It would benefit every one of us if we would say to ourselves several times a day, “God has a good plan for my life.” Why should we do that? Because each of us needs to be firmly convinced of that truth to keep us from being affected by our changing circumstances and emotions.
You may be asking, “If God has such a wonderful plan for my life, why am I not living in it?”
I understand why you would ask that question. It does seem strange that if God loves us so much and has such good plans for us, we should have to suffer such misery. What you must remember is that we have an enemy who is out to destroy God's wonderful plan.
Although God had a good plan for my life, I ended up in an abusive environment because the devil came and disrupted that good plan.
But there is something else, something really awesome about God, we need to understand. God doesn't like it when someone hurts us and tries to undermine His plan for us. While He is making us lie down in green pastures to restore our soul, He is getting up to do something about our situation!
It should be a great comfort to us to know that what we cannot do for ourselves, the Lord will do for us — if we will trust ourselves to Him. Only He has the power to restore what has been lost to us, whether that loss was our own fault or the fault of our enemy.
Return to the Point of Departure
The basic meaning of the word restore in this context, as defined in Strong's concordance, is, “to turn back (hence, away) … literally or figuratively (not necessarily with the idea of return to the starting point).”3
God wants to take us back to the point of departure, the place where we veered from His plan for us, then bring us forward from that place to make things work out the way He intended from the beginning. He will not necessarily take us back to the place physically, and often does not. I don't think He even wants us to try to go there in our memory and relive that experience, although perhaps some people need to do that.
There may be times when people's memories have been blocked by something hideous that happened to them in the past they have not been able to face and deal with mentally and emotionally. In that case, they may need to go back and resolve that situation so that they can move forward with their lives. But as I warned earlier, it is best not to go on a digging expedition.
There are things about my childhood I cannot recall, and it doesn't bother me a bit. There are some things we are better off not remembering and reliving. Many times a God-given ability to forget is a real blessing.
One facet of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to bring things to our remembrance. (John 14:26.) If there is anything in our past we need to face and resolve, we must trust God to bring it to our attention, so that we don't have to go digging around looking for it.
Some people have been seeking emotional healing for years and years by going back into their sub-conscious and digging up all kinds of harmful and hurtful memories. That is dangerous business. It is much wiser to depend upon the Holy Spirit to bring forth those things that need to be dealt with and put away once and for all.
Good From Bad
As for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are this day. Genesis 50:20
God wants to restore your soul. Somehow or another, He wants to go back to wherever your life got off track and make everything right from that moment forward.
Although even the Lord cannot change what has happened to you, He can change the consequences of it, as He did for me.
In my own life I cannot truthfully say I am glad I was abused. But because I chose to yield the abuse to God so that He could heal me, He made me a better, stronger, more spiritually powerful and sensitive person.
That is just another example of how God takes what was meant for evil against us and works it out for our good.
Joseph is the one speaking about this in Genesis 50:20 when he told his brothers that what they meant to him as evil when they sold him into slavery in Egypt, God had used for good to save them and their families and many others in time of famine.
Opening the Ashes
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed and qualified me to preach the Gospel of good tidings to the meek, the poor, and afflicted; He has sent me to bind up and heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the [physical and spiritual] captives and the opening of the prison and of the eyes to those who are bound.
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord [the year of His favor] and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn.
To grant [consolation and joy] to those who mourn in Zion — to give them an ornament (a garland or diadem) of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment [expressive] of praise instead of a heavy, burdened, and failing spirit. … Isaiah 61:1-3
Here in Isaiah 61:3 we are told that as part of His restoration process, the Lord gives beauty for ashes. But for that to happen to us, we must be willing to give Him the ashes.
I once saw a movie in which the father of a young woman died. She loved him so much she had his body cremated and kept his ashes in a little box on the mantle. She never intended to keep them there permanently, but was waiting for just the right day to dispose of them.
Finally the perfect day arrived. The wind was blowing strongly as she went to the stable and saddled his favorite horse, the one he used to choose when they went horseback riding together. She directed the horse up to the top of a high hill where she opened the box and threw her father's ashes into the wind which blew them away. That was her way of letting him go — permanently.
That scene came back to me as I was pondering this issue of giving our ashes to the Lord.
You may have been hurt in the past and have kept the ashes of that hurt somewhere close at hand. Every once in a while you may get them out and regrieve over them. If so, I understand because I used to do the same thing.
