with the local officials, the district attorney and county commissioners, and so on. Somehow he got personal information about the local district attorney and some of the others; county commissioners. (So here’s the next step Dan) He started sending faxes with hateful, vulgar language regarding those local officials and sent thousands of faxes to the local businesses. He just kept fax blasting his hateful messages. I don’t know how long that went on; for quite a period of time; months if not years; until the FBI shut down his faxing operation. Then he got his idea to do the picketing.
To me it’s all consistent. My father finds ways to be hateful. I think there’s a part of him probably that’s a little five year old who wants attention from his mommy who died. Anybody that has observed that situation very closely figures out that if you leave them alone that’s where they are the most vulnerable! They want attention. They crave attention! My father has just been a master at figuring out how to get attention. I told Rick last week this is not about God and the Bible, this is about his need and desire to be hateful and he has just used God and the Bible as a venue to vent his hatefulness onto the world! That’s what I believe he has been doing.
Daniel: What you are saying is, absolutely whatever it was that inspired him, it was not the Spirit of God that motivated him to take the stands that he took.
Mark: That’s right! John 3:17 says: “Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved”. There’s a New Testament folks! There’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And He came and He died. He gave up His wealth in Heaven and He came to this earth and He gave His life. And there is now hope! There is none of this hope in my father’s words. He doesn’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as far as I can tell. I’m just going by his behavior. I just can’t see it. I’m not attempting to judge my father. I’m bearing witness to the behavior I have observed. Where is Christ in my father’s behavior?
Daniel: In my mind, I’m wondering; I have two questions at this point. 1. How did he get licensed and instated as a pastor. Did those that put him in his position really have an idea of what kind of person your father was? Or did he just work his way up? Did they know what he was preaching? I mean, maybe you don’t know the answer to these questions.
Mark: I do because that local newspaper was trying to do some research and Jon Bell wrote about it in his book ‘Addicted To Hate’. Basically what he learned was those folks there at Eastside Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas; my father had gone in there as an associate pastor; and those men tell the media in 1994 that they were deeply concerned for him. They told the press that they watched him. When I was 9 months old they watched him slap my face with his open hand and cuff my face with the back of his hand, jerking my head back and forth with his hand because I had begun to squirm in the church service. They said that several of the men approached my father and told him not to do that again. They were concerned about his behavior but nevertheless that pastor there, and those leaders, set him up across town at Westboro Baptist Church. And Dan, I wasn’t aware or old enough to know, but from what I learned from what those folks told the media, was that just about as soon as they set him up in his own church, he cut himself off from Eastside Baptist Church and my father has been on his own, by himself, from that moment until the hour he passed away, with no outside contact or accountability. He has had no accountability! No human on this earth can function effectively without healthy, meaningful, willing accountability! My father had none!!
Daniel: Our guest is Mark Phelps. He is the son of the late pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr. Fred Phelps was the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for their thousands of picket protests against the US Military and the homosexual agenda. Mark Phelps has come forward to testify about what it was like to be inside of the church the process of healing he had to go through in order to overcome the negative impact his father had on him and his family.
When we left off we were talking about what it was like to cope with everything that was going on and now I want to get to the point where you know; this has been abuse, there has been different things going on; and you are ready to leave. You left at age 19. What brought you to that crisis moment and what was it like for you to actually walk out the door and not look back?
Mark: What led to it was, I meant a young lady who was not like anybody I had known. She was just a gentle soul, peaceful, very loving. My father liked her at first. She was there at the church one day at the end of the church service on a Sunday evening and she heard my father cursing and beating my sister upstairs shortly after the church service. My father thought she had already gone; he had no idea she was at the bottom of the stairs listening to his rage and filthy language. This young lady walked right out of that place and down to the local grocery store and called her dad to pick her up. She told me she was not going to be a part of this and refused, absolutely refused to keep seeing me, if I was going to stay there. This is what started the process of my leaving.
At that time, also, my father was doing some particularly savage, brutal beating of my oldest sister and my older brother. Some incredible things were going on. My father was at his very best worst in his violence and abusing. He confined my sister for 40 days with only water after he had beaten her so horribly. I’m the yes man and I’m standing around watching all of this horrific abuse and I walk in from all of my college classes one day and see him savagely beating my oldest sister. He is bending her backwards over the church pew hitting her in the face with his fist and spitting in her face. Then he is beating her with the mattock handle. And he is cursing and screaming and berating her. All I am able to do is stand there and watch this and listen to his rage at my sister.
All of this is starting to wear on me and I’m seeing this young lady that I had recently met, and her family. Oh my gosh and I’m thinking the two families are worlds apart in their character . . . And then the thing that probably led up to it was finally, it was coming into the end of the semester there in December and I knew I wasn’t going to have a 4.0 GPA. Well, we didn’t have to have a 4.0 but we had to be pretty close. And I just wasn’t ready to be there when that report card came.
So on December 27, 1973 at about 10:30 at night I spent about an hour and a half leading up to 10:30 p.m. just taking two or three clothes items at a time and putting them in a basket. I had a little ’66 Pontiac that I had managed to get and I put a basket full of clothes in the trunk of that car. I had met a young guy who told me if I ever needed it I could have a room to stay in for a night or two. At about 10:30 I slipped out that night and drove away with nobody knowing I was leaving. When I was at that house that night sleeping in a strange bed at a house where I didn’t even know anybody, I vividly recall I figured I was going to wake up in hell! That’s basically how I got the transition made. I just was terrified and I just did it anyway. I just felt something wasn’t right. That’s the best I could do at that time Daniel.
Daniel: And in leaving, did you begin to go through what they call survivors guilt? In other words, ‘well now I left but now I feel guilty that my siblings are still back there with that heavy situation’?
Mark: Well, it was that, and guilt and fear. I had an automobile accident a couple of months later and I was sure; I poured over the New Testament; and I just felt sure from reading Hebrews that God was giving me one last chance and then that was going to be it. He was going to squish me! But I just stayed the course.
Then I got a job, got married, my wife and I started our own business, my wife miscarried three boys all during the first ten years of our marriage. For ten years, Dan, I was in limbo. I just didn’t know how to focus on anything related to God and the Bible. I felt guilty. I felt frightened. I started to get a little bit into the positive thinking arena; Napoleon Hill, his book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, W. Clement Stone. A little bit of the positive thinking material from Norman Vincent Peale. I was trying to figure out how to manage all the feelings I had stuffed down into my heart. Stress was starting to build a little bit; normal life stress in my life. Operating a business we had locations in four different states. Things were going well but I was really struggling from the stress; from my past. I didn’t understand the psychological aspects of it as far as how the mind works. But I was spending such a large amount of my energy keeping that garbage all stuffed in there. And it was leaking out!
I’ll tell you bluntly and frankly, although I wasn’t aware of it, and that’s the simple truth of it. I wasn’t aware of it but I was damaging my wife. I wasn’t sensitive. I wasn’t present. I didn’t have the foggiest first idea of what it meant to be a husband or an intimate partner. And it was taking a toll on this precious little soul I had married! All she knew was that she loved me. It shook me to the core when she was finally able to come to me one day and tell me she was having some problems. I just fell to the ground, emotionally. It was still another year or two; I was so busy with business and so on. Then when my business partner who had helped us start our business crashed his plane and died, that was the final shake. By 1988 . . . I don’t know if people can understand this, but when you are broken and you don’t know you are broken, it’s hard to know what to do. I’m driving along with my wife up into one of the little mountain communities there in southern California for a little time away. She is still so gentle with me as she’s always been. I said to her: ‘Honey, do you think I could benefit from some therapy?” That’s all I said to her. She said: ‘Maybe you could’. And so I knew that’s what I needed to do.
I had to find the right person though, folks. I had to find a guy who was a pastor, a psychologist and an attorney who could take the brunt of what I had to dump out. There wasn’t going to be any little mealy mouth for me; and I don’t feel this way today about therapist; but understand this massive garbage that I had. And I had the same attitude as my father; fundamentally I disdained people. I said to myself, I’m not going to sit with some mealy mouthed little person that wants to ask me how I’m feeling! I ain’t going to do that! But if there is somebody that can take this doctrine of Calvinism and if somebody can take this massive intensity that is roaring inside my soul then maybe I’ll do it. And it was two years with this guy and I finally started to get to my soul. I got all the garbage off the top of my soul, enough so that I began to feel terrified and all I could feel were all the emotions that were laying underneath all that cognitive diversion I had put in place to protect my soul.
And then I found a husband and wife team, bless their hearts, and I spent five years. Two of those years I spent going two or three times a week. And I found a woman’s group. And I’m telling you, that woman’s group, going once or twice a week at night for three hours, working with women who had been abused in every kind of way. Listening and seeing and watching and hearing and then every now and then I would join in and work on stuff I needed to work on. And they were a big part of my healing. I began to understand women and I began to understand feelings and I began to understand what it was like to be a human being.
Daniel: Now, uh, man, and see, this is the problem folks. The problem is that when we think we can bottle everything up and just bulldoze our way through life no matter what we’ve been through, what we’ve endured or what kind of abuse, this philosophy doesn’t work in the long run! There has to be a breaking point where we allow God to touch those deeper parts of us and take out the poison. What Mark is beginning to tell us is that he had a lot of poison on the inside of him. Some of you have a lot of poison on the inside of you. Be encouraged! We have a God who has a plan to take it out.
Mark is describing how he had come to the point where God began to heal him on the inside, to pull out the garbage and the poison. You know Mark I want to ask you this question. Could you be where you are today if you had not submitted to a season of internal healing; going back and allowing God to deal with all of the pain that you had been storing up in you from all those years of abuse?
Mark: No! Absolutely not even close. It would not have been anywhere near possible to know the Lord as I have come to know Him. There is a normal sanctification process and I know folks understand that. But if there is nothing there to work with; if you are going to die to Christ, if you are going to put yourself on the cross and die to yourself and live to Christ and walk with Him, you have to have a self with which to do that, you know? So I glory in that. I now know and I’m alive and I can give that life to Christ because I just didn’t know anything.
Daniel: Now let’s talk about the whole experience that you had with Jesus, in light of everything you have told us. So you actually genuinely received Jesus as your Lord and Savior when you were 11 and then continued to go through many years of abuse after that. And it was just terrible and you were terrified of hell but you had no relationship or intimacy with Jesus. You didn’t have intimacy with your father. Frankly it was hard to have intimacy with anyone. Now you leave your family and then there is a span of years. Now during those years, were you just keeping Jesus as far away as possible? Were you like kind of dancing on the sideline with Jesus? What was that element of your story like?
Mark: I was just so frightened and I just figured God felt the same way about me as my father did. I heard that I had become a primary part of my father’s sermons, that I was a heretic and I was a reprobate and I was the evil one and my father used me as an object lesson often, as I understood it, in his messages. And I just felt God hated me and I was just holding on by some kind of faith and hope that I wouldn’t just end up in hell.
What I didn’t mention earlier, that I want to mention now, in about 1984 I was finally able to start back into a church body. I still had the same arrogance and pride, with a chip on my shoulder that every single person in my family has, which we received from our father . . . that we had superior head knowledge about the Bible and a lot of doctrinal understanding. I joined a men’s Bible study that was a part of this church. It was the men in this men’s group that were the primary source of change for me. The leader simply had us memorize verses, and there was a lot of conversation and discussion. It was a Bible study with men and we would talk about our lives. And I just stuck with these men in this group. So by the time it came to 1988 and 1989 and I was beginning to do some of the formal therapy work, I had a relationship with the Lord that I had never had before. And it was by that, by taking what I had learned from these men that helped me so much. And I would listen to Focus on the Family a tremendous amount and I was ‘fathered’ a lot by Dr. James Dobson. And then some of those men; they all know it personally, I’m not telling anything here that they don’t already know personally; some of those men are like fathers to me and like big brothers to me. But these men were the way the Lord started getting into me.
So when I would go into those times when I would be driving my car from my house into the therapist office to do healing work, that time was spent in prayer. This is just as real as I know how to get with folks. This is not some holy stuff. I’m talking bluntly in conversation with the Lord, saying “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what is coming next. I am scared. I need your help! I am begging you, Lord, to go with me into this next period of time with these guys and help me face what I have to face.”
The professional therapists had me lying on the ground, helping me to try and relax. Then, for example, they would start raging and throwing books off the shelves and they would try to recreate a little bit of the environment that I had been raised in. And I just asked the Lord to help me and to please be there with me in it as I faced the fear. And I began to be able to allow myself to open up very slowly.
When I was still living there, as long as I could avoid getting beat, I just shut off. The raging of my father and his beating of my brothers and sisters . . . I just shut myself off to all of that violence Dan. And I had to go back in and face all of that. So these professionals tried the best they could, bless their hearts, to recreate the reality of what I had faced. And it was sufficient because the Lord was with me and I just kept asking over and over for Him to go with me and to be with me and to go into my heart with me and to help me see this and help me face this and help me deal with this.
Also, I would drive my vehicle for business. We had businesses in Orange County and San Diego about an hour and fifteen minutes apart. It was just as common for me to pull off at an exit between Orange County and San Diego as it was for me to just drive all the way through to a normal day. I would be working on some aspect of my healing the night before in therapy, or some audio tape that I may have gotten from Focus on the Family that I had been listening to. I worked at my recovery day and night. I’d be in front of the Lord and I would be listening to stuff and I’d have to pull off at an exit and park my car and deal with whatever the Lord was bringing up for me to deal with. I would weep and roar with pain, and cry, and cry out, and I just had to take it as it came. My wife would head off to her work in her profession and my daughters would be off to school and I’d be there in the living room or family room, just laid out on the floor listening to something or reading something and dealing with the emotion of what it was bringing up for me.
