Just some things on my mind...

[Emerald518]

Well, I'm happy to say that as of today, I think just a little bit of progress has been made in this whole messy situation that I've found myself in the last few years. Today as I was alone and just thinking over things the way I often do, I had this sudden realize that, despite all that has happened and all that I have screwed up and had to deal with because of the mistakes that I have made, God is NOT against me and is not making me live with the consequences of my choices because He is against me, something that I think in the back of my mind I always believed, but didn't really realize I believed.

It comforts me to have this realization, that all of this is happening not because God is punishing me or because He turned His back on me when I made those mistakes, but it still hurts that things are this way nonetheless. I fully recognize that the outcome of all of this is not God's fault, but my own doing, but I still hurt that I was allowed to do the things I did and that I was allowed to make choices that were self-destructive and spiritually self-abusive if there is such a thing. I believed that I was not worthy of having the opportunities that were presented to me back there and believed that if I didn't have a job and couldn't pay for my education all in cash as I believed was the only biblical way to do so at the time, then I didn't deserve to keep all of it and did what I did so I would both deserve it and so God wouldn't take all of those things away from me...my view of God was still incredibly skewed at that point and I guess it still is...

I also hurt that even though what I did wasn't done out of any desire to do anything wrong and even though God is not against me as I believe, that my life won't ever be what it was before this happened or what it was starting to be, and that I have lost so much. While I know that God is a God of restoration, I also know that some opportunities He gives us are a one moment in time kind of thing and if we don't take the opportunity to have them when they're there, we never will. Maybe I'm just assuming the worst, but I almost count on that being the case here and boy does it hurt. And I'm scared, too. I feel like if I wait for what God has for me next, I'll be waiting so long that I end up running out of time, and like I said earlier, I hurt that my life won't be what it was and that even though the choices I made were made to do no wrong to anyone but myself, that I still have to live with what I've done. Right now I feel like I've had the wind completely kicked out of me and I just don't know what to do. But I'm comforted by the fact that God isn't against me like I had believed and knowing this, it makes it easier to get close to Him again....after four long years.....

 

[Aussie Pete]

Well, I'm happy to say that as of today, I think just a little bit of progress has been made in this whole messy situation that I've found myself in the last few years. Today as I was alone and just thinking over things the way I often do, I had this sudden realize that, despite all that has happened and all that I have screwed up and had to deal with because of the mistakes that I have made, God is NOT against me and is not making me live with the consequences of my choices because He is against me, something that I think in the back of my mind I always believed, but didn't really realize I believed.

It comforts me to have this realization, that all of this is happening not because God is punishing me or because He turned His back on me when I made those mistakes, but it still hurts that things are this way nonetheless. I fully recognize that the outcome of all of this is not God's fault, but my own doing, but I still hurt that I was allowed to do the things I did and that I was allowed to make choices that were self-destructive and spiritually self-abusive if there is such a thing. I believed that I was not worthy of having the opportunities that were presented to me back there and believed that if I didn't have a job and couldn't pay for my education all in cash as I believed was the only biblical way to do so at the time, then I didn't deserve to keep all of it and did what I did so I would both deserve it and so God wouldn't take all of those things away from me...my view of God was still incredibly skewed at that point and I guess it still is...

I also hurt that even though what I did wasn't done out of any desire to do anything wrong and even though God is not against me as I believe, that my life won't ever be what it was before this happened or what it was starting to be, and that I have lost so much. While I know that God is a God of restoration, I also know that some opportunities He gives us are a one moment in time kind of thing and if we don't take the opportunity to have them when they're there, we never will. Maybe I'm just assuming the worst, but I almost count on that being the case here and boy does it hurt. And I'm scared, too. I feel like if I wait for what God has for me next, I'll be waiting so long that I end up running out of time, and like I said earlier, I hurt that my life won't be what it was and that even though the choices I made were made to do no wrong to anyone but myself, that I still have to live with what I've done. Right now I feel like I've had the wind completely kicked out of me and I just don't know what to do. But I'm comforted by the fact that God isn't against me like I had believed and knowing this, it makes it easier to get close to Him again....after four long years.....

About 40 years ago I got deceived. It was an issue of great importance to me, perhaps too important. When I finally woke up to it, I was shattered. I left the youth leadership team and not long after, the church I was going to. Over the next year or so, I found a new fellowship led by the most spiritual mature person I have ever met. Gradually, I began to see how and why I got deceived. I started out mad at God - how could He let me be so deceived. Then I got mad at myself. Unbelief was replaced with hurt pride. I learned a great deal over the next decades. I discovered what pride is - and its not what I thought. I found out the cost of independence and rebellion. I discovered that God does little to correct us many times. He just lets us go our own way. We can do a search and destroy on our own lives with great effect. God will not violate our free will. He does forgive, cleanse, teach, restore and encourage - as we learn our lessons. One of the important lessons is to forgive yourself. That's easy to say and near impossible to do. This article will help you.

Can you forgive from your heart? - Christian Life Frankston

It relates to forgiving others, but the principles apply to forgiving ourselves also.

 

[Emerald518]

It's funny that you talk about being deceived because that happened to me as well.

When I first became a Christian, I had very little exposure to Christianity and didn't know what to look for in a church. One of my cousins was married to a newly ordained pastor and invited me to join their church, and when I say invited, I mean manipulated by telling me "God wants you here". Her declaration was so confident and I was so overwhelmed with trying to find my way that I believed this was God directing me. I was in that church as well as another one of the same denomination after theirs closed and the two years in it were nothing but a nightmare.

I was never taught to analyze scripture, never taught to pray properly and even told that the problems in my life were what I deserved for being sinful. I was so beaten down when I left two years later. I saw God as an angry monster who wouldn't hesitate to unleash some Old Testament style anger on me if I didn't appease Him and felt like I was constantly on the edge of making Him go off on me no matter what I did.

I wanted nothing to do with Him for awhile the summer after I left that awful church and went through a period of rebellion where I did whatever I wanted because I felt like I'd been kept in a cage like an animal. But there was some part of me deep down that wanted what other Christians had and wondered what was so wrong with me that I couldn't have it? I started going to a different church and attending membership classes but was still afraid of God and angry at Him when I wasnt. I decided to get baptized and then it that didn't help anything, that I was going to walk away from God forever and live my life the way I wanted to live it and not be miserable until I died.

The day I got baptized was the most wonderful day of my life and when I came up out of the water, it was like someone lifted a veil off of my face and I saw the truth for the first time and just how wrong I had been about everything and that I had been deceived. God showed me as well that He wanted to use that to help prepare me for what He wanted me to do, which was help people in the church who are deceived into thinking that they are saved when they aren't and bring them out of deception.

After this I was joyful but also paranoid that anything might cause me to fall for deception again, so when God kept nudging me to quit a job I was working to go back to school, I thought it wasn't Him for several reasons. I had this belief based on a twisted view of certain scriptures that debt was a sin and I figured that since I hadn't found a different job by the time school started that fall that God was telling me tostay there even though I wanted to quit very badly. I saw it as an attempt by Satan to deceive me because as I believed debt was sinful, then the desire to quit working when I didn't have something else lined up was not wise because it out me at risk of sinning, which I believed was just as bad as committing the sin itself. I did my best to resist that urging thinking it was Satan, but when it wouldn't go away and got stronger and bothered me more and more the more I resisted it, I chalked it up a very intense spiritual battle that I would just have to fight and claw until the very bitter end in order to win it. At some point I realized I was wrong and finally did what I now know God was wanting me to do, but it was too late by the time I realized that. I ended up failing the two exact classes that I needed to continue on according to God's prescribed timeline for me, which I believe is evidence of Him removing that opportunity for what I'd done...everything else happened from there...

 

[Emerald518]

It's funny that you talk about being deceived because that happened to me as well.

