Ah, I thought highschool was going to be the toughest time of my life, but I was wrong! Sometimes I think it would be better to go back to highschool and refocus my thinking and care more about my future.
I'm cleaning houses for a living right now, and it seems my life is just in a big fat depressing rut. When I read blogs like my friend Tabitha's it makes me realize how far away from God I truly am. When I think I'm ok I get a big slap in the face reminding me how not ok I am and then that makes me feel ashamed for not doing what I was called to do and sad because I don't know how to get back on track. Conviction is harsh.
I've really been struggling lately with some issues like am I really saved and if I am why don't I feel any different. Now I'm not saying that I never accepted Jesus Christ into my life, because I did, I'm saying that maybe I was believing the wrong thing all these years. I knew that if you believe in God, believe that Jesus died for my sins and arose on the third day, and did not sin, then that was all you needed to get into heaven. Now I know that's not enough. You have to have a personal relationship with Jesus; and although I know this, I mean I truly know and believe this, I can't seem to do it. I can't discipline myself to read my Bible and spend time in prayer every day, and that scares me. We had a children's service one Sunday a while back and part of the speaker's sermon was a story of a preacher who was dying and he was on his bed screaming about the flames coming up around his legs and everyone in that hospital room knew what was happening. He was going to hell. A preacher, a man of God. That scared the crap out of me. If that happened to a preacher who knew the word of God inside and out and who probably led other people to God, then what's going to happen to me? I sure don't want to have a false belief and convince myself that what I'm doing is enough when it's never enough. You can never do enough for God, because he gave us the breath in our lungs and he can take it away in half a heartbeat.
So all this and more is going on in my head and heartache is filling me to overflow, when I found some comfort in a passage from a book I'm reading called "How to Talk About Jesus Without Freaking Out" by Jim and Karen Covell and Victorya Michaels Rogers that says there should be three parts to your testimony: Before Christ (B.C.), Meeting Christ (year zero), and After Christ (A.D.) OK the part that got me was this: "Year Zero is the time you met Christ and consciously chose to follow Him-the moment of your conversion." So I am saved, it's just that all the time since I accepted Christ has been wasted on who knows what kind of unimportant crap that at the time I thought was the most important thing in the world. I've been asleep for 24 years and am just now waking up to look back on how much I've missed. I can hardly bear the thought of how many chances I've missed to do God's work. I just realized that it's a shocker that I should find comfort in a book that's not the Bible, but yes folks I did, sometimes that happens.
I always think that I don't have a good testimony because I grew up in a Christian home, never did drugs or smoked, never got into trouble at school (ok there was that paddling in Kindergarten but that wasn't my fault, honestly! ok it might have been, I didn't like nap time), and was so shy that I cried at the drop of a hat. Truly, up until after college, you could not get me to talk in front of any type of crowd or to talk to people I didn't know. But because of God I am standing in front of kids making a complete and total idiot out of myself, singing and praising the God who gave me the courage to do it, and not caring who sees me because I know it's all for Him.
Wow, this is a really long post but I feel better getting it out. I've been moping around telling myself that nobody wants to hear my problems because they have their own, but that was Satan whispering in my ear and preying on my weakness. God gave me the strength tonight to break down that wall of self pity, and showed me that Jesus is my life and to find joy and comfort in Him.
PS
If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all. For real, I'm sensitive and I take well meaning but uninformed advice as snide comments against me. Just so ya know.
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