Welcome, Guest Intro, And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa, and I'm here to show you how. Let's go. Hey man, thank you so much for listening to my interview with Dr. Steve Tracy, who is the author of Mending the Soul, and most recently, to heal or harm scriptures used as poison or medicine for abuse survivors. This is the best book I've read all year. I would recommend it to anyone. Steve does such an amazing job of helping us connect with God's heart for this extremely important yet underestimated issue of abuse. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse or you know survivors of sexual abuse, this episode will be especially helpful because you will hear a definition of what is abuse, what God's word and the Bible has to say about it, some of the common lies we believe, the truths we need to hear, and how we can guard against misinterpretations of scripture because this is literally a life or death issue. And I want to remind you that the views expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of husband material ministries. Featuring a guest is not an endorsement of their beliefs, methods, products, services, or any other content they've created. We believe in discernment. So as with any resource, test everything against your own convictions, take what's helpful, and leave the rest behind. I am absolutely thrilled that Steve Tracy, the author of To Heal or Harm and Mending the Soul, is with us. Welcome to the show, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Thanks so much, Drew. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

We are talking about abuse. It's tough. It's difficult, and yet so, so necessary. How do you define abuse?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, I give pretty tight definitions. I'm an academic in the book, but at the most basic level, abuse is any kind of misuse of God-given power to harm another human being. I mean, just at its most basic level. And I look at five primary kinds of abuse in my writings, but our spiritual power, our verbal power, our sexual power, physical power. And that all comes from being made in God's image. He gives us potency. We're able to do what animals

Defining Abuse As Misused Power

SPEAKER_00 2:30

can't, the power of words, you know, etc. etc. So when we misuse those beautiful gifts to harm another person, it's what I would call abuse.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

It was surprising to me to find out how much of the Bible talks about abuse.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Yeah, I continue to marvel at how often formally trained, I mean, at a seminary level, that's a lot of time, money, and dollars. People that have had the full ministerial training know nothing about abuse often. That's starting to change, thankfully. But I know for all of my ridiculous amount of degrees and student loans, Bible college, two master's degrees, a five-year PhD in biblical studies. I didn't get five minutes in all, I mean, all those courses, Greek, Hebrew, books of the Bible, theology, blah, blah, blah, not five minutes in all those years on abuse. So you would think, well, apparently the Bible has nothing to say about it. Well, actually, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of passages in Scripture about abuse. And when you start to see that and and you know, have a lens to see what's there, it it is absolutely revolutionary in multiple ways. One of which is for those of us who've experienced abuse, and by my definitions, virtually every one of us has, not necessarily capital A, you know, that which would fit the legal criteria for prosecution crime. Thankfully, not all of us have, but a surprising percentage have, especially men, and that's the really kind of overlooked population of abuse survivors, but certainly small A. Like if you went through junior high in the United States, you've experienced abuse. And it can be really damaging. Not because we're weak, but because we're made in God's image, and that creates certain vulnerabilities. So it's really helpful when you come to understand that scripture addresses abuse all over the place. It normalizes, in a sense, what we've experienced, not to make it healthy, but I'm not the weird one because I experienced abuse and it was really hurtful. No, it scripture addresses this. It talks about how harmful each kind of abuse is. And that's super helpful. And obviously, it's helpful in other ways for scripture to address abuse and address it forthrightly. Like, I'm astounded at how often how bashful Christians often are, families, churches, etc., in addressing abuse. And then you come to Scripture and it's like in fact, it's more graphic than often like who got stuff like the fatal gang rape of the the Levites' concubine. I mean, that's just nasty. Well, there's a reason it's there, not because, of course, God is like twisted and and and delights in that. Humans give graphic stories out of a sense of twistedness. God, knowing what this broken world looks like, wanted to give us honest takes on the ugliness of abuse so that we would see it as he does. So just that mere fact that Scripture is very unabashed about addressing the ugliness of abuse, be it physical, be it sexual, etc., really speaks to us about the heart of God. And then it should embolden us to do the same in our own lives, in our churches, in our families, with our kids, uh, with our own stories, you know, etc.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

I love how you describe the way God responds to abuse. He sees, he hears, he feels, yeah, he redeems and restores.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah. That's worth the price of a book. So beautiful. No, it's so true. You you nailed it, Drew, right out of the book of Exodus in a context of abuse, slavery of the Israelites. Uh, who knows how many times I've read the book of Exodus? It's a bunch, you know, as a as a seminary teacher, you read the book and you try to learn from each of the readings. But reading it as I was writing, mending this writing to heal or harm, reading Exodus again, it jumped out at me in a new way. And it's just right there in, I think, chapter three, God's response. And it gives such hope to all of us. Abuse, man, it's nasty and so destructive in so many ways. And one of the many ways is abuse of any kind tends to create clouds of toxic shame. It just happen almost intuitively, that we feel, and it it obviously that's probably most obvious with sexual abuse, but not at all limited to sexual abuse. Any kind of abuse tends to make us feel defective, worthless. You know, there's something irredeemable in us. So hearing God's heart for his abused children cuts through the lies of the toxic shame and says, okay, that may be what you're feeling. Won't dismiss what you're feeling, but let's hear God's heart here. Here's his heart toward abuse and specifically toward his children who are hurting.

God Sees And Hates Abuse

SPEAKER_01 8:30

So many men in our community have experienced childhood sexual abuse.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Including through pornography. What does the Bible have to say about those experiences?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Great question. Very sensitive question. And I have to tell you, Drew, how refreshing it is for me to be doing this podcast. Not 100%, but I've done a bunch of podcasts now for this new book, and all but a few of them were very much directed at a female audience. And I'm very, very glad to do that. But we often leave men out of the equation as if well, abuse victims are women. Well, yeah, uh, and men too. So I really appreciate you zeroing in on the fact that certainly with sexual abuse, men are the like unseen population. And statistically, we're talking at least one out of five young men growing up will experience contact sexual abuse. And I distinguish contact from non-contact because you rightly note pornography is a whole other non-contact category. That like what what percentage of young men these days are in growing up exposed to porn in a society that allows that to happen, that is abusive. So if you include that, I mean we're talking close to 100% of young men, but even at a contact level, at least one out of five. So it's a really high percentage of men experience sexual abuse. Like, as I said earlier, it dresses abuse very, very forthrightly. Most of the examples are of women, but you certainly have the example in Genesis of the attempted gang rape of by a group of men of who it was angels, but they thought it was, you know, two men. And what we see over and over is God absolutely hates it. He hates abuse of any kind, and that certainly includes sexual. Hence, you have a little over 700 commands in in Jewish law in Torah, and only about twenty, less than two dozen of them are given capital punishment. Sexual abuse or rape is given capital punishment, which tells us sexual abuse is on God's short list of things that he most hates because it is so destructive. And so often when someone, man or woman, is abused, it's not taken seriously. It's reported and nothing happens, the allegation is is just discounted at best, and sometimes the child or the young person's shamed for saying it as if they're just lying. And that creates a whole new level of damage. So the fact that God takes abuse sexual abuse so seriously, he hates it, it it breaks his heart, he has such passion toward justice for the victim, that should really speak to us in a healing way, especially when we've gotten the opposite. I just want to say I'm probably a little older than most of our listeners. You know, as someone who's, as my African friends would say, probably seen more sunrises than most of you. God, if you've been sexually abused, God hates what happens, happened to you. I can't even put in words how much he desires to redeem that, to offer his healing. And maybe you've not experienced that from other humans that you should have gotten it from your caregivers, family members, whoever, spiritual leaders. If that's your experience, I just want to say I'm really sorry that should never have been the case. Ever, ever. But we want to let scripture speak to us about the heart of God, and he cares deeply, beyond what we can even imagine.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

It reminds me of the words of Jesus saying, if anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

And boy, does sexual abuse cause us to stumble. You know, whether it's from lust to then we get involved in porn, out of control, anger, that we've, you know, we end up hurting others because we've been hurt in a host of ways. And sometimes in the church or a family, you have a child or a young person who's acting out and they are angry, and so everyone just jumps on their sin. Certainly not all anger is sin, but let's say it did cross the line and behavior is sinful. Jesus is directly addressing that in Matthew, and he's saying, you know what? Let me tell you my priority here, and obviously it should be our priority. It's not on hammering the vulnerable one who was wounded, it's the one who did the wounding. And then he gives this graphic metaphor that would have resonated in first century Palestine because the sea for uh to the Jews in the first century was considered a place of desolation, and it was terrifying. Sea of Galilee would have um storms that would whip up, and you know, they didn't have life jackets, they didn't have uh the the Coast Guard. I mean, you you get caught in a storm and you go down and that's it. So they were very afraid of that kind of scenario, and Jesus is picking up on what would have been one of their greatest fears, and and then the language is so specific. There are two Greek words for the millstone. One was the little one that

Men’s Hidden Abuse Stories And Porn

SPEAKER_00 14:40

a woman who was, you know, doing the cooking could use to thrush the grain. But Jesus, well, it would have been in Aramaic, but as Matthew translates it into Greek, it's the huge millstone that would have been maybe 300 pounds that it would take an oxen to move. Like the language is so specific, like the worst of the worst. How you hurt one of these little ones and cause them to stumble, and you'd be much better off if someone took a 300-pound millstone, tied it around your neck, and dropped you into the desolate sea. You'd be better off than what will happen to you come judgment day. Like, okay, I get the point. God hates, hates it when his vulnerable ones are wounded by those with more power who should be their protectors. Couldn't be more clear.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

I'm also thinking about the guys who were abused and then repeated what was done to them.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

That is so common. That is so common. And I love what I heard Larry Crab, who's now with the Lord, say years ago every one of us at one level or another have been victimized and we're victimizers. And he wasn't talking necessarily abuse, but just in general. You know, we're sinned against and we sin. And maybe this is human nature, but certainly in our culture it's it's a world of extremes. It's kind of all or nothing. So either your sensitivity is to abuse victims, and everything is about victimization, or you go to the opposite extreme. Oh, that's woke. They're just making that up. Life is rarely in the extremes. Uh it's important that we nuance and realize it's both and, and we need to account for both. It's essential that all of us own what's ours to own. So in our woundedness, we sometimes often turn around and wound others. It's really important that we own that. We can't heal as long as we're passing the buck and not being honest. Won't happen.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Right? But at the same time, we need healing. And so it's important that we're able to be honest about how we've been sinned against, enter into that, name it, find Christ healing there. It's both in.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

I hear a big difference between taking ownership and carrying shame. And those are two different things.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah, two very different things. Yeah, I appreciate you making the distinction. Um, Jeremiah talks about abusers who were so hard-hearted that they couldn't blush or even feel shame when they should have. So we can become so hardened that there's just no healthy sense of shame that that is something's wrong inside of me that I need I need to address. That's healthy shame. If it's based on truth, like the truth is I've really hurt another person, I've really violated the laws of God. But it's healthy shame if there's a sense of I can do something about it. I can go to my heavenly father and confess. That's healthy shame, it's based on truth. But unhealthy or toxic shame is based on lies. I I'm owning what isn't mine to own. Like the abuser's sin I feel shame for, and then sexual abuse survivors tend to be filled with shame for that which is not theirs to feel shame for.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Right. What are some of the most common lies that abuse survivors believe?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I'm irredeemably defective, and hence I just need to hide. I can't tell any of my anyone my story because I I'm I'm just messed up and can't really be fixed. There's so many, that's a great question. There's so many lies, and some often these lies are deeply buried, and we don't even fully realize that this is a lie we believe. And that's where I think healthy relationship with others. I really believe in, for instance, small healing groups. I've, as a pastor, done those, led those for years. We all have misbeliefs, but chances are I can see your misbeliefs easier than I can see mine, right? And in a healthy fellowship, Paul says in Ephesians 4, we speak the truth one to another. And I may be able to see some things that you can't see, and vice versa. If I enter into this with a spirit of humility, we're gonna learn together, we're gonna support each other as brothers, and then it helps some of these surface. But you know, another lie would be because we've been sexually abused, and it can come from other kinds of abuse as well. I especially see it with sexual abuse. My masculinity is now corrupted. I'm not really a man. And man, Satan has a field day with that one. Our masculinity does tend to be strongly tied to a sense of his potency and strength. And, you know, I'm don't at all ignore the fact that God has made men and women different. I cherish that. Hopefully, we can all say that's a great thing. We're not the same. There's two genders and they're very different. And I don't want to overdraw the distinctions, but just biologically, men do have much more testosterone, 10 to as much as 20 times more testosterone than women. And that's the way God's made us. That's not a chauvinistic statement, that's biology. And by uh testosterone does account for greater physical strength. I mean, there are certainly women that are stronger. I look at some of the female MMA fighters. Just generally speaking, men do tend to be stronger physically, and I think our when we're violated sexually, there can be this sense that that shouldn't happen to a man. I should be stronger than for that to have happened. So there's just, again, deeply buried, not maybe even at a level I I'm fully aware of the lie, but I think deep down there's often this sense that if you've been sexually abused or or maybe physically, I'm not really a man. I I'm not really male.

Victims Who Become Victimizers

SPEAKER_00 21:30

I'm subpar masculine, some permutation of that kind of lie. That's deadly. That is just so destructive.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Right. Some of the other lies I often hear are I wanted it, I chose it, I must have liked it because my body responded to it.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

That's very insightful, Drew. Even with women, I saw some recent research. For a long time, it wasn't recognized until pretty Recently, that when a child is sexually abused, that there could be arousal, but especially for females. Well, newer research is showing actually that's not the case. Again, that's biology. Just because you were aroused doesn't mean you wanted it, let alone deserved it. God's made our bodies, certainly our genitals, with pleasure receptors. So, and that's that's a lot of the confusion of sexual abuse. When we're taken advantage of by someone with greater power, the power differential is really huge here with abuse. That's just so confusing. Well, but part of me didn't want it, but then again I was aroused. So I guess deep down I really did want it. Your body's wired for pleasure, so that doesn't necessarily at all mean that you wanted it. And it certainly doesn't mean it was your fault. But that's confusing, very confusing.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

It really is. And it can also create questions about God, like God, why would you let this happen to me?

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

What kind of a God would let this happen to me? Or also, like, well, God clearly must be punishing me, or He must not care. So many lies about God and ways that our view of God is affected too.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah, we actually developed this for Africa, but we've used it extensively here in the US. That's just part of the healing model and process. We create a chart that has lies about God, lies about myself, lies about others. And then we list some of the most common lies, and then we have a verse or two of scripture that uh addresses that lie. And we are our people have found that to be an extremely helpful exercise. So I'll just throw that out as kind of a template to consider in the in the healing growth process. God self-others, it's guaranteed if you've experienced abuse, Satan's implanted lies in each of those three areas. And part of the growth healing process is being able to identify those lies and challenge them with God's truth.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

What are some of those most important truths for abuse survivors?

SPEAKER_00 24:19

God loves me unconditionally. If we've put our faith in Christ as our Lord and Savior, I'm loved unconditionally, and nothing I do and nothing that's done to me will ever change that. Like that is one of the most precious truths in all of Scripture. Romans 8. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. And Paul goes through this litany of like all the horrible things, powers on earth, demonic powers, all these things. No, nothing can separate us from the love of God. That is, I think, one of the most important biblical responses to that lie.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

That is the medicine of scripture.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

And yet you also go into detail about how scripture can be poisonous for abuse survivors when it's contaminated.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I love your comparison of scripture to water. It's this essential resource that we need, and it's life-giving. God created water and he created and inspired the Bible, and yet it can also kill us.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Yeah, isn't that a catch-22?

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Man, I've had typhoid. It's typically water and borne, and I was deathly ill in the Congo. And there's all kinds of diseases. I I threw in a few stats in the book. Like millions of people a year, their lives are threatened from waterborne illnesses. So on average, we can only go about three days without water before we die. So we have to have it. But it may be the very thing that makes us sick or potentially even kills us. What a dilemma. And yeah, I think that's a great analogy for scripture. It's we need God's word. It's life-giving. It gives us his perspective, his instructions. It's essential to thrive spiritually, but when it's misread, or yet when it's weaponized against us, instead of it being a source of life, it can become a source of contamination, disease, and death. And Satan, the evil one, that's his strategy. You know, when Jesus was tempted in Matthew's record in Matthew 4 in the wilderness, Satan uses script, Satan quotes scripture. So we need to be really sensitive to the fact that while scripture is God's truth and it's life-giving and it's essential, it can just as easily be used against us as used for us.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Which is why we desperately

Toxic Shame And Common Survivor Lies

SPEAKER_01 27:20

need the principles you teach in this book to heal or harm about how to correctly interpret it.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

I should tell you, I, you know, uh Zondervan published this book, and they were they've been great to work with. They've done several of our books. But when we got to the cover, my idea was to have a hand grenade with Bible verses written on it. And they thought that was too militant. And okay, I I could see how some might misconstrue that, but that's how strongly, from my experience, I believe scripture can can blow up in our face. And we've just seen that over and over. And so in decades of I spent 15 years as a pastor, I've been 25 years now leading Mending the Soul as an abuse organization, been a seminary prof for 30 years. I mean, God's given me a lot of experience right over the years with countless dear people in multiple contexts around the world. And I've just so often seen the damage when men and women have scripture misused against them. And sometimes we misuse scripture against ourselves. I mean we misread it in ways that we go away condemning ourselves when God's not condemning us. But the Bible's it's a beautiful book, but it's not a simple book. There's some hard stuff that's really hard to understand. So we've just had so many experiences of people having scripture misused against them in ways that were heartbreaking. And that really lay behind the book. And those kind of, you know, the statements I made. No, scripture is not a record of condemnation against you. It's not a list of rules that that you violated that that give God justification in wiping you out like a piece of garbage. Though God is just and we're sinners, and I get that. But in fact, scripture is God's love letter spoken from a God who, yes, he's holy and we're sinful, but here's the wonder of all wonders. He delights in forgiving and redeeming sinners. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's what Scripture itself says. So I really see Scripture as God's letter to us from Genesis to Revelation. It's this record of our creator's desire and commitment and plan to restore broken relationships.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

And your book helped me understand some of those verses and passages that just felt out of line with that. Like, how is this God's love letter? But with context and with a lot of understanding, it fits together.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Yeah. You know, I take heartdrew that scripture itself says some scripture is really hard to understand. So, okay. Again, I have a PhD, and yet there are texts I ran across one last week in my devotions that I've looked at countless times, but I still scratch my head. With all of my training, I scratch my head saying that's a really hard one. Well, Peter says that in 2 Peter, I think it's chapter 3, about Paul, that he writes some things that are hard to understand. And hence we need to have some sound principles for interpretation that will guide us. And I've sought to do that in this book. For lay people, I didn't write this for the academy, you know, for the experts. Um, frankly, they have tons to read. But I've written things for the for the academy, that's fine. But I really wanted to to empower and encourage lay people who haven't had the privilege of getting the advanced training and yet they love Jesus. They have they they want to honor him and follow scripture, but there's some really confusing things they don't know what to do with.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Well, thank you so much. I'm very, very grateful and I would recommend to heal or harm to anyone. Just for a taste of some of the kinds of insights you give, how would you answer the question, is all sin the same?

SPEAKER_00 31:43

I would say yes and no. It's an incredibly important one. Just a week or two ago, I read an account of uh another. There are just countless times we we hear this happening, or at least I do. High profile pastor, megachurch pastor. Not that small church pastors can't do it, but it's less likely you'll hear about it. A pastor who had molested not one, but multiple young women in the church. Most were minors at the time. And I give a similar account in the book, but there's just so many of these. And immediately people run to the defense. Well, we're all sinners. You know, we can't condemn Pastor John. He said he was sorry. Well, you know, we need to restore him to the pulpit because, hey, we all need Jesus. And yeah, that's true. What lies behind those kind of defenses of an abusive pastor who preys on the flock is, well, all sin's the same in God's eyes. It's all the same. In in one sense, that's true. In another, it's absolutely categorically untrue. It's true in the sense that all sin is

Replacing Lies With God’s Truth

SPEAKER_00 33:00

wrong. All sin is a, I mean, by definition, it's a violation of God's law. So all sin is the same in the sense that it all displeases God and violates his law. And all sin is the same in the sense that it separates us from our loving Creator. So it doesn't matter whether I commit murder or am angry, sinfully angry, that's a sin that puts me liable to, you know, puts me under God's judgment, separates me from my creator. So that's a sense in which it's the same. But let's just think for a second. There's a dramatic sense in which all sin is not the same. I I mentioned earlier that out of, I think it's 713 commands in Torah, the law of Moses, just over 20 are given capital punishment. So apparently God's not weighing all sin the same. Some sin clearly has far greater consequences than other sin. Scripture itself says there's certain sins that God hates. It's a limited number that he calls abominations. So some sin is more destructive than other sin. And hence it's put in its own categories. And scripture talks about some sin garnering a greater punishment. Jesus himself said it will be worse than the day of judgment for these people than these people, because they had more revelation. You have me, Jesus speaking. In essence, I'm speaking to you directly. You have a greater sin if you reject what I'm saying. So, and certainly on the sin that's most hated by God, a spiritual leader taking advantage of those under his or her care, that's particularly odious to God. So there's no defense for a pastor who preys on the flock and putting that in the same category as a lay person who sins in other ways, anger, whatever. We must not, my friend Rebecca Davis calls this sin leveling, like it's all the same. No, it's not.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

And for some sin, we really need extra help. We really need professionals and organizations that specialize in issues like abuse. How can mending the soul help?

SPEAKER_00 35:45

I appreciate that question. Yeah, we started in 2003 because at that time I was teaching at a seminary and doing a lot of groups, particularly for men struggling with sexual compulsion. And that came out of my wife's practice as a clinician. She had her own counseling clinic and just had a lot of men that were struggling and asked if I'd start a little outreach to work with them. And we've we've loved doing that over the years. But we just saw this glaring need. There weren't Christian abuse healing

