This webpage applies not only to men and women who have lost their ability to enjoy sex through past trauma, but also to any who have lost it through thinking of sex as dirty or unspiritual.


I must tell you about a sexual abuse survivor who, through a close walk with God, discovered powerful healing secrets that can propel survivors into fulfillment beyond their dreams. Of course, one survivor can only have one gender, but these healing secrets apply with equal force to both genders. The insights shared below are equally my own, and I’m the opposite gender. I will also share the experiences of a male abuse survivor.

A friend I greatly admire – I’ll call her Christine – was just a little child when her God-given potential to delight in marital relations was savagely stolen from her. She wants revenge. And this woman is smart. She understands that wanting her abuser to suffer would not be revenge but letting him win. It would be letting this evil man succeed in so corrupting her that she becomes nasty like him.

Bitterness blinds, deluding us into thinking ourselves better than those we despise, but reality can be amazingly different to what we suppose. Quite likely, Christine’s abuser was himself sexually abused as a child and, instead of forgiving, he felt justified in using his abuse as an excuse for wanting her to suffer. Should she now act like him by using her abuse as an excuse for wanting him to suffer? To become embittered like him and want to see someone else suffer (her preferred target being her abuser) would not only justify his actions – doing her bit to declare that no one can suffer abuse without ending up wanting others to suffer – but by her very desire to see someone suffer, she would be imitating him. Not only is such bitterness not revenge, it is wisely said that “imitation is the highest form of flattery.”

Christine is remarkably perceptive. She understands that the ultimate revenge has nothing to do with polluting herself with hate. The ultimate revenge involves refusing to let herself be robbed of anything – neither her self-esteem, nor her purity, nor her ability to enjoy full sexual pleasure. True revenge is to let Jesus completely turn the tables so that she enjoys greater purity than even the most innocent non-Christian virgin (only faith in Christ makes people truly sinless and pure in God’s eyes) and enjoying heights of marital pleasure that few people attain, even if they have never been abused. That is truly a triumph to relish; a sweetness to celebrate for all eternity.



Throughout his earthly ministry we find Jesus waiting for people to ask for healing, and even then he at times double-checked to ensure that they truly wanted healing (Scriptures).

Jesus is the complete opposite of an abuser. He overflows with such tenderness and deep respect for you that even though he knows you would like the final result, he refuses to force himself or his healing powers upon you against your will. As much as it hurts him, he restrains himself until you give him full permission to heal you. “Ask that you may receive,” pleaded Jesus over and over, using many different expressions and parables to stress the centrality of this spiritual principle. In fact, even if you give him permission, he is reluctant to heal unless you passionately want it. True love is saddened by reluctant compliance. It pines for something far deeper.

The Bible is emphatic: intensity of desire is a critical factor in receiving from God (Scriptures).

The heart-wrenching tragedy is that few abuse survivors passionately want full healing. Of course they want their pain to go but it is hard for them to want the full healing of their sexuality because most survivors had their capacity for sexual happiness wrenched off them before they had a chance to realize the real value of their loss. Their dreams were shattered and their expectations corrupted before knowing even a glimmer of the unique ecstasy of marital intimacy bathed in endless oceans of warm tenderness and selfless love, as our Creator intended. As someone blinded before being able to see would have little comprehension of all the visual beauty he is missing out on, so is someone sexually plundered before experiencing the heights of marital love. Such survivors can’t understand why people keep raving on about sex as if it were something desirable. In reality, even many people who think sex is wonderful know only hollow, fleeting moments of lust and have no conception of the indescribable depths of fulfillment of marital relations.

Christine read widely from the Bible, but the book of Proverbs held a particular attraction. Beginning in her teens, she spent years fellowshipping with God by daily reading Proverbs, asking God to speak to her from it. To her horror, she discovered that in this God-breathed book, her best friend, the divine Source of all wisdom, speaks positively about sex (Scripture).

Yes, the book warns of serious dangers if sex is misused – that did not surprise her – but that God would speak positively about sex was a serious challenge to her faith. The more she meditated on Proverbs the more divinely convinced she became that even the warnings against misusing sex indicated the value of sex. Parents give little children strict instructions about the care they must take over their best clothes, not old ones of little value.

Despite everything within her screaming that sex was bad, God had to be right. She inwardly recoiled, wanting to permanently push this out of her mind, but she also learned from Proverbs that it is important to carefully weigh up both sides of a matter before deciding one’s view (Proverbs 18:13, 17). If you come to a conclusion prematurely, God revealed to her, you are setting a limit on your life.

