The Evil One’s terrifying strategy is to divide and conquer. He knows that his slim chance of victory increases if he can make you feel isolated from other Christians – make you feel peculiar or even perverse to suffer the temptations he is putting upon you. His dirty trick is to try to make you feel guilty or abnormal because of thoughts plaguing your mind that do not even come from you but are actually his words or images fired into your head. He is particularly delighted if he can con you into feeling too ashamed about this common situation to seek from fellow sufferers the comfort and support you deserve.

A woman, whose story you will read later, told me how she was mentally tortured by blasphemous thoughts she did not want. “I was too embarrassed and afraid to tell anyone,” she said, “as I thought everyone would disown me and tell me I was going to hell.”

Having counseled many victims of child abuse, those words sound extremely familiar. They remind me so much of the way sexually abused children are conned into feeling, and the false shame and guilt that keeps them from seeking help and being rescued. Then I remembered one of my favorite sayings that temptation is spiritual rape. Truly our spiritual enemy is the Evil One! How dare he torment us and then do his utmost to fill us with false shame and feelings of hopelessness to try to keep us from receiving the love and comfort from other Christians that we deserve!

There are Christians who feel that God has rejected them and mistakenly suppose that their Lord will probably spurn them for all of eternity and yet, despite it all, these amazing men and women of God continue to do their best to serve the Lord. Most Christians can only gasp in awe that anyone feeling this way would continue with God. I am convinced that such people will be exalted forever as heaven’s heroes.

I’m not surprised, however, when people who feel that God will never forgive them have bouts of anger and bitterness toward God. Their anger is not really at God, but at a non-existent being – a cold, unforgiving ogre whom the Deceiver tries to portray as God.

To help you realize that you are in excellent company as you battle fears that you are unforgivable, I want to share some testimonies with you. These testimonies will both inspire you and assure you that you are not alone. The cherished data banks in heaven’s hall of fame are crammed with testimonies like these: