Lina Abujamra: Recovering from Spiritual Trauma

• Guest Bios
• Show Transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPAeY0573g

Does anyone truly recover from spiritual trauma? After being ravaged by the church or a church leader, can a person ever be the same?

Those gut-wrenching questions were recently posed by author and speaker, Lina Abujamra, at the Restore Conference—a session featured on this edition of The Roys Report.

“It’s been 9 years since I survived my spiritual trauma,” she said. “It left me changed. I’m not the same person I used to be.”

But then, with brutal honesty, Lina describes her transformation from ambivalence and hiding—to trusting once again in Jesus. “I know why deconstruction has become so popular,” she admits “Sometimes it hurts too much to try to heal.”

Lina calls us to face the hurt and the pain—and to admit our need for Jesus. In doing so, we don’t become the person we were. But we do become a person with a reconstructed faith, a faith not based on any Christian leader or institution, but on Christ alone.

This Week’s Guest

Lina Abujamra

Lina Abujamra is a pediatric ER doctor, now practicing telemedicine, and founder of Living With Power Ministries. Her vision is to bring hope to the world by connecting biblical answers to everyday life. A popular Bible teacher, podcaster, and conference speaker, she is the author of several books including Thrive, Stripped, Resolved and her most recent book, Fractured Faith.

Lina ministers to singles through her Moody Radio show, Today’s Single Christian, and is engaged in providing medical care and humanitarian help to Syrian refugees and others in disaster areas in the Middle East. Her ministry also provides spiritual retreats for women at The Hope Ranch. Learn more about her at www.livingwithpower.org.

Show Transcript

SPEAKERS LINA ABUJAMRA MD, JULIE ROYS

JULIE ROYS Does anyone truly recover from spiritual trauma? After being ravaged by the church or a church leader, can a person ever be the same? Welcome to The Roys Report—a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And those gut-wrenching questions were recently posed by author and speaker, Lina Abujamra, at the Restore Conference. “It’s been 9 years since I survived my spiritual trauma,” she said. “It left me changed. I’m not the same person I used to be.” But then, with brutal honesty, Lina describes her transformation from ambivalence and hiding—to trusting once again in Jesus. “I know why deconstruction has become so popular,” she admits “Sometimes it hurts too much to try to heal.” Yet, Lina calls us to face the hurt and to face the pain—and to admit our need for Jesus. In doing so, we don’t become the person we were. But we do become a person with a reconstructed faith, a faith not based on any Christian leader or institution, but on Christ alone. This is such a raw and accessible message and I’m so excited to share it with you. But first, I want to take a minute thank the sponsors of this podcast—Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington.

Well again, you’re about to hear a message by Lina Abujamra on recovering from spiritual trauma. Lina is a popular Bible teacher, blogger, and founder of Living with Power Ministries. She’s also the author of Fractured Faith: Finding Your Way Back to God in an Age of Deconstruction. And, she’s a pediatric ER doctor, who was born in Lebanon and is deeply involved in humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees. She’s someone I’m proud to call a friend. And I think you’re going to moved and helped by her powerful message. Here’s Lina Abujamra