A key aspect of Christine’s healing revolved around transforming her attitude toward her own body.

A mutual friend of both Christine and me saw in her mind’s eye an unclothed baby girl lying on her back. Next to her was a beautiful pink rosebud. God tenderly kissed the baby. My friend felt God was saying by this symbolism that Christine’s genitals were as beautiful and perfect as a rosebud. Naturally, my friend was very hesitant to mention such a bizarre experience.

Completely unknown to my friend, the Lord had already given Christine an identical vision. So when my friend finally mustered the courage to share the vision with her, it proved to be powerful confirmation.

The need for God to speak so dramatically about this matter was especially great for Christine because her abuser’s excuse for hurting her was his claim that her genitals were imperfect and that he needed to “fix” them by molesting her. In contrast to what she had for so long believed, God saw her genitals as exquisitely beautiful and perfect. This revelation was, of course, deeply healing. Most of us will not hear from God so dramatically, but our bodies are equally loved by our Creator, and in the secure exclusiveness of marriage we have every right to feel that we have highly desirable bodies.



A friend of mine – I’ll call him Jake – suffered severe sexual and physical abuse from his parents and siblings from babyhood. He is now in his forties. Sometimes Jesus appears to him and physically holds him, just to help him heal. There was in time when Jake used to think that Jesus would never act this way or even speak to anyone today. Even now, he is sometimes so scared that it might be some sort of deception that he asks the Jesus who appears to him to confirm that he is Lord. He does, and this puts Jake’s mind at rest, since he believes no demon would say that. He writes:

These experiences with God have shown me that right from when I was a tender young age, any nurture, intimacy, or love always meant sexual abuse or harm. My body would respond to any closeness as if it were sexual, even if no thoughts, feelings or emotions, or anything questionable were going on internally. Then I start hating my body, and wanting to really hurt, or hit it.

However, instead of continuing in my old pattern of abusing myself, or self-harm I started talking to Father God about it, and asking him why I responded this way. He said it is because whenever I was touched, nurtured or loved as a child it meant perverseness, and sexual touching. He told me that he is healing me of this.

Now, what used to be my body’s automatic response to touch seems to be lessening immensely, as his touch is always wholesome. Now, my response seems to becoming normal, as that auto programmed response is lessening. My fear of tender intimacy is being broken.

This is still very new to me and I am embarrassed to write about it. Even as I write I feel like hitting myself, but I refuse to do so. God has told me that touch does not bother him, and that I, too, should be unconcerned about it.

So this is what I have been doing. I find I am able to relax in his arms as he holds me, and just soak up his nurturing love. I am like a thirsty sponge that cannot get enough of his tender, nurturing love.

Yes, I know that God can do anything, but it is hard for me to believe that he would really bring about this deep healing within me, and be this tender for me. I am crying to think of his kindness.

I had always thought love meant harm, intimacy meant hurt, and that touch was always evil. I had not even realized that I had felt this way. Now the Lord is crumbling destructive lies within me that I did not even know had been sabotaging my relationships.



Christine shares another factor in transforming her body image:

I began to gain a bust long before other girls in my school class. And I hated it. As if growing up were my fault, my mother kept calling me a slut because of my developing figure. And I had so wanted to be a good girl. Over and over my mother kept angrily warning me that breasts make a person the object of unwanted male attention. I so hated my body that rather than dare look at it when undressing, I would close my eyes.

When I was in my teens, God meant so much to me that it was usual for me to spend many hours a night in prayer. When I was fifteen, after one such session of several hours with God, I went to the bathroom and a voice within me that seemed to be God, told me to take off my clothes. I rebuked the voice and spent several minutes commanding demons to leave in Jesus’ name. But the presence remained. “Why are you still here?” I angrily demanded.

“You rightly tell demons to leave, but I am no demon,” came the reply. “I am your God. Please take off your clothes.”

I withdrew to a corner and with not just great reluctance but such fear that I was literally trembling, I slowly removed some of my clothes. “You are beautiful,” God said. It took something like three hours of coaxing and God pronouncing that I was beautiful before I was finally completely unclothed and looking in a mirror. I had been so effective in shunning my body for so many years that I was astonished to discover that I had pubic hair.

The next time God asked me to take off my clothes, it was easier. I guess it only took me about two and a half hours that time! The Lord kept it up until now, even though in public I am extremely modest, I feel so uninhibited that I frequently lie unclothed in the privacy of my bedroom. It isn’t sexual to me, nor to God, who assured me years ago that he, the creator of sex, was himself asexual.

