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Hopefully forgiven and trying to start over
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BlessEwe
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What a wonderful heartfelt post lifewanderer! I do believe Christ is going to open doors and lead you to exactly what your searching for. It sounds like you have a awesome counselor. I will agree to go back to Celebrate Recovery, find a sponsor ( take your time , baby steps) and work the program. Already you are opening up here, I am glad you did. I will be praying for you.
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UnitynLove
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No Condemnation
YouTube - The Glorious Gospel Of Jesus Christ
What I found out is that usually we only focus on the negative things that people do or situations have caused us but never on the positive things. I remember, my cousin brought me food, carried me to work, and did all sort of nice things for me, but the minute he messed up and did something wrong my mind continued to circle around that issue for hours then I caught myself. I said wait a minute, my cousin did all these nice things for me and with one mistake I'm dwelling on this thing for about how long now?? Why do we hold on to the negative and never the positive? We take the positive lightly but the negative holds weight, why? I don't know, but I know this one thing I will not dwell on the negatives nor will I let the negatives hold weight in my life I will only dwell on the positives in people even when they make mistakes. Because that moment of weakness in them is not them, and with every person and situation there is so much more positive than negative, but it is up to us what we focus on. Put on your mind on positve things God did for you, people have done for you, and situations, and let those positive things be the picture from which you look out from not the negatives.
YouTube - The Glorious Gospel Of Jesus Christ
What I found out is that usually we only focus on the negative things that people do or situations have caused us but never on the positive things. I remember, my cousin brought me food, carried me to work, and did all sort of nice things for me, but the minute he messed up and did something wrong my mind continued to circle around that issue for hours then I caught myself. I said wait a minute, my cousin did all these nice things for me and with one mistake I'm dwelling on this thing for about how long now?? Why do we hold on to the negative and never the positive? We take the positive lightly but the negative holds weight, why? I don't know, but I know this one thing I will not dwell on the negatives nor will I let the negatives hold weight in my life I will only dwell on the positives in people even when they make mistakes. Because that moment of weakness in them is not them, and with every person and situation there is so much more positive than negative, but it is up to us what we focus on. Put on your mind on positve things God did for you, people have done for you, and situations, and let those positive things be the picture from which you look out from not the negatives.
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UnitynLove
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The expression “nobody’s perfect” is used or heard almost every day, but it’s true—I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, nobody’s perfect. Hopefully, though, we’re all getting better and are on our way to perfection. The important thing to remember is that even though we’re not yet perfect, we’re still OK. Just because we haven’t arrived yet doesn’t mean that we’re not on our way.
It’s true that we all still have a long way to go. I used to get discouraged about how far I had to go, and it seemed like I was reminded of it every day, sometimes every hour. I carried a constant sense of failure—a feeling that I just wasn’t who I needed to be, I wasn’t doing good enough, and I needed to try harder. Yet when I did try harder, I only failed again.
I’ve now adopted a new attitude: “I’m not where I need to be, but thank God I’m not where I used to be. I’m OK, and I’m on my way!” I now know with all my heart that God isn’t angry with me just because I haven’t arrived yet. He’s pleased that I’m pressing on and staying on the path. If you and I will just “keep on keeping on,” God will be pleased with our progress.
Keep walking the walk one step at a time. This is an important thing to remember. It’s true that we have to keep pressing on, but thank God we don’t have to hate or reject ourselves while we’re trying to get to our destination.
If I invited you to take a walk, you’d think I was crazy if I became angry after the first few steps because we hadn’t yet arrived at our destination. We can understand ordinary things like this, yet we have a difficult time understanding that God expects it to take some time for us to grow spiritually.
We don’t think there’s something wrong with one-year-old children because they can’t walk perfectly. They fall down frequently, but we pick them up, love them, bandage them if necessary, and keep working with them. Surely our heavenly Father can do even more for us than we do for our children.
The process is always difficult. Growing and learning is never easy, but the changes make us better people. We begin to think differently, then to talk differently, and finally, to act differently. This process develops in stages, and we must always remember that while it’s taking place, we can have the attitude, “I’m OK, and I’m on my way!”
Enjoy yourself while you’re changing. Enjoy where you are on the way to where you’re going. Enjoy the journey! Don’t waste all of your “now time” trying to rush into the future. Remember, tomorrow will have troubles of its own (Matthew 6:34).
Today you may be wrestling with a bad temper, thinking if you could just get freedom in this area, everything would be all right. But the thing is, God will then reveal something else that needs to be dealt with, and you’ll be back in that same frame of mind again, thinking, “If only I didn’t have this problem, I could be happy.” We must learn to look at these things in a new way.
We can be free to believe that we are, indeed, OK and on our way—not perfected yet, but pressing on. We can be free to enjoy life, enjoy God and enjoy ourselves.
It’s true that we all still have a long way to go. I used to get discouraged about how far I had to go, and it seemed like I was reminded of it every day, sometimes every hour. I carried a constant sense of failure—a feeling that I just wasn’t who I needed to be, I wasn’t doing good enough, and I needed to try harder. Yet when I did try harder, I only failed again.
I’ve now adopted a new attitude: “I’m not where I need to be, but thank God I’m not where I used to be. I’m OK, and I’m on my way!” I now know with all my heart that God isn’t angry with me just because I haven’t arrived yet. He’s pleased that I’m pressing on and staying on the path. If you and I will just “keep on keeping on,” God will be pleased with our progress.
Keep walking the walk one step at a time. This is an important thing to remember. It’s true that we have to keep pressing on, but thank God we don’t have to hate or reject ourselves while we’re trying to get to our destination.
If I invited you to take a walk, you’d think I was crazy if I became angry after the first few steps because we hadn’t yet arrived at our destination. We can understand ordinary things like this, yet we have a difficult time understanding that God expects it to take some time for us to grow spiritually.
We don’t think there’s something wrong with one-year-old children because they can’t walk perfectly. They fall down frequently, but we pick them up, love them, bandage them if necessary, and keep working with them. Surely our heavenly Father can do even more for us than we do for our children.
The process is always difficult. Growing and learning is never easy, but the changes make us better people. We begin to think differently, then to talk differently, and finally, to act differently. This process develops in stages, and we must always remember that while it’s taking place, we can have the attitude, “I’m OK, and I’m on my way!”
Enjoy yourself while you’re changing. Enjoy where you are on the way to where you’re going. Enjoy the journey! Don’t waste all of your “now time” trying to rush into the future. Remember, tomorrow will have troubles of its own (Matthew 6:34).
Today you may be wrestling with a bad temper, thinking if you could just get freedom in this area, everything would be all right. But the thing is, God will then reveal something else that needs to be dealt with, and you’ll be back in that same frame of mind again, thinking, “If only I didn’t have this problem, I could be happy.” We must learn to look at these things in a new way.
We can be free to believe that we are, indeed, OK and on our way—not perfected yet, but pressing on. We can be free to enjoy life, enjoy God and enjoy ourselves.
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- Aug 3, 2004
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Hi,
It's not God stopping you being angry but you facing your anger and working through it with Jesus. Suppression won't work. Only resolution by understanding how Jesus steps into your life's circumstances, takes them upon Himself and gives you back your own life transformed by His life.
God does love you. He loves his creation, even when we were his enemies. His commitment to us is based irrevocably on His love for us, not the other way around. This is a real key for transformation. We tend to live out of our own self image, whereas we are to live out of who we are in Christ - forgiven, loved, blessed, etc.
Bless you
John
NZ
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- Aug 3, 2004
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Let's try and make things a bit clearer.
I am angry. I have a choice. Either believe that God doesn't like me being angry, beat up on myself and cringe before Him while pleading for Him to take away my anger. And then I get disappointed or even angry at God because my anger remains.
Or, I can look at my anger head on. I can admit to what made me angry. Then I can say "Jesus, you took all the wrong things done to me and all my reactions, hurts and confusion upon yourself on the cross and buried them ("We are crucified with Christ"). I don't need to beat up on myself any longer. Instead I can accept that your life within me will bring to me ways in which I can adapt my life to yours."
For example. A woman had been badly treated by her controlling mother. She was very angry and very hurt by her mother. She sat down one day and told Jesus just how she felt, and all the things that she could recall where her mother had hurt her and why that made her so angry. She did this sort of thing over several weeks. Afterwards she told me how she could see that her own mother was just repeating her own childhood experiences of her own mother, and now she felt sorry for her without having to accept her mother's negativity.
This is further comment on the first point I made. If you want more detail on the second point just let me know.
John
NZ
I am angry. I have a choice. Either believe that God doesn't like me being angry, beat up on myself and cringe before Him while pleading for Him to take away my anger. And then I get disappointed or even angry at God because my anger remains.
Or, I can look at my anger head on. I can admit to what made me angry. Then I can say "Jesus, you took all the wrong things done to me and all my reactions, hurts and confusion upon yourself on the cross and buried them ("We are crucified with Christ"). I don't need to beat up on myself any longer. Instead I can accept that your life within me will bring to me ways in which I can adapt my life to yours."
For example. A woman had been badly treated by her controlling mother. She was very angry and very hurt by her mother. She sat down one day and told Jesus just how she felt, and all the things that she could recall where her mother had hurt her and why that made her so angry. She did this sort of thing over several weeks. Afterwards she told me how she could see that her own mother was just repeating her own childhood experiences of her own mother, and now she felt sorry for her without having to accept her mother's negativity.
This is further comment on the first point I made. If you want more detail on the second point just let me know.
John
NZ
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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.
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.
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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.
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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bluelime2
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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.
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?
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?
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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.
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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