Deliverance and Healing from Trauma

 The Hebrews were slaves in Egypt for 400 years. It got worse and worse. Finally, their male babies were slaughtered by the Egyptians. Their fate was unbearable.

We could think of the refugees who sacrifice everything to escape the torment of tyranny in North Korea, much worse than in the old East Germany.

When I was in Australia in 1972, I studied psychology at university. I read that quite a few immigrants from Eastern Europe after the war had psychiatric disorders, especially paranoia, that is, delusions of persecution.

If you constantly feel threatened, you can internalise fear in such a way that you see threats where there is no threat.

Panic fear can become a habit. With this extreme fear then comes despair, depression, anger and hatred.

Persecuted slaves and prisoners are always afraid of betrayal because that is their life experience.

Trafficked prostitutes sometimes have the opportunity to report to the police, but they do not know whether a police officer is trustworthy or perhaps involved in the dirty tricks.

Recently we have been reading about children who have been sexually abused in churches or religious schools. Who can these children trust? Who would believe them?

I know a Christian woman who was cruelly controlled by her self-centred husband. At home he was arrogant and domineering, but at church he was a radiant Christian. When she left her husband, she was judged as the guilty one.

When people are broken, they not only need a deliverer to rescue them from captivity. They also need miraculous healing for their broken hearts.

In the story of Moses in Exodus, we see how God delivered the Hebrews through dramatic miracles. God punished the Egyptians with ten terrible plagues, but the Hebrews lived in another region, Goshen, and they were spared.

Then two million Hebrews were trapped in an ambush on the shores of the Red Sea. Pharaoh and his army chased after them. Without a miracle, they would have been as good as dead.

There are Christians today who claim that God ordained miracles only for Bible times, but no more, as if miracles were a special offer for then.

This religious idea is simply cruel, blasphemy. God is love. He does not change.

You don't need a miracle until you need a miracle.

There are so many broken and enslaved people today.

I know Christian women who visit brothels. In one year they discovered and freed four enslaved prostitutes.

Deliverance from slavery is absolutely necessary, but it is not enough. They need to find Jesus as their eternal liberator. Those who do not go to heaven by faith are eternally lost, whether they lived in a brothel or a palace.

But there are so many Christians who only know Jesus to some extent. They believe that their sins are forgiven and they hope to be in heaven after death.

But in the Bible we see Jesus as the healer and deliverer who completely transformed broken people.

You may have been set free from abuse, but the after-effects of the trauma are still agonising.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Ps 147:3 NIV

It is not enough to save people from sin. They need care and healing for the aftermath of sin, from their own sins and from the sins of others that have ruined them.