Please help me I'm at my wits end

[TheBigYin]

Friends,

Please help me...I posted a similar message on the general charismatic forum a few days ago and was hammered by certain individuals....

I am really struggling....

I made a commitment to Christ in 1990...and was married in 1995. My wife and I had a ministry in church - we ran the youth group and saw many miracles. Through the loss of my job in 2003 and losing my house and car and everything and being in court with bad debts my marriage broke up.

I am now a bankrupt, and in 2005 I became involved in satanism.

In the last month I have made a real commitment again to Christ, but I have so many struggles....

My partner of 2 years and I split last week, although I have found a new church. Yet I struggle with so many things.

I feel so alone, I am struggling with drinking and smoking...I have no one that I can really call upon for help....because only being in my new church I cannot trust anyone enough to open up for help,

the pull of the dark side is such a strong attraction again...I miss my little girl like hell....I struggle with self-abuse (yes I know at 40...what a disgrace).

Please please can someone not crucify me....please just pray for me and give me some ray of hope...because I am so torn inside as I write this....I feel there's no one for me on this planet at all.

Help me please please

 

[PastorMike]

Friends,

Please help me...I posted a similar message on the general charismatic forum a few days ago and was hammered by certain individuals....

I am really struggling....

I made a commitment to Christ in 1990...and was married in 1995. My wife and I had a ministry in church - we ran the youth group and saw many miracles. Through the loss of my job in 2003 and losing my house and car and everything and being in court with bad debts my marriage broke up.

I am now a bankrupt, and in 2005 I became involved in satanism.

In the last month I have made a real commitment again to Christ, but I have so many struggles....

My partner of 2 years and I split last week, although I have found a new church. Yet I struggle with so many things.

I feel so alone, I am struggling with drinking and smoking...I have no one that I can really call upon for help....because only being in my new church I cannot trust anyone enough to open up for help,

the pull of the dark side is such a strong attraction again...I miss my little girl like hell....I have struggled with self-abuse (yes I know at 40...what a disgrace).

Please please can someone not crucify me....please just pray for me because I am so torn inside as I write this....I feel there's no one for me on this planet at all.

Help me please please

I will be praying for you bro, but what you really need is to find a pastor that you can trust even if you have to go to another town to find one... you need someone to counsel you and pray for you and someone you can be accountable to...

I am praying right now bro... God bless, Mike.

 

[KleinerApfel]

I'm sorry that I didn't take up the invitation on your thread for the rest of us to be honest there too.
You noticed what can happen when we do - it's always a risk.

I am also very aware that as a woman I have received a great deal of compassion and support here, yet when men post similar requests for help they often get kicked in the teeth. I don't know why that is. :o

You were brave to type your struggles out there, and I know you'll have the courage to find the right person to share with in "real life" too. Make enquiries on Christian counselling too. It's not so easy in the UK but there is some available.

I went on a healing retreat at Ellel Ministries last summer, where the prayer and loving support was utterly wonderful. They have centres in several UK towns if you're interested, and do single day events and short courses etc. too.

 

[pdudgeon]

I agree with Mike.
Run, do not walk, to make arrangements to talk with your pastor. chances are he's already talked with others who had similar experiences to yours, so you won't be shocking him.

can I tell you something else that i heard this morning?
God is more concerned with where you are headded than with where you have been.

you've already determined to make a fresh start in your life.
Now get the help you need to make good on that promise.

 

[dkbwarrior]

My friend, never let condemnation strong-arm you. I have told my testimony here several times before, but I think it will help for me to repost some of it for you.

I committed my life to Christ while sitting in the hole in prison. In some ways it was almost entirely accidental, in other ways i was headed there all of my life.

I don't know for certain when I was actually born-again. I say that because, though I was raised in a non-christian household, and we did not go to church, when I was twelve, a friend invited me to a pentecostal church with his family, and I went up for salvation at the youth rally altar call.

I never really went back to church with any consistency after words, but from that moment forward I believed in God, and Jesus, and had great respect for christians. The only problem was that I could not live a christian life, no matter how hard I tried.

