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Did I back slide or am I bring to hard on myself?
I don't really know how to explain everything but I am going to try my best so you can understand my problem. I am going to start from the very begining from where it all started. I am sorry if if its to long but it'd the only I know how to explain it. Well here goes my dad died when I was little I am now a 25 year old female anf my life has been medded up ever since which dosnt make any since at all to me because I never really knew my dad because my parents divorced when I Was 3 because my dad molested me which I don't really remember that either its just what I was told and I only was allowe supervised vidits on the weekends with him. Not having my dad around messed up my life so much when I got older.when I turned 16 I stared going crazy and turned into a wild party gir l berf ore I turned 16 I was what you would call a goody goody. When I turned 16 I stared drinking smoking pot and having sex outside of marriage un protected but 2 years ago I got saved and dedicated my life to jesus christ as my lord and savior but awhile back I slipped with a couple of guys and I talked to pastor Justin about my mistake and he sau d I was being to hard on my self and he says everybidy makes mistakes is he right or do I need to jus t give up on everyhing and stop trying because no matter how hard I try I am not going to change that's just how I feel right now .like know matter how hard I try I am not going to change so why nother even trying ?
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Want to answer more questions in the Miscellaneous category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Spirituality?
We are always more critical of ourselves than anyone else ever will be. God know's what it feels like for humans to be tempted. Our God is a loving God and will love you, no matter how many times you mess up. God doesnt expect you to be perfect, only God is perfect but for some reason, many new believers feel they must be perfect from the moment they dedicate their lives to Jesus. I've got a church background and at one point hubby and I were home group leaders. I found there were people who stayed away from church and fellowship cus they smoked cigarettes and were finding it hard to stop and gave up quitting and felt unworthy of being called God's child. When you messed up as a kid, did you ever feel unworthy of being part of the family with Mom? Did you ever feel if you made a mistake, said you were sorry, Mom forgave you and you did it again, that Mom would not forgive you the 2nd time? Did that ever happen? Mom not forgiving you and saying you could no longer be part of the family?
Sounds ridiculous right? Well, parents are supposed to be loving and patient with their child in training their child. We are being trained right now to become citizens of heaven. The earth is our classroom.I have always felt that what is most important to God is actually very simple: Love God, Love yourself and Love others. Spelled out, that means not ignoring God but working on talking to God more often. From my life experience, God is more interested in the fact that I am willing to please Him and always checking in to ask Him if I am still pleasing Him. A bunch of fancy worship songs and fancy formal prayers are not how God communicates with me. My God has a great sense of humor and will occasionally say something funny that makes me laugh. It's as cozy and casual as sitting with my dad or uncle chatting.
Love yourself means accepting the fact of where you are at right now, deciding you want to become more like God, and understanding that it is a process. Loving yourself means you don't place yourself in situations that you know are not good for you as far as your spiritual growth, situations where you will be too tempted to get pulled off track or where you will be treated poorly by others. Its one thing to turn the other cheek but we carry that too far. Its good to not let someones name calling and verbal challenges or put downs not cause us to become angry and want to defend our good name, but if day in and day out, you hang out with someone who bullies, or engages in physical , mental or emotiional abuse towards you, you aren't loving yourself enough to leave that situation.
Loving others? I don't know if you had siblings but those who have siblings know you can love them but have days you can't put up with them and yes, fight and argue. And as family, parents taught us to makeup with our sibs as soon as possible...which includes asking forgivenes, and giving forgiveness and letting go of the incident in owns mind. they are also just learning like you.
All of creation is your sisters and brothers because God created them too. So what matters is how you treat not just friends but strangers for they are still part of the greater family of God, his creation, whether they Know who their Heavenly Father is or not.
If you work on all 3, and God is looking at your heart, and knows you are not hard hearted but genuinely feel bad when you mess up, thats what matters most to Him, that you are still trying, working at it. A person who is spiritually not moving forward anymore is the only one who God may be concerned more about, but He also knows he's given us free will and will not interfere with our choices. However He's always got his arms open when we come running to him with our "skinned knees and hurt feelings" He picks us up, dusts us off, and gives us a pep talk that we can do it and send us off again. Don't be hard on yourself, God isnt hard on you. If you want to be more like God, and he isn't acting that way, there neither is there any reason for you to do so.. You have a good Pastor. Tell him how much you appreciate him. Blessings!
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I'm not a very religious person though I have friends that are. If one of them were answering you they would say something like, the Lord never gives you more than you can handle, or that the Lord never asks for more than you can give.
From these words I would say that yes you are being too hard on yourself. We are human. We make mistakes, we hunger for that which we cannot have or should not have or do. This is all part of the human frailties.
Two years is a short period of time in which to reinvent one ‘self. You spent seven years living another life another way of life. You just don't throw a switch and change overnight. You are going to have yearnings.
Look at it this way. You need to lose 20 pounds so you go on a diet. During the first weeks of the diet you yearn for all the junk food you've been eating. You finally feel like you have it out of your system and one night you go to your mothers and there on the table is a double chocolate cake with double fudge icing. You know you shouldn't have any. You walk by it but come back again and again and again. You can just about taste that cake. To my way of thinking is this is where you found yourself when you slipped. In essence you picked up a knife and cut yourself a sliver of that cake and know you are beating yourself up over it.
Remember what I said above; YOUR HUMAN, YOU MADE A MISTAKE. You confessed your mistake to Pastor John and he has forgiven you. Learn from this mistake, allow it to make you stronger and move forward. Do not look back.
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