So I've become a Christian again... Now what?

[melody5697]

First, some background information. I was raised a Christian. I went to Baptist churches until second grade, then I started going to an E-Free church. Starting the summer before third grade, I started going to an LCMS church. (I was also baptized in third grade, which was something I'd been wanting since kindergarten, even though I didn't actually understand that I was a Christian until first grade.) When I was 13, I realized that I'm into girls, which then caused being a Christian to hurt. When I was 14, the words "I hate God" kept repeating in my head, even though I didn't hate God at all. I'd had enough. I started thinking of a bunch of problems with Christianity so I would have a reason to stop being a Christian besides my sexual orientation. Once I stopped being a Christian, I had one less thing to hate about myself and that horrible sentence stopped repeating in my head. I kept this a secret from my dad at first. (I was physically abused by my mom and emotionally abused by my dad, so I didn't feel at all comfortable talking to my dad about anything, unless you count asking A LOT of religious questions. Plus I like the taste of wine.) But he didn't approve of my friends (dirty, perverted, pot-smoking, Satanic scene kids, but they weren't bad people, so I think they were just going through a phase) and said that I would find my best friends at church because he found his best friends at church, so I told him so he would leave me alone about it. Interestingly, that was the day my dad decided to go to an Eastern Orthodox church because he finally realized that a bunch of churches in the LCMS are going Calvinist and the others are running away in the opposite direction and becoming Evangelical. (I really hope I didn't just offend anyone.)

I attempted suicide several times that year because I hardly had any friends and I suffer from terrible guilt because of bad things I've done in the past (my personality type is INFP and I've been in a Fi-Si loop since I was 11) and my dad was making it worse by blaming me for him losing his job (he got a job that he knew he might lose because he had to stay home and make sure I did my home work) and not having any friends and by threatening to kick me out when I turned 18 if I didn't graduate from high school even though I was far too depressed to do my home work, and I had to come live with my grandparents when I was 15 so I wouldn't kill myself. (And no, the suicide attempts didn't start after I stopped being a Christian. My first suicide attempt was several months before that, and I had been self-harming since age nine.) My grandparents still make me go to church even though I wasn't a Christian, but living with them totally changed my life. The unintentional child abuse stopped and I got help. I haven't attempted suicide since I was 15 (although I've had a few cutting relapses along the way), and I have awesome friends now. But I'm still not COMPLETELY better, and not just because bipolar disorder (which I was diagnosed with when I was 15) never goes away. As I explained earlier, I am still in a Fi-Si loop. If you want an in-depth explanation of what that is, you'll have to google it. But basically I feel horrible, then I think of reasons I should feel horrible, and then I feel horrible again. It continues in a loop and it's awful. It's much more complicated than that, but I don't feel like explaining a bunch of personality type theory.

Recently, I made a new friend named Sam who was also in a Fi-Si loop. I've only been in a Fi-Si loop for eight years, but he was in a Fi-Si loop for 17 years. He helped me figure out that I'm in a Fi-Si loop, and he told me how he got out of his. He's Pentecostal, and he said that God helped him. (There were other things as well, but he emphasized how much God helped.) At first I just rolled my eyes and ignored that particular piece of advice. But yesterday at work, when I was going through a period when my Fi-Si loop was especially bad, I thought about what Sam had said, and I wondered if maybe he was right and becoming a Christian again could help me. It was actually a Christian song being stuck in my head that prevented my first suicide attempt from being fatal, after all. (I took a bunch of pills, then I got the song Tourniquet, by Evanescence, stuck in my head. It's about a Christian girl who decides to kill herself, but as she's bleeding to death, she remembers that some Christians believe that you automatically go to hell if you kill yourself, so she prays that she'll still go to heaven. With that song stuck in my head, I could no longer deny the possibility of going to hell for committing suicide. I figured I deserved it anyway, but there was an online friend who I hoped to meet in heaven. I called 911 for her.) Then, when I was driving home, something occurred to me... What if the devil had caused the words "I hate God" to repeat in my head so I would stop being a Christian to get it to stop? I started freaking out, and with that possible explanation in mind, I began to think, maybe I SHOULD become a Christian again. So I grabbed my tablet, found my list of reasons I'm not a Christian, and went through them one by one. I was able to find satisfactory explanations for everything, and I am now open to Christian beliefs other than what I was raised with, so there are no longer reasons not to be a Christian.