LINA ABUJAMRA MD 00:04 On January 12, 2010, a catastrophic magnitude seven earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time. The epicenter was near the town of Leogane approximately 25 kilometers west of Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital. By January 24, at least 52 aftershocks measuring four and a half or greater, had been recorded. An estimated 3 million people were affected by the earthquake. Death toll estimates ranged from 100,000 to 160,000. The government of Haiti estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had collapsed or were severely damaged. I went to Haiti two weeks after the earthquake. On January 21, I boarded a plane with a handful of doctors and flew down to Haiti to help provide medical relief wherever it was needed. I am not unfamiliar with pain and devastation. I was born in West Beirut, Lebanon and grew up in the 70s and 80s. I lived through some of the worst of the civil war in West Beirut. I have seen war and devastation, yet I was unprepared for the magnitude of pain and destruction that I saw firsthand in Haiti. An entire city had been pummeled by the earthquake. The smell of rubble permeated the air. The more time I spent on the ground treating the wounded the more I started to sense an odd pattern of emotions; a mix of panic and ambivalence emerged from the ground. The panic I understood. People’s homes were lost, their loved ones were missing. The sense of loneliness and isolation clung to even the youngest of the patients that I cared for. That was expected. It was the ambivalence that puzzled me. Over and over again, I observed a sort of detachment, almost like an invisible wall. Blank stares, far away gazes, a standoffish stance with an obvious message. Don’t step any closer to me, stay right where you are. An invisible wall surrounded many of the wounded. It would be some time before I began to understand that ambivalence is a common protective mechanism for those of us who have endured deep trauma. It took me living through my own trauma to finally understand the comfort that ambivalence offers. Traumas darkest secret is that it strips us of our defenses. It makes us vulnerable. We become easy targets, we become exposed. Ambivalence is the easiest protective mechanism against trauma. If we act like it doesn’t matter, perhaps we’ll start to believe it. Or perhaps everyone else will. If we convince ourselves we don’t care so much, perhaps it won’t always hurt so much. I was there once. I tried that strategy. It worked for a while until it didn’t. In 2013, I left my church. I told my story at the last Restore Conference. I later wrote a book about it called Fractured Faith. I started the writing process using ambivalence as my shield. But eventually that shield became too heavy for me to keep on carrying. Dropping the shield became my saving grace. The Sunday I left my church began the slow deconstruction of my faith. Little did I know at that time, how deeply the decision to leave my church would affect my life and my faith. Honestly, if I could have foreseen the pain that would come from that decision, I don’t think I would have left. If I could have predicted how isolated and abandoned I would feel in the years to come, I might have ignored my conscious and gone with the flow. Instead, I chose to lean into disruption. My conscious had overruled the status quo. Still ask anyone who has tried it. It’s never easy to embark on a different road even if that road is the right one. I’m more convinced today than ever that leaving that toxic environment of my church was the right thing to do. But that knowledge did not make my decision to leave any easier. It also doesn’t make being here being here any easier. I thought of a thousand ways I could get out of today’s talk. I’m ashamed to admit I even hoped that the controversy around Julie Roys would lead to the cancellation of the conference. I almost blamed COVID. Who can argue with that? Some days the idea of being back here has felt like opening up the coffin on a corpse one would rather leave dead. Other days I’m quite aware that there is no corpse of the past. A corpse might actually be easier to handle. Rather what those recovering from spiritual trauma or any abuse for that matter learn is that that corpse is more like the squirrel that I just got living in my attic. Its presence is noisy enough to remind me that it is quite alive and very much living in the attic, unwilling to evacuate my home, my space, my soul. Unleashing the truth about past trauma can be too jarring, too messy to attempt. Many choose to remain hidden. I don’t blame them. Ambivalence is a welcome retreat to the emotional havoc of facing the truth. But some speak up. They wake up one day tired of hearing the scraping in the attic. They open the attic doors and let the light in. At first the glare hurts but eventually the wounded feel their way towards recovery. We feel our way towards recovery. But does anyone truly ever recover from spiritual trauma? I’m not sure that recovery is the right word. Perhaps transformation is more like it. It’s been nine years since I survived my spiritual trauma. It’s left me changed. I’m not the same person I used to be. I went to church last Sunday morning. I did my best to skip it. I waited until it started before leaving my home. I told myself I didn’t need to go. That I was being legalistic by insisting I go. That God loves me whether I go to church or not. I told myself that I deserve to rest, that I was too tired from the busy work of serving God in need of a real Sabbath for once. Instead, I got in the car and drove the mile to church. Maybe the two texts my nephew sent me asking about my whereabouts tipped me towards going. Or perhaps I knew the truth that if I skip this Sunday, I might never go back. So, I shuffled myself in at the last minute, 20 