I once had a word of knowledge about a person who had been
repeatedly raped by her father and an uncle as a young child. As I looked at the people present at
the gathering, I was fairly sure I knew who it was; a young woman had been
glowering at me for most of the meeting.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. After the meeting, a sweet little lady in her 70’s
approached me.
“I was the person who was raped,” she said. “From the age of 5 until I was 10 or
12, I was repeatedly sexually abused in the way you described. It has affected every day of my life
since then, including my marriage.
You are the first person I have ever told about it!”
Was she, as a young girl, in any way to blame for what went on? No! As an innocent child she was sinned against in a horrendous
fashion.
The main way to deal with this kind of problem will come out
in the next post, but there is a very important principle here, and that is the
need of forgiveness. Despite the
magnitude of the sin against her, this lady needed to forgive her father and
uncle. Jesus made it quite clear
that our own forgiveness depends on our willingness to forgive others. (The fact that one forgives doesn’t
mean one trusts again quickly. The
wife who is sinned against when her husband has an affair is not immediately
going to trust him again.)
It was a privilege to pray with her and see her set free as
she forgave her father and uncle. Jesus cleansed her and freed her from the shame of what
had happened to her.