But now what do I do? I have no idea where to start! I stopped being a Christian for FIVE YEARS, and growing up in the Lutheran church basically taught me that Christianity is about believing the right things so you go to heaven and convincing others to believe the right things so they go to heaven and nothing more, so I basically have to start from scratch. (I thought my dad had taught me that intentionally, but I just talked to him about it and he thinks the Lutheran churches we attended taught me that. Or he may have just meant one particular Lutheran church. It's called Augsburg Lutheran Church and it's in Shawnee, KS. STAY AWAY. Even if you agree with the doctrine, surely you wouldn't think that this one thing the pastor did was right. After my first suicide attempt, he was supposed to come to my house after I got out of the hospital. He canceled without any explanation. Then we didn't show up for church the following Sunday, and he called my dad and asked where we were. No mention of my suicide attempt. So yeah.) I haven't usually actually been paying attention at church, but I've heard this stuff about having a relationship with God. Perhaps if I'd actually had a relationship with God before, I wouldn't have stopped being a Christian. How does it work? And how do I go about choosing a church? I guess I could just keep going to the one my grandparents have been taking me to for the past three years, which is a Church of the Nazarene, but I'm not so sure about all that Wesleyan-Holiness stuff, and there's also the fact that the Church of the Nazarene officially believes that homosexuality is wrong. (Although not everybody in my church actually believes you can stop sinning, and while most people at my church believe that homosexuality is wrong, there are some who don't, including my grandparents, and the ones who think it's wrong don't treat the two openly gay people there, me and a guy named Tyler, any differently.) I have no idea what to do.

 

[John Hyperspace]

Have faith in the promise; you're going to be just fine. No matter what happens, you will know complete joy, peace and happiness after this whole trial of life is over. Life can be hard, but that is the point. All of the "bad" things that happen are measured out to you in a way that will be for your ultimate good in the end. The things you don't have right now, aren't there so that when you do get them (and you will) you'll know what you've got, and you'll cherish them for what they are. Life is a process of creation, and, change; of transformation. You are becoming who you are to be.

Put all of your faith and trust and hope in the promise of God; God is with you at all times, even when you turn your back, He's watching out for you, guiding your feet in the places you need to go. Sometimes the places will be dark; but it's in these places you acquire strength through trial. God has you on the treadmill, and you're going to have to run on it, and get endurance, and strength through the things you suffer. No pain, no gain. It's the same for all of us.

Remember, a ship on a calm sea gets nowhere. When the fire turns up, get right in there. Learn to accept all things that come your way, as obstacles to overcome; building you up in the process; giving you strength, and compassion, and understanding with which to help others in similar situations to also endure.

Most of all: love. Love all, love freely, love them that hate you, love them that are friendless, love the persecuted, the weak, the strong; love, love, love without measure. Stand with others, be their strength when you can, be their courage when you can, be their help when you can. Show them undersanding; and help those going through the things you've gone through, since you know these troubles they could use a friend who understands them. Just, love. Have faith in all trials knowing that all things are working together for your good, even when you can't see how. Every trouble is stamped with LOVE by God. Everything is going to turn out great for everyone; you will see. Laugh at the naysayers, love the ones who cast doubt at you; rise above those that are stuck on the earth. You are who you are, and that's exactly who you should be, and you will be who you will be.

God doesn't make mistakes; and God made you. Have faith, hope and love; and most especially, love. Show it as strongly as you can make it to shine. Sit back, relax as well as you can. Let God take care of where you're going, you are in good hands.

 

[1watchman]

One doesn't STOP being a Christian, for they either are and "sealed" by the Holy Spirit, or they are only a "wannabee" following Christian teachings. That seems to be where you are, friend. If you now want to be saved and become a "child of God" by the new birth ---John 3, then let me recommend you read John 1; John 3; John 14, and ask God to teach you about His Son and salvation. Look to God always, friend, and trust Him and His immutable Word.

 

[Greg J.]

Hi melody5697,

I've been in an Si-Ti loop for 40 years, the last 15 of which have included depression and bipolar disorder. I'd be happy to address each of your concerns. Please just write another post if you would be interested in that or not.

I will say one important thing. Being a Christian is not about what you do or don't do, or even to a degree who/what you are or are not. It is about the living God. Jesus is alive and real and more than anything wants you to get to know him. I suggest you start talking to him (about anything you care about) every day. He may speak back to you, but he has already told us tons of things (particularly about himself) in the Bible.

The simple first step is to attend a mainstream Christian church you like regularly, and try to get into a weekly church group that meets to either study the Bible (attenders might be any age) or just to get to chat (attenders would be near your age).

 

[crossnote]

I heard a lot of Church experiences in your testimony...but not one word about Jesus..our Redeemer, Savior and true Hope.
Seek Him and find Him in His Word, as you do that personal relationship will form. (I would start with the Gospel of John).

 

[paul1149]

What if the devil had caused the words "I hate God" to repeat in my head so I would stop being a Christian to get it to stop?

Exactly. He sets us up, he plants the seed, then he condemns us for it. When we buy into his strategy and condemn ourselves and doubt God's grace, we end up doing his destructive work for him - which is exactly what he wants. Take a look at this testimony in that regard: http://j.mp/resistdevil

Essentially, relationship with Christ goes far deeper than correct doctrine. So much deeper, in fact, that you can get the doctrine wrong and He still says with you and can even use you. That's not to say being wrong doctrinally is a good thing - it's not. But we are under grace, and sometimes it takes time to get our doctrine in order. Look how patient He was with His first disciples, who despite living with Him for three years routinely screwed up.

God doesn't abandon us in such a circumstance, and we should be focusing on what He's trying to do in us and through us, not on forcing ourselves through doctrinal hoops. The rest will fall into place at the right time.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I stopped being a Christian for FIVE YEARS, and growing up in the Lutheran church basically taught me that Christianity is about believing the right things so you go to heaven and convincing others to believe the right things so they go to heaven and nothing more, so I basically have to start from scratch. (I thought my dad had taught me that intentionally, but I just talked to him about it and he thinks the Lutheran churches we attended taught me that.

I consider that deeply unfortunate, because one of the reasons I became a Lutheran was precisely because in Lutheranism I found the message of God's grace, and that it had nothing to do with me, what I believed, what I thought, or what I did. Because the central teaching of the Lutheran tradition is that we are saved by the grace of God alone, apart from ourselves, that we stand completely naked before God and He, out of His loving kindness, freely clothes us with Jesus Christ and accepts us as His dear and beloved children. Salvation isn't about being good enough, salvation is about God being good to us; salvation isn't about us believing the right things about God, it's about God in Christ offering Himself to us and for us; salvation isn't about us, it's about Jesus, the One who pours Himself out in love for a broken, hurting world. The God who abandons Himself in love upon the cross, and declares each and every one of us His own beloved for Christ's sake.

Note that I'm not saying this to discredit your experience, but I am saying this to criticize a church that would call itself Lutheran and completely and utterly deny the very core tenets of Lutheran theology. Such a church wouldn't just be being bad Lutherans, it would be a complete and absolute betrayal of everything "Lutheran" has meant for five hundred years.

I became a Lutheran because I had grown up in a church tradition that largely taught me that it was up to me to reach out to God, that I had to find God in my own experience, and largely left me with a broken conscience as even if I outwardly confessed my love for God, my mind inwardly betrayed that as I, in the deepest part of me, considered myself beyond hope and repair. I couldn't truly appreciate what the Gospel meant until I finally able to encounter the selflessness of God in Christ who gives everything, freely. Not as a conditional gift which I had to cross my t's, dot my i's, say the right words, pray the right prayers, or all the many things which my Evangelical and Pentecostal upbringing had largely instilled in me: that it was solely God, on His own, saving me; and this He did without my consent, this He did apart from me. This He did because He loved me, and for no other reason, and that there was truly nothing I could do that could sever the love which He has for us in Jesus.

And so, before I continue to read the rest of your post and address it, and regardless of anything else anyone else might say or think about you, I want to say this:

God loves you.
Your sins are forgiven.
You are a beautiful, justified, entirely righteous on Christ's account baptized daughter of God the Father.

You are Christ's.
Christ is yours.

You have been sealed with the Holy Spirit,
United together with Christ, in His death and His resurrection, to the hope of future life.
With God as your Father.

