Hit By Friendly Fire: What To Do When Christians Hurt You

Love . . .

ordains every struggle to strengthen us,

lights every furnace to purify us,

mingles every bitter cup to heal us.7

I have never known God's love more than when I took up the cross, took off the crown, and went to my own Gethsemane.

I gave this testimony to these three families, and I saw God moving to bring new life. It didn't take years of counseling. It took one moment of saying, "I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection in my life. I want take up my cross and follow Him, to claim Him as Sovereign King even in my rejection and my betrayals." I watched faces lift up from prayers of confession to joyful release, years of pent up pain dripping away and new life, like fresh sunshine, coming through.

God will do it for you, too. He will transform you who have been hurt, wounded, abandoned, sinned against, betrayed, from a victim to a victor by trusting in the One who was hurt, wounded, abandoned, sinned against, betrayed, but who pronounced forgiveness from the cross. Jesus Christ has transformed the cross from an instrument of destruction sent by the Father to an instrument of salvation ordained by God. In Him there can be no more victims — only victors.

How many here will say, "I want to know him and the power of his resurrection, and share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may rise again?"

How many will believe that they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

_________________________

Michael Milton is Senior Minister of First Presbyterian Church, Chattanooga, TN.

_________________________

Notes

1. The Columbia World of Quotations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. www.bartleby.com/66/. 2004.

2. Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000).

3. Gene Edwards, Crucified by Christians (Beaumont, TX: SeedSowers/Christian Books Pub., 1995).

4. Matthew Henry, Leslie F. Church, and Gerald W. Peterman, The Niv Matthew Henry Commentary in One Volume : Based on the Broad Oak Edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Pub. House, 1992).

5. Mark Water, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000), 430.

6. Simpson, James B., comp. Simpson's Contemporary Quotations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. www.bartleby.com/63/. 2004.

7. Newman Hall, Leaves of Healing from the Garden of Grief (http://www.biblebb.com/quotes/quotes1104.htm, 1891).

Unless otherwise stated, all quoted Scripture is from the English Standard Version.