Scripture Share

[PamelaS]

This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24

 

[Dynamic]

This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24

Hello! I hope this finds you well with understanding. This act of faith (you posting this scripture) was just way bigger than I can ever explain to you for my walk with God right now. Be blessed in favor and let this remind us all you never know what that small thing God urged you to do may do for someone else in the Kingdom family

 

[Dynamic]

I will give thanks to you Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds. Psalm 9:1

 

[Dynamic]

Do not worry about your life, what you will put on. Matthew 6:25

 

[Dynamic]

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

James 1:8

 

[Dynamic]

But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Acts 1:8

 

[In the weeds]

"He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds"

Psalm 147:3

 

[Dynamic]

Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

Isaiah 54:10

 

[Dynamic]

Okay back to what I was sharing before:

What I feel/think:
I am in bondage.

Truth according to Bible:
I am free in Christ.


Psalm 32:7 (NKJV)
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.”


2 Corinthians 3:17 (NKJV)
“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”


John 8:36 (NKJV)
“Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

 

[Dynamic]

Lie:

I am miserable.
Truth
I have Gods comfort.

John 16:7

“But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”


2 Corinthians 1:3–4


“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

 

[Jan123]

Hello everyone. I’m glad I found this forum. I’m sort of going through a crisis of faith right now. Not fully a crisis of my faith - I know in the end I still want to be a Christian and I know no other ‘option’ will do for me. But, I am just starting the journey of processing my trauma and past griefs and I am having a hard time relating to God. I feel my faith and soul are fractured and I need God to piece me back together, but I am currently angry at Him for my life experiences. The Bible verses I know no longer bring comfort as I try to make sense of my experiences in light of who God says He is. Things aren’t making sense for me. To make things more complicated, I have adhd and possibly undiagnosed autism which in addition to cptsd makes things a bit more sticky. I’m working with a good psychologist for that but I feel I need a specifically Christian centered trauma counsellor or something. I’m praying God gives me something, just anything, hope His presence, so I can know again that He’s still there. I know theologically that He is but I can’t feel it or reconcile His presence with experiences. I feel I need to see Him in a new way or something, I don’t know. I have good pastors for theology and advice but I don’t know how to explain my experiences to them. I have been told that I am listening to my feelings too much and should stop. I know it’s good advice but it’s not very helpful when I am dealing with trauma related issues. I can tell that they might not be equipped to deal with faith issues arising from trauma. I don’t want to be minimized. If anyone know what can help me to relate with God again, please share. Right now I’m journaling and pouring out my heart and doubts to God. But I don’t have a scripture to hold unto. I feel kind of baseless without a scripture to hold unto and believe.
Thanks

Thank you for being so honest and for sharing. I really relate to how you feel. I suffer from complex PTSD, chronic pain, and other mental health issues after living through over 20 years of narcissistic abuse.


I’ve tried really hard to rebuild my life. I’ve trusted God while making difficult decisions, including leaving my home, trying to pursue a life for myself, build stability, and heal, even without receiving apologies or accountability from the people who hurt me. But there have been so many extreme setbacks, one after another, alongside such a lack of support and real community in what I’m going through, including within church communities.


I’ve come across pastors who have been very dismissive of experiences of abuse, especially narcissistic abuse, and who don’t seem to understand how deeply complex PTSD can affect someone. I know exactly what you mean. There was a point where I was trying so hard to grow in my faith and in every area of my life, but once I started becoming more in touch with myself and trying to process my trauma, it felt like the trauma blocked me from everything.


Being on that healing journey now, I’ve realised how much perfectionism affected my faith. I used to feel like I had to have an answer to every question as a Christian, understand every perspective and verse, and somehow make complete sense of the Bible. It honestly became toxic for me. I felt ashamed that I could no longer find peace in reading large parts of the Bible.


This year in particular, I’ve gone through some extreme setbacks with my health. I study at university, but I’ve had to stop studying, and I’ve become too unwell to work as well. That has brought a lot of financial implications. I worked hard to build savings, but now that I’m too sick to study or work, I’ll probably have to use those savings just to make sure I have somewhere to live.


Throughout this year, I’ve realised how important support is. But after experiencing narcissistic abuse, it can be incredibly difficult to feel safe with people or trust them. I took the risk of putting myself out there, especially with other Christians, and sometimes I ended up feeling even more rejected, minimised, and misunderstood. At times, I was almost made to feel as though I simply didn’t understand the Bible well enough and that this was why I felt the way I did.


Rather than finding the support I had prayed and looked for, I ended up learning a lot about my boundaries and about which people I don’t feel safe enough to let into certain areas of my life.


I’ve also had a lot of back and forth with God. There have been times when I’ve felt like I wanted to completely drop my faith. At the same time, there have also been many moments when I felt like I needed God, even when I couldn’t really feel His presence or goodness in my life. I’ve felt a lot of anger and disappointment that God allowed me to go through so many things, especially while I was trying to remain faithful to Him.


That’s something I’m still going through now, and it’s hard because I can feel so much anger and work through it one day, thinking that because I’ve processed the anger for that day, it’s gone. Then it just keeps coming back up again.


I’m still young. I’m only 23, and I think some of that anger comes from feeling like I was robbed of so much of my life growing up in abuse. I made a brave decision to leave, and I’m grateful that God guided me through that, but since leaving and trying to navigate life in a healthier way, it feels like there have just been setback after setback.