You are among the cherubim and the seraphim, and all the archangels. You are among all the saints of God which have come before you, are with you, and will be with you until the end, and for eternity.

God loves you.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

Under different circumstances I might suggest trying a different Lutheran church, such as ELCA. But I can understand how that would be bad advice currently. Perhaps an Episcopal church might be a better choice.

My main concern would be finding a church where you can hear the Gospel, and where you can find healing, and a community that actually will support you, especially in regard to your mentioning of suicide attempts. Any pastor who does not consider that a priority issue has failed enormously in my mind. The Church, said St. Augustine, is a hospital for sinners; it is not a social club for saints, it is not a religious club for people to feel pious, or better about themselves. It is where the hurting and broken, where outcasts, and sinners come and gather to receive God's Word and Sacrament, it is where Christ, the great physician, invites us to find our healing in Him. This is the refuge of the beggar, the scoundrel, the unwanted, and the unloved; here is where God, our fortress, resides that we might rest in Him.

The peace and love of God be with you, no matter what your choice is, or where you find yourself.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[seashale76]

I don't know if it would help you, but you can read my testimony here at CF (http://www.christianforums.com/xfa-blogs/seashale76.95814/)

I'm much more a fan of encouraging people to search for themselves. I believe that God draws us to Himself. The Christian faith is something you can read about on-line, but it must be lived. The faith has a very physical aspect to it. It is more than intellectual assent to a belief. Actions are involved. One must life out their faith in Christ's Church. This is something that many people ignore these days. I can say I believe something and truly think I do all day long- but it isn't until I start putting actions behind the declaration- that it means anything. Say, I sit at home every time there is a Divine Liturgy. As a consequence, I never partake of the Eucharist. Say, I sit at home and never pray. Say, I never feed and clothe the poor.

Go to church, get out there, get baptized, catechized, take communion, get a prayer rule and follow it, and then live a life in Christ. (And I don't mean to make that sound easy because it isn't. I also don't mean that you are going to be able to just jump in there- in Orthodoxy we believe in catechesis- so even if you wanted to become a Christian it is heavily encouraged for you to attend church, study, et cetera before you make the commitment because it is a serious one. Chrismation and Baptism is something you have to be prepared for. We don't do altar call theology.)

"If you wish to save your soul and win eternal life, arise from your lethargy, make the sign of the Cross and say: In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Faith comes not through pondering but through action. Not words and speculation but experience teaches us what God is. To let in fresh air we have to open a window; to get tanned we must go out into the sunshine. Achieving faith is no different; we never reach a goal by just sitting in comfort and waiting, say the Holy Fathers. Let the Prodigal Son be our example. He "arose and came."" (Luke 15:20).
~Tito Colliander The Way of the Ascetics.

"Faith, like active prayer, is a grace. For prayer, when activated by love through the power of the Spirit, renders true faith manifest - the faith that reveals the life of Jesus. If, then, you are aware that such faith is not at work within you, that means your faith is dead and lifeless. In fact you should not even speak of yourself as one of the 'faithful' if your faith is merely theoretical and not actualized by the practice of the commandments or by the Spirit. Thus faith must be evidenced by progress in keeping the commandments, or it must be actualized and translucent in what we do. This is confirmed by St. James when he says, 'Show me your faith through your works and I will show you the works that I do through my faith.'" (cf. Jas. 2:18.)
~St. Gregory of Sinai, The Philokalia, Vol. 4.

I am a firm believer that one can't know what the faith is about truly unless they come and see it for themselves. You must visit a church to learn about the faith. Visiting doesn't lock one into becoming a member. I've never yet been to an Orthodox Church where I've seen anyone harassed and hounded into joining- and even if you want to become Orthodox you would have to be catechized.

Find an Orthodox Church in your area (I'm biased). Perhaps go with your dad? http://orthodoxyinamerica.org

My advice to you:
Pray and do your research. I will post a few things that it certainly wouldn't hurt for you to read that explain the Orthodox Christian faith fairly well. (The first 3 links are a comprehensive, easy read that covers a lot.)
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/history_timothy_ware_1.htm (part 1)
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/history_timothy_ware_2.htm (part 2)
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/most_important.htm
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/god.htm

Some prayer resources:
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/prayer.htm
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/prayers.htm

May God guide you to Himself!

