Teaching Elder Mic Knox spoke on the topic of spiritual abuse on his Spiritual Fitness Show…
Pastor Knox expounded on the signs of typical to spiritual abusers and provided a recommended remedy for church members who feel they are under spiritual abuse from church members or leaders. He highlighted how the power of Christ brought down the “wall of hostility” between man and God and between men saying:
“How can you begin to have this peace with those in your church that are, well maybe even its the pastor who is a spiritual abuser? You are going to need to go to them and confront them and I would go with an individual just like Matthew chapter 18, and I would go and I would confront them and say “here’s some of the things that we see” and I would put it on paper and I would give it to them. “You are displaying signs of a spiritual abuser, and I am confronting you one on one, you can’t hide behind a committee, you can’t hide behind a whole bunch of ‘yes men’, we’re coming to you straight face to face and we’re calling upon you to repent.” And you know if they won’t repent, and if you know that a whole bunch of other people get involved, there you go. Bingo! You’ve got a spiritual abuser.
And the only way you can do this is because you have peace with God, because you know that if they don’t repent – well it’s not up to you. It’s up to God. God the Holy Spirit has to make these men and women break. Prayer, and going to them and showing them on paper and through your words that you are calling them to repent of what they are doing and how they hurting other people. It may be a whole large group of people, but you go one by one or you bring them in and you confront. And you don’t do it in the setting of some kind of “court system”.
You can see the entire Spiritual Fitness Show from March 2, 2021 to hear Pastor Knox’s full remarks in the video below: