- Apr 25, 2019
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Hello everyone. I have posted here many times with many different questions, but I thought I would just make one post where I chronicle everything I've been through up to this point, and see what you all think. I want to describe everything as much as I can, without anything added or left out. Let's begin.
My whole family is Christian, and I was raised that way. I have been a 'Christian' my whole life, however I didn't really take it too seriously. Now of course I had some reverence toward God, I felt I loved him and I loved it when I would discover a favorite celebrity was a Christian. I would go to church, pray, and read my Bible, because I felt that it would be disrespectful to God not to do these things. I 'believed' in some sense, but my belief was basically "Do what you want, as long as it's not too bad, because God will just forgive you." So I did that: listened to horrible rap, cussed sometimes, played horrible games, watched horrible shows, masturbated to inappropriate content multiple times a day and loved it, planned on having sex with anyone should the situation arise (luckily it didn't), and that was the most I wanted out of life. I have tried several times to give up inappropriate content, but would eventually give up and give in, saying that I would just be forgiven. Enjoy myself here, then enjoy myself in heaven, right?
This all changed when I began to have panic attacks and thought I was having heart attacks. I would pray to God and promise to stop looking up inappropriate content if he would help me live through it. The episode would end, yet I would continue to do everything I was doing without a care. Then one time, in December, I was going through one such episode, promising to give up my sin, but falling nevertheless. This time, however, it scared me. Would I be eternally damned if I broke a promise to God? I looked it up, and to my relief, the answer I got was 'no.' However, I also read somewhere afterwards that continuing in unrepentant sin could end up causing you to lose salvation or something. I did not know at the time about eternal security and stuff like that (my theology was really shallow back then). This really scared me, and I opened up to my parents about what had been going on. I began to try to turn my life around, stop watching inappropriate content and stuff like that, read the Bible more, etc. Didn't last long, and I was watching inappropriate content and masturbating again. "Whatever, it's a process, right? Can't stop completely in one go." This continued for a little while, and then things really turned upside down.
One Sunday mid-January I was about to go to sleep, when I was reading the note card that I had gotten from church that morning. We had just entered a three-week period of prayer and fasting, and I was fasting from video games, because that was practically all I did (oh yeah, and watched inappropriate content). Anyway, as I was reading over it again, a few verses in particular caught my eye:
Matthew 7:21-23
21 Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
I felt this verse was talking to me. For the past month, I was trying to clean myself up, sure I failed a bunch, but I was working on it. However, this verse made me take a good long look at myself. I had never even considered this possibility before. A fake Christian? What? How does that work? You believe, and you're saved, right? I looked up a few commentaries on the verses, and it was talking about how someone could profess belief in Christ, but by their actions, show that they don't actually have saving faith, and that they were really deceived. This was news to me. I knew people who said they were Christians, yet listened to rap and cussed and slept around with different people. This is probably what caused me to not care about my sin as much.
I didn't think about it too much that night, but the next day I sure did. Not so much at school, but after school. I began to be really nervous. Surely a true Christian wouldn't watch inappropriate content and long for sex without a care, right? Countless times throughout the day I prayed a prayer asking God to forgive me and save me, however I didn't feel anything after praying, so I would pray again. I began to pace and look nervous, so my parents stopped me and asked me what was going on. I told them, showed them the verse, and they told me not to worry, and that everyone makes mistakes, etc. This sort of comforted me.
The next day was worse. I was worrying throughout the day at school, and after school, when I went to work, it got really bad. The more I read online, the more I was convinced I wasn't truly saved, and never could be. I was so far gone, that I couldn't truly come to God and be saved. I was sure I was going to hell. I could barely function that day during work. When I finally got off and my mother picked me up, I told her about everything I was worrying about, and I began sobbing profusely, begging God to help me. My mom prayed over me, cried with me, and I felt this peace enter me that I could not explain. I felt that if I wasn't saved before, I was now. Throughout that week, I would struggle with assurance of salvation more times, and it would get really bad again, bringing me to tears, something would happen that would help me feel better. I would hear something in a Christian movie, or read something in our devotional, that me and my parents felt was speaking directly to me. For a few months, the struggles would come and go, and I would talk with different people, including an old youth pastor I had, and this helped me.
However, it seemed some new reason for why I wasn't saved would pop in my head, and I would worry and cry again. One day, I realized just how many disgusting fetishes and fantasies I had throughout my years of inappropriate content watching, and I felt that someone like me couldn't be saved, and that God couldn't love me. This caused me to cry so much, but my mom comforted me by saying that I wasn't too far gone, and that God still loved and wanted me. Anyway, I was fine for a while. One thing that helped was that for a while, my sexual desire was almost non existent, which gave me hope and assurance. I felt this was something that God helped get rid of in me. This wouldn't last though, and little did I know I would go back to struggling with it off and on, which snatched that piece of assurance from me. One time, when I was in one of my sobbing, fearful, feeling hopeless and broken phases, I promised God I would give up playing video games for the rest of my life if He wanted me to. So far, I have kept that promise, mostly out of fear that God would reject me if I started playing again. I thought that doing this would help me, but so far, it appears I was wrong.
Then one fateful day, I had finished talking to a teacher from my school who was giving me assurance and was helping me with what was going on, and she told me that all I could do was rest and trust in the Lord, and give everything up to Him for Him to take care of. So that's what I did. I stopped thinking about it, and I went to watch a movie with my parents. Oh boy, little did I know that this night would lead to much of my current struggles. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, something happened in my brain, and for some reason, it was like the idea of God and Jesus seemed fake. I was so confused. It was like I stopped believing completely. I told my mom about it, I literally told her "I don't think I believe in God right now. I don't." I literally said that. How did this happen? She told me not to worry, she told me that I really did believe, but that letting go of my problems and giving them to God had caused me to think that I had stopped believing. I went with it, trusted her judgment, assumed I would believe again in the morning, and everything would be good. It didn't stop in the morning. I still felt I didn't believe. I read my Bible and looked up what this could mean. Of course, I found Hebrews 6, which says that if someone stops believing, they can't come back. Whether or not they were saved before or not, it was clear that if you at one point professed faith, then later on renounced it, you were lost without hope. Of course, it was then that I believed again, and this shook me to the core.
This wasn't the only time this happened, oh no! It would happen again on countless occasions, some lasting several days. I would cry out and ask God to help me believe again. When I did believe again, I would become scared that it was too late for me, and that since I had fallen away and stopped believing, I was gone with no hope. On multiple occasions, during my "unbelieving" phases, I would say out loud "I don't believe in God" or "God doesn't exist" or something like that, at least somewhat meaning what I was saying. Afterward, I would go "Why did I just say that? What is going on? How is this happening?" I would then try to look up some apologetic stuff to try to make me believe again.
A few times, I would half-wish that none of it was real; that way I wouldn't have to worry about it. I would look at other people who were atheists who didn't have to worry about stuff like salvation and sin and stuff, and I would become sort of jealous of them. A few times I contemplated what it would be like to fall away, and if I should. Of course, right after I would beat myself up and question why I would think such horrible thoughts. What was wrong with me? Is further proof of me not being saved?
These weren't my only issue though. One night, I had the usual feeling of hopelessness and despair and went to my mom like I usually did to talk to her about it. This time, something was different. I felt angry instead of depressed and scared. I was yelling at people and was in general super angry. When my mom prayed over me like she usually did, instead of feeling the usual peace I felt when she usually prayed over me, this time I felt this irritation and anger when she prayed. I couldn't keep still; it was like the prayer was irritating the heck out of me and I wanted her to stop so bad. Her praying was like nails on a chalkboard to me. After she finished, I told her what I was feeling. She made a face, like she just had a revelation, and she began praying for some evil spirit or something to leave me alone and leave our presence. This scared the living daylights out of me, and I cried profusely and was utterly terrified. She told me she felt something was off when I entered the way I did, and she said she felt something "dark" in the room that left when she prayed it away. I became very scared that I had been possessed. Of course, a true, Spirit-filled Christian, couldn't be demon-possessed, so was this incident further proof that I was not saved? People kept telling me that it was demonic OPPRESSION, not possession, and that I was fine. This didn't satisfy me, and the rest of that week I felt dead inside.
Another thing that has happened recently is me doubting the divinity of Jesus, Him being the Messiah, and even wondering if maybe He was the Devil in disguise (still hate writing this down). This was in the midst of me going through a "dance between belief and unbelief" times. (During this time I would go from believing to unbelieving to believing again within a very short period of time, and it would keep repeating over and over. I hated it.) My mind would go "What if the Jews are right? What if the Pharisees who committed the unforgivable sin were right?" This caused me to fear even more, and I wondered how I could even contemplate that possibility. It was like I really believed those horrible thoughts. Anyway, I would go look up more apologetic stuff to alleviate my "extreme" doubts.
On top of everything, I have been fighting looking up inappropriate content and stuff off and on, and recently I started looking up straight hardcore inappropriate content and masturbating again. This, too, caused me to doubt my salvation.
To sum it up, many, many, many, many, MANY unconnected, super weird, horrible things have happened to me that have caused me to seriously question if I'm saved, or even if being saved is a possibility for me anymore. I've looked up answers to my questions, and some have been REALLY unhelpful and condemning, and if these people are right, then I'm gone without any chance for forgiveness. The possibilities are either they're right and I'm too far gone and forever damned, they're right and I haven't truly apostatized, meaning their's still hope for me, or they're wrong, and either way I still have hope. I don't want to completely rule out what they say, though, and so this scares me even more. Two people who's stuff I've read that have scared me the most are John Piper and John MacArthur, both extreme (I think) conservative Calvinists. I am inclined to believe that their interpretations are the most Biblical (probably because their interpretations don't sound too good to be true), but then I'm pretty sure that would rule me out completely. So now I don't know what to do. Perhaps I'm not one of the elect, and all of this unwanted crap that is going on in my life is just God's way of rubbing it in my face, that no matter how much I want Him, He doesn't want me. That I was put here on this Earth just to struggle to truly know Him and find victory in Him, and then fail, and be sent to hell to suffer all the more for eternity. I can't deal with this pain and fear anymore. I never wanted to stop believing, have and believe stupid blasphemous thoughts, and all of this other crap. All I ever truly wanted since I read that first verse was to know God and be with Him forever; I want to rest in His perfect love and serve Him and do His will and enjoy His presence forever. But it seems He doesn't share my sympathies. Apparently I was created to suffer. And the more I try to come to Him, the more He lets me know that it ain't gonna happen. I can't take it anymore. I wish I was never born. I wish I was aborted so that I wouldn't have to deal with this crap and so that I didn't have the possibility of blowing it completely and cutting myself off from the only source of true joy and happiness forever, leaving me to suffer for eternity. This is my story. Hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes and make better choices. Take God seriously, or this will happen. You'll be trying to claw your way back to Him, but it will be no use. Honestly, all I want to do at this point is lay on the floor, shrivel up, and die. What else can I do?
My whole family is Christian, and I was raised that way. I have been a 'Christian' my whole life, however I didn't really take it too seriously. Now of course I had some reverence toward God, I felt I loved him and I loved it when I would discover a favorite celebrity was a Christian. I would go to church, pray, and read my Bible, because I felt that it would be disrespectful to God not to do these things. I 'believed' in some sense, but my belief was basically "Do what you want, as long as it's not too bad, because God will just forgive you." So I did that: listened to horrible rap, cussed sometimes, played horrible games, watched horrible shows, masturbated to inappropriate content multiple times a day and loved it, planned on having sex with anyone should the situation arise (luckily it didn't), and that was the most I wanted out of life. I have tried several times to give up inappropriate content, but would eventually give up and give in, saying that I would just be forgiven. Enjoy myself here, then enjoy myself in heaven, right?
This all changed when I began to have panic attacks and thought I was having heart attacks. I would pray to God and promise to stop looking up inappropriate content if he would help me live through it. The episode would end, yet I would continue to do everything I was doing without a care. Then one time, in December, I was going through one such episode, promising to give up my sin, but falling nevertheless. This time, however, it scared me. Would I be eternally damned if I broke a promise to God? I looked it up, and to my relief, the answer I got was 'no.' However, I also read somewhere afterwards that continuing in unrepentant sin could end up causing you to lose salvation or something. I did not know at the time about eternal security and stuff like that (my theology was really shallow back then). This really scared me, and I opened up to my parents about what had been going on. I began to try to turn my life around, stop watching inappropriate content and stuff like that, read the Bible more, etc. Didn't last long, and I was watching inappropriate content and masturbating again. "Whatever, it's a process, right? Can't stop completely in one go." This continued for a little while, and then things really turned upside down.