When Scripture Becomes A Weapon

SPEAKER_00 36:20

resources that were accessible. There were just so little at that time that really integrated scripture, that wasn't afraid of good, solid social science research and brought that together. And in God's providence, that reflects my training and my wife's training. So we just saw this huge, glaring meat. People that were hurting that just didn't have good resources. One of our children was abused, and it came out a few years before we started meeting the soul. We had nothing as parents who were hurting to help our own kids. So part of our journey is that we were able to create, using our training, great resources that we needed but didn't have, and now others can benefit from. So we have a website with lots and lots of resources. I mean, that's that's what we do is we create resources. So lots of books, a lot of free downloadables. We have uh two healing workbooks, the Manning the Soul workbook for men and women. It's really in-depth. We recommend doing it in small groups. And we have guidelines for facilitating, we have an online facilitator training. We just, you know, my wife made really good money as a professional therapist. That has its place, but how many people can afford 150, 100, 200 bucks a pop? Like week after week. It's just not accessible for a lot of people, and even then it's a very limited relationship. Can't be friends outside the office, etc., etc. Um, it has its place, but we really believe in the power of small groups if they're well directed. So the curriculum is basically lets people go through a small group process, and then we have another uh called explore that's the it's just six weeks. A lot of us aren't ready for the deep dive initially, so it's kind of the more gentle on-ramp to a healing process. So those would be a couple resources that I definitely throw out for our listeners. I I don't have enough words to use or time on your podcast, Drew, to articulate how strongly I believe there is nothing that our listeners have experienced that God can't heal. We work in war zones. We work with survivors of massacres. I've seen the worst of the worst, and I've seen Christ there. I've seen the miraculous power of God. I could tell a lot of stories. I won't do that now, but I just want to give that as an encouragement for our listeners. Whatever you've been through, it may have been hideous. Abuse always is, but I can tell you from my experience and from God's word, there's nothing Jesus can't heal and doesn't want to heal. And mining the soul resources can be part of that. We'd love that. And there's others, you know, it's not just mining the soul, it's about the body of Christ, and there are other resources as well. Don't don't continue to suffer in silence. That's what the enemy wants, is for you to just continue to hide your story, and that's not the path of victory.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

You're not too broken.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Never, never too broken for Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

And with your help and with more of these resources, I believe we can also become a safer society, especially with churches. One of your first stories into healer harm was from a divorce attorney who says, if I want to find an abuser, I go to church. So if we take the doctrine of sin seriously, we need to take a good hard look at our own internal world, our own communities, our own churches, and to acknowledge that yeah, abuse is not somewhere else always.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Of course, totally agree with that, and want to add, and we can be part with God's help of the solution. And I again want to point out to our listeners, super high percentage, who have their own abuse stories if they're honest, and it took me a really long time to come to honest grips with things in my own past, ways I'd been wounded. That's hard. But God wants to use that. I love that Paul told the Corinthians that God gives grace to us in time of need so that we can turn around and give that grace, mercy

Why All Sin Is Not The Same

SPEAKER_00 41:00

to others who have a similar need. And this is part of the most beautiful aspect of the way God wants to bring good out of evil. Evil's evil. You know, we don't sanitize it, we don't relabel it, evil's evil. Abuse is always evil. But God is not stymied by any of the bad things that have happened to us. In fact, he wants to use it for a greater good. And oh my goodness. And I often will say this when we do our Africa trainings, and I'm there a couple months a year. I wouldn't be doing the work I'm doing if some really horrible evil things have not happened in our family. But it did, and God has been so gracious to bring good out of it, and I have insights and courage I wouldn't have had if I hadn't had those experiences. And then that gives me a way to bless others with ways God has blessed me and things he's done for me. So I really believe abuse survivors can help others in a unique way that non-abuse survivors can't.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

I'm speechless. Steve, what's your favorite thing about healing?

SPEAKER_00 42:19

My favorite, man. Now that's an interesting question. A lot of potentially right answers, but that it just so shames Satan. Because Satan is the destroyer. One of his names in Revelation is Apollyon, which is destroyer. And in abuse healing, the lies of Satan, the strategy of Satan to destroy is flipped upside down. I just picture Satan being shamed. And I love that.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Great questions. Love what you're doing. And I hope your audience will continue to grow, and men will uh continue to increase their personal health, uh, wholeness. We need that. My goodness, we need that in this day and age. Men are under attack, masculinity is under attack, and a lot of work to be done.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Well, thank you so much again. Guys, if you want to connect with Steve, look at his books, find out more about mending the soul, go down to the links below. And always remember you are God's beloved son, and you he is well pleased.