But you need to do what I did and let go of those ashes, allowing the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow them away to where they cannot be found again. This is a new day. There is no more time left for grieving over the ashes of the past. You have no future in your past.
God has the same good plan for you that He had the moment you arrived on this planet. He has never changed His mind. From the moment the enemy hurt you, God has had your restoration in His heart.
When the Lord placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He never intended for them to fall into sin and disrupt His perfect plan for them and their lives. But they did fall into sin and became slaves to Satan.
What was God's response?
Immediately He went to work on His plan for their restoration. He knew He was going to send His own Son to redeem them. That was the whole reason behind Jesus' coming to the earth, as we see in the King James Version of 1 John 3:8: … For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.The Amplified Bible version reads: … The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo (destroy, loosen, and dissolve) the works the devil [has done].
My Cup Runneth Over!
Yes, though I walk through the [deep, sunless] valley of the shadow of death, I will fear or dread no evil, for You are with me; Your rod [to protect] and Your staff [to guide], they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my [brimming] cup runs over.
Surely or only goodness, mercy, and unfailing love shall follow me all the days of my life, and through the length of my days the house of the Lord [and His presence] shall be my dwelling place. Psalm 23:4-6
This last part of David's most beloved hymn of praise to God describes the condition the Lord wants us to be in constantly. He wants us to be protected, guided, comforted. He wants to set a table of blessings before us in the very face of our enemies. He wants to anoint us with the oil of joy instead of mourning. He wants our cup of blessings to overflow continually in thanksgiving a
nd praise to Him for His goodness, mercy, and unfailing love toward us. And He wants us to live forever, moment by moment, in His holy presence.
All these things are part of His good plan for each of us. Regardless of how far we may have fallen, He wants to raise us up and restore us to that right and perfect plan He has for our lives.
Bruising Head and Foot
And the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled (cheated, outwitted, and deceived) me, and I ate.
And the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all [domestic] animals and above every [wild] living thing of the field; upon your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust [and what it contains] all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He will bruise and tread your head underfoot, and you will lie in wait and bruise His heel. Genesis 3:13-15
After Adam and Eve fell into sin and came before God to answer for their disobedience to Him, the Lord placed a curse upon the serpent who had deceived them and disrupted His plan for them. Among other things, He told him he would bruise the heal of the woman's offspring Who would also bruise his head.
When you were hurt or abused, or when you were simply lead astray by Satan into some kind of sin or failure, those times were the devil bruising your heel. The promise is if he bruises your heel, you can bruise his head.
But you are not going to bruise the head of Satan by sitting around crying over the ashes of your past life. The only way you will ever bruise the head of the devil is by doing the works of God — in spite of everything the enemy may throw at you to stop you.
I believe I am bruising Satan's head every day I live.
Do you want to continually bruise Satan's head, as I am doing in my life and ministry? The way to do that is by helping someone else. Start being a blessing to others, and you will start bruising Satan's head.
Don't just crawl off somewhere to nurse your wounds. Don't just sit and pick your scabs and bleed all your life. Get busy bruising the head of the one who bruised your heel by being a blessing to someone else.
The Bible tells us that the way to defeat evil is by overcoming it with good. (Rom. 12:21 kjv.) But that takes effort and determination. It won't just happen. We have to decide to do it.
For years I did just what I am urging you not to do. I wallowed in the ashes of my past life. When I finally gave those ashes to the Lord, confessing to Him that my life was a mess, and asking Him to set it straight, He called me to work in His Kingdom.
You don't have to have a call like mine to be a blessing. Just get busy being a blessing to each person you come in contact with in your daily life. Start where you are, and God will take you where you should end up.
Maybe Satan has bruised your heel, but if you are willing and determined, you can bruise his head!
Types of Abuse
We have said that our soul or our inner being is comprised of our mind, will, and emotions. Often our soul, like our body and our spirit, is abused.
To abuse something is to “misuse” it or “to use wrongly or improperly.”4 In other words, to use it for a purpose other than for what it was intended.
There are several types of abuse: emotional, verbal, physical, and sexual. We will look at each of these separately though they may often occur together.
Emotional Abuse
Emotional abuse can occur when a person, who is created by God for love and acceptance, is rejected and made to feel unloved, unappreciated, or unworthy. That kind of treatment will often have an effect on the individual's self-image and self-esteem.
