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Copyright © 2018 Joy Elizabeth Hellmann. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the author.

I dedicate this book to the thousands of sexual abuse victims who have suffered wounds from not being heard or understood. I dedicate it to those who were most certainly not believed, and the most tragic, not being protected. This is for those of you who have been violated through sex trafficking, by relatives, church members, leadership authorities, Satanic ritual abuses, or by total strangers. By His grace, I have cooperated with my most loving Savior who has been with me, guiding me to a completed healing in this area. I do believe He has completed this miraculous healing within me, and will do the same in you, which will be my deeper satisfaction, and weightier reward.

I pray He will bring His rays of light into any darkness of soul. I pray His Spirit of Healing into infected wounds while imparting the inspiration to proceed forward, in this, your unique journey. You are precious in His sight. He cares. He listens. He understands. He alone is the healing solution for our whole man (spirit, soul, body). He has an individual plan for your heart and recompense for your assaults. He wants to walk you out of the trauma and out of torment. His power is so much greater and His light so much brighter than any darkness you have experienced. I pray you experience His healing presence washing over every cell in your body as I share the secrets of my journey with you. In Jesus’ name.

I would like to first thank my Savior, who is the Mighty Counselor, for His loving, healing, and faithful power in my life. He is my healer and has done oh so well, in this great task of saving me. He used a variety of methods, resources, counselors, and mentors to ensure healing and wholeness from sexual abuse. However, I know with certainty who was behind each face, each book, each tool. It was my beautiful, most loving friend, Jesus Christ.

If it wasn’t for Jesus empowering those He strategically brought into my life, they would not have had the grace to walk me through such heartache. Because they had willing hearts and open minds, Jesus was able to flow through these individuals with miraculous power that only comes from Him. These rare ones are the heroes in my story. God uses people to heal people. Sometimes we need Jesus with skin on, so to speak, to get the job done.

I thank these brave, selfless individuals who cooperated with the Lord to bring about the healing I needed, to become the whole person I am today.

It has finally arrived! There is a move of God taking place in the world and in His church that is bringing a supernatural awareness of the prolonged and nightmarish issues of sexual abuse. This is happening prophetically and strategically by the grace and love of God. It’s amazing to watch these God happenings unfold before our very eyes. I’ve asked myself the questions, “Is this for real? Can it be? After so many years of constant cover-up, now truth is being brought into the light. Are we finally being heard and taken seriously? Furthermore, are those in authority helping those who have been defenseless? Is awareness on the topic finally causing a monumental shift, sounding the alarm that sexual abuses have, and will forever be, inexcusable?”

I hear God answering with a resounding, “Yes, and this move is here to stay!”

In all of history, we have never seen a day such as this. It has finally arrived. Many hearts will experience long-awaited relief. Help is on the way! Don’t give up, today is a new day. No more hopeless wishing. No more delay.

I desire to give you, precious survivor, a gift of wisdom, that will allow you to make some substantial shortcuts in your healing journey. Please keep the following in mind as you read: I have written every word of this book with love and compassion for those who have experienced sexual assault. You matter, your pain matters. I labor in love to show you this with my words. I want you to feel and experience the love you never imagined you would ever experience. It is only by God’s grace that I have cooperated with Him. Jesus is a loving Savior who has been with me, guiding me to a completed healing in this area. I believe He is The Redeemer! I do believe He has completed this miraculous healing not just for me, but for you, survivor. You are the one I write my story for.

I was five years old living in Mobile, Alabama. One evening my dad and I were watching a biography of the life of Elvis Presley. While I was watching, I remember a strange compassion started to roll over my heart. I had never felt anything like it. I was filled with deep concern for Elvis’ salvation. Strange, right? But this was just how it began. God used normal, ordinary happenings to reveal Himself to me. He was (and is) always speaking. This compassion did not let up. There was a beautiful presence that intensified, and continued to increase, as if to tell me I should go and be alone. So, I went into my bathroom where I stood overwhelmed with so much love, conviction, and reverential fear, though I did not know exactly why yet.

I was standing in the corner of that little bathroom when a dramatic scene began to unfold. The Spirit of God gave me one of my greatest gifts—an encounter with Jesus. He was indescribable love. I recognized immediately that I was a sinner in need of a Savior, but also that the choice was up to me. I knew I needed Him in this life as well as in the life to come. I thank God to this day for the awareness of the lost state I would be in without Him.

These scriptures explain exactly how I felt: “For I was born a sinner—yes, even from the moment my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5; NLT).

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood” (Romans 3:23-25; NLT).

In this moment, I knew Jesus was real. He was only love, and He loved me beyond my capacity to explain. I started to cry saying, “I want Jesus. I don’t want to go to hell.” I wanted others to know Jesus and didn’t want them to go to hell either. This was an encounter with God. I now know that I was made aware of these truths by the Holy Spirit. Man can’t impart these types of spiritual revelations.

