Dearest Bridget,
You described me, shamefully, to a "T".
What a struggle to keep oneself unstained by the world!
Even the little things can trip us up.
Nonetheless, this is what I have learned in my life, on my journey:
You can leave the Lord and do bad and then return with a whole heart and be received again. Thank the Lord!
After receiving the Lord as my personal Saviour, around 10 or 11 years old, I learned and grew, in the Lord, and got baptized (in water) and came to love Jesus Christ more than any other thing or person! I witnessed and enjoyed it! It was easy for me. I meditated on God's Word day and night. It was the love of my life! I was in church, almost every single day and Christians were my friends and we saw many miracles!
Uh oh! Then, I graduated from High School, went off to college, and became despressed. I, not only, was away from home for the first time in my life but I also had a learning disability that no one nor I, myself, knew I had (at that time) and I got very ill with Pnemonia or something of that sort and had to go back home.
When I was at home I got well in less than a week. The doctors thought it would take 2 to 3 weeks. I went back to college and ended up depressed again and I could not keep notes like the other students and so my counselor called my partents to pick me up and take me home.
I was upset that I could not do college and work towards becoming the "Missionary Nurse" that I wanted to be, for the Lord.
Notice that I said that "I wanted" to be.
I've learned, over the years, how to distinguish between my wants and God's.
God didn't want me away from home and in college. That's why I couldn't get it done. (Kind of like, "Jona and the whale". He thought he would do what He wanted to do and found that he could not.)
Well, I realized that I went to that college because of a Christian guy, in our church family, who I liked and wanted to follow and he went there so I decided to go there; plus, everyone was making a big tadoo about me being the first graduate of our church's Christian School and about making them proud and I was the oldest child in my family and it was being expected of me. (You know how exciting graduations can be.)
Well, upon coming home from college, I had low self-esteem because I didn't mount up to everyone's expectations and I felt that I had let God down; plus, as I began to get back into the swing of things, back at home, I found that a lot of things had changed and were not good. (I had been away for just 6 months.)
Many of my Christian brothers and sisters had fallen into sexual sin and one super great Christian friend had come back from a year of living it up in the world with another and I was just dumb-founded, to say the least!
I remember, telling the Lord, that whatever He was doing - I could not handle it anymore and that I was going to give up my walk with Him.
He let me! Or it seemed He did.
I think because I was older, then, I had new temptations that I did not have when I was younger and they were very strong and unrelenting.
I can't go on and tell you everything, but mean to just tell you what, I, have learned and believe the Lord has told me, about this ugly struggle I've had in this life:
1. You can be a Christian who ends up being saved, only, "So as by fire". Meaning, you believe and you struggle and you do good but you, also, fail many a times ending up with works that burn in the end, but you are saved so as by fire or, as we may put it, by the hair on our chinny-chin-chins or by the skin of our teeth. Barely so, but we did make it because God held on to us and wouldn't let us go as far as, actually, becoming unsaved or blotted out, etc.
"Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
"If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
"If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: BUT HE HIMSELF SHALL BE SAVED; YET SO AS BY FIRE."
1st Corinthians 3:13-15 in the King James version of the Holy Bible
"But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that WE SHOULD NOT BE CONDEMNED WITH THE WORLD."
1st Corinthians 11:32 in the King James version of the Holy Bible
2. The Lord will receive you again and again, but it is going to be harder and harder for you to come back to Him because you will feel ashamed and scared of failing again. (You and me, at this time.) But knowing that you need Him and really can't live without Him, will force you to keep struggling to get back in line with Him.
I believe the Lord leaves the 99, so to speak, and goes to get the one that strayed and finds him/her ALWAYS before it is too late. That's why it is said that "He who began a good work in you will perform it to the end." We feel bad because we have to keep being rescued. We are weak but He is strong.
The only way to keep the strength of the Lord, is to exercise our "faith" DAILY. If we miss a day, we are going to be a little weaker than the day before. If we skip a few days, it is to our soul what food is to our bodies and we are going to be even weaker and that is when we have the worst of times.
This is why God doesn't want us to neglect our meetings with other Christians: so we don't become weak and discouraged. We need to stay in His Word, taking up our cross DAILY ("daily" is the key. If we eat food for the body, daily, we should eat spiritual food for our spirit just as much.)
I'm talking for myself as well as you. "Encourage one another while it is still called TODAY."
My spirit is welling-up within me, but I want to have the verses from God's Word to show you; however, I do not have the time to look them all up (at this time; for, they are many!
Just, I will tell you this last thing, for now:
Put God first in everyone of your days! Purposely, set your alarm an hour earlier, every morning of every day, for Him. Do nothing but pray, meditate and sing unto the Lord from that time 'til you have to get ready to do your earthly duties for that day.
Take one day at a time but make sure that you give God the first part of everyone of those days!
It's just like it's been proven: "Breakfast" has been proven to be the most important part of everyone's day. If you want your body and your brain to function at its best, every day, eat breakfast!
If you want your spirit to function at its best, every day, eat spiritual food before you begin each day.
"But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law, he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree, firmly planted, by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and in whatever he does he prospers!" (Read Psalm 1)
DELIGHT yourself in the law of the Lord.
MEDITATE DAY and NIGHT.
BE like a tree, FIRMLY PLANTED, by streams of water.
YIELD FRUIT.
Your leaf will NOT WITHER.
I will lift you up in prayer, daily!
4givN