People who are constantly subjected to emotional abuse quickly alter their opinion of themselves and their perspective of others. Their ability to develop and maintain lasting, wholesome relationships with other people is usually affected. They often begin to adjust their behavior toward others because they don't want to run the risk of suffering more emotional hurt and pain.
Verbal Abuse
Then there is verbal abuse.
People thrive and grow on edification, exhortation, and encouragement. Words of blessing can motivate people to become all that God intends for them to be.
When you and I were born into this world, God had a ready-made plan tailored just for each of us. He wanted to give us loving, caring parents to nurture us and teach us His Word and provide us everything we needed to live in peace and happiness and security. He wanted us to be brought up in a home in which family members spoke the right things over us and about us and to us, telling us that we could be anything the Lord wanted us to be.
Our heavenly Father never intended for us to be brought up by people who would say to us, “You're never going to amount to anything!” or “Why can't you be like your brother?” or “Why don't you get good grades like your sister?” or “What's the matter with you anyway?”
That kind of talk is damaging to people's souls because it alters their thinking about themselves and others.
If your parents or teachers or other authority figures in your life were constantly telling you such negative things during your formative years, you likely grew up asking yourself, “What is wrong with me? Why can't I be like my brother? Why don't I get good grades like my sister? What is my problem?”
I was so verbally abused in my early years that even into my thirties and forties I was still asking, “What's wrong with me?” That continued until the Lord answered my question with, “There's nothing wrong with you, but there is a lot right about you.”
He went on to tell me what is right with me is not based on my perfect behavior. I learned I am acceptable to God not because I am so good but because He is so good. I am right with Him because He chose to make me right with Him.
The devil doesn't want us to hear the truth. He has offered religion, the following of rules and regulations, to try to get us to make a never-ending attempt to be good enough to deserve God's blessings. The problem is, we can follow all the rules and observe all the laws and still not experience any joy or victory in our lives.
I am not a teacher of religion, I am a teacher of the Word of God. One reason I put so much emphasis on the Bible is that in it we find God's good plan for our lives.
The Bible doesn't teach us about religion, it teaches us about a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. When He comes to live on the inside of us, we receive His nature in our spirits. (1 John 3:9.) We get an opportunity for a fresh start, a new beginning! Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17 kjv). We are given new life — we literally come alive again.
When that happens, we are empowered to do in our daily lives what we are exhorted to do in Philippians 2:12: … work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ).
By reading and meditating on the Word of God, we begin to renew our mind, as we are told in Romans 12:2: Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].
Once our mind is renewed by the Word of God, our will begins to come back into line with His will and purpose for us. When that happens, our emotions start to come under control. Our souls are healed so that we can enjoy the righteousness, peace, and joy that are rightfully ours in the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 14:17.)
Physical Abuse
Physical abuse includes not only being beaten and mistreated, it also includes such traumatic experi
ences as being left alone or locked in a closet or even denied outward demonstrations of love and acceptance.
It has been proven that newborn babies who are never touched or held become weak, anemic, and even physically sick. If they are denied loving care and attention long enough, they may actually die.
I have read somewhere that in marriage a woman needs twelve meaningful, loving touches every day from her spouse in order to live out the fullness of her life and be truly healthy and whole. As I was sharing that fact in one of my marriage seminars, a lady on the front row looked at her husband and said, “You're killing me!” She meant he had not been giving her the affection she needed.
The truth is that all of us, no matter what our age, need not only to be safe from physical mistreatment but also to be loved and nurtured physically as well as emotionally.
Sexual Abuse
Finally, there is sexual abuse, which is said to be the worst, most offensive, and most damaging of all.
As designed and instituted by God, sex should be the highest expression of a couple's giving of themselves to each other in love within the bonds of holy matrimony.
When an individual is forced to engage in sex against his or her will, something is taken from that person he or she does not want to share. If that individual is abused in a perverted manner, he or she may suffer lasting damage to the soul as well as to the physical body.
When people, especially children, are abused sexually, their mind, will, and emotions may be tremendously affected. They may become negative, suspicious, critical, judgmental, worried, and unsettled. They may also become what I would call “mentally deep,” always reasoning, always trying to figure everything out, always asking, “How can I take care of myself? How can I keep life under control so I don't get hurt anymore?”