I remember, for example, when I learned what love was. I learned that my father had replaced the word love with the word evil. What my father tried to pass off to me as love was his evil! I had to learn my whole vocabulary. I just had to be remade in the Lord Jesus Christ and He was with me every second, every moment of that time, and He held me up and He brought me through it. And He was with me and He still is!
Daniel: So you are telling us that your very vocabulary and definitions of things had been so tainted by your dad that even when you would try to read the Bible, for example, you were almost reading a different book then the love letter that God has really given to us.
Mark: I wasn’t almost reading a different book. I WAS reading a different book! And I heard from my niece recently near the time my father was passing away, bless her heart, she and her sister had left the church, and of course, therefore, had left their family. And in their words, they are ‘trying to do good’. This is second generation now. She tells how she and her sister; how all of them; have been told that what they are doing is good. Bless their hearts. God bless them. I don’t know what’s going to happen for them. I pray for them.
But yes I’m telling you, Dan, you’re right, I read the Bible as an instrument of hate to be beat over the head with. I never understood the Lord Jesus Christ! I had NO IDEA of His love! I had NO IDEA of His heart! I just didn’t know. And now I know Him intimately! And I’m telling you, the heart and love of Christ is LIFE!
End of “Second Radio Interview – Part 2”
Daniel: How did you cope with the environment in your mind? Here you are, your dad is using the Bible to preach on Sundays. You are told that Jesus is Lord and your dad is a religious leader. People come to him to get advice for their lives then you see him doing these things, and you are going through beatings. I mean, how do you cope with that?
Mark: Well, I disconnected to a large extent, is what I realized years later. But the main coping mechanism that I particularly, specifically had as one of the 13 children living there was I drew close to the abuser. I became the yes man. I became his executioner. He even had me beating the children, my siblings, during that last couple of years I was living there. I became everything he wanted. I figured him out and I became just like him. I became exactly the way I knew he wanted me to be and I figured out how to get safe after some horrible beatings I had endured. In a nut shell, that’s how I did it. And yet I was still terrified that I was going to hell the night I left because you just don’t get through that kind of stuff without that kind of terror, you know.
Daniel: Would you say that you drew closer to your dad then you did to Jesus?
Mark: I didn’t even know who Jesus was. My father took my older brother and I to a Bible Conference when I was 11 and I got saved. I’m sure my father must have been preaching something from the Bible about that, before this time, but the Bible Conference was the first time I actually heard the words. My dad never focused on the New Testament, or very seldom did. He focused on his doctrines; he focused on the Old Testament a lot. I certainly had not the foggiest idea that there was any such thing as a personal relationship with The Lord Jesus who loved me and gave His life for me to save me. I just knew He had died for my sins and I was overwhelmed by that and knew I was saved when I was 11. But I felt more guilt. I would regularly go through this 7-day guilt cycle. I would hear more about what I should be like on Sunday and then knew how I was the other 6 days of the week. I pretty much was in the business of extreme guilt.
I want to clarify . . . I didn’t draw close to my father. There was no intimacy or affection or closeness or relationship. I figured out how to stay safe with him which made him think that I was an ally. But I did not grow close to him at all! I just figured out how to stay safe around him. That’s all there was to that! I don’t know of a single human being who ever was genuinely close to my father. My father was an abuser all the years I knew him. People do not draw close, genuinely, intimately close, to an abuser! They are not capable and those around them are too frightened!
Daniel: So as you watched your dad’s ministry develop, how did he begin to branch out into this picketing and attacking different groups. How did you see that in relation to his character?
Mark: Well, I didn’t see it all because I was gone by age 19 but it fits perfectly. Basically the way I’ve been able to figure that out by watching and hearing things from the family; although they don’t have contact with me you can’t help but get some pieces of information. To put it simply there was a certain point along the line there where he did not have the need to abuse his children; his family. The other children were more compliant and they were doing what he wanted to do and he kind of lost his family as a venue for his hate. He no longer had the stresses as high as when there were a lot of children at home, and perhaps there was not quite as much financial pressure; I can’t be certain about this.
He had been an attorney and then he had his license suspended for two years and the family had no income for quite a while so he had all the kids selling candy for the church. He abused the candy companies by not paying them for their product after it was delivered and sold. So we would sell the candy and he would keep the money. He also had most of the children running every day, 10 miles a night, literally. At least the older kids; the younger kids couldn’t get that far in the time allotted each day for running at the track. But all the children were working from the time we got up in the morning until we went to bed at around 10 or 11 at night. We were going to school, selling candy, and running around the track. I think he had less of a need and less opportunity to be hateful as the children got older.
When he lost his law license in the early 1990’s; remember I left in 1973; but as I’m watching it, he ran for governor of The State of Kansas thinking that might be a venue in which he could function. He only got about 30 percent of the vote thankfully.
After that, he was so hostile with the local officials, the district attorney and county commissioners, and so on. Somehow he got personal information about the local district attorney and some of the others; county commissioners. (So here’s the next step Dan) He started sending faxes with hateful, vulgar language regarding those local officials and sent thousands of faxes to the local businesses. He just kept fax blasting his hateful messages. I don’t know how long that went on; for quite a period of time; months if not years; until the FBI shut down his faxing operation. Then he got his idea to do the picketing.
To me it’s all consistent. My father finds ways to be hateful. I think there’s a part of him probably that’s a little five year old who wants attention from his mommy who died. Anybody that has observed that situation very closely figures out that if you leave them alone that’s where they are the most vulnerable! They want attention. They crave attention! My father has just been a master at figuring out how to get attention. I told Rick last week this is not about God and the Bible, this is about his need and desire to be hateful and he has just used God and the Bible as a venue to vent his hatefulness onto the world! That’s what I believe he has been doing.
Daniel: What you are saying is, absolutely whatever it was that inspired him, it was not the Spirit of God that motivated him to take the stands that he took.
Mark: That’s right! John 3:17 says: “Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved”. There’s a New Testament folks! There’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And He came and He died. He gave up His wealth in Heaven and He came to this earth and He gave His life. And there is now hope! There is none of this hope in my father’s words. He doesn’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as far as I can tell. I’m just going by his behavior. I just can’t see it. I’m not attempting to judge my father. I’m bearing witness to the behavior I have observed. Where is Christ in my father’s behavior?
Daniel: In my mind, I’m wondering; I have two questions at this point. 1. How did he get licensed and instated as a pastor. Did those that put him in his position really have an idea of what kind of person your father was? Or did he just work his way up? Did they know what he was preaching? I mean, maybe you don’t know the answer to these questions.
Mark: I do because that local newspaper was trying to do some research and Jon Bell wrote about it in his book ‘Addicted To Hate’. Basically what he learned was those folks there at Eastside Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas; my father had gone in there as an associate pastor; and those men tell the media in 1994 that they were deeply concerned for him. They told the press that they watched him. When I was 9 months old they watched him slap my face with his open hand and cuff my face with the back of his hand, jerking my head back and forth with his hand because I had begun to squirm in the church service. They said that several of the men approached my father and told him not to do that again. They were concerned about his behavior but nevertheless that pastor there, and those leaders, set him up across town at Westboro Baptist Church. And Dan, I wasn’t aware or old enough to know, but from what I learned from what those folks told the media, was that just about as soon as they set him up in his own church, he cut himself off from Eastside Baptist Church and my father has been on his own, by himself, from that moment until the hour he passed away, with no outside contact or accountability. He has had no accountability! No human on this earth can function effectively without healthy, meaningful, willing accountability! My father had none!!
Daniel: Our guest is Mark Phelps. He is the son of the late pastor Fred W. Phelps, Sr. Fred Phelps was the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for their thousands of picket protests against the US Military and the homosexual agenda. Mark Phelps has come forward to testify about what it was like to be inside of the church the process of healing he had to go through in order to overcome the negative impact his father had on him and his family.
When we left off we were talking about what it was like to cope with everything that was going on and now I want to get to the point where you know; this has been abuse, there has been different things going on; and you are ready to leave. You left at age 19. What brought you to that crisis moment and what was it like for you to actually walk out the door and not look back?
Mark: What led to it was, I meant a young lady who was not like anybody I had known. She was just a gentle soul, peaceful, very loving. My father liked her at first. She was there at the church one day at the end of the church service on a Sunday evening and she heard my father cursing and beating my sister upstairs shortly after the church service. My father thought she had already gone; he had no idea she was at the bottom of the stairs listening to his rage and filthy language. This young lady walked right out of that place and down to the local grocery store and called her dad to pick her up. She told me she was not going to be a part of this and refused, absolutely refused to keep seeing me, if I was going to stay there. This is what started the process of my leaving.
At that time, also, my father was doing some particularly savage, brutal beating of my oldest sister and my older brother. Some incredible things were going on. My father was at his very best worst in his violence and abusing. He confined my sister for 40 days with only water after he had beaten her so horribly. I’m the yes man and I’m standing around watching all of this horrific abuse and I walk in from all of my college classes one day and see him savagely beating my oldest sister. He is bending her backwards over the church pew hitting her in the face with his fist and spitting in her face. Then he is beating her with the mattock handle. And he is cursing and screaming and berating her. All I am able to do is stand there and watch this and listen to his rage at my sister.
All of this is starting to wear on me and I’m seeing this young lady that I had recently met, and her family. Oh my gosh and I’m thinking the two families are worlds apart in their character . . . And then the thing that probably led up to it was finally, it was coming into the end of the semester there in December and I knew I wasn’t going to have a 4.0 GPA. Well, we didn’t have to have a 4.0 but we had to be pretty close. And I just wasn’t ready to be there when that report card came.
So on December 27, 1973 at about 10:30 at night I spent about an hour and a half leading up to 10:30 p.m. just taking two or three clothes items at a time and putting them in a basket. I had a little ’66 Pontiac that I had managed to get and I put a basket full of clothes in the trunk of that car. I had met a young guy who told me if I ever needed it I could have a room to stay in for a night or two. At about 10:30 I slipped out that night and drove away with nobody knowing I was leaving. When I was at that house that night sleeping in a strange bed at a house where I didn’t even know anybody, I vividly recall I figured I was going to wake up in hell! That’s basically how I got the transition made. I just was terrified and I just did it anyway. I just felt something wasn’t right. That’s the best I could do at that time Daniel.
Daniel: And in leaving, did you begin to go through what they call survivors guilt? In other words, ‘well now I left but now I feel guilty that my siblings are still back there with that heavy situation’?
Mark: Well, it was that, and guilt and fear. I had an automobile accident a couple of months later and I was sure; I poured over the New Testament; and I just felt sure from reading Hebrews that God was giving me one last chance and then that was going to be it. He was going to squish me! But I just stayed the course.
Then I got a job, got married, my wife and I started our own business, my wife miscarried three boys all during the first ten years of our marriage. For ten years, Dan, I was in limbo. I just didn’t know how to focus on anything related to God and the Bible. I felt guilty. I felt frightened. I started to get a little bit into the positive thinking arena; Napoleon Hill, his book ‘Think and Grow Rich’, W. Clement Stone. A little bit of the positive thinking material from Norman Vincent Peale. I was trying to figure out how to manage all the feelings I had stuffed down into my heart. Stress was starting to build a little bit; normal life stress in my life. Operating a business we had locations in four different states. Things were going well but I was really struggling from the stress; from my past. I didn’t understand the psychological aspects of it as far as how the mind works. But I was spending such a large amount of my energy keeping that garbage all stuffed in there. And it was leaking out!
I’ll tell you bluntly and frankly, although I wasn’t aware of it, and that’s the simple truth of it. I wasn’t aware of it but I was damaging my wife. I wasn’t sensitive. I wasn’t present. I didn’t have the foggiest first idea of what it meant to be a husband or an intimate partner. And it was taking a toll on this precious little soul I had married! All she knew was that she loved me. It shook me to the core when she was finally able to come to me one day and tell me she was having some problems. I just fell to the ground, emotionally. It was still another year or two; I was so busy with business and so on. Then when my business partner who had helped us start our business crashed his plane and died, that was the final shake. By 1988 . . . I don’t know if people can understand this, but when you are broken and you don’t know you are broken, it’s hard to know what to do. I’m driving along with my wife up into one of the little mountain communities there in southern California for a little time away. She is still so gentle with me as she’s always been. I said to her: ‘Honey, do you think I could benefit from some therapy?” That’s all I said to her. She said: ‘Maybe you could’. And so I knew that’s what I needed to do.
I had to find the right person though, folks. I had to find a guy who was a pastor, a psychologist and an attorney who could take the brunt of what I had to dump out. There wasn’t going to be any little mealy mouth for me; and I don’t feel this way today about therapist; but understand this massive garbage that I had. And I had the same attitude as my father; fundamentally I disdained people. I said to myself, I’m not going to sit with some mealy mouthed little person that wants to ask me how I’m feeling! I ain’t going to do that! But if there is somebody that can take this doctrine of Calvinism and if somebody can take this massive intensity that is roaring inside my soul then maybe I’ll do it. And it was two years with this guy and I finally started to get to my soul. I got all the garbage off the top of my soul, enough so that I began to feel terrified and all I could feel were all the emotions that were laying underneath all that cognitive diversion I had put in place to protect my soul.
And then I found a husband and wife team, bless their hearts, and I spent five years. Two of those years I spent going two or three times a week. And I found a woman’s group. And I’m telling you, that woman’s group, going once or twice a week at night for three hours, working with women who had been abused in every kind of way. Listening and seeing and watching and hearing and then every now and then I would join in and work on stuff I needed to work on. And they were a big part of my healing. I began to understand women and I began to understand feelings and I began to understand what it was like to be a human being.