Being unclothed makes me feel free, which is amazing, given the intense shame I felt in my earlier years. I find it so soothing that when I am stressed I often close my door and remove my clothes just to relax. In fact, I often pray unclothed. I can understand how some people might think that disrespectful to my Lord, but the God before whom all things are naked and exposed (Hebrews 4:13) has assured me that he is quite happy with it and loves me feeling comfortable about my naked body. It is in public that I honor him by dressing modestly.

I am not yet married but I know that God has taught me how natural and beautiful it is to share my God-given body with the man he gives me. I will delight in showing him everything. In fact, I look forward to it as my final triumph and my divinely-ordained confirmation that my God-given body is highly desirable.

I will have a life-partner who adores my body and prefers it to every female form in the world. How do I know that? Because it is my right. God will give me a godly man committed to mentally and visually, as well as physically, forsake all others and delight exclusively in my body. This is not just a romantic ideal. On this net-burst.com website are pages explaining why Christians should act this way toward their marriage partner, and I refuse to lower myself by becoming one with anyone not committed to that degree of marital faithfulness.

The rest of the world might regard my body as ordinary, but both my husband and I will regard removing my clothes as unveiling a masterpiece. The most exquisite clothes would be nothing but rags concealing true beauty. When naked with my husband I will feel more beautiful and adorned than if decked out with the most stunning, jewel-encrusted gown. And I will be equally infatuated with the breath-taking beauty of his masculine body.

As frustratingly impossible as you would find trying to explain the joys of color to someone born blind, so it is beyond me to convey to the average victim of sex abuse the mystical beauty of marital relations and to explain why it is not only foolish for anyone unable to appreciate sex to marry, but cruel to one’s partner. The whole point of marital relations is shared delight. You might think you are heroically meeting your partner’s sexual needs, but without your enjoyment, not only are you missing out, it is as hollow to a loving partner as trying to share your heart in a conversation with someone who does not understand your language. There is no need to be disturbed by this, however. If you let it motivate you to seek healing, wondrous things will result.



Let your imagination run wild. Your child has been kidnapped. To raise money for the ransom you are forced to pawn your wedding ring. afterward, a benefactor generously gives you enough money to redeem your ring. Now you can regain your beautiful ring or you can leave it at the pawnbroker’s, either because you decide your marriage is not worth it or you feel so riddled with guilt over pawning the ring that you do not even want to face the matter.

This is not mere fantasy. If you have suffered sexual abuse, something very close to this has actually happened. You have been brutally robbed of something very precious to your marriage. Quite likely, you have little conception of the value of this marital gift because it was taken from you before you had the chance to enjoy it and appreciate its true worth. Through his painful death, Jesus paid for your salvation, but whether you avail yourself of the benefits is up to you. Among the benefits that Jesus has paid such a mind boggling price for is not only the full restoration of your purity but also for you to enjoy God’s precious gift of marital physical pleasure and fulfillment.

God himself proudly and lovingly created your sexuality, and although it was viciously taken from you in a way that broke not just his laws but his heart, Jesus has provided you with all that you need to redeem this unique and priceless gift, just like being given the money to redeem your wedding ring from a pawnbroker. It is up to you whether you choose to honor your Creator and Redeemer by redeeming his gift or whether you spurn the offer.

My friend refuses to let her former abuser rob her of the tiniest thing. She is determined to get back everything he stole with interest. She demands not only what she would have had if he had not abused her, but much more besides. And this is her Christ-bought right. We find the divine principle in black and white in the Old Testament. The penalty for stealing was not just that the thief return what he stole, he had to pay back to the victim significantly more than what he stole. Proverbs 6:3, for example, states that when a thief is caught, he must restore what he took, sevenfold.

If you have been sexually abused, more than just a human was involved. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood . . .” (Ephesians 6:12). Behind the attack were evil spiritual forces with a specific goal: to ruin you sexually. What if, instead of them succeeding, you ended up seven times more blessed sexually than if they had not attacked you? What a triumph that would be! What a victory to savor! All of heaven would applaud. And what happiness would be yours and your marriage partner’s!

This is your Christ-bought destiny. If you want it. You could enjoy it all or you could choose to let evil triumph, lessen your marriage and waste some of the restoration Christ paid such an exorbitant price for you to enjoy. When you were attacked, your power of choice was ruthlessly taken from you. Your loving Lord will not do that. He lets you choose the magnitude of your healing.

