One of my friends has been falsely accused and while it’s heartbreaking to watch, I think that she’s not alone.
I’ve been falsely accused; I’m sure you’ve been falsely accused, too. We all have at some point in our lives.
It reminds me of the apostle Paul. Wow. He gave his life to the Corinthian church for two years and some false teachers came along, infiltrated it ,and accused him of a lot of false things. To the point that they accused him to his face and having served for so long in that church, not ONE person stood up to vouch for him.
Can you imagine, sitting there in church, someone accuses you to your face and all your friends, people you’ve walked with for years, are silent. No one says ANYTHING. No one vouches for you, your testimony. No one offers any help at all.
Can you imagine that pain and suffering you’d face, the brokenness of your heart as you watch those who SHOULD believe in you, say NOTHING.
I know what that’s like firsthand….
Have You Been Falsely Accused?
My church and everyone in it, no one believed me, no one came after me after the lie Kyle told came out. Not one friend, after I had been walking with them for 5-6 years, believed me.
They all believed a lie.
Seven years later, I still sit here, waiting for God to show the world I wasn’t lying. Waiting, hoping, and praying that by His grace and mercy, the truth, will come out. That everything I’ve said, both publicly and privately will be proven to be the truth.
It’s tough. How do you carry on for so long? How do you have that kind of faith in such opposition?
God.
God is the only reason you can make it through the most toughest times of your life. God is the only reason you get to wake up every day alive. God is the only person that makes living worth living.
He’s the only person that will never fail you. He’s the only person that will never leave you.
Your family, your friends, even yourself (think: self-sabotage) can sabotage you and everything you stand for. They can misalign you, discredit you, heap coals upon your head, try to kill you both in spirit and physically, but God will NEVER treat you unkindly.
He will never be mean to you or treat you unfairly.
He’s always loving, always careful with His children, always kind, always perfect.
Here’s the thing…
We cannot expect humans to be God.
We cannot expect those who say they love us the most to ALWAYS be kind, ALWAYS be loving, ALWAYS be perfect.
My church sinned. Every single one of them in one way or another, and God will deal with that, but GOD will deal with it, not me. I’ve chosen to place my hope and my faith in Jesus Christ and that means I’m His.
It means if He wants to allow me to be drug through the mud, it’s for His own purpose and glory. It’s not my reasoning to question Him or to accuse HIM. It’s my job to submit, willingly, out of an obedient, loving, faithful heart for the day when He WILL show the world that I was never lying.
I know that day will come. But in the meantime, I, like my friend, have a lot to learn.
God allows us to be falsely accused, to suffer for many reasons.
But first, we must recognize where the accusations come from.
Revelation 12:10 tells us that Satan accuses us day and night to God.
Satan is an accuser. He is CONSTANTLY at work the Bible says DAY AND NIGHT.
Whether that’s to God’s face regarding us, or whether that’s through using saved and unsaved people to do his dirty work for him, we are ALWAYS, day and night, under attack for being accused as believers.
We MUST understand that in order to get through it.
It’s not coming from our glorious Creator. It’s not coming from our very worthy God. It’s coming from Satan. It’s coming from his demons. It’s coming from those who choose to allow themselves to be used by him, whether even but for a moment or for a long time.
And if you ARE accused by a person, how can you hate the person?
Is not that a person, whether saved or unsaved, a person God created in His own image. Is not that person someone Jesus Christ went to the cross and died for?
How can we hate the person themselves?
No, we need to separate the man from the spirit.
Hate the work of Satan.
Hate the work of the person who’s misaligning you, but don’t hate the PERSON.
The person whom you hate is the one that Jesus loves and wants to call into a right fellowship with Himself.
Once we are able to separate the two: man and the spirit or rather man and the action, we are able to forgive the person doing this to us. Whether that’s a whole church full of people who claimed to be your friend or one man that stands behind it all.
The second thing you must realize is that Satan is relentless. He doesn’t GET tired. Remember, He was created perfect. He was an angel. A beautiful angel. He fell. That was HIS own choice, but he was CREATED perfect. Why is he perfect? Because he was in heaven and everything in heaven is perfect.
HE, by his own choice, decided to leave perfection, and is no longer perfect. I think we can all understand that. But those attributes he had, never being tired, things like that, would still exist.
So we can rightly assume that he never gets tired. The Bible says day and night. He doesn’t have to sleep like we do, in order to refresh.
We are going up a losing battle if it’s just our flesh against Satan.
But it’s not!
As a believer, we have the Holy Spirit, GOD, living inside of us. And it’s ONLY through the power of Christ that we can defeat Satan. We cannot defeat him on our own. It’s foolish to think we can. We are no match for him. He’s been living over 6,000 years. All that knowledge! We cannot defeat him by sheer human power.
We defeat him through Christ.
The answer to defeating Satan is given to us in James 4:7.
It says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
A lot of people want to skip over the first portion of that verse. They wanna go right to the “resisting the devil” part and while that IS part of it, it’s not ALL of it.
If I try to resist Satan and I am not submitting to God what will happen?