Daniel: Now, uh, man, and see, this is the problem folks. The problem is that when we think we can bottle everything up and just bulldoze our way through life no matter what we’ve been through, what we’ve endured or what kind of abuse, this philosophy doesn’t work in the long run! There has to be a breaking point where we allow God to touch those deeper parts of us and take out the poison. What Mark is beginning to tell us is that he had a lot of poison on the inside of him. Some of you have a lot of poison on the inside of you. Be encouraged! We have a God who has a plan to take it out.
Mark is describing how he had come to the point where God began to heal him on the inside, to pull out the garbage and the poison. You know Mark I want to ask you this question. Could you be where you are today if you had not submitted to a season of internal healing; going back and allowing God to deal with all of the pain that you had been storing up in you from all those years of abuse?
Mark: No! Absolutely not even close. It would not have been anywhere near possible to know the Lord as I have come to know Him. There is a normal sanctification process and I know folks understand that. But if there is nothing there to work with; if you are going to die to Christ, if you are going to put yourself on the cross and die to yourself and live to Christ and walk with Him, you have to have a self with which to do that, you know? So I glory in that. I now know and I’m alive and I can give that life to Christ because I just didn’t know anything.
Daniel: Now let’s talk about the whole experience that you had with Jesus, in light of everything you have told us. So you actually genuinely received Jesus as your Lord and Savior when you were 11 and then continued to go through many years of abuse after that. And it was just terrible and you were terrified of hell but you had no relationship or intimacy with Jesus. You didn’t have intimacy with your father. Frankly it was hard to have intimacy with anyone. Now you leave your family and then there is a span of years. Now during those years, were you just keeping Jesus as far away as possible? Were you like kind of dancing on the sideline with Jesus? What was that element of your story like?
Mark: I was just so frightened and I just figured God felt the same way about me as my father did. I heard that I had become a primary part of my father’s sermons, that I was a heretic and I was a reprobate and I was the evil one and my father used me as an object lesson often, as I understood it, in his messages. And I just felt God hated me and I was just holding on by some kind of faith and hope that I wouldn’t just end up in hell.
What I didn’t mention earlier, that I want to mention now, in about 1984 I was finally able to start back into a church body. I still had the same arrogance and pride, with a chip on my shoulder that every single person in my family has, which we received from our father . . . that we had superior head knowledge about the Bible and a lot of doctrinal understanding. I joined a men’s Bible study that was a part of this church. It was the men in this men’s group that were the primary source of change for me. The leader simply had us memorize verses, and there was a lot of conversation and discussion. It was a Bible study with men and we would talk about our lives. And I just stuck with these men in this group. So by the time it came to 1988 and 1989 and I was beginning to do some of the formal therapy work, I had a relationship with the Lord that I had never had before. And it was by that, by taking what I had learned from these men that helped me so much. And I would listen to Focus on the Family a tremendous amount and I was ‘fathered’ a lot by Dr. James Dobson. And then some of those men; they all know it personally, I’m not telling anything here that they don’t already know personally; some of those men are like fathers to me and like big brothers to me. But these men were the way the Lord started getting into me.
So when I would go into those times when I would be driving my car from my house into the therapist office to do healing work, that time was spent in prayer. This is just as real as I know how to get with folks. This is not some holy stuff. I’m talking bluntly in conversation with the Lord, saying “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what is coming next. I am scared. I need your help! I am begging you, Lord, to go with me into this next period of time with these guys and help me face what I have to face.”
The professional therapists had me lying on the ground, helping me to try and relax. Then, for example, they would start raging and throwing books off the shelves and they would try to recreate a little bit of the environment that I had been raised in. And I just asked the Lord to help me and to please be there with me in it as I faced the fear. And I began to be able to allow myself to open up very slowly.
When I was still living there, as long as I could avoid getting beat, I just shut off. The raging of my father and his beating of my brothers and sisters . . . I just shut myself off to all of that violence Dan. And I had to go back in and face all of that. So these professionals tried the best they could, bless their hearts, to recreate the reality of what I had faced. And it was sufficient because the Lord was with me and I just kept asking over and over for Him to go with me and to be with me and to go into my heart with me and to help me see this and help me face this and help me deal with this.
Also, I would drive my vehicle for business. We had businesses in Orange County and San Diego about an hour and fifteen minutes apart. It was just as common for me to pull off at an exit between Orange County and San Diego as it was for me to just drive all the way through to a normal day. I would be working on some aspect of my healing the night before in therapy, or some audio tape that I may have gotten from Focus on the Family that I had been listening to. I worked at my recovery day and night. I’d be in front of the Lord and I would be listening to stuff and I’d have to pull off at an exit and park my car and deal with whatever the Lord was bringing up for me to deal with. I would weep and roar with pain, and cry, and cry out, and I just had to take it as it came. My wife would head off to her work in her profession and my daughters would be off to school and I’d be there in the living room or family room, just laid out on the floor listening to something or reading something and dealing with the emotion of what it was bringing up for me.
I remember, for example, when I learned what love was. I learned that my father had replaced the word love with the word evil. What my father tried to pass off to me as love was his evil! I had to learn my whole vocabulary. I just had to be remade in the Lord Jesus Christ and He was with me every second, every moment of that time, and He held me up and He brought me through it. And He was with me and He still is!
Daniel: So you are telling us that your very vocabulary and definitions of things had been so tainted by your dad that even when you would try to read the Bible, for example, you were almost reading a different book then the love letter that God has really given to us.
Mark: I wasn’t almost reading a different book. I WAS reading a different book! And I heard from my niece recently near the time my father was passing away, bless her heart, she and her sister had left the church, and of course, therefore, had left their family. And in their words, they are ‘trying to do good’. This is second generation now. She tells how she and her sister; how all of them; have been told that what they are doing is good. Bless their hearts. God bless them. I don’t know what’s going to happen for them. I pray for them.
But yes I’m telling you, Dan, you’re right, I read the Bible as an instrument of hate to be beat over the head with. I never understood the Lord Jesus Christ! I had NO IDEA of His love! I had NO IDEA of His heart! I just didn’t know. And now I know Him intimately! And I’m telling you, the heart and love of Christ is LIFE!
End of “Second Radio Interview – Part 2”
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Speaking Words Of Life
We live in an amazing country. And the freedoms and benefits of living here are enormous. We live in a country that has a healthy food supply. We are not actively at war in this nation. We have medical care for many of our citizens and a free public education system for both genders. We have 50 states but there is freedom of travel among those states without passports. We attempt to support freedom of religion or no religion and if you post something negative about the government on social media you live with the expectation that your post will still be there in the morning. These are just a few of the privileges of living in a free society.
You and I are living in one of the freest societies that have ever existed. But if you look at some of the indexes for civil and political freedoms for 2015 you can see quickly that freedoms have been dropping for 9 consecutive years for many countries in the world.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.VY26qPlViko
In the U.S. our “great experiment in democracy” has not been without ups and downs to be sure. And the expectation of freedom remains strong for most of us in this country. But is it possible to misunderstand our amazing liberties and the effect they have had on us? Do we have this sense that they “belong” to us forever? Have we read enough history to know better? Do we sometimes find ourselves getting angry when something we hold dear in this society gets encroached upon by others in society who look at life differently than we do?
I think it’s almost impossible not to get a sense of entitlement about American freedoms. It is one thing to feel incredibly blessed by living in a free society but it is another thing to believe you are forever entitled to those benefits.
I have noticed something troubling in the last few years in our culture as social media has allowed us to speak quickly and sometimes vehemently about our political and cultural views. What I’ve noticed is we are getting grumpy and sometimes we are getting just plain mean.
Jesus gave us some specific commands in the Bible about how to live. He said “I’m giving you a new commandment. Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” Christ said a lot to his followers when He was here but He continually repeated His command to love each other the way He did . . . personally and unconditionally. The Bible has many positive commands of what we are to do. Love. Give. Be with people who are suffering. Make sacrifices in your giving. Keep loving and don’t stop.
But do you know there are things we are also told we are NOT to do? One verse says “Do everything without complaining or arguing. Then you will be blameless and innocent.” That is an incredibly high standard. And it seems to be so especially in our social media generation. We can speak almost instantaneously into any situation. We don’t have to slow down anymore to be thoughtful in our responses to our friends, our families and our communities. We can be practically instantaneous in what we communicate. The verse that says we are not to complain or argue goes on to say if we will follow that high standard we will shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of Life. The word of Life is the powerful truth of what Christ can do for us as he sets us free from sin and helps us turn back to God.
But notice this verse all starts with whether we decide whether we will indulge in complaining and arguing. If we do this we will not be blameless and can’t really hold the word of Life out to anyone. Our choices of what we post on social media really have consequences.
It took me awhile to understand that a country like this one was going to live on compromise. There really is no way to have a free society without having us all a little dissatisfied all of the time. What helps me is to realize that when I am excited about something going on in our society that someone else probably is not. Someone who, like me, cares about his family, pays his taxes, and does the best he can every day. I need to try to see him as a real person. So what do my friends and acquaintances notice about me when my party is not in office? Do they see me being respectful of the president or do they see something else? Do my Facebook posts make Christ happy? Do the people on the other side of whatever the issue of the day is feel honored by my comments?
I have lived long enough to see a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions come down. All the way from back in the civil rights movements in the 1960s. When a decision comes down that I might have wished had gone differently do I complain? Or do I get really grateful to live in a country that has branches of government that check each other every day I have been alive. Branches of government staffed by people who have tried to do the best job they know how to do on most days.
So let’s look at our lives. Let’s look at Facebook pages. Let’s listen to our conversations. And let’s listen to the things our children hear us saying every day. And the next time something happens we don’t like (an election, a Supreme Court decision, or the guy who cuts us off in traffic) let’s listen hard to what we think and what we say. And then if we ever get the privilege as believers to live in Malawi or Syria or some of the very toughest places in the world, we might, just might have practiced enough self-control to even think about being ready to live in those places. And be shiners of the light we are privileged to shine to all.
We have become arguers and fighters, not for the gospel, but for our rights as Americans. We are not fighting for the salvation of the lost but are fighting for our freedom of religion in America. We are not called to fight for our freedoms. We are called to set people free with the good news of the gospel.
Followers of Christ all over this globe are suffering horrendous persecution and anguish simply because they confess the name of Jesus and cling to Him as their Savior and Lord. Many of these individuals have no idea what it would be like to have the protections and privileges Christians have in America. But not having those freedoms does not slow them down in living amazing lives of integrity, love and humility in their cultures. And many would have a very difficult time understanding our consternation over the present circumstances we have in America just because we think some of our rights under our constitution seem to be slipping away. To them they would be unable to relate to rights and protection under the laws of their country.
I don’t imagine anyone in America who has enjoyed our present rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms (or as my wife says, ‘freedom to bare arms’) wants to give up any of these rights and I understand the fear, discomfort and upset we can feel personally regarding changes that are taking place in America.
So what are we to do as American Christians? Curse and spew hate at the individuals we perceive as responsible for these changes? Fight and bite and scratch and claw at these individuals? Speak evil of them? Write our Congressmen but not show the simplest of kindnesses to other people? What would a Christian in Syria advise us to do? What would a Christian in Malawi advise? What would Christ advise? Or command? “Go into all the world and preach the gospel making disciples of all men.” Something like that!
Is our focus to be on the political structure of our country and our freedoms or are we to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Are we to be cursing and condemning other religions or are we to be loving the individuals within those religions and telling them about our Savior?
Some of you may be feeling like it’s a real challenge to care about people who oppose your views. Perhaps those people even feel like enemies to you. Jesus said something very powerful in the Sermon on the Mount. He said “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.45 In this way you show that you are children of your Father in heaven.” Notice Jesus was and is a realist. He knows we will struggle with relationships and that some people on earth will seem like our enemies. But also notice his command. That we LOVE those people and pray for them.
Jesus told us if we were his friends we would obey His commands. And that includes following Him in choosing to love and pray for our enemies. Just like He did! But, I have seen Jesus give us blessings that went far beyond our having the ability to pray for our enemies. And that is that He would break down the walls between us and our enemies by letting us reach out to them. What might that look like the next time there is someone in the political realm we disagree with? What if we picked up the phone and asked that person what it felt like when his side won? Could we walk in his shoes just for a minute and hear his side of the story? Could we listen to why that issue matters to her so much?
But what if we realize we don’t have any friends right now on the “other” side? If that is the case have we only been hanging out with people who think like we do? Well we can change that. We can ask God to give us someone right in our neighborhood or at work or at the gym to get to know a little better. Even if it’s just to have polite conversation about life. God is faithful to answer those kinds of prayers. Because He cares very much about how we get along with others on this planet. Let Him give you someone you least expect. And just watch what happens to your heart. You may have been commissioned by God to be His ambassador, but He cares as much about your heart as he does anyone else’s. And ours can become hardened. Without us noticing!
In America we have more freedom and privilege than most of the world. Many Christians on this earth know nothing of an environment or government that has affirmed their beliefs. Rather they have had to stand strong in utter darkness at risk of their own lives. We may soon share their experiences in America. We need to prepare for that day to be sure. Perhaps God is preparing you right now. In a world where communication is moment by moment He might be asking you to respond to the Scripture about not complaining and arguing anymore and challenging you to love people. The way Jesus asks us all to love. One person at a time. Who knows? That person might be on the social media you are going to be on today. Do you have an encouraging comment for an “enemy?” Watch out! One day that person might become a friend.
Mark Phelps
You and I are living in one of the freest societies that have ever existed. But if you look at some of the indexes for civil and political freedoms for 2015 you can see quickly that freedoms have been dropping for 9 consecutive years for many countries in the world.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.VY26qPlViko
In the U.S. our “great experiment in democracy” has not been without ups and downs to be sure. And the expectation of freedom remains strong for most of us in this country. But is it possible to misunderstand our amazing liberties and the effect they have had on us? Do we have this sense that they “belong” to us forever? Have we read enough history to know better? Do we sometimes find ourselves getting angry when something we hold dear in this society gets encroached upon by others in society who look at life differently than we do?