Because she has fully expressed to God her most intimate and scary secrets and feelings, trusting him with her heart, Christine has experienced such healing that there is little anger left in her. The little that remains, however, she uses very cleverly. Christine refuses to waste her anger by directing it at herself, her innocent husband, or even her abuser. Instead, she directs it at the evil forces that drove her abuser and would likewise like to enslave and pollute her. She refuses to let evil rob her of the pleasure, purity, and sweetness of spirit that are her spiritual birthright. She will not rest until she has extracted sevenfold compensation by enjoying heights of purity, fulfillment and freedom from inhibition that are way above average. She will settle for nothing less than her past pain being utterly drowned in a sea of sheer joy, fulfillment and God-glorifying, Christ-bought pleasure to an extent that would make others envious, if only they knew.



It is tragically common for abuse survivors to turn to such things as porn, masturbation, impure fantasies or sex outside of marriage to try to dull their pain. The relief this provides is like a drug that not only enslaves, belittles and corrupts but is frustratingly fleeting and keeps producing a bitter downer. It promises comfort but ends up delivering more pain than ever. It is dangerously addictive, inflamed still more by its victims not connecting the illicit act with the awful feelings that eventually follow, like an alcoholic not thinking of the hang-over and degradation when craving a drink. Moreover, to indulge in sexual feelings that do not focus on loving one’s marriage partner is to further damage and pervert one’s God-given sexuality and so let evil win.

Each instance hardens the link in the core of one’s being between sexual feelings and something totally contrary to God’s plan for sex, such as violence, pain, revulsion, selfishness, or someone other than one’s God-given marriage partner. It turns sex into something ugly. Like vandalizing a priceless work of art, it might not be intended as a brutal act of defiance against the Creator of the masterpiece, but it has that effect.

I understand abuse survivors doing this. They are almost out of their minds with pain and they suppose that their sexuality has already been ruined. But this is underrating the power of Almighty God to restore. Nevertheless, just as every additional act of defacing a work of art grieves the artist and is yet another setback, making restoration a longer, more painstaking process, so it is with every time one perverts sex.

But Christine has seen through the lie. To break any addiction is difficult but it is a huge leap in dignity, liberty and restoration of one’s sexuality (a core aspect of our personhood) and innocence.



In Egypt, Joseph could triumphantly declare to his relatives who had treated him cruelly, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). The ultimate foiling of the evil one’s plans is to let Christ achieve in you the exact opposite of what Satan attempted by inspiring your sexual abuse. Instead of it ruining your sexuality or harming your marriage, it can end up motivating you to obtain from God victories and fulfillment that average people never tap into.

If all of Christine’s personality were thought of as a country, then, through no fault of her own, huge tracts of it – especially areas of her sexuality – had been overrun by the enemy. The devil and his slimy thugs had the audacity to claim them as their own and to rule in those areas of her life, not by forcing her to sin, but by controlling her sexual response, such as causing her to recoil from something she would otherwise enjoy immensely. She could act defeated and let these filthy invaders get away with this, but to do so would be foolish – since there is no need to suffer such humiliation – and it would be dishonoring to the Love of her life, the Lord Jesus, who on the cross at horrific cost made total victory her rightful spiritual inheritance.

There is more to letting the devil win than engaging in blatant sin. Since at the cost of his life the Son of God purchased our freedom, to remain in bondage, letting evil rule over us by limiting our sexuality and dictating our sexual response to certain stimuli, would be to insult the one who paid so dearly for us to be free from satanic control.

The Promised Land was divinely given to the Israelites but to possess and retain it took faith, courage and effort. There is a vast difference between what Christ’s victory has made possible for us, and what we allow to become practical reality in our lives.

Through Christ’s precious victory, it is our divine right for us to rule, under God, over our sexuality. Nevertheless, we can choose to keep caving in to fear and satanic bluff, and humiliate ourselves and our Savior by surrendering our rightful inheritance to Christ’s enemy.

Even before she married, Christine relished the thought of reclaiming her sexuality through marriage. It was as though entire rooms in her personhood had been vandalized. She could leave them that way and lose access to them, being too ashamed even to enter those areas, or at the appropriate time she could invite her God-given husband into them and let him tenderly repair, redecorate and beautify them; lovingly transforming dark, dank, defaced areas of her life into places of light and joy.