minutes late and slouched in my seat on the last row. I’m no longer comfortable sitting in the front. I looked around me at people I once thought I understood. Who are these people? I wondered? Why are they even here? Do they know what happens behind the scenes in churches? And how could they not know? I’m annoyed by the little things now. When everyone raises their hands at the same time I’m tempted to put my hands down. When they sit in group formation I become suspicious. When did I become so cynical? I try to listen I really do. But I’m so distracted by everything and everyone. I glanced at my watch again. Only 10 minutes have passed. I don’t know how I make it to the end. But eventually it ends. I beeline to the door grateful for the small reprieve of sitting in that back row. Why do I do this to myself week after week? Why do I keep on showing up? I used to go to a restaurant in South Florida on a regular basis. It was run by an English lady whose husband was the cook. He made the best chicken curry I’ve ever had in my life. Every time I went I ordered the curry and was never disappointed. Until one day I ordered a chicken curry and when it arrived it had a different consistency than usual. I didn’t say anything because I figured it was a fluke a one-time mishap. I came back the next week and again the chicken curry was subpar. I asked if the cook had changed but was assured that no the same cook was in the back, but something had shifted. This went on for weeks until one day the owner of the restaurant asked me how the curry was. After remaining quiet for so long and perhaps hopeful for a change, I decided to speak the truth; it’s not so great, I told her. Something has changed with the chicken curry. I fully expected her to apologize maybe offer me a free meal and work on improving that chicken curry the next time I showed up. The very opposite took place. The woman’s face turned bright red, and she started to lecture me. How dare I critique the curry? What did I know about curry? Who did I think I was to say anything about the curry? I apologized quickly to her and told her I was likely wrong. That perhaps the cook was just tired today to let it go. She became even angrier when I suggested that the cook had the problem. She became unstoppable in her tirade, confident in her own ability to judge the curry, intent in her accusation of my ignorance of all things curry. I didn’t have a word for it back then. But she was gaslighting me. I’m not sure what the tipping point was in that conversation, but I finally snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up to leave and told her I was shocked that she had responded that way. She remained unapologetic, and I simply walked out. Call me a dreamer. But to this day, I still cannot believe that she’s never tried to stop me. It’s been six years, and I’ve never gone back to that restaurant. I have vowed never to return in this lifetime. I confess that my resolve has weakened a couple of times. There are days that I think about the curry; how incredibly good it used to be. I really miss it. I long for the days when I used to show up for that perfect bowl of chicken curry. I’ve asked myself if maybe I had overstated the whole incident. But then I remember why I stopped going for the curry. I picture that old English lady, and I remember why I can’t go back. I’ve noticed that trauma can make people a little bit irrational. You start telling yourself things that don’t always make sense. English people can never be trusted. The curry there was disgusting anyway. If anyone I care about ever dares to go into that restaurant again, they’re strangers to me. And yet, as painful as it is to admit it, I missed the old English cook’s curry. Some days I wish I’d never said anything about the curry on that fateful day. Some days, I wish I had the courage to walk back into that restaurant and forget any of the problems ever took place. Some days, I tell myself I’ve made a mountain out of a molehill. On those days when I missed the curry the most, I replay the English lady’s words in my head, and I know with certainty, no curry is worth the pain I went through. No meal deserves that much pain as a condiment. Does anyone ever truly recover from spiritual trauma? I’m not so sure that recovery is the right word. Perhaps transformation is more like it. After the Haiti earthquake, most of the buildings were too pummeled to be recovered. The only way forward was to reconstruct them. The old rubble needed to be cleaned up, new structures needed to be rebuilt. It takes a lot of courage to rebuild. It’s easier to choose ambivalence, it’s easier to move away. I can understand why so many people leave evangelicalism and Christianity after being wounded by the church. I can understand why deconstruction has become the language of the wounded. Sometimes it hurts too much to try to heal. Healing takes time. It takes conviction and a refusal to give in to the lies; both the lies thrust at us by the world around us and the lies we ourselves create in our own hearts and heads. It takes passion and perseverance; it takes stillness and silence. It takes well I wonder if the only way forward is by divine intervention. I suppose you can say it takes a savior to rebuild one’s soul from the ground up. It took a while for me to accept the idea that I’d been a victim of spiritual abuse. Compared to so many others, my story seems so underwhelming. I mean, nothing really bad had happened to me. I wasn’t sexually abused. I didn’t have a big faceoff with the abuser. In fact, I left the toxic environment I was in out of my own volition and as quietly as possible. But for the longest time leading up to my breaking away, I had been positioned very close to the fire, perhaps too close to leave as an innocent bystander unaffected by the shrapnel and aftershock. Spiritual trauma