I’ve been bedbound with illness for nearly a year now, and sometimes, when it gets really bad, I don’t even feel like a human being. At times it almost feels like I’m trapped in a dream because everything is so overwhelming, especially when I don’t have the support that I need.


I think one of my biggest fears is that I’ll never get to live the life I want to live, that I’ll never really experience freedom, and that my whole life will become about simply surviving and being grateful for every small thing. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with gratitude, but the thought of never having a certain level of freedom, energy, or independence in life, especially when there are so many things I’ve never had the chance to experience, genuinely breaks my heart.


I think that’s where having compassion for yourself and putting yourself in spaces that bring more awareness can help. Sometimes I’ll watch YouTube channels, and I also do ACA, which helps me understand a bit more about what I’m going through and why the emotions can feel so extreme at times. Just having that knowledge and understanding can help me have a bit more compassion for myself when those feelings come up again.


I’ve also struggled with people responding to suffering by saying that eternal life is ultimately the answer to our problems now. Sometimes I’ve found that quite disrespectful. It’s not because I don’t believe in eternity or accept that we live in a fallen world. It’s because I’ve noticed that some people use Scripture in a way that avoids actually helping someone. They interpret it in a way that almost forces you to find hope in a particular way instead of allowing you to be honest about what you’re experiencing.


I’m sorry if this sounds quite negative, but one thing I’m really grateful for is a priest I had who was one of the only people I genuinely felt spiritually safe with. I didn’t realise until later how much spiritual trauma I had from previous church experiences.


My priest was really good. I’m not saying we agreed on everything, but I felt like he encouraged me to see God in a more peaceful and relatable way. He helped me learn how to let go of perfectionism, both as a person and within my faith, and focus more on freedom and on how God might be allowing me to develop greater freedom in Him.


I was also able to express difficult emotions to him, including emotions that other people might dismiss or that you might only feel safe expressing in therapy. It helped me realise that God can handle those emotions too.


I think I’ve also had to learn the hard way that everyone’s faith is different. As trauma survivors, it can be so easy to put ourselves down and put other people on a pedestal. I’m not saying I know everything, that I’m perfect in my faith, or that there aren’t things I still need to learn. But I’ve started to understand that the emotions I feel aren’t unique to me.


Over the last few months, I’ve taken part in programmes, found forums, and come across different people online who feel similarly to me. I normally don’t like posting about personal things on the internet, but I responded to you because I really resonated with what you said.


I’ve noticed that many people with experiences similar to mine have gone through periods where they couldn’t even read the Bible and had really intense emotions towards God. What seems to have helped many of them is honesty: being really raw with God and learning that He can handle it and love you through it. God isn’t only the God of people who appear perfect and polished or fit the image of a “perfect Christian”. God is available to anyone who is open to Him.


I’ve also had to learn to respect where my own boundaries are. There were times when I felt embarrassed and ashamed because I used to be able to read whole chapters of the Bible without feeling so sensitive or overwhelmed. Then I reached a point where reading Scripture sometimes left me feeling more confused or distressed rather than helped.


I’ve found some peace in learning to respect that and recognising that other people experience it too. I try to connect with what I can connect with. I read some of the Psalms regularly, and one of my favourites is Psalm 27. Even if it weren’t in the Bible, it’s something that speaks deeply to me. It reminds me that God can be there for me in the absence of having an active father or mother in my life.


I’ve also learned to take things slowly and not pressure myself to read huge amounts of new Scripture. I still feel that reading some new Scripture is important for me, so I might read a Mass reading, a small part of Samuel, which I’m currently going through, or simply a verse of the day.


I think my attitude towards Scripture has changed. I’ve realised that your relationship with the Bible can look different depending on where you are in your faith journey. Sometimes you may feel ready to hear something and immediately be obedient to it. Other times, you may read something and allow yourself to have questions or opinions about it. Sometimes you might simply read it and give yourself time to process it. For me, it’s become more about meeting God where I can through what I’m reading and seeing what is revealed to me at that point in my life.


Because my health has caused long periods of isolation, I’ve also spent more time learning how to separate church from God in a certain sense. I’m not saying church isn’t important. I still have some church hurt and spiritual trauma that I’m working through. What I mean is recognising that the church itself is not God.


God can speak through people in church, and sometimes there may be people He wants you to listen to. But I’ve learned that I’m not obliged to accept everything someone tells me simply because they are confident or strong in their interpretation. I need to listen to where God is taking me rather than placing unnecessary external pressure on myself.


Sometimes, when I come across some of the more difficult concepts in the Bible that I’m not particularly receptive to at the moment, I also think it reminds me that God is both our friend and our Father. There are times when you don’t feel His presence, but that doesn’t necessarily mean everything is as bad as it feels.


Sometimes you may feel close to God, and sometimes you won’t. I think those periods can make you more grateful for the moments when you genuinely do feel His presence or feel like you can hear from Him. Communication with God isn’t always going to feel the same. Sometimes there are longer periods of silence, which can feel frightening, but I think those periods can also reveal what you truly believe about God and what you choose to hold onto.


Apologies for such a long response. I just wanted to write a proper reply because what you shared really resonated with me. I’m also really happy that you’ve found a church community that works well for you and supports you in what you’ve been dealing with, especially in regard to your son as well.