Chapter 2 There is No Manual
The church I was doing counseling for was located in a city of close to 300,000 people. The chance of my counseling two people who had not seen each other in over a decade in a matter of hours was infinitely small. The first was a young woman who wanted to commit suicide. We went through her life asking God to show us what to do. When we got to her adolescent years she said she had been molested by a group of five boys in a playground. We prayed for forgiveness and she was able to forgive. We prayed over other bad relationships and broke the ties she had to these people. She was in our church and in a home group, so there was follow-up. She had a female member of the church who was present who was going to be there if she needed someone to talk to. I would always be available.
My next appointment was a young man who had just lost his job. As I began to pray he started to shake and weep. He was a store manager and this was the second time he was fired for sexual harassment. He had a wife and children and he had no idea of what to tell them. As we prayed and asked God to show us what to do, he said, “There is one thing I have never told anyone.” He continued, “When I was a teenager, four of my friends and I molested a girl in a playground.” I had never seen this young man before. As I said, the chance of him landing in front of me in a city of 300,000 was very small. The chance of him being there within an hour of me previously counseling his victim was even smaller.
I prayed silently, “God, what do I do? I just prayed for his victim.” God replied clearly, “They are both victims.” There is true evil. We will deal with it in another chapter. Psychiatrists and psychologists have written books about it. This was not an occasion of facing it. There were no demons present, just a broken young man. There is a bigger picture. I later met his wife and children.
I, in no way condone his actions, but in discussing his life, I saw the reasons he ended up there. In my life I have sat across from a priestess of a witch’s coven, a mercenary, a man who threatened to kill his wife with a butcher knife and many others. I have seen God’s mercy and healing. I have also seen raw evil, which a psychiatrist who wrote 2 books on says there is no therapy for. I agree.
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