What is going on with you inwardly now, try to give words to your feelings.

Can you in the midst of all the feelings also tune in to a sense of Gratefulness?

Is it possible to shove all the other thoughts and feelings aside and choose for the notion of Gratefulness?

The theme for this week is gratefulness.

I believe we all have come here with a grateful heart; we want to celebrate. Can we be silent and ask ourselves:

and ask: what is happening in me now? What do I notice in my body, is there a nervous tension or a happy excitement, or I am tired.. as I didn´t sleep well. Whatever one feels. It is O.K. feel it, look at it with the beautiful child-like look: ask yourself: what is  going on here?

This grateful silence is so important as it prepares us to listen to our thoughts and feelings. Above all, it helps us to tune in to  what God allows us to sense of the needs of a client. He can give us inspiration and wisdom about how to share them. He knows  people and thinks with love for them. Living so much with blessing people makes me turn to this eternal pool of Love, that the  Holy Spirit continues to pour out in us, if we are open for Him.

Gratefulness is an essential element needed to know God better. We all have met that love as we met Jesus. That love motivates us to find answers: how can we share that love when people with persons who suffered so much through abuse? They don´t  know how to trust, as their natural trust ability destroyed. They need to be exposed to loving people, we as counselors and  therapists need to have this love centrally in our approach.

Especially as we meet people, who grew up in a Christian Culture, but are so hurt by a god that doesn´t seem to hear inner cries of an abused child. A culture that makes people afraid of sexuality, growing up in a culture that creates tabu´s where it shouldn´t be. Growing up with a distorted view of sexuality that didn´t prepare them for healthy living. We are up and against a tremendous force Of Evil, that has made deep inroads in the developing minds of children and young people. Sexual abuse (SA) creates an overwhelming fear of authority figures. SA destroys the fundamental trust that a person needs to grow into an individual and yet be part of a family, a community. SA is a reason for hyper-individualism with an intense need for belonging, that due to this  breakdown of trust stays unfulfilled.

We are so grateful that God has sent his son into this broken world.  He allowed him to be crucified. The scandal of crucifixion,  the pounding of nails into a body, something which rape victims can identify themselves. The torturous hanging before Jesus died  reflects something of the long-term effects of sexual abuse. A God who allowed himself to be broken, so that we could be healed.

I am grateful that the IPSICC school came started first as Esarpac, with an E of European then evolved into Isarpac with an I of International, then into IPSICC: the International Psychotherapeutic School in Christian Culture.

Vibeke and I are so grateful that the Lord allowed us to start ISARPAC 25 years ago. It became a 4-year summerschool training with quite a bit of homework and extra weekends. As a result of mental problems in Muslims, the Danish Psychotherapeutic  Society realized that Muslims should be helped in their own culture. I had read about that and said: “We experience the same as Christians”.

Vibeke and I had found in the literature that the attitude of a counselor towards faith affects their clients as they tend to take over the values of the therapist. The very secularised Danish Culture was often not a good match for Christians. Thus the suggestion was made in the Board to rename our school into IPSICC: International Psychotherapeutic School In Christian Culture with an emphasis on Survivors of Sexual Abuse. This was evaluated and accepted by the Danish Psychotherapy Society. Thus we became recognised by the Danish Government.

We are grateful for the Students who came over the last 25 years. They helped the Staff to develop, adjust and improve the program. Our aim was to be approved by God and by Secular specialists, as one fundamental ground principle is “there is only One truth, in the Word of God as well as what Science proofs as being true, even if we don´t know how to harmonise both: there is no conflict between Bible and Science.

Many of our students were blessed with the merciful attitude that Jesus teaches through the Holy Spirit even if the didn´t have a perfect youth themselves. I surely didn´t have a perfect youth.

As I prepared for the devotions this week, I received an encouraging blog from one of my Swiss YWAM students, now a happy wife and a busy mother of four, she writes about Gratefulness:

“God is greater than my imperfections. He knew them before I realised them.
This gratefulness is because I experienced in my life that my personal mistakes and errors are not the end of my life. That he turned them into something beautiful.
This gratefulness lies in discovering who God made me to be – and the joy of being it.
This gratefulness comes from situations when I was faithful in the little – and he surprised me with the big thing, more wonderful than I could ever have imagined.
This gratefulness fills me with a lightness, with a grace towards myself and others. It fills me with a deep peace–even in things I am struggling today, even in realities that aren´t perfect or in situations I don’t understand. Yet He is there, beautifully, faithful, amazingly present.  And this enables me to keep a happy heart – in the midst of this imperfect reality of my own life and the world I live in”.

The awareness that God has accepted us, with faults and all, enables us to meet other survivors:

I am grateful for the clients that got helped through the people who went through our school. So many former survivors did make a choice to marry and be happy. Others had their marriage restored. Some decided to stay single, but not as “sour leftovers,” but with a healthy view on their reality of an abusive background decided to serve the Lord as a single person.

God is Love. I surely don´t understand all that God does or doesn´t do in this world. I also admittedly don´t know what some of Gods children are doing. I have been reading lately in Job. How friends sat quietly with him for seven days, not saying a word.

Then they started to blame him. For me I can only understand a bit of Job´s faith when I start from the point: God is love, and that Job had realised that. In spite of everything God loved Job and He loves us today, unbelievable but true.

Let us join together in singing about this beautiful love of God.