identity

the enemy is tricky. the way he is able to hold people captive is awful. my heart hurts when i see people bound by things outside of them, as well as inside of them. yesterday when Mandy was at the hospital, I took the boys to a near by park to kill time until we were able to join her for a tour of the maternity ward. it was a nice little park, swing sets, see-saws, climbing structures, slides...plus there was a basketball hoop, a pavilion and tons of open space. i even ran into a friend down there.

in the 45 minutes we were there, i definitely witnessed two drug deals, and may have witnessed a few more. you could see it coming...the buyer acting shifty, scratching their arms; clearly looking for a fix. the dealer waiting, almost playing with the addict, the captive one. they would then begin haggling over something until the price the dealer is seeking gets met. the addict walks away with their fix, knowing they are about to get a moment of freedom for the itch...only to have it return later. and the dealer leaves, feeling a bit victorious and attempting to absolve himself of feeding someone else's addiction...

as i sat there with my two sons everything in me wanted to run over there and tell the addict...you don't have to, you don't need this, you can fight it, we get find a way to help you fight it!

it brought me back to something i've been sitting on for about a week. its a touchy thing really, it affects so many of us. please add your thoughts, comments, critiques.

there are so many people like this addict who have become bound, who have become victims of

something outside of them. be it a drug, alcohol, violence done to them; physical and emotional. yes, some start themselves on their path of becoming a victim...but most are victimized...

i've met many people in my life who are victims of the people around them. they've been abandoned, beaten, raped, hated, slandered, lied to, set-up, drugged...the list could continue. my heart hurts at the thought of the people who's faces enter my mind just as i type each word. we have all been victims of the evil in this world in some way or another...be it relational or systemic.

the worst part of it all for me is when i watch people stay victims. they re-live their victimization, they stay there...they identify themselves as victims and with their victimization. they can't imagine their lives without that, and thus they make it their all-consuming identity. how they relate to the world around them is completely based on their identity as victim of ______.

before i write more, hear me out...I am not saying 'Get over it'. i don't want to be insensitive to the hurt and pain anyone has endured on any level, at any time. if you were a victim of anyone; know this, it is awful, no one can know what you've experienced, i wish it had never happened. it makes my heart hurt, it makes God's heart hurt. nor am i saying, forget about it, pretend it never happened. its a part of your story, but it doesn't have to be the whole story....

please though, please don't allow it to consume you. one of the trickiest traps the enemy has is to find a way to keep us a victim, keep us in our brokenness and pain, of having the pain and the action consume us to a point where God cannot even redeem the pain because we can't even imagine our lives without it!

there is another reason the enemy seeks to keep us as victims...we see victims as innocents. victims did not do anything to merit what was done to them. and if we remain in that victim state, if we allow ourselves to remain as victims; we begin to see ourselves as innocents and that begins to pervade every area of our lives until we begin to think we can't be in the wrong; because we are the victim...'this happened, that's why i'm this way and its ok because this happened"... we absolve ourselves of responsibility, we rob ourselves of transformation, we prevent God from being able to take those broken pieces of glass and transform them into something beautiful, something that shows the power a loving God has over the sin and evil in this world.

the enemy definitely doesn't want that. so he whispers, 'its ok, you're a victim, its not your fault. you're stuck in this now, you can't make it past this. besides, you're broken, you're a victim, what can you do anyway...'

but God is a liberating God. God is a transforming God. God proclaims freedom for the captives, liberation for the oppressed. God is who enables us to break away from an identity wrapped up in our victimization, and into an identity as the children of God. let that be what defines you. believe that today you can say, 'i was a victim. now i'm a child of God and victor in Christ.'

church, we must walk with the victims in our lives. its a hard thing, we don't like to enter into suffering, we try to avoid suffering at all costs. but church, if we are going to be like Christ...we must enter into the suffering that surrounds us, we must suffer with those in pain; that they might know they are not alone. we must be incarnational.