is hard to describe because it’s so hard to define. It comes in a variety of shapes and forms. It varies from person to person and cannot be boxed into a one size fits all. But one thing it always carries with it is a deep sense of grief and shame. I suppose simply put spiritual trauma happens when those we trust the most become the ones who hurt us the most. It’s almost always the result of an event or events that threatened to damage our core spiritual values and goals. Spiritual trauma sucks every bit of resource out of us. Our time every minute of every day becomes focused on analyzing and over analyzing the abusive situation. Spiritual trauma sucks our emotional margins, our zeal for God, even our souls. But even more importantly, it’s our innocence we lose through the process. Spiritual trauma is painful, and it is real. One of my favorite people in Scripture is a woman without a name. She is referred to as the woman with the issue of blood. She was a woman who was hurting and had gone for help to those who are supposed to help her. Instead, for years, she had been traumatized by the healers around her. She was a victim of a system that sucked every bit of resources from her until she had nothing left to give. Her story is mentioned in three of the Gospels, but I like the rendition in the Gospel of Mark the best. We’re told, there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, If I touch even his garments, I will be made well, and immediately the flow of blood dried up. And she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, he immediately turned about in the crowd and said, who touched my garment? And his disciples said to him, you see the crowd pressing around you and yet you say, who touched me? And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease. What an interesting little account we’ve been gifted in the pages of Scripture. Here was a woman who had suffered trauma after those she trusted the most, became the ones who hurt her the most. Stripped of all of her resources, she had nothing left. I wonder how long she had clung to the ambivalence that came from hiding before she bravely ventured out to find Jesus. How many nights did she stay awake, trying to talk herself out of showing up on that day? Did her faith in God flounder? Did she feel the suffocating breathlessness of the never-ending lonely nights? Did she agonize over how abandoned she felt by those she thought would be there for her? How many excuses did she run through until she had none left until her only option was to try? Hiding is never helpful. Yet hiding from others is the best way we know to protect ourselves from more pain. Hiding from others is the only way we know to keep functioning. I’ve often felt like the woman with the issue of blood torn between the desire to hide in my shame and the desperate need for healing and help. It’s only when the pain of my shame became too heavy to bear that I mustered enough momentum to move into the light. Ultimately, it’s pain that moves us into recovery. Pain is an incredible gift. C.S. Lewis, a man who had experienced so much pain in his life, understood that. He once wrote that God whispers to us in our pleasures. He speaks to us in our conscious, but he shouts to us in our pain. He said that pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. See, pain awakens us to our need. Pain tips us to the light. My pain was the tipping point that moved me back into the light. Like the woman with the issue of blood, I crawled my way back to healing under the watchful gaze of all the rotten physicians and the righteous accusers. I guess another way to say it is that the woman with the issue of blood eventually became broken enough to risk finding healing with Jesus. Does anyone truly recover from spiritual trauma? I’m not so sure that recovery is the right word. Perhaps transformation is more like it. Over the last few years, I’ve learned that it’s the most broken that have the most hope of recovery. It’s when you reach a desperate place of brokenness that you finally find the courage to run to Jesus for healing. The problem with so many Christians who are deconstructing is that we’re still looking to others for answers. We’re still looking to some form of church or cultural leadership for answers. We’re looking to influencers to hand us our healing. We’re waiting for our abusers to wake up, to change, to repent, to be held accountable in some way as they very well should be. But don’t hold your breath. We’re hoping our therapists will guide us back to the light and they are indeed instrumental in in doing so. But no one can offer us what they don’t have. For some things, only the miraculous will do. The disciples didn’t even notice the woman who had reached out to Jesus for healing. Their eyes, their minds, their attention, were elsewhere, anywhere but on the one who needed help the most. They were too busy with the work of the ministry to notice the heart of the ministry. They were so focused on the size of the crowd that they missed the one who was hurting. They were so caught up with what seemed urgent that they missed the divine. Only Jesus saw her. Only Jesus had the power to heal her. Three years ago, on a cold January day in Chicago, I finally hit rock bottom. I finally reached that place of brokenness. I had tried every other means to find healing and had come up empty. I talked about my pain to everyone who would listen. I had dissected every detail of my story with my therapist. I had read every tweet about deconstruction and every deconstruction account reported by Julie Roys and others. I had even written and preached about my pain. I had reached out to every garment except the only one who could heal me. Eventually, when I hit rock bottom, I realized that I was missing the key piece to the puzzle. I needed Jesus. It was through Jesus; it