Thank you to those who responded to my posts and encouraged.
I've just been thinking about what's been said. When I first made a commitment to Jesus, I did feel a tremendous peace. However, I had begun going to a church where I really struggled. Some things didn't make sense and I also had just had a breakdown, or rather, a number of breakdowns.
It was a long time ago now, but it just didn't seem to be the best place for me to be, but to be honest I felt cross about my experiences there. Finally I left and went to another church, against the advice of a group leader who believed it was a good church and had at one time wanted to disciple me. But basically I left, and then some time later quite a few people left there (not because I had left though!!!).
From the second church, I ended up going to a tiny congregation because I didn't feel I was really fitting in there. Then, I left there due to travelling time and subsequently attended three more churches.
All the while this happened I would have health problems, mainly mental health.
Finally, after a time of really trying to be faithful in prayer, etc, I looked at my relationships and realised that I was struggling emotionally and didn't feel I belonged either at church or with some friends I'd made. We usually met over coffee, and because I was unable to maintain work I was alone a lot of the time.
Please reserve judgement over the cause of my mental health struggles.
Eventually, i felt i couldn't call myself a Christian anymore. I realised I'd been hypocritical, and also it felt too difficult to continue to express my distress to those I thought weren't friends, because they evidently seemed to be becoming worn out. When I compared my friendship with them, to their other friendships, it seemed to me that they favoured their other friends.
Also, what really hurt was that there had been a number of events that some had been invited to, that I might have liked to have been asked to, but wasn't.
This all was incredibly painful.
Anyway, here I am. I won't share some info, but I am estranged now from my relatives, but I think that for the moment that is best. There is more but I need to think it through.
Right now, I really want to make sense of God and the Bible.
I think that after I had that wonderful experience of peace, I lost a lot of it. If I'm honest, I think I put it down to insufficient teaching, unhealthy teaching and an unhealthy environment.
Also, now, currently, I can't sense God's Spirit in me.
I haven't mentioned some other things which I felt upset about.
But I admit I turned to many secular sites in pursuit of a way forward, especially those rejecting Christianity.
I would like to ask, can the Spirit of God return if he has left?
First of all, the Holy Spirit hasn't left you, that's not what He does.
But even if you were to leave, God is like the father of the prodigal son and runs out to meet all who come back, and Jesus Himself is the Good Shepherd who travels high and low to find the one lost little lamb who is estranged from the sheepfold. God has a reckless love for us.
In my own life I experienced a lot of spiritual lows. I've spoken about it many times here on Christian Forums. I spent a big part of my youth worried that God would abandon me, that God couldn't completely love me, that maybe I was even beyond hope and redemption.
The very short version of my story is that I wasn't hearing what God was saying. I wasn't hearing it because it wasn't what was being preached in the churches I was part of. Because that's how God talks to us, through His word, and the Scriptures are not being properly taught, if the theology we are being trained in isn't good theology, then we are hearing a lot of things, but God's voice is being crowded out by a lot of noise.
And given your lack of good church experiences my advice to you may not sound pleasant. But the only antidote here is church, a church which honestly and faithfully preaches the Gospel. Because there are a lot of churches that preach a lot of things, very often a lot of moral preaching, a lot of preaching about doing X, Y, or Z in order to grow closer with God; but frequently that's just a lot of noise that's drowning out God's voice. Because what God wants to say to you, to me, and to every other sinner in this world is that He is the God who loves us so much that He gave His only-begotten Son, and that it's not about us trying to find Him. He comes down here to find us. Because if it were up to us to find God, we wouldn't know our own bottom end from our top end. But God comes down, God meets us right here, He meets us right here in Jesus, Jesus who suffered, Jesus who died, Jesus who rose again. This Jesus that says, "Come to Me all you who are burdened and weary, and I will give you rest. This Jesus who gives Himself freely.
There's a lot of preaching out there that is saying what you need to do to find God, to grow closer with God, to climb up this ladder, or this other ladder (there certainly seem to be a lot of ladders). But there is no ladder to climb. God is right here. When you read or hear the Scriptures, God is speaking. When you are being told that your sins are forgiven on Christ's account, that's God speaking. When Jesus gives Himself to you in the bread and wine of His Supper, that's God speaking. When you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, that was God who spoke, God who worked, God who did these things.
It's not about you trying to reach out to God. God is already here, and He is giving Himself freely. God is shouting His love to us from all sides, but we need the ears to hear that only He can give us, and that is by hearing the word.
At the risk of sounding like I'm just advocating my own brand of Christianity, have you tried a Lutheran church?
-CryptoLutheran