I think it’s almost impossible not to get a sense of entitlement about American freedoms. It is one thing to feel incredibly blessed by living in a free society but it is another thing to believe you are forever entitled to those benefits.
I have noticed something troubling in the last few years in our culture as social media has allowed us to speak quickly and sometimes vehemently about our political and cultural views. What I’ve noticed is we are getting grumpy and sometimes we are getting just plain mean.
Jesus gave us some specific commands in the Bible about how to live. He said “I’m giving you a new commandment. Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” Christ said a lot to his followers when He was here but He continually repeated His command to love each other the way He did . . . personally and unconditionally. The Bible has many positive commands of what we are to do. Love. Give. Be with people who are suffering. Make sacrifices in your giving. Keep loving and don’t stop.
But do you know there are things we are also told we are NOT to do? One verse says “Do everything without complaining or arguing. Then you will be blameless and innocent.” That is an incredibly high standard. And it seems to be so especially in our social media generation. We can speak almost instantaneously into any situation. We don’t have to slow down anymore to be thoughtful in our responses to our friends, our families and our communities. We can be practically instantaneous in what we communicate. The verse that says we are not to complain or argue goes on to say if we will follow that high standard we will shine like stars in the universe as we hold out the word of Life. The word of Life is the powerful truth of what Christ can do for us as he sets us free from sin and helps us turn back to God.
But notice this verse all starts with whether we decide whether we will indulge in complaining and arguing. If we do this we will not be blameless and can’t really hold the word of Life out to anyone. Our choices of what we post on social media really have consequences.
It took me awhile to understand that a country like this one was going to live on compromise. There really is no way to have a free society without having us all a little dissatisfied all of the time. What helps me is to realize that when I am excited about something going on in our society that someone else probably is not. Someone who, like me, cares about his family, pays his taxes, and does the best he can every day. I need to try to see him as a real person. So what do my friends and acquaintances notice about me when my party is not in office? Do they see me being respectful of the president or do they see something else? Do my Facebook posts make Christ happy? Do the people on the other side of whatever the issue of the day is feel honored by my comments?
I have lived long enough to see a number of U.S. Supreme Court decisions come down. All the way from back in the civil rights movements in the 1960s. When a decision comes down that I might have wished had gone differently do I complain? Or do I get really grateful to live in a country that has branches of government that check each other every day I have been alive. Branches of government staffed by people who have tried to do the best job they know how to do on most days.
So let’s look at our lives. Let’s look at Facebook pages. Let’s listen to our conversations. And let’s listen to the things our children hear us saying every day. And the next time something happens we don’t like (an election, a Supreme Court decision, or the guy who cuts us off in traffic) let’s listen hard to what we think and what we say. And then if we ever get the privilege as believers to live in Malawi or Syria or some of the very toughest places in the world, we might, just might have practiced enough self-control to even think about being ready to live in those places. And be shiners of the light we are privileged to shine to all.
We have become arguers and fighters, not for the gospel, but for our rights as Americans. We are not fighting for the salvation of the lost but are fighting for our freedom of religion in America. We are not called to fight for our freedoms. We are called to set people free with the good news of the gospel.
Followers of Christ all over this globe are suffering horrendous persecution and anguish simply because they confess the name of Jesus and cling to Him as their Savior and Lord. Many of these individuals have no idea what it would be like to have the protections and privileges Christians have in America. But not having those freedoms does not slow them down in living amazing lives of integrity, love and humility in their cultures. And many would have a very difficult time understanding our consternation over the present circumstances we have in America just because we think some of our rights under our constitution seem to be slipping away. To them they would be unable to relate to rights and protection under the laws of their country.
I don’t imagine anyone in America who has enjoyed our present rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms (or as my wife says, ‘freedom to bare arms’) wants to give up any of these rights and I understand the fear, discomfort and upset we can feel personally regarding changes that are taking place in America.
So what are we to do as American Christians? Curse and spew hate at the individuals we perceive as responsible for these changes? Fight and bite and scratch and claw at these individuals? Speak evil of them? Write our Congressmen but not show the simplest of kindnesses to other people? What would a Christian in Syria advise us to do? What would a Christian in Malawi advise? What would Christ advise? Or command? “Go into all the world and preach the gospel making disciples of all men.” Something like that!
Is our focus to be on the political structure of our country and our freedoms or are we to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness? Are we to be cursing and condemning other religions or are we to be loving the individuals within those religions and telling them about our Savior?
Some of you may be feeling like it’s a real challenge to care about people who oppose your views. Perhaps those people even feel like enemies to you. Jesus said something very powerful in the Sermon on the Mount. He said “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.45 In this way you show that you are children of your Father in heaven.” Notice Jesus was and is a realist. He knows we will struggle with relationships and that some people on earth will seem like our enemies. But also notice his command. That we LOVE those people and pray for them.
Jesus told us if we were his friends we would obey His commands. And that includes following Him in choosing to love and pray for our enemies. Just like He did! But, I have seen Jesus give us blessings that went far beyond our having the ability to pray for our enemies. And that is that He would break down the walls between us and our enemies by letting us reach out to them. What might that look like the next time there is someone in the political realm we disagree with? What if we picked up the phone and asked that person what it felt like when his side won? Could we walk in his shoes just for a minute and hear his side of the story? Could we listen to why that issue matters to her so much?
But what if we realize we don’t have any friends right now on the “other” side? If that is the case have we only been hanging out with people who think like we do? Well we can change that. We can ask God to give us someone right in our neighborhood or at work or at the gym to get to know a little better. Even if it’s just to have polite conversation about life. God is faithful to answer those kinds of prayers. Because He cares very much about how we get along with others on this planet. Let Him give you someone you least expect. And just watch what happens to your heart. You may have been commissioned by God to be His ambassador, but He cares as much about your heart as he does anyone else’s. And ours can become hardened. Without us noticing!
In America we have more freedom and privilege than most of the world. Many Christians on this earth know nothing of an environment or government that has affirmed their beliefs. Rather they have had to stand strong in utter darkness at risk of their own lives. We may soon share their experiences in America. We need to prepare for that day to be sure. Perhaps God is preparing you right now. In a world where communication is moment by moment He might be asking you to respond to the Scripture about not complaining and arguing anymore and challenging you to love people. The way Jesus asks us all to love. One person at a time. Who knows? That person might be on the social media you are going to be on today. Do you have an encouraging comment for an “enemy?” Watch out! One day that person might become a friend.
Mark Phelps
Thursday, June 25, 2015
A Boy, A Cat and a Disconnected Heart
He rang the doorbell. It was winter, and with his thick gloves he could barely feel the button.
No answer.
He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside, walked along the porch rail. Toward him. He watched it.
In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban sleigh bells, the chains on its tires chimed rhythmically into the pounded street snow.
No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.
He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred more when he tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his thick coat.
He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.
When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...
Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching the eyes widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately struggle. For a long time struggle.
Watching.
The lids droop slowly down. The light passes from the eyes.
He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.
Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed. Flooding the look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.
A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could feel it.
Guilt.
Or was it love? Yes, warm love for this tiny being.
But...
I want to do it. Again. Now.
Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.
He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he felt the same pity again warm flooding him.
And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.
And when it was over he...
But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal ferocity and writhed free.
He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake somehow...as it ran from him...yes, he was awake now...
And terrified
Had anyone seen him? Would they know?
In a panic he ran
Home to his father's house...
Back at my father’s house when I was seven years old we had two beagle dogs. Male and female my father named them Ahab and Jezebel. I did not understand this as a young boy. In fact it took me years to begin to have any understanding. Already by age seven I had watched my father beat my mother many times. And I had received many beatings from my father. And I had been humiliated and shamed by my father. And I had witnessed my father beating my brothers and sisters. And he slapped them and hit them and knocked them around . . . at will. And I had been terrified by my father to the point where I did not ever want to say another word the rest of my life.
I could not understand the fascination I had watching the way Ahab treated Jezebel when I would do what I would do, but one thing was certain . . . I was fascinated.
We had a good sized yard which we called the back yard, side yard and front yard. In the back yard we had the dog house for Ahab and Jezebel. In our back yard we also had a couple of picnic tables and several large trees.
When I was about seven years old I would stand on the picnic table so I could feel safe. Then I would throw rocks at the top of the dog house where Ahab and Jezebel would retreat for peace and rest. I did this many times over a period of a couple of years around this time of my life. I felt safe standing on the picnic table thinking that Ahab would not attack me when he got mad.
What made Ahab mad was my throwing rocks against the top and side of the dog house. I don’t know why it made him mad, but it most certainly did. After a few minutes of hitting the dog house with rocks Ahab would begin to growl. If I continued to throw rocks before very long Ahab would begin attacking Jezebel. Apparently he blamed Jezebel for the noise and he would light into her and she would yelp with hurt and pain.
The only fear I felt doing this was thinking Ahab might attack me if he got too mad. It never crossed my mind that what I was doing was wrong. And it fascinated me to the point of distraction. I had no idea why at the time. I would continue to throw rocks for as long as I had nerve until I would get too scared that Ahab might run out of the dog house after me.
My throwing rocks at the dog house and making Ahab mad, and Ahab attacking Jezebel because of it, represented the same dynamics I was living with inside my own house. Except I was not the one getting mad and attacking others. It was my father doing the attacking and the growling and barking and the hurting of others.
It was very upsetting to me to realize what I had done, and why, as I got older and left my father’s house. For years I simply felt guilty and never mentioned what I had done to anyone. There must have been a part of me that knew it was wrong or I guess I would have said something. My younger brothers and sisters playing nearby didn’t seem to notice what I was doing and were not bothered by it. I never asked them, but as far as I know they did not notice what I was doing. Or if they did the last thing they were going to do was to stop abuse. In my household we had enough energy to take care of ourselves and ourselves only. To come up with the energy to intervene in someone else’s bad behavior is just more energy than any of us had.
And I never talked about what I had done to the cat when I was selling candy door to door for my father’s church. I was old enough by then to feel guilt, but I could not help myself at the time. I had a compulsion to explore and try to understand what I was feeling inside, but felt too guilty to talk with others about it, so I guess I must have experimented on my own from time to time to try to figure out what I was feeling.
What I was feeling was fear and rage and hurt from living with my father. I had to do a lot of work to undo the damage caused by my father’s raging and violence. I now understand a little bit about what was going on in my behavior as a young child.
I felt different as a child from other children because I was suffering chronic abuse. It was like I was on the outside looking in while others were living. Psychologists would call this “dissociation” and it has to do with not being able to integrate all of what is going on in your life into one person or one self. This is very common for children of abuse and especially those children who suffered abuse at a very early age. Dissociative identity disorder is a DSM V diagnosis that involves a serious post-traumatic stress response to the level of trauma the child experiences. The other children in my school seemed to be involved in their lives and had freedom and opportunity to do all types of activities and have an entire world of experiences. But I was living in quiet desperation knowing that my father was beating me and my brothers and sisters and beating my mother and raging around the house throwing anything he could get his hands on and putting holes in the walls.
My life felt strange and dark and so utterly different from the lives I observed others living. But nothing could change our circumstances. Nothing ever did. Things only got worse and worse. The beatings got more violent. My loneliness got more filled with despair. And there was no reason to hope for anything else. So I accepted the way things were. I just accepted it. But in my soul the darkness got darker and the fear got more fearful. And the hopelessness multiplied.
I honestly did not know any different or understand that life could be other than what it was. I thought the other children in my classes at school were just faking it and going along with the show like I was. Just playing their part and going through the motions and that when the school day ended and we all went home that it was the same for them. How could I know differently? How do you know what you have not experienced or seen or felt or heard? How could I know other kids were going home to a “Hey, how was your day?” and a hug and being looked in the eyes when they answered. Or that other kids got to throw a football with their dad or have their homework checked by their mom or could have normal sibling interactions that including laughter and fun and connection. How was I to know that for many of them what was on the outside of their lives indeed matched what was on the inside . . . or perhaps even surpassed it because they were truly loved and valued at home by their families.
But me? I felt sick inside. Hopeless! Yet somehow I kept going and going and going through the motions. Every day! Putting one foot after the other. Like a little soldier. When the storms of my father’s rage would hit I would hold on the best I could. When my mother asked me to run down to the store I felt a little bit of life getting to see the people and be around people. Normal. Just a few minutes of normal human interchange. It helped.
Finally when we had to start selling candy the times away from home increased and yet the terror and darkness remained in my soul because I knew when I was at home the fear would always be there. So, sadly, it stayed with me when I was away. I just didn’t have to face it head on for the few hours I was away.
I had no idea why I felt the way I felt about the cat. It was spontaneous and thrilling and enthralling and all consuming, this feeling I would get when I had control of the cat and could let it have hope again after I would make it go unconscious. Then I felt such sadness and pity and remorse and I would want to love the cat and comfort the cat. But like a burning surge in my heart I would want to choke the cat again. Then the sadness and pity and remorse and compassion would flood me again. I did not know enough at the time to be concerned. I was simply experiencing it. And felt so guilty.
I believe I was experiencing what I was seeing enacted at home. And for some reason it helped me process what I was experiencing to reenact it. But I also believe the level of cruelty I was using toward the cat and towards my own dogs was something that was corrosive to my soul. It may be explained by a diagnosis such as dissociative identity disorder but I would have many years before I would understand much less begin to heal from what I was doing to my own soul in recreating cruel experiences in smaller more helpless beings.
After I had left my family I was with my girlfriend one time after we had gotten to know one another quite well. Out of nowhere, as we were sitting quietly in the car, I slapped her face. I was not mad. I was not upset. We had not been fighting. I did not slap her hard. Only hard enough to be uncomfortable and shocking to her. Then this horrible sick feeling came over me as she started to cry. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked me why. Why had I slapped her? She got out of the car and went into her home. I was shocked. I was scared. I was sick to my stomach. Suddenly I began to cry.