When I first became a Christian, I had very little exposure to Christianity and didn't know what to look for in a church. One of my cousins was married to a newly ordained pastor and invited me to join their church, and when I say invited, I mean manipulated by telling me "God wants you here". Her declaration was so confident and I was so overwhelmed with trying to find my way that I believed this was God directing me. I was in that church as well as another one of the same denomination after theirs closed and the two years in it were nothing but a nightmare.

I was never taught to analyze scripture, never taught to pray properly and even told that the problems in my life were what I deserved for being sinful. I was so beaten down when I left two years later. I saw God as an angry monster who wouldn't hesitate to unleash some Old Testament style anger on me if I didn't appease Him and felt like I was constantly on the edge of making Him go off on me no matter what I did.

I wanted nothing to do with Him for awhile the summer after I left that awful church and went through a period of rebellion where I did whatever I wanted because I felt like I'd been kept in a cage like an animal. But there was some part of me deep down that wanted what other Christians had and wondered what was so wrong with me that I couldn't have it? I started going to a different church and attending membership classes but was still afraid of God and angry at Him when I wasnt. I decided to get baptized and then it that didn't help anything, that I was going to walk away from God forever and live my life the way I wanted to live it and not be miserable until I died.

The day I got baptized was the most wonderful day of my life and when I came up out of the water, it was like someone lifted a veil off of my face and I saw the truth for the first time and just how wrong I had been about everything and that I had been deceived. God showed me as well that He wanted to use that to help prepare me for what He wanted me to do, which was help people in the church who are deceived into thinking that they are saved when they aren't and bring them out of deception.

After this I was joyful but also paranoid that anything might cause me to fall for deception again, so when God kept nudging me to quit a job I was working to go back to school, I thought it wasn't Him for several reasons. I had this belief based on a twisted view of certain scriptures that debt was a sin and I figured that since I hadn't found a different job by the time school started that fall that God was telling me tostay there even though I wanted to quit very badly. I saw it as an attempt by Satan to deceive me because as I believed debt was sinful, then the desire to quit working when I didn't have something else lined up was not wise because it out me at risk of sinning, which I believed was just as bad as committing the sin itself. I did my best to resist that urging thinking it was Satan, but when it wouldn't go away and got stronger and bothered me more and more the more I resisted it, I chalked it up a very intense spiritual battle that I would just have to fight and claw until the very bitter end in order to win it. At some point I realized I was wrong and finally did what I now know God was wanting me to do, but it was too late by the time I realized that. I ended up failing the two exact classes that I needed to continue on according to God's prescribed timeline for me, which I believe is evidence of Him removing that opportunity for what I'd done...everything else happened from there...

I also wanted to add some things I forgot. After everything happened, the good part, there was still this terror in the back of my mind that God would still unleash that Old Testament style anger on me if I did what I wanted and quit my job, and I thought that maybe if I kept working there and maybe if I did just a little bit extra and did beyond what God required, maybe God would be pleased enough to let me off the hook for doing it and tell me that I didn't have to and would be allowed to do what I wanted. I thought if I did just a little bit extra to please God, He'd be more lenient on me when I screwed up and not get to that level of anger with me. But when I did it, I thought God was still expecting me to do it anyway and that's when I got angry and pulled away from Him...I was scared and then came to the conclusion that what I wanted was sin and kept rejecting it...leading to all of this...

 

[the last child]

I’m not an expert, and I’m not really sure I follow everything u wrote. I just wanted to suggest that perhaps u are over analyzing and over complicating things—by a large measure—imho. It’s been my experience, as Pete has said, that God does not micro manage our lives. He gave us—including you—a free will. So instead of worrying about what ifs, or mistakes of the past, I’d suggest u take some time to praise Him. And just think about excellent and praise worthy things. As odd as that sounds, it will bring your focus back to where it belongs—from ur self and what u should or shouldn’t do or have or haven’t done or do or don’t believe—to just simply Who He is. And u just might find some healing and rest there. Sounds like u need some. Or a lot. Before u move forward.