Greetings! Life has been hard, especially with faith.

ReuleauxMan

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Greetings everyone, these forums seem to be an oasis of kindness in a dark social media world filled with spiteful comments. As I have interacted with others, I have met some very kind and loving people, and every time I fellowship with a Christian, I meet someone who seems to be filled with a spirit of kindness despite this world being full of of hurt people hurting other people.

Since early childhood I resolved to live a perfect spiritual life, full of love and forgiveness for others and at every opportunity doing only kindness. After all the difficult, sometimes quite traumatizing experiences in the first twenty years of my life, I ended up getting life-long mental illness instead. I was dumbfounded, thinking that this was a severe injustice, but I still did my best to find and keep purpose in my life and preserve my sense of spiritual perfectionism. Eventually, after not making progress with recovering to weller-than-well, medication-free, mind-over-matter triumph over mental illness, I resented myself for trying to live up to with absolute perfectionism the standard I thought was God's, loving, seeking approval from, and instantly forgiving others who would hurt me again and again. I read the tragedy that trauma can cause mental illness; where is there any justice for us victims of it if we can be dealt a bad hand of cards AND THEN end up with LIFE-LONG mental illness.

I looked back and thought I was being weak by turning the other cheek. How quickly I became a bitter person for several years. I was angry, resentful, and bitter even at God for allowing the mostly mental/emotional trauma against me from kindergarten onwards, and I hated myself and the personality I was created with for not being mean or tough enough to give others a dose of their own medicine. The ones who were hurting me would have been stopped in their tracks, and I would have suffered a great deal less traumatizing trauma for learning to grow thicker skin, and I perhaps wouldn't have gotten mental illness.

After a while I discovered that I was losing myself and the identity I had so cherished; I felt the warm, loving light within me being replaced with cold darkness. I was a man after God's own heart, and finally, after having "woke up" and thinking I was "taking the red pill" by becoming disillusioned with forgiveness and embracing the hate I had been guarding my heart against, I found that I might as well have been taking a sledgehammer and tearing down my house and its foundations that I had been gifted with and was keeping safe since childhood. I was destroying something very precious that I had been protecting, so I resolved to turn from resentment and bitterness and hope that that precious identity I had would come back. I didn't want to lose that light, so I will nurture goodness, kindness, love, and forgiveness like I've always had, if not even better hopefully, and I hope to have more of in the future.

Now, I am pretty homeward bound after years of schizoaffective disorder, and I will have to wait until the covid-19 pandemic passes to really start interacting with others again in real life, but most everyone else is going online too because of the pandemic, so I hope to have lots of fellowship here :) ! God bless!
 

Llewelyn Stevenson

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Greetings, and God continue to enrich and reward you.

I noticed your comment that you tired to live up to a standard and ended up feeling a failure [or, that's how I understood it].

In Christ we do not live up to a standard but rather allow God to raise that standard up within us till it becomes our lifestyle. That is the truly spiritual way.

Jer 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jer 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
 
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ReuleauxMan

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Thanks for the warm welcome yall :) !

Greetings, and God continue to enrich and reward you.

I noticed your comment that you tired to live up to a standard and ended up feeling a failure [or, that's how I understood it].

In Christ we do not live up to a standard but rather allow God to raise that standard up within us till it becomes our lifestyle. That is the truly spiritual way.

Jer 31:33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Jer 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

I admit this feels like a point of confusion for me a bit, but this sounds very well said :) . I've been blessed to have a kind spirit in me from early childhood, while many of my peers were busy bullying and taunting me and each other. From wherever I was at spiritually, I've had to understand what it means for the old man to die away and for the new creation in Christ to come in. Even though I was doing my best as pre-Christian to do all the good works I could do, I still felt very frustrated when others taunted me, so definitely there was stuff in my spirit that had to pass away and new stuff to be added. I'm not sure where I am supposed to go spiritually from here, whether I should keep anything from my old self that I feel was good (and let it be transformed into goodness for Christ instead of being goodness for self if I understand correctly), except prioritizing making sure the bad from it like the bitter root that was in my heart doesn't regenerate.

