Redeeming love

Pastor Lewis L. Tucker Jr. has written a book, a Mother’s Day present of sorts for women.

The book, “Damaged Goods,” was released this week by Outskirts Press, a self-publishing house in Colorado — just in time for Tucker’s Mother’s Day sermon at 11:30 a.m. Sunday at New Birth Kingdom Church on Park Avenue.

The book is, essentially, a message to women who’ve been abused by men yet still think they need a man in their lives and are willing to put up with any kind of treatment to keep one. The message: God thinks you’re worth more than that; you need God in your life first before a man; and the Father’s love can restore you.

The book’s message can help women who’ve been abused get on the road to recovery, Minster Gwen Campbell, president of the Virginia-West Central Area Team of AGLOW International, said in a testimonial. AGLOW is a transdenominational organization of Christian women in 172 nations.

Tucker says his own experience, in part, led him to write the book. He says that his own wife, Stephanie, had been damaged, but when he married her, he saw her as a gift from God. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was going to go with her on a journey of restoration.

Sadly, he writes, many women have been mistreated in some way, such as physical, verbal or sexual abuse. Some fall into patterns of promiscuity, trying to find love in all the wrong places. For some, it’s depression. For some, it’s substance abuse.

Whatever the manifestation, the abuse leaves all damaged.

Some men take advantage of damaged women. They use them, then discard them.

“Telling you that he loved you when he really didn’t, making you think you could trust him and then finding out that you couldn’t, left just as deep, if not deeper, emotional scars as if he went upside your head,” Tucker writes.

Tucker admits that he himself was once “a player.” Now, he writes, “it is my desire never to see another woman, including my two beautiful daughters (Kyah and Kourtney), suffer because of a man.”

During his ministry, he says he and his wife have heard repeatedly bemoan their sufferings. Often, they’ve heard it from the same woman, more than once. “Same woman, same story, different man,” in Tucker’s words.

One of those women called his wife last year, and Tucker says he knew what had happened from hearing his wife’s side of the conversation. He said God spoke to him, so he grabbed the phone and began ministering to the woman.

What Tucker had to say to her and what he says in his book boils down to is, first, God didn’t say a woman has to have a man. In fact, Genesis 2:18 says, “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a (helpmate) for him.’”

“So,” Tucker writes, “who needed who?”

During the beginning of the journey of restoration, a damaged woman doesn’t need a man, she needs the “Heavenly Father so he can heal you,” Tucker writes. The Bible says we are “complete in Him,” not in men.

“The Bible says, ‘… a wise, understanding and prudent wife is from the Lord’ (Proverbs 19:14, AMP),” Tucker writes, and “that means you’re a gift, and not just any old gift but a gift from God, so you need to act like it.

“Don’t just give yourself to anybody, to any undeserving joker. And since you’re a gift from God, you need to let God decide who you belong to.”
Restoration will require forgiveness and finding a church home.

“… God desires to restore you, but the question is, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’” (John 5:6, KJV)