Isaiah 59:1-2 shows that there is a consequence of sin, as you have described, that all the orchestration has gone to waste because of a failure to act for His success through us. This doesn't mean that He is unable to make something as good or even better though (Jeremiah 18:4-6). It really is a case of Jeremiah 17:10, He has to examine what was your reason for failing (ie: do you have a chance for forgiveness) and also your response (eg: Proverbs 19:3, Psalms 51:17, 1 John 1:9).
Would you like more specific help to assess your situation? (I might recommend using the "Start a Conversation" feature under my username if it makes you uncomfortable to talk about your past in public view).
Hi. I tried to post this in a reply once but the page refreshed in the middle of editing, so I'm not sure that what I originally wrote and saved it still there. If it is, feel free to ignore this.
If not, this is what I originally wrote. This whole situation is really complex and tangled up and I'll try to explain as best as I can. Before I was a Believer, I was part of a church for two years that really did a lot to hurt me. They taught false doctrine, taught works even though they preached grace, emotionally and spiritually manipulated me and did so many other things that I can't even describe. I left after two years of being there and was completely traumatized when I came out and wanted nothing to do with God after I left. After I got out, I realized that I had been the victim of a cult and what I had endured during my time in that church was something called spiritual abuse. I left in April of 2015 and was only able to find the courage to get out after going into a place that was so dark mentally that I knew if I stayed there any longer than I did, I was going to end up doing something drastic to hurt either myself or someone else and I was extremely close to being forcibly hospitalized...my mom was ready to have me committed at one point and that is no exaggeration.
Even before my time in that church, I'd had a lot of chaos in my life. I grew up in a home where there was a lot of violence and dysfunction and had a narcissistic father who did anything and everything he could to hurt me and control me. The message that was pounded into my head and very soul growing up with him was that I was no good and I know now that the reason I ended up in the church that I did was because I was drawn to what was familiar...abuse and toxicity. My childhood home was also not a Christian one and when I decided to seek a relationship with God at 19 years old, I had no idea what I was doing because I was never exposed to any Christian teaching. I had also been trained to never question anyone in a position of authority growing up with the father that I did, and when someone from that church told me that it was "where God wanted me to be", I went in without questioning because all that I knew about God was that if I did something He didn't like, He would slam me into hell without reservation. I stayed there because once in, I got so deep that I couldn't see a way out and I feared that God would punish me for leaving.
My best friend and one of my cousins, both of whom attend the church that I go to now, helped me get out and I ended up being baptized at my current church in August of 2015. I remember coming up out of the water and feeling this "power" come over me and feeling...clean...and new. It didn't hit me until about a day later what had happened and I realized that that day, I truly became a Believer...God showed me who He really was and pulled the veil off of my eyes and that I had been deceived the entire time I was in that church...after that, life for the first time was finally what I had always wished it would be...orderly, filled with love...God during this time also placed a calling on me to do a specific thing and made a way for me to go back to school to finish a degree that I had started in order to be able to pursue it and the process of completing said degree was part of living out that calling as well. But things didn't stay that way for long...
I had gone to college for one year out of high school and ended up having to leave for financial reasons after my freshman year. Right after I left was when I joined the cult because leaving college was traumatic for me, as it had been the only stable thing in my life and my escape from all of the horrible stuff at home until baptism day. I had friends, was in a major I loved, had a teacher I really grew to admire and things were great. During the two years that I was gone and in the cult, I was also working as a janitor in a hospital with really crazy hours. My job required me to work a minimum of 24 hours a week with 8 hour days ending at midnight. The cult had also taught or allowed and even at times encouraged me to believe that taking out loans for any reason was sinful and that God would punish me for doing it. This was a teaching that I couldn't seem to let go of even after what happened when I got baptized. I looked for a job that would be more compatible with my school schedule so that I could leave that one when the semester started, but wasn't able to find anything and believed that it meant that God was wanting me to stay where I was at so that I could pay for school all in cash and avoid debt as I believe was required of me as a Christian. So I did.
However, the entire time I was there, I had this burning desire in my heart to leave and a nag in my mind that kept doing so and got stronger the more that I ignored it. But I didn't believe that it was God. Besides the calling that getting my degree was a part of, God also called me to help the deceived because of what I'd experienced and I was so grateful for what He had done for me in getting me out of that church, I wanted to be as righteous as possible and was willing to do whatever He wanted me to do, no questions asked, even if it meant doing something I didn't want to...and I didn't want to stay at that job. For whatever reason, I feared that the desire that kept eating at me to quit wasn't God, but actually Satan tempting me to sin. And my worst fear was that if I gave in or if I decided to do what was on my heart and leave that job, that God would be so angry with me for sinning or being deceived again that He would take everything that He had just given me away and punish me by making my life so much worse than it had been either in the cult or with my abusive dad and after having endured so much bad in my past, I didn't want to risk it. I didn't see that by staying there, my whole life was starting to deteriorate because I was exhausted all the time from doing a full day at school and then having to work for 8 hours until midnight on top of it, that my spiritual life and growth was starting to fall apart because all the days and nights that I should have been in church or doing bible study or fellowshipping with my newfound church family, things I wanted to be doing, I was working. I only saw one thing...whatever I do, don't give in to temptation, don't take out those loans because you'll be a hypocrite and fall for deception and then you'll fail to walk worthy of your calling, defeat Satan, win this spiritual battle of debt vs no debt, make God proud...And when I finally got to the point where I realized that the nag to leave really was God all along, it was too late to reverse what I'd done and I knew that I missed the door to enter into what God wanted for me. I quit my job, but it was too late to salvage my grades or anything else...