 

[graceandpeace]

First, some background information. I was raised a Christian. I went to Baptist churches until second grade, then I started going to an E-Free church. Starting the summer before third grade, I started going to an LCMS church. (I was also baptized in third grade, which was something I'd been wanting since kindergarten, even though I didn't actually understand that I was a Christian until first grade.) When I was 13, I realized that I'm into girls, which then caused being a Christian to hurt. When I was 14, the words "I hate God" kept repeating in my head, even though I didn't hate God at all. I'd had enough. I started thinking of a bunch of problems with Christianity so I would have a reason to stop being a Christian besides my sexual orientation. Once I stopped being a Christian, I had one less thing to hate about myself and that horrible sentence stopped repeating in my head. I kept this a secret from my dad at first. (I was physically abused by my mom and emotionally abused by my dad, so I didn't feel at all comfortable talking to my dad about anything, unless you count asking A LOT of religious questions. Plus I like the taste of wine.) But he didn't approve of my friends (dirty, perverted, pot-smoking, Satanic scene kids, but they weren't bad people, so I think they were just going through a phase) and said that I would find my best friends at church because he found his best friends at church, so I told him so he would leave me alone about it. Interestingly, that was the day my dad decided to go to an Eastern Orthodox church because he finally realized that a bunch of churches in the LCMS are going Calvinist and the others are running away in the opposite direction and becoming Evangelical. (I really hope I didn't just offend anyone.)

I attempted suicide several times that year because I hardly had any friends and I suffer from terrible guilt because of bad things I've done in the past (my personality type is INFP and I've been in a Fi-Si loop since I was 11) and my dad was making it worse by blaming me for him losing his job (he got a job that he knew he might lose because he had to stay home and make sure I did my home work) and not having any friends and by threatening to kick me out when I turned 18 if I didn't graduate from high school even though I was far too depressed to do my home work, and I had to come live with my grandparents when I was 15 so I wouldn't kill myself. (And no, the suicide attempts didn't start after I stopped being a Christian. My first suicide attempt was several months before that, and I had been self-harming since age nine.) My grandparents still make me go to church even though I wasn't a Christian, but living with them totally changed my life. The unintentional child abuse stopped and I got help. I haven't attempted suicide since I was 15 (although I've had a few cutting relapses along the way), and I have awesome friends now. But I'm still not COMPLETELY better, and not just because bipolar disorder (which I was diagnosed with when I was 15) never goes away. As I explained earlier, I am still in a Fi-Si loop. If you want an in-depth explanation of what that is, you'll have to google it. But basically I feel horrible, then I think of reasons I should feel horrible, and then I feel horrible again. It continues in a loop and it's awful. It's much more complicated than that, but I don't feel like explaining a bunch of personality type theory.

Recently, I made a new friend named Sam who was also in a Fi-Si loop. I've only been in a Fi-Si loop for eight years, but he was in a Fi-Si loop for 17 years. He helped me figure out that I'm in a Fi-Si loop, and he told me how he got out of his. He's Pentecostal, and he said that God helped him. (There were other things as well, but he emphasized how much God helped.) At first I just rolled my eyes and ignored that particular piece of advice. But yesterday at work, when I was going through a period when my Fi-Si loop was especially bad, I thought about what Sam had said, and I wondered if maybe he was right and becoming a Christian again could help me. It was actually a Christian song being stuck in my head that prevented my first suicide attempt from being fatal, after all. (I took a bunch of pills, then I got the song Tourniquet, by Evanescence, stuck in my head. It's about a Christian girl who decides to kill herself, but as she's bleeding to death, she remembers that some Christians believe that you automatically go to hell if you kill yourself, so she prays that she'll still go to heaven. With that song stuck in my head, I could no longer deny the possibility of going to hell for committing suicide. I figured I deserved it anyway, but there was an online friend who I hoped to meet in heaven. I called 911 for her.) Then, when I was driving home, something occurred to me... What if the devil had caused the words "I hate God" to repeat in my head so I would stop being a Christian to get it to stop? I started freaking out, and with that possible explanation in mind, I began to think, maybe I SHOULD become a Christian again. So I grabbed my tablet, found my list of reasons I'm not a Christian, and went through them one by one. I was able to find satisfactory explanations for everything, and I am now open to Christian beliefs other than what I was raised with, so there are no longer reasons not to be a Christian.