I need to admit that bitterness started really becoming a problem for me after I had formally been baptized and accepted Christ, after when mental illness started incapacitating me more and I had time to dwell on my thoughts and the past, and I've had to re-dedicate/re-commit/re-surrender myself to Christ at least a couple of times to be sure that I had actually accepted Christ and the Holy Spirit. This left/leaves me wondering sometimes if I had/have really been saved and really am being regenerated by the Holy Spirit. On and off I've struggled with alternating moods of complete peace with God and deep bitterness in a bi-polar/borderline personality disorder type fashion. It has been a few days since I've felt the specter of resentment and bitterness come about again, and each time I hope it never returns, until it does and I end up feeling again that all my love for God is empty and groundless against what seem to be true feelings of resentment.

What I've written in my first post here emphasizes for myself that I really don't want to lose grasp of that precious love and forgiveness I had when I was younger even amidst all the trials and tribulations, so hopefully if the bitterness in me tries to come back then I will be ready and determined to dissolve it any time those bitter thoughts come back. But should I be looking to my younger self's personality for inspiration of the love and kindness I am capable of, or is that the old man talking and I need to completely disregard him in favor of this new, regenerated self from Christ that maybe I still haven't found yet so don't know what it is like. I can't be positive whether I have the Holy Spirit in me or not after all the bitterness, even towards God, that I've had even after my last re-submission to Christ.

Thanks again for the response Llewelyn Stevenson :)!
 
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ReuleauxMan

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To be safe, I just carefully re-dedicated myself to Christ. It is not easy promising Jesus for at least the fourth time that I would not turn from Him. So, I wanted to make sure I had no bitterness or resentment against Him, current or lingering. I wanted to be confident that should any should any old thought processes or new challenges come my way, I was already and would be strong in my faith. Confident, I decided to go through with it. It went as follows, with much more thought than verbalized words.

"Jesus Christ of the Holy Trinity, you are Lord!
Jesus Christ of the Holy Trinity, you are Lord of my life!
I will follow you in love, forgiveness, and truth!
I will not forsake you or turn from you again Jesus Christ of the Holy Trinity!"
 
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Llewelyn Stevenson

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So you recognize that the bitterness and resentment are not of God but of the devil and of the flesh.

Understand first that you are in Christ and, that being so, he will keep you. You are not lost because you have been sorely tempted, and the fact that you feel warned of the dangers of developing these habits and state of mind is witness to the fact that Jesus is keeping you, guarding you as his own. He is jealous over you and will not easily let you go.

In fact, he said, "None will pluck you from my hand."

Rest assured in that.

Now concerning temptation and the flesh we know that we have the life and power of Christ and can overcome them. Temptation is not sin but can lead to sin if we allow it. From what you write I believe you are refusing to allow it and in this you are kept pure. It is when we look to ourselves for strength that we can be overcome. Keep your eyes firmly fixed on Christ who is your righteousness and the seed of God planted in your heart and mind.

About temptation the Bible says, "Submit to God and resist the Devil and he will flee from you."

Again, reading, I think you are doing this and your victory is not far away though, remember, God's strength is revealed in your weakness. Lean on him.

About the flesh the Scripture declares, "Put your flesh [mortal bodies] to death."

How, you ask? Through the cross, and that has already been done. Please read Romans 6.

What you need to do now is set this firmly in your mind, as it says, "Reckon yourself dead to sin."

Establish it in your heart and mind. When you were baptised you were baptised into his death and raised again a new man. A new man. Not the person born of the flesh but now born of the Holy Ghost. You have a new nature and one that transcends the old.

When we are tempted it is the lust of the flesh that draws us away toward sin, but we are not of the flesh for we have died to it.

So, when tempted, I encourage you and all others to say as I say, "That is not who I am. I am dead to that and no longer do those things."

What am I doing? I am reckoning. I am recognising that Jesus has overcome all this for me and now will in me. Jesus has triumphed over every work of the Devil by the cross and now I determine to walk in his victory. His, I say, and not mine. These are the weapons of our warfare that bring every thought into obedience to Christ; and I emphsise "thought" for that appears to be where your battle is.