I didn’t really understand why I was crying but the crying got harder and harder. I sat in the car outside her house at the curb and cried for an hour. At the time I had no idea why I was crying. I don’t believe I even yet connected the horrible sick feeling I felt when I saw her cry with my own wrongdoing in hitting her. I now think I didn’t even understand that there could be a normal cause and effect between an abusive wrong behavior and the victim’s response of crying or sadness or anger. Those normal responses were not allowed in my house and I think I didn’t understand I was in the presence of completely normal and healthy in this beautiful and strong young woman I was dating!
Her mother told her ‘the first time a boy hits you it is his fault; the second time a boy hits you it is your fault!’ My girlfriend told me it was never to happen again. And it never did. It never happened again, not to this very second. A few months later she asked me why I had hit her. I still had no answer but I told her it would never happen again. It was not even because of anger or some difficulty. It was very much like what I had done with the cat. I did it because of something that was happening inside me. Not for any other reason. The slap had nothing to do with my girlfriend and everything to do with the poison that was inside of my soul. This poison came from what I witnessed daily in my home in the form of cruel abuse perpetrated against me and my family members.
If you have read my blog you know the years I spent and the hard work I had to put into understanding and healing from all the years of abuse at my father’s hand. The best I have ever been able to understand about these aspects of my behavior is simply I was trying to figure out, at some level, why the world was the way it was and why my family was the way it was, and why there was such a difference. And I was trying to comprehend the conflict of rage and love I felt for my father and my mother, trying to reconcile these deep conflicting feelings.
At some level I had learned if you love another living being you hurt them. Of course this was not conscious but it was deep within me as a conflict and came out in bizarre ways that were hurtful. I wanted to see if another living being could hurt like I hurt and if hurting another being was the way it had to be to make sense of life. I also wonder if I did indeed have dissociative identity disorder. It is often a diagnosis that is not made for years, but it stems from early, ongoing and extreme physical or sexual abuse. It can manifest itself on a spectrum of passive disengagement and withdrawal from the active, present environment all the way to multiple personality disorder. I think it helps me to see why I always felt like others were living and I was watching. I was truly disengaging from my own life to protect myself emotionally from it…
Some of you may be confused by the emotional detachment that many of us from abuse have experienced. In my view, this is actually a gift God gave us in the way He made our minds. We have the ability if we are in the middle of war, car accidents, abuse or other horrific circumstances to shut down our normal emotions to deal with what we must deal with right in front of us. I see that as a tremendous gift. But what we have to do if our abuse was ongoing is often to get help to reconnect with those emotions we shut down. To not have a normal connect between present circumstances and emotions can do us and our families great harm. We must work to reconnect with that little boy or girl or woman or man who got hurt and give ourselves a chance to be whole again.
I have no idea if this resonates with any of you who came from chronic, early abuse. Boys are more likely to be involved in abuse of animals and certainly each child is different. If you know of a child who is abusing animals don’t take it as just “curiosity” of a child. See it for the huge cry for help it is. There is a very strong correlation between abusing animals and future domestic violence. For those of us who were around repeated and terrorizing violence it hurt us tremendously but it also set us up for behaviors down the road. If you have struggled with behaviors or actions that seem way out of proportion to what the circumstances seem to call for, know that the person exhibiting these behaviors may have unresolved trauma in their lives. And we trauma victims often wall off our emotions so that we can’t even feel what a victim is going through.
There is hope in the process of healing in this. Please take my experiences and use them as a jumping off point for yourselves. And even if what you have experienced is different from my life story, please contact me if you want to talk this through. I am available and I encourage you to take the step to talk to someone about what you think is unspeakable. Remember, shame has such power over us unless we bring it out of the dark and out of our isolation and get help in an affirming environment.
I know, I know. This seems so unfair. Your perpetrator hurt you so badly and “trained” you to think abuse is normal. And then made it far easier for you to do. And you may have been disconnected from the normal emotions you should have felt from doing wrong towards an animal or person. Well it is unfair! But let’s take that unfairness, examine it in the light of day and detoxify its power over us. And let’s begin healing so we make sure this doesn’t happen again. We can help each other in this!
Sincerely,
Mark Phelps
No answer.
He waited. A cat, caught like him on this cold night outside, walked along the porch rail. Toward him. He watched it.
In the street behind them a solitary car passed. Like urban sleigh bells, the chains on its tires chimed rhythmically into the pounded street snow.
No one was home. The cat. Was rubbing against his leg.
He set the candy down and picked it up. It purred. And purred more when he tucked it under his warm arm. Like a football. Against his thick coat.
He could see into its eyes. Up close. He liked it that way.
When he wrapped his thick fingers round its tiny neck...
Pinning its legs against his side, he slowly squeezed, watching the eyes widen in alarm. Feeling it push against him. Desperately struggle. For a long time struggle.
Watching.
The lids droop slowly down. The light passes from the eyes.
He let go. Another car rattled metal links by in the snow.
Watching the light return. The animal terror that followed. Flooding the look in those helpless eyes. It pierced his soul.
A shock wave of remorse flamed hot. In all his cells he could feel it.
Guilt.
Or was it love? Yes, warm love for this tiny being.
But...
I want to do it. Again. Now.
Yes, I want to know what it's like once more.
He squeezed the cat's thin neck. And when it has succumbed, he felt the same pity again warm flooding him.
And only horror at himself. As he did it once more.
And when it was over he...
But this time the cat mustered the last of its tiny animal ferocity and writhed free.
He felt...watching it streak away...he felt jarred awake somehow...as it ran from him...yes, he was awake now...
And terrified
Had anyone seen him? Would they know?
In a panic he ran
Home to his father's house...
Back at my father’s house when I was seven years old we had two beagle dogs. Male and female my father named them Ahab and Jezebel. I did not understand this as a young boy. In fact it took me years to begin to have any understanding. Already by age seven I had watched my father beat my mother many times. And I had received many beatings from my father. And I had been humiliated and shamed by my father. And I had witnessed my father beating my brothers and sisters. And he slapped them and hit them and knocked them around . . . at will. And I had been terrified by my father to the point where I did not ever want to say another word the rest of my life.
I could not understand the fascination I had watching the way Ahab treated Jezebel when I would do what I would do, but one thing was certain . . . I was fascinated.
We had a good sized yard which we called the back yard, side yard and front yard. In the back yard we had the dog house for Ahab and Jezebel. In our back yard we also had a couple of picnic tables and several large trees.
When I was about seven years old I would stand on the picnic table so I could feel safe. Then I would throw rocks at the top of the dog house where Ahab and Jezebel would retreat for peace and rest. I did this many times over a period of a couple of years around this time of my life. I felt safe standing on the picnic table thinking that Ahab would not attack me when he got mad.
What made Ahab mad was my throwing rocks against the top and side of the dog house. I don’t know why it made him mad, but it most certainly did. After a few minutes of hitting the dog house with rocks Ahab would begin to growl. If I continued to throw rocks before very long Ahab would begin attacking Jezebel. Apparently he blamed Jezebel for the noise and he would light into her and she would yelp with hurt and pain.
The only fear I felt doing this was thinking Ahab might attack me if he got too mad. It never crossed my mind that what I was doing was wrong. And it fascinated me to the point of distraction. I had no idea why at the time. I would continue to throw rocks for as long as I had nerve until I would get too scared that Ahab might run out of the dog house after me.
My throwing rocks at the dog house and making Ahab mad, and Ahab attacking Jezebel because of it, represented the same dynamics I was living with inside my own house. Except I was not the one getting mad and attacking others. It was my father doing the attacking and the growling and barking and the hurting of others.
It was very upsetting to me to realize what I had done, and why, as I got older and left my father’s house. For years I simply felt guilty and never mentioned what I had done to anyone. There must have been a part of me that knew it was wrong or I guess I would have said something. My younger brothers and sisters playing nearby didn’t seem to notice what I was doing and were not bothered by it. I never asked them, but as far as I know they did not notice what I was doing. Or if they did the last thing they were going to do was to stop abuse. In my household we had enough energy to take care of ourselves and ourselves only. To come up with the energy to intervene in someone else’s bad behavior is just more energy than any of us had.
And I never talked about what I had done to the cat when I was selling candy door to door for my father’s church. I was old enough by then to feel guilt, but I could not help myself at the time. I had a compulsion to explore and try to understand what I was feeling inside, but felt too guilty to talk with others about it, so I guess I must have experimented on my own from time to time to try to figure out what I was feeling.
What I was feeling was fear and rage and hurt from living with my father. I had to do a lot of work to undo the damage caused by my father’s raging and violence. I now understand a little bit about what was going on in my behavior as a young child.
I felt different as a child from other children because I was suffering chronic abuse. It was like I was on the outside looking in while others were living. Psychologists would call this “dissociation” and it has to do with not being able to integrate all of what is going on in your life into one person or one self. This is very common for children of abuse and especially those children who suffered abuse at a very early age. Dissociative identity disorder is a DSM V diagnosis that involves a serious post-traumatic stress response to the level of trauma the child experiences. The other children in my school seemed to be involved in their lives and had freedom and opportunity to do all types of activities and have an entire world of experiences. But I was living in quiet desperation knowing that my father was beating me and my brothers and sisters and beating my mother and raging around the house throwing anything he could get his hands on and putting holes in the walls.
My life felt strange and dark and so utterly different from the lives I observed others living. But nothing could change our circumstances. Nothing ever did. Things only got worse and worse. The beatings got more violent. My loneliness got more filled with despair. And there was no reason to hope for anything else. So I accepted the way things were. I just accepted it. But in my soul the darkness got darker and the fear got more fearful. And the hopelessness multiplied.
I honestly did not know any different or understand that life could be other than what it was. I thought the other children in my classes at school were just faking it and going along with the show like I was. Just playing their part and going through the motions and that when the school day ended and we all went home that it was the same for them. How could I know differently? How do you know what you have not experienced or seen or felt or heard? How could I know other kids were going home to a “Hey, how was your day?” and a hug and being looked in the eyes when they answered. Or that other kids got to throw a football with their dad or have their homework checked by their mom or could have normal sibling interactions that including laughter and fun and connection. How was I to know that for many of them what was on the outside of their lives indeed matched what was on the inside . . . or perhaps even surpassed it because they were truly loved and valued at home by their families.
But me? I felt sick inside. Hopeless! Yet somehow I kept going and going and going through the motions. Every day! Putting one foot after the other. Like a little soldier. When the storms of my father’s rage would hit I would hold on the best I could. When my mother asked me to run down to the store I felt a little bit of life getting to see the people and be around people. Normal. Just a few minutes of normal human interchange. It helped.
Finally when we had to start selling candy the times away from home increased and yet the terror and darkness remained in my soul because I knew when I was at home the fear would always be there. So, sadly, it stayed with me when I was away. I just didn’t have to face it head on for the few hours I was away.
I had no idea why I felt the way I felt about the cat. It was spontaneous and thrilling and enthralling and all consuming, this feeling I would get when I had control of the cat and could let it have hope again after I would make it go unconscious. Then I felt such sadness and pity and remorse and I would want to love the cat and comfort the cat. But like a burning surge in my heart I would want to choke the cat again. Then the sadness and pity and remorse and compassion would flood me again. I did not know enough at the time to be concerned. I was simply experiencing it. And felt so guilty.
I believe I was experiencing what I was seeing enacted at home. And for some reason it helped me process what I was experiencing to reenact it. But I also believe the level of cruelty I was using toward the cat and towards my own dogs was something that was corrosive to my soul. It may be explained by a diagnosis such as dissociative identity disorder but I would have many years before I would understand much less begin to heal from what I was doing to my own soul in recreating cruel experiences in smaller more helpless beings.
After I had left my family I was with my girlfriend one time after we had gotten to know one another quite well. Out of nowhere, as we were sitting quietly in the car, I slapped her face. I was not mad. I was not upset. We had not been fighting. I did not slap her hard. Only hard enough to be uncomfortable and shocking to her. Then this horrible sick feeling came over me as she started to cry. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked me why. Why had I slapped her? She got out of the car and went into her home. I was shocked. I was scared. I was sick to my stomach. Suddenly I began to cry.
I didn’t really understand why I was crying but the crying got harder and harder. I sat in the car outside her house at the curb and cried for an hour. At the time I had no idea why I was crying. I don’t believe I even yet connected the horrible sick feeling I felt when I saw her cry with my own wrongdoing in hitting her. I now think I didn’t even understand that there could be a normal cause and effect between an abusive wrong behavior and the victim’s response of crying or sadness or anger. Those normal responses were not allowed in my house and I think I didn’t understand I was in the presence of completely normal and healthy in this beautiful and strong young woman I was dating!
Her mother told her ‘the first time a boy hits you it is his fault; the second time a boy hits you it is your fault!’ My girlfriend told me it was never to happen again. And it never did. It never happened again, not to this very second. A few months later she asked me why I had hit her. I still had no answer but I told her it would never happen again. It was not even because of anger or some difficulty. It was very much like what I had done with the cat. I did it because of something that was happening inside me. Not for any other reason. The slap had nothing to do with my girlfriend and everything to do with the poison that was inside of my soul. This poison came from what I witnessed daily in my home in the form of cruel abuse perpetrated against me and my family members.
If you have read my blog you know the years I spent and the hard work I had to put into understanding and healing from all the years of abuse at my father’s hand. The best I have ever been able to understand about these aspects of my behavior is simply I was trying to figure out, at some level, why the world was the way it was and why my family was the way it was, and why there was such a difference. And I was trying to comprehend the conflict of rage and love I felt for my father and my mother, trying to reconcile these deep conflicting feelings.