But now what do I do? I have no idea where to start! I stopped being a Christian for FIVE YEARS, and growing up in the Lutheran church basically taught me that Christianity is about believing the right things so you go to heaven and convincing others to believe the right things so they go to heaven and nothing more, so I basically have to start from scratch. (I thought my dad had taught me that intentionally, but I just talked to him about it and he thinks the Lutheran churches we attended taught me that. Or he may have just meant one particular Lutheran church. It's called Augsburg Lutheran Church and it's in Shawnee, KS. STAY AWAY. Even if you agree with the doctrine, surely you wouldn't think that this one thing the pastor did was right. After my first suicide attempt, he was supposed to come to my house after I got out of the hospital. He canceled without any explanation. Then we didn't show up for church the following Sunday, and he called my dad and asked where we were. No mention of my suicide attempt. So yeah.) I haven't usually actually been paying attention at church, but I've heard this stuff about having a relationship with God. Perhaps if I'd actually had a relationship with God before, I wouldn't have stopped being a Christian. How does it work? And how do I go about choosing a church? I guess I could just keep going to the one my grandparents have been taking me to for the past three years, which is a Church of the Nazarene, but I'm not so sure about all that Wesleyan-Holiness stuff, and there's also the fact that the Church of the Nazarene officially believes that homosexuality is wrong. (Although not everybody in my church actually believes you can stop sinning, and while most people at my church believe that homosexuality is wrong, there are some who don't, including my grandparents, and the ones who think it's wrong don't treat the two openly gay people there, me and a guy named Tyler, any differently.) I have no idea what to do.

I'm so sorry to hear of your experiences. A good church community will love you & support you, no matter who you are or what you've been through. We all have battle scars, & God loves us anyway.

It's hard to make church suggestions without knowing more about where you are, but there are some generally LGBT-affirming denominations, such as the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ, etc. Given your background in a Lutheran Church, you may feel more comfortable in the Episcopal Church. However, individual congregations can vary, so you would want to research your local options.

Let us know if we can be of more help.

 

[South Bound]

First, some background information. I was raised a Christian. I went to Baptist churches until second grade, then I started going to an E-Free church. Starting the summer before third grade, I started going to an LCMS church. (I was also baptized in third grade, which was something I'd been wanting since kindergarten, even though I didn't actually understand that I was a Christian until first grade.) When I was 13, I realized that I'm into girls, which then caused being a Christian to hurt. When I was 14, the words "I hate God" kept repeating in my head, even though I didn't hate God at all. I'd had enough. I started thinking of a bunch of problems with Christianity so I would have a reason to stop being a Christian besides my sexual orientation. Once I stopped being a Christian, I had one less thing to hate about myself and that horrible sentence stopped repeating in my head. I kept this a secret from my dad at first. (I was physically abused by my mom and emotionally abused by my dad, so I didn't feel at all comfortable talking to my dad about anything, unless you count asking A LOT of religious questions. Plus I like the taste of wine.) But he didn't approve of my friends (dirty, perverted, pot-smoking, Satanic scene kids, but they weren't bad people, so I think they were just going through a phase) and said that I would find my best friends at church because he found his best friends at church, so I told him so he would leave me alone about it. Interestingly, that was the day my dad decided to go to an Eastern Orthodox church because he finally realized that a bunch of churches in the LCMS are going Calvinist and the others are running away in the opposite direction and becoming Evangelical. (I really hope I didn't just offend anyone.)