She could choose to exalt her hateful abuser over her loving husband. For example, she could hide her body, choosing to believe her abuser’s lies when he implied she was ugly, or she could choose to believe her husband when he says she is beautiful. Her automatic response is to believe her abuser because for much of her life she had accepted his lies as gospel truth, but it truly is a choice – an act of will. At first, it takes enormous effort. Like any habit, the habit of letting lies repeat in her head for years had grown so powerful that to change her thinking is like trying to stop a driverless car that is slowly rolling toward her and then push it in the opposite direction. Once the momentum is gained in the right direction, however, it gets increasingly easy.

Instead of letting something remain a trigger for a bad memory, Christine wants it superceded by good memories. Her abuser did things to her that were utterly inappropriate outside the sanctity of marriage, let alone to a little girl. Nevertheless, mature couples can find such things enriching and warmly beautiful when done in loving tenderness within the security of a lifelong marital commitment.

By his actions, her abuser had the effect of programming her to react with fear, revulsion and pain to anything remotely like what occurred in her abuse. She refuses to let her abuser get away with that and to have it interfere with her enjoyment of intimacy with the loving husband the Lord has given her. She is determined to keep moving slowly but progressively to the point in her marital experience where such actions are strongly associated with warmth, love, security and bliss. By this process she will eventually reprogram her reaction so that what used to be a trigger for unpleasant feelings becomes a trigger for physically and emotionally beautiful feelings.



The following is Christine’s prayer for a married friend who is recovering from sexual abuse.

Dear Lord,
I thank you for your gift that we call sex, and yet the very word can make us shudder. How it must sadden you that the very expression of selfless love that you intended to be pure and uplifting and empowering for both partners is so often perverted into something crude and shameful and degrading. You designed it to be the joyous bond between a man and wife that makes them one. I thank you that the pleasure you lovingly planned for them has not only emotional benefits but even health benefits. And I praise you for anointing a spiritual side of sex to be used by each partner to minister to the deepest parts of the other.

I ask for your healing touch upon my dear friend who has been robbed of the joy and fulfillment that you long for her to have. No perverted act can compare with the real and beautiful sex life you have ordained for her.

My friend needs your healing, and her husband needs the ministry that no one in the entire universe can give him, but her. She is called to be the only one and he is called to be her only one. You desire to delight this couple. Together in you they can have a union that truly blesses you.

Give my friend a hunger to know your desires concerning marital pleasure, because as you teach her the beauty of your ways, she will heal. Give her a longing to use this sacred gift to minister to her husband so that he, too, may find your healing. Draw her and her husband together with a stronger bond and greater fulfillment than either has ever dreamed of.



Among the tragedies that sexual abuse typically brings is that something innocent and beautiful becomes so associated with past trauma that anything remotely like that innocent thing triggers terror, revulsion or some other unpleasant reaction. The instant you received Christ’s salvation, your pristine innocence was established spiritually. Now Jesus longs to take you on a healing journey by progressively restoring your innocence psychologically, so that in your mind and instinctive reactions you are like someone who had never been hurt. Jesus is no abuser. Despite his omnipotence he will not abuse his power by forcing this healing upon you. He humbly seeks your permission.



If you have suffered past sexual abuse it is not enough to focus on improving present and future sexual experiences. To become sexually normal now, healing from past trauma is essential. Most of us want to ignore the past and “get on with life,” but that is like building higher while ignoring structural damage in the foundation.

If you were abused as a young child, you need to read Powerful Answers for People Traumatized as Children and prayerfully assess whether it applies to you. Many people with this specific problem refuse to admit it to themselves but until the matter it is fully addressed, their present-day sexuality will remain crippled. Other essential healing issues are covered in Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors.



Related Pages

Reclaiming Lost Opportunities Breaking Restrictions in Your Life

“I Hate Sex!” When Wives Want a Sexless Marriage

Putting Holy Fire In Your Marriage Stirring Up Marital Passion

Love God & Christian Sex Secrets The Horror and Joy of Sex

Celebrate your Sexuality

How Holy Wives Express Marital Love Smashing Inhibitions and Misconceptions

The Hidden Reason More by Christine about Spiritual Warfare

Afraid? Help and Inspiration When Gripped by Fear

An Eye for Beauty? Why it is Critical to Closely Control What you Look At

Essential Reading

The above belongs to a series of free webpages devoted to the full recovery of survivors (male and female) of all forms of sexual interference. See Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors for an overview and links to the other critically important pages.

Personalized support

Grantley Morris: healing@net-burst.com

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