The Locust years…

I had the privilege of speaking to 11 of the most courageous women I have ever met Monday night. These women are survivors of domestic violence. Some of them are survivors of sexual abuse as well. They are all survivors of multiple types of abuse be it verbal, emotional, physical, and/or sexual. While some have endured their horrific circumstances for years, others were able to escape within the first months or years. All have scars, some visible to the human eye, all visible to our heavenly Father.

While the physical bruises, cuts, and burns will heal naturally, the emotional wounds will take much time, love, compassion, and hard work on the survivor’s part before they will heal. BUT…they can and will heal when our Heavenly Father is the source of strength, hope, courage, and love from which these women choose to draw from. Christ and Christ alone fully understand the depth of their pain, their needs, fears, hopes and dreams.

What courage I heard in their voices as they shared what they had learned from the classes they had been taking. The strength they had received from each other and the hope they now have for a life free from abuse.

My prayer is that God will use my words to His glory and let my words bring encouragement, hope, and a challenge to choose to live a life dedicated to Christ. I pray they will choose to focus on the good and positive changes that are taking place in their lives and not dwell on the horrors of the past.
I pray that they will believe, trust, hope, and receive God’s promise in Joel where God promises to restore to His people the years that were taken from them in such a horrible way. He will give them more than they had and they will not be ashamed! What a wonderful promise!

Joel 2:25 (NAS)

"Then I will make up to you for the years
That the swarming locust has eaten,
The creeping locust, the stripping locust and
The gnawing locust,
My great army which I sent among you."

Joel 2:26 (NAS) “You shall have plenty to eat and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you; Then My people will never be put to shame."

Glory be to God through whom all things are possible!