At some level I had learned if you love another living being you hurt them. Of course this was not conscious but it was deep within me as a conflict and came out in bizarre ways that were hurtful. I wanted to see if another living being could hurt like I hurt and if hurting another being was the way it had to be to make sense of life. I also wonder if I did indeed have dissociative identity disorder. It is often a diagnosis that is not made for years, but it stems from early, ongoing and extreme physical or sexual abuse. It can manifest itself on a spectrum of passive disengagement and withdrawal from the active, present environment all the way to multiple personality disorder. I think it helps me to see why I always felt like others were living and I was watching. I was truly disengaging from my own life to protect myself emotionally from it…
Some of you may be confused by the emotional detachment that many of us from abuse have experienced. In my view, this is actually a gift God gave us in the way He made our minds. We have the ability if we are in the middle of war, car accidents, abuse or other horrific circumstances to shut down our normal emotions to deal with what we must deal with right in front of us. I see that as a tremendous gift. But what we have to do if our abuse was ongoing is often to get help to reconnect with those emotions we shut down. To not have a normal connect between present circumstances and emotions can do us and our families great harm. We must work to reconnect with that little boy or girl or woman or man who got hurt and give ourselves a chance to be whole again.
I have no idea if this resonates with any of you who came from chronic, early abuse. Boys are more likely to be involved in abuse of animals and certainly each child is different. If you know of a child who is abusing animals don’t take it as just “curiosity” of a child. See it for the huge cry for help it is. There is a very strong correlation between abusing animals and future domestic violence. For those of us who were around repeated and terrorizing violence it hurt us tremendously but it also set us up for behaviors down the road. If you have struggled with behaviors or actions that seem way out of proportion to what the circumstances seem to call for, know that the person exhibiting these behaviors may have unresolved trauma in their lives. And we trauma victims often wall off our emotions so that we can’t even feel what a victim is going through.
There is hope in the process of healing in this. Please take my experiences and use them as a jumping off point for yourselves. And even if what you have experienced is different from my life story, please contact me if you want to talk this through. I am available and I encourage you to take the step to talk to someone about what you think is unspeakable. Remember, shame has such power over us unless we bring it out of the dark and out of our isolation and get help in an affirming environment.
I know, I know. This seems so unfair. Your perpetrator hurt you so badly and “trained” you to think abuse is normal. And then made it far easier for you to do. And you may have been disconnected from the normal emotions you should have felt from doing wrong towards an animal or person. Well it is unfair! But let’s take that unfairness, examine it in the light of day and detoxify its power over us. And let’s begin healing so we make sure this doesn’t happen again. We can help each other in this!
Sincerely,
Mark Phelps
Monday, June 1, 2015
Repent Without Regret
Ever think about how often perfectionism gets people into trouble? It’s the impossible standard you put on yourself and others that makes you at best a schoolmarm or at worst a tyrant. Neither of which is easy to live with. And the perfectionist is never satisfied. And that lack of satisfaction haunts our lives.
Do you know what I think? Perfectionists deep down have a desire to please. Ourselves, others and even God. So we put an unhealthy standard on ourselves and then get busy flogging ourselves every time we don’t live up to those standards. Am I saying it is wrong to have standards of excellence and to work hard? I am not! The Bible speaks plainly about the importance of excellence in our work. Hard work brings some amazing results, and we are often proud of those results.
But how do we actually deal with God’s standards and ours? God’s standards are that we are to be holy. Just the way He is. The funny thing about God is at the same time He sets this very high bar knowing it will be so good for us if we live up to it. He knows if we try to be loving, just, kind, honest and act in integrity the way He is it will profoundly change our lives. But….do you know what the rub is? We can’t live up to His standards and He knows it. Oh great. Those of you who have lived under an impossibly high standard of parents or bosses are already cringing.
But… God builds in an amazing and creative solution to His high, really impossible standards. He asks us to be holy and not sin but lets us know He has a Son who can stand in for us when it’s our turn to be punished for our sin and wrongdoing. Jesus Christ steps in FOR us and pays for our mistakes and sins with His own life. We’re rescued from this mess because Jesus did everything perfectly that we couldn’t. And we’ve chosen to receive the gift He gives us by believing that it is true. It’s an act of faith. We were shown amazing mercy by God. And the best part is He offers this gift to everybody on the planet. We have the choice to turn away from the way we have been living our lives and turn to Him to receive this amazing gift.
God does two big things when we turn the rudder of our lives toward Him. He forgives us of our sin. That is showing us mercy. But then He does something more. He gives us the grace to live our lives as His sons and daughters. With our heads held high and in freedom. We are similar to death row prisoners deserving punishment but the great news is Jesus takes our place on death row. And then He helps us walk out of the prison we’ve made of our lives in a really different way. He lets us walk out as sons and daughters.
Do you know what sons and daughters of God get to do? We get to spend time with Him and talk to Him. This ability we have to connect with God is His gift of love to us. Part of His love allows us to talk with God; we can talk with Him out loud or in our hearts when we are alone. The exciting reality for us is He hears each word, even our unspoken thoughts. Once we belong to His family we are never alone again.
When I begin to worry or am distressed I start talking out loud (if I am alone!) to God as if He is right in the room with me. I try to divert my worry immediately into prayer. Even if I am not alone I try to do that same thing, taking my worry into prayer, within my own mind. I start by rehearsing the circumstances, describing them to the Lord and then continuing on with prayer about the circumstances I’m concerned about. Even with the feelings of fear or upset still in my chest or stomach I try to start right away into conversation with the Lord. This has taken me some time to make this a habit but it has been a wonderful one to develop.
For me, even harder than worries I find myself struggling with, are the feelings I get when I have made a mistake. Especially if it seems like a big mistake! When I make a mistake I feel an immense amount of guilt. I feel like a failure. When I feel like I have let my daughters down or my wife down I also am upset because I feel like I have let God down. My heart sinks within me. Sometimes I actually lose physical strength. As soon as I am able I rush to my wife or my daughter and apologize and they are always willing to forgive me.
One thing I have been working on is to have compassion for myself when I do make a mistake. I have learned I have a lot of compassion for other people and often very little for myself. Sometimes I say things to myself I would never let someone say about my wife or daughters. I can be very harsh with myself. Maybe you find yourself doing the same thing. Somehow thinking it will help. What I find it does for me is tend to slow me down from the things God has given me to do in this life. Lacking compassion for myself and beating myself up has never produced much other than anxiety! So, going to ones I love and telling them what has happened, asking forgiveness and MOVING ON to what is next in my life has taken discipline. I have to remind myself to have compassion and kindness toward me like I would toward anyone else. And doing that has made my life more productive and I think has allowed me to have even more compassion for others who are struggling when I’m compassionate with myself.
So while going directly to the person I’ve hurt has worked with people in my life for years it was always harder for me to do this in my relationship with God when I thought I had failed Him. I always assumed He was disappointed in me. I always felt a distance in my relationship with Him. Instead of running to the Lord immediately I would wrestle with my feelings until I was able to finally tell Him I was sorry. Even then I still felt a distance from Him, for a while at least. Then I would resolve not to make any mistakes again especially if it is a mistake that I have made more than once. Do you hear the perfectionism in that? I believed I had to do most of the work to get things right between me and God. Forgetting that He had a God sized heart and was tremendously open to forgiving me! Always! But the bottom line is mistake making is a very painful business for many of us and we think if we could just avoid mistakes altogether we would be alright. (Oh the pain of perfectionism! Who could imagine not making any more mistakes? Um…maybe a perfectionist?!)
Over the years it has become less agonizing for me as I have learned in my heart (not just intellectually assenting to this truth) that God made me right with Him when I accepted the gift that Jesus gave me when He died. Made me right forever! Perhaps you have a person in your life that you love so much that there really is nothing they could do that you wouldn’t forgive them for. That you are entirely predisposed to believe the best about them! Well that is the way God sees us who are His children. There is an old–fashioned Bible word called “justified” that describes our relationship with God right after we have received the gift of eternal life. We are “justified” which means God’s demands for justice have been accomplished.
We who deserved to die to pay for our own sins now have Jesus taking that punishment for us. He takes our penalty and pays it. In full! Do you remember Christ’s last words on the cross right before He died? He said “it is finished.” In the original language that was actually financial terminology that meant “paid in full.” Christ paid all that needed to be paid for our wrongs. He completed the transaction! And that action on His part makes us right before God. Completely! It is God who has already done the justifying by having Christ die on the cross to pay for our sin and wrong. Years ago I taught myself a simple definition of ‘justified’. For me it simply means ‘just as if I’d never sinned.’ If we continue our analogy to death row it’s not just that we’re pardoned by God. No. It’s as if we had never been charged with the crime! Isn’t that amazing?
So, did this new concept immediately take effect? That I would understand it’s as if I never did anything wrong? Well, no! Another important step I needed to make in my relationship to God was to learn not to keep saying I am sorry to God all the time! Reading that may sound odd at first. What’s wrong with saying you are sorry for wrongdoing? We have to do this with our friends and family or we will not have very good relationships, right? But with God there was a subtle way my apologizing was not building relationship with Him.
I have come to the realization that if the main way I am relating to God when I make a mistake is always saying I’m sorry, and repeating that same cycle, then I am missing a big part of what God is wanting to do in my life! Of course we certainly do not want to do things wrong intentionally. I am not suggesting that we are free to do things we know are wrong on purpose as if God’s grace and mercy towards us were cheap. I would never want to do intentional wrongs repeatedly. But sometimes we get caught in an endless cycle of doing things we don’t want to do, apologizing, and then doing them again. It doesn’t seem very much like the kind of life we expect to live if we are daughters and sons of the King. King Jesus. We are human, of course. But at some point, God helped me to see how He wanted me off the sin/sorry/sin/sorry cycle. And honestly I was very glad to get off the treadmill!
God wants us to walk in the freedom of knowing Him and knowing we are completely free to be ourselves. Even with our flaws and tendencies to stay in the rut of doing things wrong. This sounds like a wonderful goal but how do we go about accomplishing this?! I am suggesting that we completely change the way we try to change. Whoa! What? I want to explore the things that have us on that treadmill we can’t seem to get off of. It will also help us find greater freedom to do the things we want to be doing. Here’s how.
Repentance is a Bible concept that is a little different than just feeling sorry for what we have done. Repentance is a very honest looking at our lives, our mistakes and our sin, agreeing with God that we are wrong in doing the sin, and then doing a complete turnabout from the direction we were heading. Repentance is doing a 180 degree turn from the direction we were going. It is a big concept.
C.S. Lewis once said that repentance is like the pilot of an airplane who happens to be flying directly into a thunderstorm deciding to do a 180 degree turn to avoid the storm. No sane pilot thinks it makes sense to fly into a thunderstorm. It doesn’t take much effort to get the pilot to agree with that. When you start hanging out with a new friend you learn pretty quickly what they are passionate about. You learn what they love and hate. What they see as valuable and what they see as destructive. Things with God are no different.
As we spend time with God we learn what He thinks are wrong thoughts and behaviors but we also learn about all the wonderful things God has given to us. And the God who made us has given us a whole lot to allow us to experience happiness and even joy that are perfectly right! This process requires a reorientation of our thinking and really our being. If we are not doing wrong then we don’t have to repent of course. But what do we do when we find ourselves doing the same things we know are wrong? Or sinful? Or unkind? Or just not the people we want to be? If repentance is a good biblical concept and something God asks of us, then why do we get caught in the cycle of feeling so crummy? I think a verse in the Bible speaks to a subtle but powerful truth that can help us.
The Bible says, "...the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death." (2 Corinthians 7:10). Okay, so this is suggesting we can actually repent but do it without regret? And that repentance isn’t what’s getting us in trouble at all but the regret? This verse brings up that we are going to have sorrow in this life. But the kind of sorrow we get from what the world has to offer gives us a lot of sorrow. And that the sorrow we get from knowing God makes us actually want to turn away from the wrong we’ve done and turn the rudder of our ship toward God. And that in that turning we won’t have regret. That sounds wonderful! But what if I am the king or queen of worldly regret? And can find 42 things to regret about what I have done since this morning?
One of the first steps is that we are going to have to re-train our hearts about how to do our repenting. This verse says “godly sorrow produces repentance WITHOUT REGRET.” We still get to agree with God that we’ve done wrong in our lives but coming to that place won’t have to be accompanied by regret. Can you spell relief?
This whole point/counterpoint between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow is worth really thinking about. We should feel sorrow because of sin, but God's will is that when we do the repenting/turning away that’s required that we’ll be able to do it "without regret." Biblical repentance doesn’t mean we just try to improve ourselves by making ourselves feel "bad" because of what we have done wrong. It means that agreeing with God that something we have done is wrong and turning with our whole hearts away from it without regret. If we have repented then we are forgiven and we don’t need to go over it again and again. We did it…then we repent…and we let it go. Why? Because if God has forgiven us He won’t bring it up again nor even remember it. So why do we want to go on day after day beating ourselves up. Why not put that to rest and believe God that we are forgiven?
Making ourselves feel bad about what we have done wrong may punish us into a temporary appearance of outward conformity, but it does nothing to help change our behavior long term. The Bible says, "...the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and harsh treatment of the body self-abasement...are of no value in restraining sensual fleshly indulgence." (Col. 2:23). Repentance by making ourselves feel a bunch of regret is harsh treatment of the body and has "no value in restraining sensual indulgence."