was Jesus through his word. Yeah, the Bible that pulled me out of that pit and set my feet back in a broad space. It sounds so Sunday school, but it’s the honest to God truth. It wasn’t a church that saved me. It wasn’t a pastor that rescued me. Although they did play a part in my reconstruction. It wasn’t my own efforts that led me to my haven of rest. It was only Jesus. It’s always been only Jesus. All I needed to do was to stop long enough and risk reaching out that touching the hem of His garment. And just when I thought that the journey was about me, finding my way back to God, I discovered that all along, he had already made his way to me. It all sounds so simple now. We like more complicated answers. We like well delineated three step processes. For me recovering from spiritual trauma wasn’t a formula. It was a process where I eventually became broken enough to finally realize my desperate need for the Savior. This very savior that I had accused of not caring, of abandoning me when I needed him the most, of allowing cruel men to get away with evil, was the one that I turned to at my lowest. I was finally willing to strip my protective coat of ambivalence and step into the light. His light. Thus started my reconstruction process. Today, the American church is indeed broken and has left many many wounded along the way. Our Christian leadership has, by and large, massively failed us. Christian institutions don’t have the answers not even by a mile. Evangelicalism doesn’t have the solutions to our problems. Our pain is deep, our divide is wide. We’re living in the most divided era of the American church in modern history. Like our country, the church has become divided among political lines into progressives and traditionalists. Even deconstruction is being interpreted along party lines. We have an argument for everything. We are ready to fight anyone. Perhaps it’s time to change. You might be thinking that not all churches are bad that only a few of the big and famous ones are. You need to wake up. War leaves no victors only victims. There is a war raging on Christianity. And much like the war in Ukraine, even though only a few of the major cities have suffered the most damage, ask any Ukrainian and they’ll tell you the honest truth. Their entire country has been devastated by the war. There are no safe areas. Many have left the church today, and are refugees, homeless survivors, victims who are not sure what the future looks like for them. The American church is broken. But it is only when the American church becomes broken enough and desperate enough for healing that it will finally be ready for a reconstruction. The American church needs healing. We need healing. We need reconstruction. We need Jesus. Does anyone ever truly recover from spiritual trauma? I’m not sure that recovery is the right word. Perhaps transformation is more like it. Today I am not the same person I used to be. Most Christians forget what the gospel message really is. We forget how deeply God loves us. We forget how accepted we are. We forget that we belong. We forget that we cannot eradicate the power of God’s love. We can’t ignore the extent God will go through to reach us. We forget the cross where Jesus laid down his life for us so that we might live. Sometimes you have to reach your lowest in order to find out what’s true. That God loves you and that nothing, nothing can separate you from the love of God. That as you drag your way back home fearful of the price you’re going to have to pay for leaving, battered and worn out and aged and sorrowful. The last face you expect to see is the tear drenched face of your father who never stopped waiting for you to come home. I’d always thought of myself as the older brother in the story of the prodigal. I lived by the rules. I didn’t cause any trouble. I looked obedient to outside appearances. Like the older brother, I worked so hard and felt nobody noticed. Like the older brother I started to resent the Father. Didn’t he see all the hard work I did for him? Wasn’t he aware of the pain that had been inflicted on me? Like the older brother, I missed that my father’s presence was the fruit to be enjoyed. That unhindered fellowship with my father was the only source of my comfort. Somewhere in the middle, I jumped ship. I wandered from home, I quit going to church. I landed in a pigsty. When I came to my senses, I saw that I was much more like the prodigal. I turned my heart from my father’s love. I took what I could, and I ran. The grace of God is manifested in that moment in the pigsty when you finally realize that the worst life in your father’s house will always exceed the best life away from his presence. God’s grace is that moment, when you hear a whisper in your heart, the whisper that beckons you to come home, and God’s grace is manifested in that moment of reckoning when you understand that it’s time to go back home. I hadn’t made it to church in six months. Hardly anybody noticed. I hid it with my travel schedule and my professional responsibilities at the hospital. My life sounded noble, but I was drifting. I was hurting. My soul was parched for God. I felt dislocated and unanchored. I had talked to my counselor about it, and the pastor at my new church had caught on to my ways, but he hadn’t pressed me on that matter. One day, a friend I respected emailed me to invite me to join a Christian writers group. I was thrilled as many of the writers in that group were people I admired. A couple of days later, though she emailed me again with a condition. The board wants to know where you stand on the church thing, given your history with church hurt. Are you part of a local church? Some things don’t make much sense to others, but that was my moment of reckoning. I can’t explain to you why that encounter was the tipping point to cause me to get out of the