- Jun 21, 2017
- 5
- 3
- 39
- Country
- United States
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Non-Denom
- Marital Status
- Single
I've noticed a very specific pattern that my mind tends to follow:
1. Triggering Event: I do something that I feel guilty about. I have a thought that produces a sort of instantaneous vow to create a sort of 'barrier' to future sin, guilt, etc. Sometimes this vow 'feels' more conscious, i.e. I have willful agency in the vow, but often it is very much instantaneous, and I am more agreeing with the vow than I am willfully making it.
2. Stakes are High: Any time one of these insta-vows occurs, whatever I want most or least want to occur to me, be taken from me, etc, is always served up as the reward or penalty for breaking or keeping my vow.
3. But What If This is God Testing Me: Now, based on the above logical reasoning you would think I would be able to quickly identify this pattern and conclude that perhaps this is my brain playing tricks on me, however, as often seems the case in OCD thinking, I always tend to wonder "What if the source of this is God testing me?"..."What if I really did willfully make this vow, am I now bound to it despite its haste, having been done in a spirit of fear, etc?"
Essentially, I've been stuck in this same thought cycle for several years now. What it all comes down to is this: I really do fear and revere God, and I don't want to displease Him.
When I go against these vows, I feel terrible, and yet I believe this to be the true path to healing. The scariest part is that I have built so much of my relationship with God around these sort of visceral promptings, nudges, etc, that when I try to break the vows I've made in an effort to engage in a sort of spiritual ERP therapy, the result is a feeling that can only be described as 'disrupted communion with God'. It is almost as if the compulsions restore a sense of communion with Him.
Now, the hope I have comes from Christ, knowing that in Him all of my sins, past, present, and future have been dealt with on the cross and that His Word tells me that he does not count them against me or remember them any more because of Jesus.
It is just so hard to silence that nagging voice that whispers in my ear saying "Yes, you're saved in an eternal sense, but you better not break these vows because God will punish you and make all of these horrible ultimatums come true in the 'temporal' sense.
I know that a sort of pettiness and vindictiveness that this inner voice posits is not true of Jesus, and thus of God, but I still waver, falling back into the 'but what if He won't be merciful this time, what if He will hold me to this one, etc."
I've run across similar posts to this one and often the advice is something akin to 'pray about it, see which vows you should keep and which you shouldn't.' Although well intentioned, this sort of advice is not helpful to a person whose mind can already condemn them by finding any little reason to justify the sort of 'but what if this time its real' thinking that OCD generates.
I am at the point where I do not think micromanaging these vows is productive. I feel like my only salvation from this struggle is a radically renewed mind, a brand new way of thinking about these vows past and present and a radical deviation from a sort of 'maybe this one is real, maybe it isn't way of thinking'. So I present to you this question which has plagued me for years:
Even if these vows were done consciously, is the blood of Jesus able to cover and annul them anyway?
Will my asking God to annul these vows, regardless of whether they were done willfully, guarantee that I am freed from the ultimatums they present?
This is the sort of worst case scenario thinking that I have to entertain to be freed from this struggle. I would be very, very grateful for any resolute conclusions from the Word that others within this community could offer. I want total, and final liberation from this fear of temporal punishment that I know many others in this forum have also struggled with. I want to rest in the mercy and love of a God who did not withhold sending his own Son to die. Thank you friends for your time and advice.
1. Triggering Event: I do something that I feel guilty about. I have a thought that produces a sort of instantaneous vow to create a sort of 'barrier' to future sin, guilt, etc. Sometimes this vow 'feels' more conscious, i.e. I have willful agency in the vow, but often it is very much instantaneous, and I am more agreeing with the vow than I am willfully making it.
2. Stakes are High: Any time one of these insta-vows occurs, whatever I want most or least want to occur to me, be taken from me, etc, is always served up as the reward or penalty for breaking or keeping my vow.
3. But What If This is God Testing Me: Now, based on the above logical reasoning you would think I would be able to quickly identify this pattern and conclude that perhaps this is my brain playing tricks on me, however, as often seems the case in OCD thinking, I always tend to wonder "What if the source of this is God testing me?"..."What if I really did willfully make this vow, am I now bound to it despite its haste, having been done in a spirit of fear, etc?"
Essentially, I've been stuck in this same thought cycle for several years now. What it all comes down to is this: I really do fear and revere God, and I don't want to displease Him.
When I go against these vows, I feel terrible, and yet I believe this to be the true path to healing. The scariest part is that I have built so much of my relationship with God around these sort of visceral promptings, nudges, etc, that when I try to break the vows I've made in an effort to engage in a sort of spiritual ERP therapy, the result is a feeling that can only be described as 'disrupted communion with God'. It is almost as if the compulsions restore a sense of communion with Him.
Now, the hope I have comes from Christ, knowing that in Him all of my sins, past, present, and future have been dealt with on the cross and that His Word tells me that he does not count them against me or remember them any more because of Jesus.
It is just so hard to silence that nagging voice that whispers in my ear saying "Yes, you're saved in an eternal sense, but you better not break these vows because God will punish you and make all of these horrible ultimatums come true in the 'temporal' sense.
I know that a sort of pettiness and vindictiveness that this inner voice posits is not true of Jesus, and thus of God, but I still waver, falling back into the 'but what if He won't be merciful this time, what if He will hold me to this one, etc."
I've run across similar posts to this one and often the advice is something akin to 'pray about it, see which vows you should keep and which you shouldn't.' Although well intentioned, this sort of advice is not helpful to a person whose mind can already condemn them by finding any little reason to justify the sort of 'but what if this time its real' thinking that OCD generates.
I am at the point where I do not think micromanaging these vows is productive. I feel like my only salvation from this struggle is a radically renewed mind, a brand new way of thinking about these vows past and present and a radical deviation from a sort of 'maybe this one is real, maybe it isn't way of thinking'. So I present to you this question which has plagued me for years:
Even if these vows were done consciously, is the blood of Jesus able to cover and annul them anyway?
Will my asking God to annul these vows, regardless of whether they were done willfully, guarantee that I am freed from the ultimatums they present?
This is the sort of worst case scenario thinking that I have to entertain to be freed from this struggle. I would be very, very grateful for any resolute conclusions from the Word that others within this community could offer. I want total, and final liberation from this fear of temporal punishment that I know many others in this forum have also struggled with. I want to rest in the mercy and love of a God who did not withhold sending his own Son to die. Thank you friends for your time and advice.