Drowning ourselves in condemnation may feel religious, but it is not God's will for us to grow that way. Making ourselves feel bad for what we do wrong is "self-made religion" because the pain we feel seems to justify our wrong doing or “fix” it somehow. Do we really think that God wants us to beat ourselves up over and over again for what we did and for what we repented for already? Should we continue to think about it again and again? Does that make us into the pure, wholesome, mature people of God He wants us to be? I honestly believe wallowing in sorrow over our mistakes keeps us locked in the identity we have of “wrongdoer.” And if that’s what we think of ourselves, what are we likely to do? Live from our identity! By the same token, if I realize I’ve done something wrong and choose to agree with God and ask His help to change I can step into the identity of “son” or “daughter” and I know I am cared about. My identity as God’s loved son has me doing things that are worthy of that identity.
No amount of feeling bad will ever make the payment for or justify what we have done wrong. Wrong things done have consequences and hurt people or hurt us. Self-inflicted pain from guilt doesn’t actually make us right before God because, "God is the one who justifies (makes us right before Him)" (Rom. 8:33b). Condemning ourselves after we have done something wrong gives us a false sense of being "good" again. Self-condemnation keeps us bent on earning a sense of right standing before God and prevents us from putting our faith in the suffering Christ did for us and the pain He felt on our behalf. Self-condemnation gives us a false sense of goodness before God.
Remember I said it would take me a long time to draw back close to God after I made a mistake. Then finally I was able to but slowly. I learned that I needed to stop closing myself off from God! I needed to learn to accept God’s love in the most practical of ways. God knew my sin before I ever knew Him and He knows my sin after I come to know Him. Surely His love for me and His kindness toward me is not less now than before I was ever aware of how Christ died for me and gave Himself for me.
Trying to motivate improvement by condemning ourselves makes it so we want to hide from God—not draw near to Him. It closes us off inside. Jesus told the religious leaders of His day, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people..." (Matthew 23:13; see also 2 Corinthians 3:17). When we try to motivate our own repentance or anybody else’s and hope for change by condemnation we are being pharisaical and are shutting ourselves—and others—from the freedom necessary for experiencing closeness to God.
If there is only one "guideline" I could give you about changing your heart after you have done something wrong it’s to have you let go of the need for self-condemnation. Directing your heart away from self-condemnation is not easy. We have this notion that to have any compassion for ourselves is wrong. The Bible tells us to love others and treat them with respect and compassion and love. But if we were to tape record the malicious, disrespecting and mean-spirited things we say ABOUT ourselves when we fail, we might all be shocked. We have to learn to speak truth about ourselves.
We can say things like “the way I just spoke to my teenager was rude and disrespectful. That is not the way you want me to act, God. Please help me exercise self-control around this young person to build her up and help her become the person you want her to be. Lord, don’t let me flog myself and go into a tailspin but just repent, get your help and move on to being a more loving parent.” This may take repeated efforts to change the way we talk to ourselves. We are not to slander others and we certainly shouldn’t slander ourselves. My encouragement to you in this is to not ever give up on this effort! It will take practice but it will bring life back to you and those you are around.
Please don’t miss these two things. Repentance requires that you retrain your heart to stop trusting self-inflicted guilt and that you start trusting Christ’s ability to help you live this new life with His help. Christ paid for the sins you committed and that is an amazing gift. But the gift keeps giving in that He also gave you the power to live a new kind of life. For repenting to function without crippling regret we have to retrain our hearts. We really have to think hard about what we believe in our heart is the best way to correct ourselves and do better the next time. If you can delight in ministering to yourself in this way think of the delight you will have in ministering to others in this way! Kindness towards yourself as you are learning to be a better, more loving person is as powerful as kindness towards others. There is actually nothing biblical about being mean to others or being mean to yourself! There is a wonderful verse in the Bible that says “it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.” That is true and I really believe God wants His kindness towards us to spill over into our own kindness toward ourselves.
Observe your reaction when you do something wrong. Do you stay away from God? What gives you freedom to draw near to God again? Kindness! God’s kindness! Do you trust the forgiveness of God because you made yourself feel badly for long enough? Try something new. See if you can trust the forgiveness of God because of the power of the cross and God’s cleansing of your whole self.
We won’t ever live right before God if we are motivated by self-condemnation! Consider it sin to feel any sense of justification or righteousness because of how much pain you inflict on yourself through self-condemnation. The security you need is not from how well you protect yourself from God. Hate any sense of "righteousness" you feel because of self-inflicted pain from condemnation.
Teach Your Heart to treat yourself like you want to treat others. Discipline motivated by fear, self-condemnation, and guilt won’t change you at the deep levels that are needed. There is too much in life coming at us too fast for us to treat ourselves this way. You have to help yourself to not fall into the pattern of trying to flog yourself for your mistakes and sin. It isn't enough for you to know in your head that self-condemnation is an ineffective and sinful way to repent. Your heart has to learn a more effective way to correct unwanted behaviors and turn to God. You may need to ask God, the Great Healer, to show you what is true about your heart so you can understand what is going on. And what keeps you from accepting God’s unfailing love and kindness toward you as you pick yourself up after a mistake or a sin . . . with His help.
Remember that shame lives best in darkness, isolation and our “not telling.” When you get brave enough to tell God exactly what happened and exactly how it is making you feel, you have brought your concern and your pain into the light by telling your story. And you are no longer alone. God has infinite patience for us and our lives. And our smallest attempts to live in His light. It is hard, but with practice it gets easier. And our burdens get lifted right off our shoulders!
Use thanks and praise to help your heart hear how good and safe it is to trust the cross of Christ. Listen to what you are thanking God about! React with thanks and praise at the slightest indication of self-condemnation or self-based righteousness.
“Father, I am a mess. I’ve done it again. And I am SO ashamed of myself I can barely stand it! I am trying not to hate myself and my actions. You are a holy God and look what I just said to my stepdaughter in such a mean tone of voice. What was I thinking?! But I understand you are my Papa. And that you love me in spite of the worst thing I think or do. And I am amazed. Thank you God! I believe I am your son. Well, I’m starting to. So I am telling you my sin but I know you say you’ll forgive me. I really struggle with believing that but right now I guess I just will believe you. Thank you. Now Papa, will you help me clean up this mess with this young stepdaughter of mine and reconnect with her? I believe you, God that you want to do this for me. This is so hard to be so honest with you, but here I am, God. Thank you….”
Get your heart to hear that it is far more effective to change by hearing thanks and praise to God for the truth about how God truly feels about you and your situation. The cross is more powerful than your sin. Thank the Lord with great joy that you don't have to put your faith in the severity of your self-condemnation. Delight your heart by praise toward God that you don’t have to wait to trust the forgiveness of God until you are "done feeling bad."
Biblical repentance is a more effective way to grow—a way of delight toward God—not of contempt toward yourself. You have to get to the heart of the matter—without self-condemnation. Delight can help you change. Joy is the strongest bond known to man and the joy of the Lord is our strength. It binds our heart with God’s. We need God’s strength in our lives. Don’t shut yourself off from God when you make a mistake. He is the only Person who is completely trustworthy with your heart!
Christians tend to feel: “I have something wrong inside and so why shouldn't I hide from God?’ But God is the one who gave us this spiritual awareness to begin with, right? So why do we feel we need to hide from Him when He knows all about us? Would you hide from your doctor after you found out you had an infection? Wouldn’t that be counterproductive, especially if this doctor was willing and able to help you? We have to learn to accept that something is wrong in our lives but that we can still move forward with repentance because God loves and understands us. If you have this awareness you can be sure that God is calling you closer to Himself. But He also wants you to take steps to turn the affections of your heart more fully toward Him. Remember that you can move forward without having to punish yourself into improvement over and over for the same sin!
The thing is when you sin…repent…do a 180 away from the sin and toward God… then you really are free to let it go because God has let it go. Once forgiven of a sin you are truly forgiven by God. It doesn’t mean that there are no consequences for our actions while on earth because with sin comes consequences, but once we are truly repentant and forgiven by God that sin is gone for all eternity. Let it go and just move on and do what is right. Sounds simple, right? But it takes practice like any wonderful habit of friendship or relationship.
Next time you sin again run to the Lord! Don’t stay away because you sinned. Give it to God and get in right standing with Him right then. He wants this for you! He wants to help you walk closer to him every day and not get drug down by staying stuck in sorrow about your sin. He’d rather help you walk as a precious son or daughter who knows you are forgiven. And are being helped up to keep walking on a good path with him! Do it right on the spot even if you don’t feel like it. He has already made you in right standing with Him. His grace and forgiveness of you is big! Accept His free gift so you can keep moving. And move with new freedom! It is for freedom that Christ has set you free!
Mark Phelps
Do you know what I think? Perfectionists deep down have a desire to please. Ourselves, others and even God. So we put an unhealthy standard on ourselves and then get busy flogging ourselves every time we don’t live up to those standards. Am I saying it is wrong to have standards of excellence and to work hard? I am not! The Bible speaks plainly about the importance of excellence in our work. Hard work brings some amazing results, and we are often proud of those results.
But how do we actually deal with God’s standards and ours? God’s standards are that we are to be holy. Just the way He is. The funny thing about God is at the same time He sets this very high bar knowing it will be so good for us if we live up to it. He knows if we try to be loving, just, kind, honest and act in integrity the way He is it will profoundly change our lives. But….do you know what the rub is? We can’t live up to His standards and He knows it. Oh great. Those of you who have lived under an impossibly high standard of parents or bosses are already cringing.
But… God builds in an amazing and creative solution to His high, really impossible standards. He asks us to be holy and not sin but lets us know He has a Son who can stand in for us when it’s our turn to be punished for our sin and wrongdoing. Jesus Christ steps in FOR us and pays for our mistakes and sins with His own life. We’re rescued from this mess because Jesus did everything perfectly that we couldn’t. And we’ve chosen to receive the gift He gives us by believing that it is true. It’s an act of faith. We were shown amazing mercy by God. And the best part is He offers this gift to everybody on the planet. We have the choice to turn away from the way we have been living our lives and turn to Him to receive this amazing gift.
God does two big things when we turn the rudder of our lives toward Him. He forgives us of our sin. That is showing us mercy. But then He does something more. He gives us the grace to live our lives as His sons and daughters. With our heads held high and in freedom. We are similar to death row prisoners deserving punishment but the great news is Jesus takes our place on death row. And then He helps us walk out of the prison we’ve made of our lives in a really different way. He lets us walk out as sons and daughters.
Do you know what sons and daughters of God get to do? We get to spend time with Him and talk to Him. This ability we have to connect with God is His gift of love to us. Part of His love allows us to talk with God; we can talk with Him out loud or in our hearts when we are alone. The exciting reality for us is He hears each word, even our unspoken thoughts. Once we belong to His family we are never alone again.
When I begin to worry or am distressed I start talking out loud (if I am alone!) to God as if He is right in the room with me. I try to divert my worry immediately into prayer. Even if I am not alone I try to do that same thing, taking my worry into prayer, within my own mind. I start by rehearsing the circumstances, describing them to the Lord and then continuing on with prayer about the circumstances I’m concerned about. Even with the feelings of fear or upset still in my chest or stomach I try to start right away into conversation with the Lord. This has taken me some time to make this a habit but it has been a wonderful one to develop.
For me, even harder than worries I find myself struggling with, are the feelings I get when I have made a mistake. Especially if it seems like a big mistake! When I make a mistake I feel an immense amount of guilt. I feel like a failure. When I feel like I have let my daughters down or my wife down I also am upset because I feel like I have let God down. My heart sinks within me. Sometimes I actually lose physical strength. As soon as I am able I rush to my wife or my daughter and apologize and they are always willing to forgive me.
One thing I have been working on is to have compassion for myself when I do make a mistake. I have learned I have a lot of compassion for other people and often very little for myself. Sometimes I say things to myself I would never let someone say about my wife or daughters. I can be very harsh with myself. Maybe you find yourself doing the same thing. Somehow thinking it will help. What I find it does for me is tend to slow me down from the things God has given me to do in this life. Lacking compassion for myself and beating myself up has never produced much other than anxiety! So, going to ones I love and telling them what has happened, asking forgiveness and MOVING ON to what is next in my life has taken discipline. I have to remind myself to have compassion and kindness toward me like I would toward anyone else. And doing that has made my life more productive and I think has allowed me to have even more compassion for others who are struggling when I’m compassionate with myself.
So while going directly to the person I’ve hurt has worked with people in my life for years it was always harder for me to do this in my relationship with God when I thought I had failed Him. I always assumed He was disappointed in me. I always felt a distance in my relationship with Him. Instead of running to the Lord immediately I would wrestle with my feelings until I was able to finally tell Him I was sorry. Even then I still felt a distance from Him, for a while at least. Then I would resolve not to make any mistakes again especially if it is a mistake that I have made more than once. Do you hear the perfectionism in that? I believed I had to do most of the work to get things right between me and God. Forgetting that He had a God sized heart and was tremendously open to forgiving me! Always! But the bottom line is mistake making is a very painful business for many of us and we think if we could just avoid mistakes altogether we would be alright. (Oh the pain of perfectionism! Who could imagine not making any more mistakes? Um…maybe a perfectionist?!)
Over the years it has become less agonizing for me as I have learned in my heart (not just intellectually assenting to this truth) that God made me right with Him when I accepted the gift that Jesus gave me when He died. Made me right forever! Perhaps you have a person in your life that you love so much that there really is nothing they could do that you wouldn’t forgive them for. That you are entirely predisposed to believe the best about them! Well that is the way God sees us who are His children. There is an old–fashioned Bible word called “justified” that describes our relationship with God right after we have received the gift of eternal life. We are “justified” which means God’s demands for justice have been accomplished.