I stood there sobbing as Jesus came to me. I could see Him clearly with my spiritual eyes and hear Him clearly with my spiritual ears. He was smiling and consoling me, with a love that only He possesses. Jesus said, “You don’t have to go to hell. There is a hell, but you don’t have to go there. There is a devil too, but you can choose me and belong to me”.

I will never forget how He gave me this choice.

“Do you want to choose me?” He asked as if He had to have my consent.

This puzzled me because my answer was an adamant, “YES!” Somehow, I understood He already knew that, but it didn’t stop Him from giving me the choice.

“You can live in Heaven with me forever and I will never leave you,” He continued.

After a while, my dad came in to check on me asking why I was crying. I told him I was going to hell because I didn’t know Jesus. He kept saying, “No, you’re not. You have asked Jesus in your heart, so you belong to Him.” But I knew I had not. It is wonderful that a child can tell the difference between really knowing the Lord or not by the power of the Holy Spirit as He reveals truth to them.

“Howbeit when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come” (John 16:13 KJV).

I told my dad clearly that I never asked Jesus into my heart, so he led me in a prayer to receive Jesus. By the power of the Holy Spirit I believed, cried, repented, and then was fully satisfied about my eternal salvation. God loves revealing himself to His little children.

“But Jesus said, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for such is the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 19:14 KJV).

At age five, I had a falling-in-love-with-Jesus experience that preserved the spirit part of me at that time. My soul was positively affected through this encounter, but my soul had a lot of growing to do.

My salvation experience remained the most important piece of my journey to freedom because, being so young at that time, I hadn’t yet received the revelation of truth that we are all spiritual beings who have a soul and live in a body. Later in my adult life, this revelation became a game changer for me and a crucial point in understanding deliverance and healing from sexual abuse. I didn’t know then that it was possible for my spirit to remain undefiled and preserved from all contamination from the abuse because I was born again and filled with the Spirit of God. My spirit was a new creature from the moment I chose Jesus and His salvation. My emotions (which are made up of memories and thought patterns) and body experienced the effects of the sexual assaults.

For the longest time, I could not tell which part of me was hurting. Was it only the emotional part of me or was it my body? Don’t they both affect the other? I felt like I was split in three different pieces. My soul and body had compartments of pain and trauma of their own, while my spirit remained preserved. God wanted to make me whole, entire, complete, and sound. He wants this for all of us. God wants us to experience divine wholeness, while the enemy will always want the opposite. The enemy would love for us to be fragmented, dissociative beings, who are confused about our identities. The revelation of spirit, soul, and body would become a priority for me to understand in order to discern which part of me was hurting. I could then target the appropriate part with the medicine of God’s Word.

Here is some encouragement from Jesus: “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace. In the world, you have tribulation and distress and suffering; but be courageous [be confident, undaunted, filled with joy]; I have overcome the world. [My conquest is accomplished, My victory abiding]” (John 16:32 AMP).

God’s Word clearly teaches that each of us are one whole person made up of three distinct aspects of our being as expressed through our spirit, soul, and body. Very few Christians know this fundamental truth and are able to apply it to their daily lives. I certainly didn’t.

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23 KJV).

Just as God is a community of One revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; He created mankind in His image as triune beings. We each have a spirit, soul, and body. What an impossibility it is to attempt to describe such a great mystery! It is the integration of our whole self that is crucial to living a victorious life. Every born-again Christian has undergone complete inner transformation spiritually. Lack of knowledge on the topic causes confusion and people may become disillusioned. So many of us confuse the spirit with the soul and lump them together as one. They are not one, but they are inter-related aspects of our total human nature. Your spirit was totally changed at salvation. Upon making Jesus Christ your Lord, your spirit underwent an instant and complete transformation.

“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV).

Notice how it doesn’t say that all things are becoming new or have the potential of being new. This verse declares that old things “have passed away” and “all things have become new.” Both of these are past tense, as in they have already happened. Our spirits are completely new in Christ. There is an ongoing process for our souls called sanctification, which continues while we are still on this earth.

The Apostle Paul supported this as well when he said: “Not that I have already obtained it [this goal of being Christ-like] or have already been made perfect (or, complete), but I actively press on so that I may take hold of that [wholeness or completeness] for which Christ Jesus took hold of me and made me His own” (Philippians 3:12 AMP).

Sanctification is a lifelong journey as far as our souls are concerned. We can all become impatient at times when we don’t see the inward realities of our salvation manifest in our natural bodies or minds quickly enough. Typically, your body and soul are both impacted by what happened at salvation, but initially, it is neither total, nor complete. However, this doesn’t mean we have not received the inward transformation the Lord paid to give us. Knowing this important truth is meant to keep you encouraged in your process of sanctification. We must not make the mistake of expecting that our exterior lives (body and mind) are automatically and immediately brand-new. Our circumstances and patterns have to change by the power of God through His Word and Spirit. We co-labor with Him through the process.