I had just started experimenting with drugs about the time I went up for that altar call. And going up for the altar call didn't slow me down much. I kept experimenting, then started smoking, then drinking, then got kicked out of school, then got kicked out of my house by my parents at the age of 13.

I was a street kid at the age of 13. I was in and out of juvenile hall for auto thefts, robberies, possession and sale of narcotics, burglary, etc., etc. I was remanded to adult prison at the age of 17 and given a five year sentence. I got out and reoffended and went back to prison with a two year sentence. Finally, at the age of 22, I ended up being sent to prison with a 14 year sentence. (If the time line doesn't add up for you dont trip, you have to take into account good time, early releases, probation, concurrent sentencing and a bunch of other things that for brevities sake I cannot cover here at this time.)

While in prison for this last, I caught another case inside the walls, and added another 3 years to my term, and ended up in the hole for a year.

On the streets when you are a problem, they put you in prison, and in prison, when you are a problem they put you in the hole. Here in California they call it the SHU, or Security Housing Unit. 22.5 hours a day of complete isolation, with 1.5 hour a day 'yard time'.

(The yard is a concrete patio about 10' x 20' in size with 14' high concrete wall around it. The only real difference fro your cell is that it is slightly bigger and has no roof on it so it is called a 'yard'. But with nothing to do there but look at the sky between the concrete walls, there is not much incentive to go out there. They help to dis-incentivize you from going to the 'yard' by always searching your cell when you are out of it.)

During all this time I had continued to believe in God, but I could not live a christian life. I must have tried a million times if I tried once, to stop smoking, to stop doing dope, to stop stealing, to stop looking at pornography, (don't you know that every inmate keeps a stack of mags under his cot), etc. etc. etc. My decisions to stop/quit were limited to the amount of time it took to think about something else.

I respected christians for being able to live a holy and sanctified life, and just figured that for whatever reason I wasn't one of those holy sanctified people. I believed in God, but I figured He didnt really want anything to do with me anymore because I was such a lost cause, and I had resigned myself to this fate.

So there I am, sitting in the hole, with nothing to do, and I asked the gaurds for a book. The laughingly brought me a Bible. Old KJV at that. They thought this was some great joke. If they only knew...

I started reading through it mostly out of boredom, and of course it wasn't like I was really opposed to reading it because I did believe in Jesus. Much of it was just gibberish to me, so many rules and geneologies and stuff. It was like wading through quicksand at first. But some of it I understood, like when it would have story narratives about Abraham, or the wars of Joshua, and I especially got into the story of Saul and David.

I would certainly have given up except again, I had nothing else to do, and they wouldn't give me any other reading material.

(continued...)

 

[dkbwarrior]

Well, I got about halfway through the Bible, and got into the book of Psalms, and that is when something utterly amazing happened to me.

Have you ever been going along in life, just cruising along, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere it seems, a light bulb goes off, and you understand something that you have never understood before? You may have heard it or seen it a hundred times before and it never meant squat, but now, all of a sudden, it makes sense? And you wonder, 'Why didn't I ever see this before?'

Well, that is what happened to me. I had an epiphany. I didn't fully understand then what I know now, ie., that this is how God talks to us. So I guess the appropriate term would be that I heard the voice of the Spirit of God.

And it happened while reading this verse:

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
-Psalm 199:11

Like a ton of bricks dumped on my head I just knew that I knew that this meant that God was not waiting for me to be good enough for Him, He was waiting for me to start putting His Word in me so that His Word would make me good enough.

In other words, if wasn't a wuestion of me cleaning up enough. If I could clean up enough and be good enough then Jesus would never have had to die on a cross in my place to begin with.

God was not waiting for me to 'be good'; God was waiting for me to 'be good soil'. Two totally different things. Of course, as with all things with God, this seemed to simple to be true.

I mean, how many christians had I heard say that if you had really repented you would then quit doing '_________', (insert sin here). Following this logic I just figured I must have never really repented, no matter how much I tried to, because I could never stop doing '_________'.

But now I was being led to understand that God wasn't waiting for me to quit doing '________'; God was only waiting for me to put His Word in my heart, and then the Word would change me.