After it all happened, I went on a spree of self destruction for about three years because of anger and hurt and I fought God at every chance I got...it was like a bomb went off inside of me and after losing the best and only good thing to ever happen to me after a lifetime of pain was something so emotionally breaking that I just...blew up. I started to get into really self destructive, self sabotaging behavior...I failed even more classes than I did when it all first happened, I made suicide threats to one of my teachers that were so concerning to her that she actually called the police on me, I started self-harming and even tried to overdose on sleeping pills and alcohol in two failed suicide attempts that neither my family or my friends know about. A psychiatrist that I started seeing last fall diagnosed me with severe anxiety, depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and at one point suspected Borderline Personality Disorder, but that has since been disproved.
At His guidance, I medically withdrew from the school I had been attending for the past four years (six if you count the years I was gone. I was still enrolled in the university itself, just not registered for classes during those two years) because I just needed to get away from what happened and because the school itself started to go downhill really fast in the last two years starting when my original group of kids left in 2016. Being on campus every day was a constant reminder of the things that happened and what I did and even after what I'd done, more bad things happened...the teacher who saved my life and who I got very close to decided to retire at the end of last year suddenly and move halfway across the country to my devastation, I moved out of my parents' house to get away from the toxicity after my dad tried to overdose me on cold meds and had gotten physical with me on several occasions, only to move back in with other family after a guy in the neighborhood I was living in developed an obsession with me and started to stalk me, even going as far as to try to break into my house to get to me one night when he saw my car in the driveway (he is mentally ill, refuses to be medicated and believes a lot of the same things that the cult I was in believes even though his church doesn't teach those things...he also believes that he is the end times prophet and claims to have "dreams" and "visions" from "God" about me, saying that when I'm "in trouble," "God" sends him "visions about where I am" and tells him to "go find me so he can save me"...that's a whole other post within itself that I would gladly divulge once I can send private messages on here).
I recently had started to rebuild my relationship with God, but now a conviction about leaving my past behind me has me fearing and believing the worst. I fear and believe that because of what I did in not walking through the door that He had opened for me, not only did I miss His plan for my life, but I am also having the callings He placed on me removed from me because I didn't walk in them when I should have and as a result, I can't trust Him. I believe that this is true because it's what I want to happen the least even though nothing else has been confirmed yet, but I'm afraid to find the answers. God showed me in January that the reason I did what I did in not entering was because after all that I had been through early on in my life, I believed that I had to earn love and make myself good enough for anyone to love me and that I had wrongly believed that I had earned everything that God gave me through all that I had suffered...and as a result, I believed that I had to suffer in exchange for being allowed to keep it, replacing the cult and abusive dad with my hospital job. My fear of falling back into deception was valid, but it was the surface of a deeply rooted fear and lie that if I wasn't good enough, God would reject me and cast me back into the darkness that He had rescued me from. I also couldn't believe that God would want something so wonderful as the life He offered me back there without making me work for it....essentially, I was afraid that I was being "faked out".
I remember every single day what I had back there and think about what life could be for me right now if I had only taken the chance and it's so painful that I can't even put it in human language. I tell God constantly that I would give or do or endure anything for the chance to be allowed to go back and change what I did, because I never wanted to do what I did to end up here and I feel like if God really is telling me that the door to enter into that calling is gone forever and I'm not getting another chance at it, that I'm being punished for not believing and that God, despite knowing what I had been through in my early life and also knowing that those things molded me and caused me to think and believe the things that I did that caused me to do what I did, doesn't care and only sees that I sinned by not entering. My fear was that if I wasn't good enough and didn't measure up to my half of the "deal" between He and I, that God would take away all of the blessings and the life He gave me back there as collateral to pay for what I couldn't bring to Him or be for Him or measure up to...and I think now that all of my worst fears are coming true. He had a calling for me, He had a ministry for me and He had a whole life planned for me that included everything I ever wanted...now it's gone before I ever got to live it, I'm not who I should be in Him and I wish every day that I would go to sleep and not wake up because my life has been over for a very long time. There will never be anything as good as what I had ever again and I know that when I missed what I did, I missed "it"...I just want to leave this world...