We who deserved to die to pay for our own sins now have Jesus taking that punishment for us. He takes our penalty and pays it. In full! Do you remember Christ’s last words on the cross right before He died? He said “it is finished.” In the original language that was actually financial terminology that meant “paid in full.” Christ paid all that needed to be paid for our wrongs. He completed the transaction! And that action on His part makes us right before God. Completely! It is God who has already done the justifying by having Christ die on the cross to pay for our sin and wrong. Years ago I taught myself a simple definition of ‘justified’. For me it simply means ‘just as if I’d never sinned.’ If we continue our analogy to death row it’s not just that we’re pardoned by God. No. It’s as if we had never been charged with the crime! Isn’t that amazing?
So, did this new concept immediately take effect? That I would understand it’s as if I never did anything wrong? Well, no! Another important step I needed to make in my relationship to God was to learn not to keep saying I am sorry to God all the time! Reading that may sound odd at first. What’s wrong with saying you are sorry for wrongdoing? We have to do this with our friends and family or we will not have very good relationships, right? But with God there was a subtle way my apologizing was not building relationship with Him.
I have come to the realization that if the main way I am relating to God when I make a mistake is always saying I’m sorry, and repeating that same cycle, then I am missing a big part of what God is wanting to do in my life! Of course we certainly do not want to do things wrong intentionally. I am not suggesting that we are free to do things we know are wrong on purpose as if God’s grace and mercy towards us were cheap. I would never want to do intentional wrongs repeatedly. But sometimes we get caught in an endless cycle of doing things we don’t want to do, apologizing, and then doing them again. It doesn’t seem very much like the kind of life we expect to live if we are daughters and sons of the King. King Jesus. We are human, of course. But at some point, God helped me to see how He wanted me off the sin/sorry/sin/sorry cycle. And honestly I was very glad to get off the treadmill!
God wants us to walk in the freedom of knowing Him and knowing we are completely free to be ourselves. Even with our flaws and tendencies to stay in the rut of doing things wrong. This sounds like a wonderful goal but how do we go about accomplishing this?! I am suggesting that we completely change the way we try to change. Whoa! What? I want to explore the things that have us on that treadmill we can’t seem to get off of. It will also help us find greater freedom to do the things we want to be doing. Here’s how.
Repentance is a Bible concept that is a little different than just feeling sorry for what we have done. Repentance is a very honest looking at our lives, our mistakes and our sin, agreeing with God that we are wrong in doing the sin, and then doing a complete turnabout from the direction we were heading. Repentance is doing a 180 degree turn from the direction we were going. It is a big concept.
C.S. Lewis once said that repentance is like the pilot of an airplane who happens to be flying directly into a thunderstorm deciding to do a 180 degree turn to avoid the storm. No sane pilot thinks it makes sense to fly into a thunderstorm. It doesn’t take much effort to get the pilot to agree with that. When you start hanging out with a new friend you learn pretty quickly what they are passionate about. You learn what they love and hate. What they see as valuable and what they see as destructive. Things with God are no different.
As we spend time with God we learn what He thinks are wrong thoughts and behaviors but we also learn about all the wonderful things God has given to us. And the God who made us has given us a whole lot to allow us to experience happiness and even joy that are perfectly right! This process requires a reorientation of our thinking and really our being. If we are not doing wrong then we don’t have to repent of course. But what do we do when we find ourselves doing the same things we know are wrong? Or sinful? Or unkind? Or just not the people we want to be? If repentance is a good biblical concept and something God asks of us, then why do we get caught in the cycle of feeling so crummy? I think a verse in the Bible speaks to a subtle but powerful truth that can help us.
The Bible says, "...the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death." (2 Corinthians 7:10). Okay, so this is suggesting we can actually repent but do it without regret? And that repentance isn’t what’s getting us in trouble at all but the regret? This verse brings up that we are going to have sorrow in this life. But the kind of sorrow we get from what the world has to offer gives us a lot of sorrow. And that the sorrow we get from knowing God makes us actually want to turn away from the wrong we’ve done and turn the rudder of our ship toward God. And that in that turning we won’t have regret. That sounds wonderful! But what if I am the king or queen of worldly regret? And can find 42 things to regret about what I have done since this morning?
One of the first steps is that we are going to have to re-train our hearts about how to do our repenting. This verse says “godly sorrow produces repentance WITHOUT REGRET.” We still get to agree with God that we’ve done wrong in our lives but coming to that place won’t have to be accompanied by regret. Can you spell relief?
This whole point/counterpoint between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow is worth really thinking about. We should feel sorrow because of sin, but God's will is that when we do the repenting/turning away that’s required that we’ll be able to do it "without regret." Biblical repentance doesn’t mean we just try to improve ourselves by making ourselves feel "bad" because of what we have done wrong. It means that agreeing with God that something we have done is wrong and turning with our whole hearts away from it without regret. If we have repented then we are forgiven and we don’t need to go over it again and again. We did it…then we repent…and we let it go. Why? Because if God has forgiven us He won’t bring it up again nor even remember it. So why do we want to go on day after day beating ourselves up. Why not put that to rest and believe God that we are forgiven?
Making ourselves feel bad about what we have done wrong may punish us into a temporary appearance of outward conformity, but it does nothing to help change our behavior long term. The Bible says, "...the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and harsh treatment of the body self-abasement...are of no value in restraining sensual fleshly indulgence." (Col. 2:23). Repentance by making ourselves feel a bunch of regret is harsh treatment of the body and has "no value in restraining sensual indulgence."
Drowning ourselves in condemnation may feel religious, but it is not God's will for us to grow that way. Making ourselves feel bad for what we do wrong is "self-made religion" because the pain we feel seems to justify our wrong doing or “fix” it somehow. Do we really think that God wants us to beat ourselves up over and over again for what we did and for what we repented for already? Should we continue to think about it again and again? Does that make us into the pure, wholesome, mature people of God He wants us to be? I honestly believe wallowing in sorrow over our mistakes keeps us locked in the identity we have of “wrongdoer.” And if that’s what we think of ourselves, what are we likely to do? Live from our identity! By the same token, if I realize I’ve done something wrong and choose to agree with God and ask His help to change I can step into the identity of “son” or “daughter” and I know I am cared about. My identity as God’s loved son has me doing things that are worthy of that identity.
No amount of feeling bad will ever make the payment for or justify what we have done wrong. Wrong things done have consequences and hurt people or hurt us. Self-inflicted pain from guilt doesn’t actually make us right before God because, "God is the one who justifies (makes us right before Him)" (Rom. 8:33b). Condemning ourselves after we have done something wrong gives us a false sense of being "good" again. Self-condemnation keeps us bent on earning a sense of right standing before God and prevents us from putting our faith in the suffering Christ did for us and the pain He felt on our behalf. Self-condemnation gives us a false sense of goodness before God.
Remember I said it would take me a long time to draw back close to God after I made a mistake. Then finally I was able to but slowly. I learned that I needed to stop closing myself off from God! I needed to learn to accept God’s love in the most practical of ways. God knew my sin before I ever knew Him and He knows my sin after I come to know Him. Surely His love for me and His kindness toward me is not less now than before I was ever aware of how Christ died for me and gave Himself for me.
Trying to motivate improvement by condemning ourselves makes it so we want to hide from God—not draw near to Him. It closes us off inside. Jesus told the religious leaders of His day, "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people..." (Matthew 23:13; see also 2 Corinthians 3:17). When we try to motivate our own repentance or anybody else’s and hope for change by condemnation we are being pharisaical and are shutting ourselves—and others—from the freedom necessary for experiencing closeness to God.
If there is only one "guideline" I could give you about changing your heart after you have done something wrong it’s to have you let go of the need for self-condemnation. Directing your heart away from self-condemnation is not easy. We have this notion that to have any compassion for ourselves is wrong. The Bible tells us to love others and treat them with respect and compassion and love. But if we were to tape record the malicious, disrespecting and mean-spirited things we say ABOUT ourselves when we fail, we might all be shocked. We have to learn to speak truth about ourselves.
We can say things like “the way I just spoke to my teenager was rude and disrespectful. That is not the way you want me to act, God. Please help me exercise self-control around this young person to build her up and help her become the person you want her to be. Lord, don’t let me flog myself and go into a tailspin but just repent, get your help and move on to being a more loving parent.” This may take repeated efforts to change the way we talk to ourselves. We are not to slander others and we certainly shouldn’t slander ourselves. My encouragement to you in this is to not ever give up on this effort! It will take practice but it will bring life back to you and those you are around.
Please don’t miss these two things. Repentance requires that you retrain your heart to stop trusting self-inflicted guilt and that you start trusting Christ’s ability to help you live this new life with His help. Christ paid for the sins you committed and that is an amazing gift. But the gift keeps giving in that He also gave you the power to live a new kind of life. For repenting to function without crippling regret we have to retrain our hearts. We really have to think hard about what we believe in our heart is the best way to correct ourselves and do better the next time. If you can delight in ministering to yourself in this way think of the delight you will have in ministering to others in this way! Kindness towards yourself as you are learning to be a better, more loving person is as powerful as kindness towards others. There is actually nothing biblical about being mean to others or being mean to yourself! There is a wonderful verse in the Bible that says “it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance.” That is true and I really believe God wants His kindness towards us to spill over into our own kindness toward ourselves.
Observe your reaction when you do something wrong. Do you stay away from God? What gives you freedom to draw near to God again? Kindness! God’s kindness! Do you trust the forgiveness of God because you made yourself feel badly for long enough? Try something new. See if you can trust the forgiveness of God because of the power of the cross and God’s cleansing of your whole self.
We won’t ever live right before God if we are motivated by self-condemnation! Consider it sin to feel any sense of justification or righteousness because of how much pain you inflict on yourself through self-condemnation. The security you need is not from how well you protect yourself from God. Hate any sense of "righteousness" you feel because of self-inflicted pain from condemnation.
Teach Your Heart to treat yourself like you want to treat others. Discipline motivated by fear, self-condemnation, and guilt won’t change you at the deep levels that are needed. There is too much in life coming at us too fast for us to treat ourselves this way. You have to help yourself to not fall into the pattern of trying to flog yourself for your mistakes and sin. It isn't enough for you to know in your head that self-condemnation is an ineffective and sinful way to repent. Your heart has to learn a more effective way to correct unwanted behaviors and turn to God. You may need to ask God, the Great Healer, to show you what is true about your heart so you can understand what is going on. And what keeps you from accepting God’s unfailing love and kindness toward you as you pick yourself up after a mistake or a sin . . . with His help.
Remember that shame lives best in darkness, isolation and our “not telling.” When you get brave enough to tell God exactly what happened and exactly how it is making you feel, you have brought your concern and your pain into the light by telling your story. And you are no longer alone. God has infinite patience for us and our lives. And our smallest attempts to live in His light. It is hard, but with practice it gets easier. And our burdens get lifted right off our shoulders!
Use thanks and praise to help your heart hear how good and safe it is to trust the cross of Christ. Listen to what you are thanking God about! React with thanks and praise at the slightest indication of self-condemnation or self-based righteousness.
“Father, I am a mess. I’ve done it again. And I am SO ashamed of myself I can barely stand it! I am trying not to hate myself and my actions. You are a holy God and look what I just said to my stepdaughter in such a mean tone of voice. What was I thinking?! But I understand you are my Papa. And that you love me in spite of the worst thing I think or do. And I am amazed. Thank you God! I believe I am your son. Well, I’m starting to. So I am telling you my sin but I know you say you’ll forgive me. I really struggle with believing that but right now I guess I just will believe you. Thank you. Now Papa, will you help me clean up this mess with this young stepdaughter of mine and reconnect with her? I believe you, God that you want to do this for me. This is so hard to be so honest with you, but here I am, God. Thank you….”
Get your heart to hear that it is far more effective to change by hearing thanks and praise to God for the truth about how God truly feels about you and your situation. The cross is more powerful than your sin. Thank the Lord with great joy that you don't have to put your faith in the severity of your self-condemnation. Delight your heart by praise toward God that you don’t have to wait to trust the forgiveness of God until you are "done feeling bad."
Biblical repentance is a more effective way to grow—a way of delight toward God—not of contempt toward yourself. You have to get to the heart of the matter—without self-condemnation. Delight can help you change. Joy is the strongest bond known to man and the joy of the Lord is our strength. It binds our heart with God’s. We need God’s strength in our lives. Don’t shut yourself off from God when you make a mistake. He is the only Person who is completely trustworthy with your heart!
Christians tend to feel: “I have something wrong inside and so why shouldn't I hide from God?’ But God is the one who gave us this spiritual awareness to begin with, right? So why do we feel we need to hide from Him when He knows all about us? Would you hide from your doctor after you found out you had an infection? Wouldn’t that be counterproductive, especially if this doctor was willing and able to help you? We have to learn to accept that something is wrong in our lives but that we can still move forward with repentance because God loves and understands us. If you have this awareness you can be sure that God is calling you closer to Himself. But He also wants you to take steps to turn the affections of your heart more fully toward Him. Remember that you can move forward without having to punish yourself into improvement over and over for the same sin!
The thing is when you sin…repent…do a 180 away from the sin and toward God… then you really are free to let it go because God has let it go. Once forgiven of a sin you are truly forgiven by God. It doesn’t mean that there are no consequences for our actions while on earth because with sin comes consequences, but once we are truly repentant and forgiven by God that sin is gone for all eternity. Let it go and just move on and do what is right. Sounds simple, right? But it takes practice like any wonderful habit of friendship or relationship.
Next time you sin again run to the Lord! Don’t stay away because you sinned. Give it to God and get in right standing with Him right then. He wants this for you! He wants to help you walk closer to him every day and not get drug down by staying stuck in sorrow about your sin. He’d rather help you walk as a precious son or daughter who knows you are forgiven. And are being helped up to keep walking on a good path with him! Do it right on the spot even if you don’t feel like it. He has already made you in right standing with Him. His grace and forgiveness of you is big! Accept His free gift so you can keep moving. And move with new freedom! It is for freedom that Christ has set you free!
Mark Phelps
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