I attempted suicide several times that year because I hardly had any friends and I suffer from terrible guilt because of bad things I've done in the past (my personality type is INFP and I've been in a Fi-Si loop since I was 11) and my dad was making it worse by blaming me for him losing his job (he got a job that he knew he might lose because he had to stay home and make sure I did my home work) and not having any friends and by threatening to kick me out when I turned 18 if I didn't graduate from high school even though I was far too depressed to do my home work, and I had to come live with my grandparents when I was 15 so I wouldn't kill myself. (And no, the suicide attempts didn't start after I stopped being a Christian. My first suicide attempt was several months before that, and I had been self-harming since age nine.) My grandparents still make me go to church even though I wasn't a Christian, but living with them totally changed my life. The unintentional child abuse stopped and I got help. I haven't attempted suicide since I was 15 (although I've had a few cutting relapses along the way), and I have awesome friends now. But I'm still not COMPLETELY better, and not just because bipolar disorder (which I was diagnosed with when I was 15) never goes away. As I explained earlier, I am still in a Fi-Si loop. If you want an in-depth explanation of what that is, you'll have to google it. But basically I feel horrible, then I think of reasons I should feel horrible, and then I feel horrible again. It continues in a loop and it's awful. It's much more complicated than that, but I don't feel like explaining a bunch of personality type theory.

Recently, I made a new friend named Sam who was also in a Fi-Si loop. I've only been in a Fi-Si loop for eight years, but he was in a Fi-Si loop for 17 years. He helped me figure out that I'm in a Fi-Si loop, and he told me how he got out of his. He's Pentecostal, and he said that God helped him. (There were other things as well, but he emphasized how much God helped.) At first I just rolled my eyes and ignored that particular piece of advice. But yesterday at work, when I was going through a period when my Fi-Si loop was especially bad, I thought about what Sam had said, and I wondered if maybe he was right and becoming a Christian again could help me. It was actually a Christian song being stuck in my head that prevented my first suicide attempt from being fatal, after all. (I took a bunch of pills, then I got the song Tourniquet, by Evanescence, stuck in my head. It's about a Christian girl who decides to kill herself, but as she's bleeding to death, she remembers that some Christians believe that you automatically go to hell if you kill yourself, so she prays that she'll still go to heaven. With that song stuck in my head, I could no longer deny the possibility of going to hell for committing suicide. I figured I deserved it anyway, but there was an online friend who I hoped to meet in heaven. I called 911 for her.) Then, when I was driving home, something occurred to me... What if the devil had caused the words "I hate God" to repeat in my head so I would stop being a Christian to get it to stop? I started freaking out, and with that possible explanation in mind, I began to think, maybe I SHOULD become a Christian again. So I grabbed my tablet, found my list of reasons I'm not a Christian, and went through them one by one. I was able to find satisfactory explanations for everything, and I am now open to Christian beliefs other than what I was raised with, so there are no longer reasons not to be a Christian.

But now what do I do? I have no idea where to start! I stopped being a Christian for FIVE YEARS, and growing up in the Lutheran church basically taught me that Christianity is about believing the right things so you go to heaven and convincing others to believe the right things so they go to heaven and nothing more, so I basically have to start from scratch. (I thought my dad had taught me that intentionally, but I just talked to him about it and he thinks the Lutheran churches we attended taught me that. Or he may have just meant one particular Lutheran church. It's called Augsburg Lutheran Church and it's in Shawnee, KS. STAY AWAY. Even if you agree with the doctrine, surely you wouldn't think that this one thing the pastor did was right. After my first suicide attempt, he was supposed to come to my house after I got out of the hospital. He canceled without any explanation. Then we didn't show up for church the following Sunday, and he called my dad and asked where we were. No mention of my suicide attempt. So yeah.) I haven't usually actually been paying attention at church, but I've heard this stuff about having a relationship with God. Perhaps if I'd actually had a relationship with God before, I wouldn't have stopped being a Christian. How does it work? And how do I go about choosing a church? I guess I could just keep going to the one my grandparents have been taking me to for the past three years, which is a Church of the Nazarene, but I'm not so sure about all that Wesleyan-Holiness stuff, and there's also the fact that the Church of the Nazarene officially believes that homosexuality is wrong. (Although not everybody in my church actually believes you can stop sinning, and while most people at my church believe that homosexuality is wrong, there are some who don't, including my grandparents, and the ones who think it's wrong don't treat the two openly gay people there, me and a guy named Tyler, any differently.) I have no idea what to do.

You see to have some ideas about what a Christian is that aren't consistent with the Bible's description

Let e start by asking you this: Have you kept the law

 

[sunnynyc]

Before you read all this, I want you to ask yourself: Do you hate your life? Do you hate yourself? Are you truly unhappy? Does it feel like the world hates you? Do you feel that people wrongfully hate you?
If so, please read on.
1 John 1:9 | Holy Bible KJV
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

From what I read from your initial post, I understand that you are gay. This is a really hard thing to confess in front of Christians and even in front of non Christians. But we have a savior. His name is Jesus Christ and he can save you from your sins. Jesus did not come to save righteous people, he came to save sinners. But before you confess this sin in front of people, i recommend you remind the people you are confessing to of this verse and also i recommend you confess this sin being mindful of who you are actually saying this to, you do not want to say this in front of big groups or even most people, you want to confess your sin in front of someone who can sympathize, maybe other gay people or maybe free christian help hotline or even suicide help hotline or even your parents or someone close to you who you trust and if no one else will listen, confess your sin to god in secret in a closet where nobody can see you pray: , what we say and do can cause other people to fall into sin, so we must be very mindful of what we actually say. I recommend studying proverbs in holy bible until wisdom enters into your heart and understanding becomes your kinswoman. Cause wisdom is a tree of life to all that find it.
Matthew 7:1-4

1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” 2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Commentary: one of the biggest sins of religious people is hypocrisy. It is easy to do this. So we must always examine ourselves for this.

In Romans 3:23-26 | Holy Bible , we see these verses:
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

JOHN 3:17 KJV "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."
John 3:17
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

JOHN 11:10 KJV "But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him."
John 11:10
“But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”
I highly recommend walking only in the day. Before i used to work nights and long hours. I suffered greatly on this job. But i was blessed by God and given a day job and the difference in my mood and personality were like night and day. It was amazing how much it changed me. It helped me to come to Christ. But this also caused the enemy to become aware and he persecuted very hard and came at me with much spiritual warfare. So meditate on the word of God daily at OFFICIAL KING JAMES BIBLE ONLINE: AUTHORIZED KING JAMES VERSION (KJV) for the lord's blessings. There are even churches that do night bible study, I recommend not going during the night. Just because someone goes to church or even teaches the word of God does not mean they are holy. But if you do, it's not the end of the world. Just understand its not good to be out at night.

If you are reading a different bible, you will notice a big difference when reading the king james version holy bible.

Because when you are reading the authorized word of God, the enemy will send all sorts of distractions your way. You will have your cellphone ringing off the hook and phone calls from people who you have never met. Anything to distract you from being saved by the word of God.

Friends and family may even start to distract you. Your enemies can even be those closest to you.

When your ways start to please God, even your enemies will become your friends.

Read Genesis to see how Satan deceives Eve.
Read Psalms to praise the Lord and God almighty.
Read Proverbs for God's wisdom.
Read the gospel of John for the good news.
Read the gospel of Matthew for more insight into the kingdom of heaven.
Read the book of Revelation for a special blessing.

And read the rest of the bible to study and learn from other people's mistakes.

And please read the story about Peter and how he denied Jesus 3 times in Luke chapter 22:
LUKE CHAPTER 22 KJV

Listen to this radio podcast:
Why Going to Church Does Not Make You a Christian | Desiring God

Isolate yourself for a while and immerse yourself in the word of God. There is much value in learning the word of God. It might be difficult for a while. You may even fall asleep studying it. You might even hate reading it, but i believe there is much value in this word. And remember this: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear God more than you fear Satan. Fear him and respect him more than man and more than Satan. This will help you greatly. Always be careful and mindful of what you say.

Matthew 15:11

“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”

FYI: I don't go to church at all. I'm still searching for God's guidance. So don't feel overwhelmed, you are not alone.
I use to hear son of satan in my head and antichrist. I was lost and searching for guidance. When i finally hated myself and my life, God's word was finally revealed to me and the importance of studying God's word was finally revealed to me.

James chapter 1: 22-27
JAMES CHAPTER 1 KJV
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.

25 But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain.

27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

In Matthew 6, God teaches us how to pray:
MATTHEW CHAPTER 6 KJV

Do this prayer to deliver yourself from evil and lead yourself away from temptation daily in the closet.

I hope that God will bless you and that you will find God. Because we all need love and God is love.

 

[faroukfarouk]

Hi; good to see you on the forums!

It's great to see you are reading John's Gospel. John chapter 3 has the section where the Lord Jesus speaks about being born again.

Chapter 3 verse 16 has a wonderful summary of the Christian Gospel!