I didn't know how to take this except literally. No one had yet taught me that I needed someone to help me understand the figurative permutations of the eisigeses of the metophorical implications of the prophetic application of the Psalm. I just decided to believe what it said.

So I thought, 'I guess the only way to hide the Word in my heart would be to memorize it'. So I started memorizing.

I memorized the book of James, the book of Galatians, the book of Romans, the Gospel of John, several of the Psalms, and significant partial portions of other books.

For that entire year in the hole I had a daily routine. I got up at 6am for breakfast, then paced the cell memorizing until lunch. At lunchtime I took a break to eat, then did my work out. Then I would pace the cell and memorize until dinner.

After dinner I would lay back on my cot and requote back to myself everything that I had memorized up until that point. Then contiue reading through the Bible like I was doing before.

I got so immersed in scripture that I began to dream the Word of God. This was an amazing time in my life that may never be duplicated again, but it was what I needed at the time to get a foundation of faith.

When I got close to the end of my stay in the hole I started getting scared. I felt so close to God there that I didn't want to leave. I feared that the changes that had happened to me would fall away from me when I got out of the hole and onto the mainline around others and where all my old sins would be waiting for me.

In fact, for a moment, I sincerely considered stabbing a gaurd in order to stay in the hole and be close to God. It was an almost irresistable urge for a short period of time. However, with the scripture that I had been reading/memorizing I was able to recognize it as a demonic attack and resist it.

So they finally let me out of the hole. The day that I walked down the tier on the mainline to my new cell, a homeboy walked by and dropped a bag of dope in my pocket and said 'welcome back homie'.

I went to my cell and did it. Then I sat there for a lng time and wondered, why did I do that? I don't need that in my life any more. And that was it. I didn't do it anymore.

One at a time things just started falling off of me. It didn't happen overnight, but I kept memorizing the Word, (though at a much slower pace now that I didn't have all day to spend at it), and payed no attention to when I would mess up. I would just confess it and move on, quoting scripture.

This was way different than before, when I would decide to 'be good', mess up 10 minutes later, then feel condemned and unworthy, and go do it some more because I felt so worthless and incabable of changing.

Now I put all the responsiblility for change in my life on the power of the living Word that I was putting inside me. The only responsibilty that I chose to shoulder for myself was the responsibility to put Gods Word into my heart so that it could do what it does best. Change and renew me!

This is how God brought me through the war of condemnation waged by the devil against all of mankind. I hope my story helps.

Peace...

 

[dkbwarrior]

for continuation.....

 

[SavedByGrace3]

.
I can only offer prayer at this point. Prayer that God intervien and work things out to your good.
Consider that done.
In Him
Dids

 

[God_Owned]

Well, I got about halfway through the Bible, and got into the book of Psalms, and that is when something utterly amazing happened to me.

Have you ever been going along in life, just cruising along, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere it seems, a light bulb goes off, and you understand something that you have never understood before? You may have heard it or seen it a hundred times before and it never meant squat, but now, all of a sudden, it makes sense? And you wonder, 'Why didn't I ever see this before?'

Well, that is what happened to me. I had an epiphany. I didn't fully understand then what I know now, ie., that this is how God talks to us. So I guess the appropriate term would be that I heard the voice of the Spirit of God.

And it happened while reading this verse:

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.
-Psalm 199:11

Like a ton of bricks dumped on my head I just knew that I knew that this meant that God was not waiting for me to be good enough for Him, He was waiting for me to start putting His Word in me so that His Word would make me good enough.

In other words, if wasn't a wuestion of me cleaning up enough. If I could clean up enough and be good enough then Jesus would never have had to die on a cross in my place to begin with.

God was not waiting for me to 'be good'; God was waiting for me to 'be good soil'. Two totally different things. Of course, as with all things with God, this seemed to simple to be true.

I mean, how many christians had I heard say that if you had really repented you would then quit doing '_________', (insert sin here). Following this logic I just figured I must have never really repented, no matter how much I tried to, because I could never stop doing '_________'.

But now I was being led to understand that God wasn't waiting for me to quit doing '________'; God was only waiting for me to put His Word in my heart, and then the Word would change me.

I didn't know how to take this except literally. No one had yet taught me that I needed someone to help me understand the figurative permutations of the eisigeses of the metophorical implications of the prophetic application of the Psalm. I just decided to believe what it said.

So I thought, 'I guess the only way to hide the Word in my heart would be to memorize it'. So I started memorizing.

I memorized the book of James, the book of Galatians, the book of Romans, the Gospel of John, several of the Psalms, and significant partial portions of other books.

For that entire year in the hole I had a daily routine. I got up at 6am for breakfast, then paced the cell memorizing until lunch. At lunchtime I took a break to eat, then did my work out. Then I would pace the cell and memorize until dinner.

After dinner I would lay back on my cot and requote back to myself everything that I had memorized up until that point. Then contiue reading through the Bible like I was doing before.

I got so immersed in scripture that I began to dream the Word of God. This was an amazing time in my life that may never be duplicated again, but it was what I needed at the time to get a foundation of faith.

When I got close to the end of my stay in the hole I started getting scared. I felt so close to God there that I didn't want to leave. I feared that the changes that had happened to me would fall away from me when I got out of the hole and onto the mainline around others and where all my old sins would be waiting for me.

In fact, for a moment, I sincerely considered stabbing a gaurd in order to stay in the hole and be close to God. It was an almost irresistable urge for a short period of time. However, with the scripture that I had been reading/memorizing I was able to recognize it as a demonic attack and resist it.

So they finally let me out of the hole. The day that I walked down the tier on the mainline to my new cell, a homeboy walked by and dropped a bag of dope in my pocket and said 'welcome back homie'.

I went to my cell and did it. Then I sat there for a lng time and wondered, why did I do that? I don't need that in my life any more. And that was it. I didn't do it anymore.

One at a time things just started falling off of me. It didn't happen overnight, but I kept memorizing the Word, (though at a much slower pace now that I didn't have all day to spend at it), and payed no attention to when I would mess up. I would just confess it and move on, quoting scripture.

This was way different than before, when I would decide to 'be good', mess up 10 minutes later, then feel condemned and unworthy, and go do it some more because I felt so worthless and incabable of changing.

Now I put all the responsiblility for change in my life on the power of the living Word that I was putting inside me. The only responsibilty that I chose to shoulder for myself was the responsibility to put Gods Word into my heart so that it could do what it does best. Change and renew me!

This is how God brought me through the war of condemnation waged by the devil against all of mankind. I hope my story helps.

Peace...

It helped me brother. That was a great post. I have never been to prison, but I have been have had serious issues with condemnation. Thank you very much for your post.

By the way, I now communicate and minister to a few people in prison. Some of whom are more famous than others, but all have been or become Christians.

 

[TheBigYin]

Wow DKBwarrior,

This was -

(1) the longest post!
(2) the best post!

....that I've ever read.

You should write a book and let everyone know about this.

And to the others that have posted here, thanks so much for not hammering me or condemning me....think I may star around this WOF malarky for a while

These posts have been a big help to me - many thanks for your encouragement and prayers.

Blessings

 

[foadle]

Remember that although circumstances seem so against you know that you are a child of God. You have repented of your former life and so now the devil more than ever sees you as a threat to his kingdom. Stand strong and we will help hold you up. You are strong in the Lord. He is a God of forgiveness and His strength will help carry you.
As mike said and others have agreed get yourself to a christian counselor or pastor asap

 

[peacechild4]

"Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them." Hebrews 7:25

God is able to do this!! Nothing is impossible for Him.. All You have to do is believe.. and follow God.. and let His Spirit lead you..

 

[peacechild4]

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

 

[TheBigYin]

Thank you all for your prayers.

I managed to get to church on Sunday, but was feeling pretty low. I phoned the assistant pastor Sunday night and he and a cell group leader came around to talk with me and pray. When they started praying...lets just say that I said "bye bye" and other things said "hello".

I felt so used and dirty yesterday and was wondering all day about what these guys would think of me.

They called last night and said that they knew it wasn't me and that they were more determined than ever to see me set free, so there is a little ray of hope there.

I was so encouraged last night as I was reading my bible before bed time and God really spoke hope to me through this verse from 1 Peter 5v10 -

"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. "

 

[PastorMike]

Thank you all for your prayers.

I managed to get to church on Sunday, but was feeling pretty low. I phoned the assistant pastor Sunday night and he and a cell group leader came around to talk with me and pray. When they started praying...lets just say that I said "bye bye" and other things said "hello".

I felt so used and dirty yesterday and was wondering all day about what these guys would think of me.

They called last night and said that they knew it wasn't me and that they were more determined than ever to see me set free, so there is a little ray of hope there.

I was so encouraged last night as I was reading my bible before bed time and God really spoke hope to me through this verse from 1 Peter 5v10 -

"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. "

Praise God bro for God's goodness and mercy to you... that is an awesome promise, you need to memorise this promise and keep it in your heart and no matter what the circumstances, no matter what is going on around you or in you confess and meditate on this promise, act like it is already true and you will have the victory... Mike.

 

[KleinerApfel]

"You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."
Jn. 15

Jesus has made you clean, He sees you as righteous and holy, not dirty, and these brothers are going to stand with you for total release into that truth and help you experience its reality more and more.

I release blessings and hope for the future over you brother, in Jesus name.

 

[TheBigYin]

"You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."
Jn. 15

Jesus has made you clean, He sees you as righteous and holy, not dirty, and these brothers are going to stand with you for total release into that truth and help you experience its reality more and more.

I release blessings and hope for the future over you brother, in Jesus name.

Yeha that's true....there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, I am clothed with clean garments not dirty ones. I will praise God today for all the issues I have, because then God's grace and mercy will all the more be demonstrated as I'm set free.

 

[peacechild4]

"You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."
Jn. 15

Jesus has made you clean, He sees you as righteous and holy, not dirty, and these brothers are going to stand with you for total release into that truth and help you experience its reality more and more.

I release blessings and hope for the future over you brother, in Jesus name.

Beautiful words.. the truth of God.. how He sees us.. sets us free!!



I stand with my sister for your total release... and for blessings and hope for your future..

We both are your sisters through Christ.. and you are our special brother!!

 

[dkbwarrior]

"You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you."
Jn. 15

Jesus has made you clean, He sees you as righteous and holy, not dirty, and these brothers are going to stand with you for total release into that truth and help you experience its reality more and more.

I release blessings and hope for the future over you brother, in Jesus name.

That is a beautiful verse.

All the junk that the enemy throws at us, comes for one reason, to condemn us.

Condemnation robs of of our faith, deceives us into thinking that we are unworthy of the love of God.

TheBigYin, it certainly does not matter what you have done, it doesn't even matter what you are doing, what matters is that you can see and believe that God sees you clean through the blood of His Son.

True faith comes from revelation of Gods Word in our spirit. When you know and understand that God loves you in the midst of your worst acts, as much as He loves His own Son Jesus, you are ready to be set free.

This may well manifest through the prayers of those that you have sought out, they may well be Gods avenue for your freedom. Or God may use another avenue, but I sense that you will be free...

Peace...

 

[tturt]

dkbwarrior - what an awesome testimony!

You know when the enemy tempted Christ Jesus, He said, "It is written..." He is our example. When we get His word inside us, then we have to renew our minds. Our actions are based on our thoughts. So when the wrong thoughts come, we replace them with The Word.

TheBigYin - that's a great verse to draw His strength from.

Seeing your thread on the other forum about leaving - - let me offer you this. This example is from Barnabas who was the person who got the other apostles to accept Saul/Paul. But when Barnabas tried to do the same thing with Paul regarding John Mark, the disagreed so much, they parted ways. Yet later Paul said John Mark was a great aid to him in the ministry. What this tells me is that God uses people to refine us. He uses me to refine them and them to refine me. You'll get plenty of opportunities to get refined here (hehehhe). The good will outweigh the negative.

(Act 9:27 But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. ). Acts 15: 37And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname was Mark.
38But Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work.
39And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other: and so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto Cyprus;
Yet
II Tim 4: 11Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.