Something or maybe nothing. It’s not promised. There’s no guarantee. It’s human will (resisting) against Satan.
We need to resist him in our flesh, yes, but we also must submit ourselves to God.
What does that mean?
It means, God is allowing you to be falsely accused.
It means, He’s appointed you to go through this. God is sovereign. He could have stopped it. If He’s allowing you to go through it; it’s for your good.
Wait….what?!
I hear everything dropping. Your jaw, whatever you had in your hand at the moment. Everything drops.
Listen, you going through being falsely accused, through suffering, is for your own good, if you are a believer.
How do we know that?
Because God is perfect.
He doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t purposely do bad things to you. He isn’t evil or mean. He doesn’t let you be sifted beyond what you can bear. He is a loving, a fair, a merciful God.
So this is for your good.
I hear you saying, “Okay, HOW? How is this for my good?”
Great question!
Let’s dive into some reasons why God may be allowing you to be falsely accused.
God may be using your being falsely accused to humble you
This one is a tough one to swallow, for sure, but it rings true in my own life. There was a certain amount of pride that I had in my life and after 7 years of being ripped over the coals, nearly daily, I’ve learned to be a lot more humble.
There is much to say about a prideful spirit. God detests it.
He wants His children to be humble, not proud or arrogant.
Maybe you are feeling specially favored by God because of something. Maybe money, success, knowledge of Him. He can use your being falsely accused to humble you.
Instead of fighting the suffering, we have to get to a point of embracing it.
God is using it for our good.
It is good that a man should be humble and not proud.
God may be using your being falsely accused to draw you to Himself
Think about it. When you are going through INTENSE suffering, you are all the more closer to God.
I personally have never been more close to God than I have been in this 7 year trial.
The truth is that I’ve watched God, I’ve seen His handiwork. He’s pulled back the curtain, as it were, and showed me SOOO many valuable things that I would not change for a million years.
I say this through tears, if the only way I could have seen all I see now, all of God’s miracles, all of His work, all of His protection, all of His care, love, mercy, and grace in a REAL and unique way, not just through knowledge or knowing ABOUT Him but seeing it up close and personal, raw, if the only way I could ever have seen all that, is by going through this 7 year trial of being falsely accused, then I welcome it.
I don’t run from it, loathe it, or want to escape. I want to know my heavenly Father more, and if this is the way He’s chosen to help me see HIM more, then that’s what I have to go through.
Has it been gut-wrenching?
Yes!
Has it felt like I was fighting death?
Yes!
Has it been so painful that my homeless story looks like a CAKE walk compared to what I’ve been through now?
Yes! and YES!
But I wouldn’t change it.
I had to go through it, to get to a whole new level of being with my Creator.
I have to go through all this, to be a better Christian, one who is worthy of leading you guys. I get why Paul lists out the reasons he is a true believer when he’s falsely accused in 2 Corinthians 11.
It’s not because he had money, fame, success, etc. that makes him worthy to lead the people for Christ. It’s because he suffered and was STILL STANDING.
Listen, anyone else who would have gone through but a PART of that, would have given up God long before. He kept going BECAUSE he is a true believer.
He’s proven he’s a true believer.
Look at the huge list he’s had to deal with in 2 Corinthians 11:25-29.
He wouldn’t have made it through all that apart from Christ, which leads me to the next point…
God may be using your being falsely accused to prove to the world you are a believer
If someone walks through something apart from Christ, they check out. No one would go through all that unless they WERE a believer.
I get asked more than ANYTHING else, why don’t you just go to the police, why don’t you just PROVE you’re telling the truth, you could take a lie-detector test, you could prove it easily. You have proof (and I assure you, I do) and I COULD save myself. I COULD go to the police. I COULD go to the church (yet again) with all my proof, but you know what?
God doesn’t want me to.
It’s not for me to save myself and ME get HIS glory. It’s His. It belongs to HIM.
And while I am suffering and waiting, willingly, God is proving to the world I AM telling the truth. What other woman would wait for God to take care of things when she could just do it herself?
A Christian woman who is in full obedience to the Lord.
I am that woman!
I’m proving I’m telling the truth. I’m proving I’m a genuine believer. I’m proving that I am obedient to God. I’m proving that I will die for Jesus Christ if that’s what He wants, and I prove it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. this trial is going on!
Maybe God is using your being falsely accused to show the world that you are His disciple, that you are a genuine believer.
In this way, it gives GOD the glory. He is able to show those who are watching you in this trial, His grace and give you grace upon grace upon grace to get you through this trial that you would NOT be able to get through on your own human endeavors. When you come to the end of yourself, of your own human strength, that’s when HIS grace, His strength, makes you strong, and you can endure.
So when you are suffering, when you are persecuted, misaligned, lied about, instead of praying for it to all end, pray that God’s grace abounds in you, for HE gets the glory when it does!!!
You just be faithful, be quiet and submissive to Him, resist Satan in your flesh and submit to God, and Satan will leave.
God may be using your being falsely accused to perfect you in HIS power and for HIS glory.