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Prophet Makandiwa

As the body of Christ, we have not done enough to stop abuse, the church has not done enough to reduce the activities of abuse. People have got a lot of stories to tell, some are in great pain and it is so terrible. If you belong to a church it means you are in a covering and that church has to do everything to cover you, not to expose you.

A shepherd in that church has to do everything to make sure that he protects everyone the Lord has given to him. Even if it means protecting you from yourself, he has to do that.

Evil can even go beyond people whereby days themselves become evil. (Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:16). If the days are evil and you are living in those days, you really need to be trained on how to survive.

The days are so evil and our children are growing up in those days. How are they going to survive? How do they face their future? How do they even pursue their careers in an abusive environment? How are they going to live and sustain their well-being when the days are evil?

There are cases where parents themselves are abusing their own children. The issue of abuse has to be addressed and corrected. As the Church, we play a very significant role in bringing about that change. People around us have to feel safe and protected just because they are close to us.

The House of God is a shelter, a strong tower. People should come into the House of God to be protected from whatever they are running away from. The Church should not hand them over to the same things that are bothering them.

In the Body of Christ, we have not been fair with a lot of issues that we have dealt with. There is a lot of injustice and unfairness in the Body of Christ. We have people that are undergoing serious abuse; husbands are being tortured by their own wives and wives are being tortured by their own husbands.

When they then come for covering of the church, all that churches do is advise them to continue praying. Yet in that prayer it is only one part that is praying, the other partner is continuously tormenting the other one.

Such things call for prayers of agreement where the two people have to come together and pray for one particular thing.

Churches continue advising people to go back into the same abusive environments just because of something we are trying to keep.

If a wife is to separate from the husband because she is running away from abuse and she comes to church for protection, the church also has a tendency of rejecting her as well. It also becomes an abusive church.

Abuse is something happening in all sectors of life; it is happening in companies, churches, schools, clubs and even in beer halls. Abuse is a subject that we have never really dealt with, we hear about it, but we do not want to talk about it.

There are so many scriptures we can refer to in the Word of God that can help us understand what abuse really is and how to safeguard ourselves against any form of abuse.

We need to talk about abuse and train people on how to protect their children. You must have the necessary requirements needed to protect the children that the Lord has given to you.

It is so amazing if you look at what our children might be going through and we are not even aware of it. How do you know if your child is being abused because that is your responsibility as a parent, you are there to protect.

You do not just protect your child from fire, water or electricity, but you also have to protect your child from somebody. You have to make sure that any abuser should not have access to your child. This issue of abuse, apart from talking about it, we need to pray about it because it is so touching. If you look at some forms of abuse that our children are going through and the level of ignorance we have as parents, it causes the heart to bleed.

If there is any person abusing any of your children, those abusers have got their own language they use and it is so similar. It is like they are coming from one place where they have all been trained to speak in a certain way.

If your child is being abused, the abuser is likely going to threaten your child never to talk about it.

Abusers normally tell their victims that “if you are to report it, I will kill you”. They continue abusing the child and the child knows that if she is to make a report he/she is hurt.

Other abusers convince the victims to keep the act as a secret. Your child will be going through some form of training on how to keep that secret. The child will even swear that she will never share the secret with anyone and she will continue to be abused.

Every time when she looks at you, she knows what is happening when you are not there. She will be so hopeless, just hoping that God will talk to you about it. She will look at you every time wanting to share, but he/she knows that the day she does that she will die.

The abuser makes it so real to your child that if he/she discloses the information to anyone he/she will die. If a child comes to you with something to report, he/she might not say it directly to you because the child promised never to break the promise.

He/She will still report it, but that will call for an intelligent parent who is full of wisdom to know that the child is trying to communicate something.

There are people who were abused when they were still young and we might blame them for not reporting it. Some of them did report the abuse, but the way they did it, the parent was not intelligent enough to hear the cry of the child.

Most parents do not pay attention, your child is crying somewhere, but you are not paying attention and you are busy doing something else. A child will try to find a way of telling you, hoping that you will figure it out by yourself what she is trying to say.

The person that might be abusing your child is still alive right now. He has set another date to continue doing the same thing again on your child, but you are not able to really investigate what is happening within your covering.