I grew up in the Church, and came to Christ at the age of 10. Knowing I was going to heaven, I had faith that God would always take care of me. You’d think that would be enough.
It wasn’t.
Somehow, I never heard the rest. I didn’t hear that when Jesus died, it was not just to save my soul when I died; He died that I may have life now, and that I might have it more abundantly. He died to heal the rift between me and God; He died for the now, not the someday. He died so we all might be adopted into the royal family of God, so we all might become heirs with Jesus Christ, princes and princesses of the Royal House of God.
I am a princess.
If I had understood that and all it means, I would have made different choices.
When I was fifteen, my boyfriend drugged and raped me. Before he took the choice from me, I had wanted to be a virgin until I married. I knew that part of me would remain with whoever I had sex with. I wanted that to be my future husband. It was foundational to me that I remain pure.
That boyfriend took that and so much more from me. I forgave him, but that wasn’t enough to set me free.
I felt unworthy of anything. In the years to come, sex was just sex, and sometimes, it was rape, but I needed it. When a serious relationship with my Satanist boyfriend fell apart after seven years, the self-esteem I’d built in the shelter of that relationship crumbled, replaced by the need to feel desirable again. Feeling I could never trust another man, and knowing love cannot exist without trust, I nearly killed myself. Those were my darkest days.
As a Satanic witch, everything was about sex and manipulation of the world through my will, and the enemy, wanting to keep me there in the darkness, empowered me. I had convinced myself that I was naturally a witch, and—because I could not bring myself to renounce the truth
of a loving and personal God—that God had made me that way. I wrote and published erotica, I did sexual role play in email and chat, and I sought out sexual encounters with men I didn’t know, just to feel beautiful, to feel powerful. I burned with lust, and the more I tried to satisfy it, the more it consumed me.
But no sin or heartache exists that is greater than the love of Jesus, and through a process too amazing to describe in this limited space, He restored me to my faith.
A friend recommended Winning the Battle Within, by Neil T. Anderson, when I told her what I was dealing with. There, at age forty-two, I learned the full extent of what Jesus did for me, and found freedom for the first time.
Here is what I most need you to understand: Until you take hold of your royal status in God’s house and all it gives you, you cannot live free from your addiction, whatever it is.
I learned that although I had long since forgiven all the men who had raped me, used me, and abused me, it was not enough. I needed to know who I was so I could safely stand on that identity and confess and renounce the sins I committed with every man I’d slept with willingly. I also needed to renounce the sins others committed against me and cut the spiritual bond to every one of my partners—willing or unwilling—created by sex.
I now know who I am, and I know what I have, but I am no better than you.
I am a princess, a joint heir with Jesus, imperfect in my humanity, but with the Holy Spirit to back me up and the truth of God’s Word flowing through my mind, I don’t have to fall into the enemy’s traps. Neither do you.
—Lillith