Hopefully forgiven and trying to start over

To me faith isn't about making me feel good, it is about knowing Jesus's character and that I can trust Him.

You can trust Him, really you can. If you can trust Him to save you, you can trust Him to forgive all your sin, past present and future.

And you can trust Him to re-make you to look like Him.

It is hard to let go, but reading the bible and praying and reading it out loud helps. memorization helps a lot too.

YouTube - The Inheritance for Men and Women

All He asks is faith as small as a mustard seed... and that's very small. And even that, He gives us, we don't have to do it for ourselves.

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I've been a christian all my life. And 'believing God loved me' never helped anything. If 'God loving me' was all it took, why was my life so horrendous at times? And if he just 'loved me' then why did he allow so much suffering in my life?

I have to admit that christian pop psychology can set my teeth on edge faster then a lot of other things. God is real. God is love. And God is good. But God is also fair, and tells us that if we don't forgive others all their sins against us, he won't forgive us our sins. If other christians had told me that from the beginning it could have saved me a LOT of pain.

Just press in to him and he'll meet you, don't worry. He's a kind father. However the feelings of not being forgiven probably won't go away (not fully) until you forgive others responsible for your suffering. God can't lie. Either he means what he says or he doesn't. However forgiveness is a process as well and it's a journey I've been on for many years (although it isn't necessarily like that for everyone.) If you want God you'll find him. And he will comfort you. (He'll also enable you to forgive anyone you need to, don't worry.)

In all my suffering God has always been there and when I pushed through, I always came out stronger and wiser. That gives you a lot you can share with others as it accumulates. God is faithful, even when things seem so dark at times. He's never let me down and I've been through so much and I've been a seriously commited christian who's never rebelled or slackened off in my pursuit of God. Ever.

Fluffy christianity can make me want to ........

He's a good God. But that doesn't mean him loving you is going to make all your pain go away. Journeys to healing are exactly that, journeys to healing. But I can vouch for Gods faithfulness (and the whys for all my experiences which I've also come to understand in hindsight) to get you through.

My prayers are with you.

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I'm going to have some rough days ahead as well. I thought I was a christian but it turns out I'm just like everybody else. I started going to churches and prayer groups and they did not help me out in time. My life seems to keep getting worse, I suffer a lot for non-christian things I've done without realizing these things were bad until it was too late. A combination of anger and confusion has led me downhill. So much has been taken away from me as a result.

My biggest fear is that if I go completely religious, I'm going to lose most of my friends. I've been praying through my life's situations for a long time, and each time I pray I get farther away from happiness. It seems the struggles will never end. I've been betrayed and hurt by some people close to me and every fall makes it that much harder for me to get up. But I still get up. I thought I had a great purpose here, but it seems I've failed to find it on my own. I have many battle scars to prove of my failures.

The hardest part of failure is that we are blind to what is going to happen as a result. One night out caused me to lose a relationship with a christian girl because now the girl doesn't trust me. I thought I was on the right track, but I guess not. Now I have a long time to figure out how to clean up the mess.

Life is so weird. God gave me a goal. Although I was seeking the goal, the only reason I can figure out that I failed in it is that I did not have the right mentality in doing so. I didn't realize that no one was going to help me, that I would have to figure it out alone. I tend to depend on other people a lot. People doubted me and so I doubted myself. Then I blew it.

I continue to pray for things to get better, but now I don't know if God will ever allow me to have a relationship. The harder I try to, the farther away it gets. It hurts so much everyday that I have to learn everything the hard way, that God is cruel to me, not warning me about what is going to happen until it is too late. So should I trust God and hope that someday He can fix things or should I just continue doing normal things?

Christians are 'just like everyone else', you know. And it isn't about doing or not doing the right things, it's about accepting what the bible says that Jesus did.
Because if you believe that he died for you, then your sins are forgiven and forgotten - there may be consequences of past actions, but Christians don't believe that God punishes them..

I'm sorry you are feeling so bad at the moment... can you find a mature Christian to help you understand things a little more clearly?
I hope things improve for you soon.

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