pigsty and start making my way back home. But it was the nudge that I needed to settle the matter. I had not found answers outside of the church. My heart was tethered to the God I was wrestling with. I was too tired to do anything but let go. And just as clear as I could hear it God’s whisper came through to my thick head. Will you just say yes to me on this? Just say yes, was all God was asking me to do. Just say yes. It was such a small thing in the big scheme of my life, a quiet whisper where I was hoping for a tsunami. But if you ever heard God’s whisper, it’s an unmistakable thing. The Christian life usually boils down to your yeses. From the moment of salvation, God stands at the door of your heart knocking, only you can open the door, only you can take that one step. Only you can say yes to God. We tend to complicate the Christian life. We overthink surrender, we look for signs, we wait. We gesticulate while the Christian life really boils down to one word. Yes. Yes, God, I’ll forgive the person who has hurt me. Yes, God, I let go of my anger. Yes, God, I’ll go to church again, even when I don’t understand anyone there. Yes, God, I’ll trust you in the waiting while we watch and see what happens to those who have hurt us the most. Yes, God, I’ll do whatever it is you asked me to do. Your future and mine depends on our willingness to say yes to God. And our yeses hinges on our belief in the goodness of God. God isn’t asking fora perfect performance. He’s not even asking us to prove our love for Him. He’s simply inviting us into His presence, where we’ll find the rest we’re looking for. It’s our heart He’s interested in. Your story is far from over. God specializes in turnarounds. He did it for the prodigal. He did it for me. And he’s waiting to do it for you. I’ve been asked to come to this conference for a reason. I don’t believe in accidents. I don’t believe in serendipitous luck. And I certainly don’t believe that I’m a famous enough speaker for you to have come to this conference because of me. The glorious truth you cannot escape is that God is reconstructing your faith. God has not failed you. He’s been right there all along, waiting for you to come home. And he’s holding up a sign that says, Welcome back to me. Pray with me please. God we come before you now humbly in awe of how good you are. God, even as I share those reflections that I wrote this week, I’m so aware of how high and how low our emotions go. Even in thinking about this concept of healing and coming back to you, Father, there are people in this room right now who struggle with what I’ve said. God, we want vengeance. We want justice. We want the truth to come out. We want it now. And God you have created us with that desire, that is not an accident. So, we recognize that you are a God of justice that you do not forget, you see all things. You know, and you hold those accountable, who are to be held accountable. So, God in acknowledging that we understand that it is to you that we let go our anger, a God who is able to bring all things to light and to right. God, there is safety and understanding that there’s security and there’s freedom in knowing that you are indeed a just and a merciful God. Lord, I ask that as we come to you today for healing, you would indeed do that. You are the great physician. You didn’t even have to run any diagnostic tests on the woman who touched you. Lord, you were the essence of healing, and you imparted your power on her. We ask for the same divine intervention, the same miracle that would happen today, God as we come to you for healing, barely able to touch more than the hem of your robe. And yet, we’re here God. Maybe this is our reaching out to touch the hem of your robe. So that it is your goodness that we look to. God even as we pray this, we recognize our own sin. Lord, I think about all of the ways that I’ve reached wrong conclusions about your goodness about who you are. Father, even this week thinking that you’d forgotten about my plight or that you weren’t aware of the things that were happening in my own life circumstances, Father. Every day all the time is a battle, to trust your goodness. So, Lord, we recognize that we are sinners indeed, but we also recognize that you long to restore us. So, God that’s what we asked for today, for a miracle of restoration of healing. God we ask for your goodness to be so obvious that not a man not a woman would leave this place untouched. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

JULIE ROYS Well again, that was Lina Abujamra speaking at this year’s Restore Conference. And what an important message that was. It’s so, so hard—after we’ve been hurt by those who claim to represent Christ—to say yes to Jesus and to trust again. But that is the only path to healing. I’m reminded of the words of Peter in John 6. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.” Well again, you’ve been listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’d like to support podcasts like these, please go to Julie Roys, spelled ROYS, dot com, slash donate. Again, that’s Julie Roys dot com, slash donate. And in the month of July, if you give a gift of $25 or more, we’ll send you a copy of Russ Meeks’ new book: Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside Down World. This is a fantastic book that deals with the issues of abuse, trauma, and forgiveness through the lens of the author of Ecclesiastes. It’s an incredibly helpful book and I’m so excited to be able to offer it as our premium this month. Also, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way, you’ll never miss an episode! And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then, please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks for joining me today! I hope you were blessed and encouraged.

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