One Sunday mid-January I was about to go to sleep, when I was reading the note card that I had gotten from church that morning. We had just entered a three-week period of prayer and fasting, and I was fasting from video games, because that was practically all I did (oh yeah, and watched inappropriate content). Anyway, as I was reading over it again, a few verses in particular caught my eye:
Matthew 7:21-23
21 Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
I felt this verse was talking to me. For the past month, I was trying to clean myself up, sure I failed a bunch, but I was working on it. However, this verse made me take a good long look at myself. I had never even considered this possibility before. A fake Christian? What? How does that work? You believe, and you're saved, right? I looked up a few commentaries on the verses, and it was talking about how someone could profess belief in Christ, but by their actions, show that they don't actually have saving faith, and that they were really deceived. This was news to me. I knew people who said they were Christians, yet listened to rap and cussed and slept around with different people. This is probably what caused me to not care about my sin as much.
I didn't think about it too much that night, but the next day I sure did. Not so much at school, but after school. I began to be really nervous. Surely a true Christian wouldn't watch inappropriate content and long for sex without a care, right? Countless times throughout the day I prayed a prayer asking God to forgive me and save me, however I didn't feel anything after praying, so I would pray again. I began to pace and look nervous, so my parents stopped me and asked me what was going on. I told them, showed them the verse, and they told me not to worry, and that everyone makes mistakes, etc. This sort of comforted me.
The next day was worse. I was worrying throughout the day at school, and after school, when I went to work, it got really bad. The more I read online, the more I was convinced I wasn't truly saved, and never could be. I was so far gone, that I couldn't truly come to God and be saved. I was sure I was going to hell. I could barely function that day during work. When I finally got off and my mother picked me up, I told her about everything I was worrying about, and I began sobbing profusely, begging God to help me. My mom prayed over me, cried with me, and I felt this peace enter me that I could not explain. I felt that if I wasn't saved before, I was now. Throughout that week, I would struggle with assurance of salvation more times, and it would get really bad again, bringing me to tears, something would happen that would help me feel better. I would hear something in a Christian movie, or read something in our devotional, that me and my parents felt was speaking directly to me. For a few months, the struggles would come and go, and I would talk with different people, including an old youth pastor I had, and this helped me.
However, it seemed some new reason for why I wasn't saved would pop in my head, and I would worry and cry again. One day, I realized just how many disgusting fetishes and fantasies I had throughout my years of inappropriate content watching, and I felt that someone like me couldn't be saved, and that God couldn't love me. This caused me to cry so much, but my mom comforted me by saying that I wasn't too far gone, and that God still loved and wanted me. Anyway, I was fine for a while. One thing that helped was that for a while, my sexual desire was almost non existent, which gave me hope and assurance. I felt this was something that God helped get rid of in me. This wouldn't last though, and little did I know I would go back to struggling with it off and on, which snatched that piece of assurance from me. One time, when I was in one of my sobbing, fearful, feeling hopeless and broken phases, I promised God I would give up playing video games for the rest of my life if He wanted me to. So far, I have kept that promise, mostly out of fear that God would reject me if I started playing again. I thought that doing this would help me, but so far, it appears I was wrong.
Then one fateful day, I had finished talking to a teacher from my school who was giving me assurance and was helping me with what was going on, and she told me that all I could do was rest and trust in the Lord, and give everything up to Him for Him to take care of. So that's what I did. I stopped thinking about it, and I went to watch a movie with my parents. Oh boy, little did I know that this night would lead to much of my current struggles. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, something happened in my brain, and for some reason, it was like the idea of God and Jesus seemed fake. I was so confused. It was like I stopped believing completely. I told my mom about it, I literally told her "I don't think I believe in God right now. I don't." I literally said that. How did this happen? She told me not to worry, she told me that I really did believe, but that letting go of my problems and giving them to God had caused me to think that I had stopped believing. I went with it, trusted her judgment, assumed I would believe again in the morning, and everything would be good. It didn't stop in the morning. I still felt I didn't believe. I read my Bible and looked up what this could mean. Of course, I found Hebrews 6, which says that if someone stops believing, they can't come back. Whether or not they were saved before or not, it was clear that if you at one point professed faith, then later on renounced it, you were lost without hope. Of course, it was then that I believed again, and this shook me to the core.
This wasn't the only time this happened, oh no! It would happen again on countless occasions, some lasting several days. I would cry out and ask God to help me believe again. When I did believe again, I would become scared that it was too late for me, and that since I had fallen away and stopped believing, I was gone with no hope. On multiple occasions, during my "unbelieving" phases, I would say out loud "I don't believe in God" or "God doesn't exist" or something like that, at least somewhat meaning what I was saying. Afterward, I would go "Why did I just say that? What is going on? How is this happening?" I would then try to look up some apologetic stuff to try to make me believe again.
A few times, I would half-wish that none of it was real; that way I wouldn't have to worry about it. I would look at other people who were atheists who didn't have to worry about stuff like salvation and sin and stuff, and I would become sort of jealous of them. A few times I contemplated what it would be like to fall away, and if I should. Of course, right after I would beat myself up and question why I would think such horrible thoughts. What was wrong with me? Is further proof of me not being saved?
These weren't my only issue though. One night, I had the usual feeling of hopelessness and despair and went to my mom like I usually did to talk to her about it. This time, something was different. I felt angry instead of depressed and scared. I was yelling at people and was in general super angry. When my mom prayed over me like she usually did, instead of feeling the usual peace I felt when she usually prayed over me, this time I felt this irritation and anger when she prayed. I couldn't keep still; it was like the prayer was irritating the heck out of me and I wanted her to stop so bad. Her praying was like nails on a chalkboard to me. After she finished, I told her what I was feeling. She made a face, like she just had a revelation, and she began praying for some evil spirit or something to leave me alone and leave our presence. This scared the living daylights out of me, and I cried profusely and was utterly terrified. She told me she felt something was off when I entered the way I did, and she said she felt something "dark" in the room that left when she prayed it away. I became very scared that I had been possessed. Of course, a true, Spirit-filled Christian, couldn't be demon-possessed, so was this incident further proof that I was not saved? People kept telling me that it was demonic OPPRESSION, not possession, and that I was fine. This didn't satisfy me, and the rest of that week I felt dead inside.
Another thing that has happened recently is me doubting the divinity of Jesus, Him being the Messiah, and even wondering if maybe He was the Devil in disguise (still hate writing this down). This was in the midst of me going through a "dance between belief and unbelief" times. (During this time I would go from believing to unbelieving to believing again within a very short period of time, and it would keep repeating over and over. I hated it.) My mind would go "What if the Jews are right? What if the Pharisees who committed the unforgivable sin were right?" This caused me to fear even more, and I wondered how I could even contemplate that possibility. It was like I really believed those horrible thoughts. Anyway, I would go look up more apologetic stuff to alleviate my "extreme" doubts.
On top of everything, I have been fighting looking up inappropriate content and stuff off and on, and recently I started looking up straight hardcore inappropriate content and masturbating again. This, too, caused me to doubt my salvation.
To sum it up, many, many, many, many, MANY unconnected, super weird, horrible things have happened to me that have caused me to seriously question if I'm saved, or even if being saved is a possibility for me anymore. I've looked up answers to my questions, and some have been REALLY unhelpful and condemning, and if these people are right, then I'm gone without any chance for forgiveness. The possibilities are either they're right and I'm too far gone and forever damned, they're right and I haven't truly apostatized, meaning their's still hope for me, or they're wrong, and either way I still have hope. I don't want to completely rule out what they say, though, and so this scares me even more. Two people who's stuff I've read that have scared me the most are John Piper and John MacArthur, both extreme (I think) conservative Calvinists. I am inclined to believe that their interpretations are the most Biblical (probably because their interpretations don't sound too good to be true), but then I'm pretty sure that would rule me out completely. So now I don't know what to do. Perhaps I'm not one of the elect, and all of this unwanted crap that is going on in my life is just God's way of rubbing it in my face, that no matter how much I want Him, He doesn't want me. That I was put here on this Earth just to struggle to truly know Him and find victory in Him, and then fail, and be sent to hell to suffer all the more for eternity. I can't deal with this pain and fear anymore. I never wanted to stop believing, have and believe stupid blasphemous thoughts, and all of this other crap. All I ever truly wanted since I read that first verse was to know God and be with Him forever; I want to rest in His perfect love and serve Him and do His will and enjoy His presence forever. But it seems He doesn't share my sympathies. Apparently I was created to suffer. And the more I try to come to Him, the more He lets me know that it ain't gonna happen. I can't take it anymore. I wish I was never born. I wish I was aborted so that I wouldn't have to deal with this crap and so that I didn't have the possibility of blowing it completely and cutting myself off from the only source of true joy and happiness forever, leaving me to suffer for eternity. This is my story. Hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes and make better choices. Take God seriously, or this will happen. You'll be trying to claw your way back to Him, but it will be no use. Honestly, all I want to do at this point is lay on the floor, shrivel up, and die. What else can I do?