Have you sinned?

If we sin there is cleansing and forgiveness when we confess our sin and, if we have not sinned, we are pure in him.

You are clean, but, from time to time you may need for your feet to be washed for we walk in a dusty world and sin's dust will sometimes cling to our feet.

Jesus said, "Those who are clean need only to wash their feet."

I hope I have been of this service to you.
 
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Deade

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Hello Reuleauxman,
welcome to CF.

I hope you'll enjoy your stay here.


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Anthony2019

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Greetings everyone, these forums seem to be an oasis of kindness in a dark social media world filled with spiteful comments. As I have interacted with others, I have met some very kind and loving people, and every time I fellowship with a Christian, I meet someone who seems to be filled with a spirit of kindness despite this world being full of of hurt people hurting other people.

Since early childhood I resolved to live a perfect spiritual life, full of love and forgiveness for others and at every opportunity doing only kindness. After all the difficult, sometimes quite traumatizing experiences in the first twenty years of my life, I ended up getting life-long mental illness instead. I was dumbfounded, thinking that this was a severe injustice, but I still did my best to find and keep purpose in my life and preserve my sense of spiritual perfectionism. Eventually, after not making progress with recovering to weller-than-well, medication-free, mind-over-matter triumph over mental illness, I resented myself for trying to live up to with absolute perfectionism the standard I thought was God's, loving, seeking approval from, and instantly forgiving others who would hurt me again and again. I read the tragedy that trauma can cause mental illness; where is there any justice for us victims of it if we can be dealt a bad hand of cards AND THEN end up with LIFE-LONG mental illness.

I looked back and thought I was being weak by turning the other cheek. How quickly I became a bitter person for several years. I was angry, resentful, and bitter even at God for allowing the mostly mental/emotional trauma against me from kindergarten onwards, and I hated myself and the personality I was created with for not being mean or tough enough to give others a dose of their own medicine. The ones who were hurting me would have been stopped in their tracks, and I would have suffered a great deal less traumatizing trauma for learning to grow thicker skin, and I perhaps wouldn't have gotten mental illness.

After a while I discovered that I was losing myself and the identity I had so cherished; I felt the warm, loving light within me being replaced with cold darkness. I was a man after God's own heart, and finally, after having "woke up" and thinking I was "taking the red pill" by becoming disillusioned with forgiveness and embracing the hate I had been guarding my heart against, I found that I might as well have been taking a sledgehammer and tearing down my house and its foundations that I had been gifted with and was keeping safe since childhood. I was destroying something very precious that I had been protecting, so I resolved to turn from resentment and bitterness and hope that that precious identity I had would come back. I didn't want to lose that light, so I will nurture goodness, kindness, love, and forgiveness like I've always had, if not even better hopefully, and I hope to have more of in the future.

Now, I am pretty homeward bound after years of schizoaffective disorder, and I will have to wait until the covid-19 pandemic passes to really start interacting with others again in real life, but most everyone else is going online too because of the pandemic, so I hope to have lots of fellowship here :) ! God bless!
Welcome to the forums ReuleauxMan and may God be with you and bless you in everything you do.
 
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ReuleauxMan

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Thanks everyone for the warm welcome, God Bless :D !

You've definitely covered essential groundwork for me to have in this battle I've waged against bitterness,
Llewelyn Stevenson. I need to be sure that I am dead to this persistent, habitual sin of bitterness - at God nonetheless! If I understand correctly, bitterness is an especially troublesome sin, often referred to as the final stage of anger, hatred, and resentment, which can and often does persist for years to a lifetime once it takes root. Thank you so much brother for taking the time to post here and address the points I've struggled with; you've definitely helped me! God Bless!
 
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ReuleauxMan

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Welcome to the CF. Hope you enjoy the fellowship and discussions.

Thank you very much for the warm welcome, Andrewn :D! I look forward to putting Logos Bible software to use with fellowship and discussions :) !
 
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