I spent many years in church thinking I knew who Jesus Christ was and I thought I knew all that there was about His Word. I believed this all while I lived a morally degenerate life. I kept spiraling deeper into lust and sinful thoughts and perverse pleasures of the flesh. Finally I had hit bottom and was on the verge of destroying and losing my family because of my actions. Ll this time my wife had been praying for me. I came to the realization that the things I had done could have destroyed everything I had ever loved. I fell to my knees there in my closet totally alone and begged Jesus to help my family and to help and change me. I truly for the first time felt His presence and actually knew what it meant to know Him in my heart and in my life. It has been 3 years now and he has called me to teach. I have a burden to tell others about Him and to tell other Carnal Christians who He is and introduce Him to them again. I also feel burdened for the teaching of true real Christian doctrine because I feel that we have somehow lost it and we don’t really search His word anymore to really know Him.
I can so relate to this. In the past year, I’ve come to really love God, not just say that I love him. It’s been a process for sure. I grew up in a Christian home, yet a very dsyfunctional one. My idea of Christianity was really a view of God that put me in the category of unworthy and one who could never “earn” God’s love. And all of us really can’t. But we don’t have too. And well, many years of thinking this way just left me a mess. I realized last year that I was just blindly following Christ for the sake of it being right. But i didn’t have the heartfelt dedication and I wasn’t really doing much outside of going to church. I was in a Bible Study last year that really challenged me. I have so far to go. I’m still struggling with things — mostly lies the devil tells me — but I am not doing things to earn love, but doing them because I love the One who loved me first. And I have been praying about where God wants me too. It’s great God has called you to teach. How did you know this is where God wanted? Lately I’ve been thinking alot about missions. Mostly I’m thinking about the lost. But I keep praying “God please use me somewhere”. I feel useless at times. And we just started attending a new church, so I haven’t really found a niche there. I also homeschool…so sometimes I just wonder if that is my “ministry”. I just feel like God wants to do more….any thoughts on this? Have you felt this way too? Sorry for my long life story. Our last church basically compromised on the teachings of Christ and we left. I didn’t feel bad about it at all. Some say that we should have stayed to change it from within, but I was having trouble knowingly subjecting to my children to water-downed preaching and sermons. So now we are at Bethlehem Baptist (John Piper’s church). It’s great. But still not sure where God wants me! If you have any input that would be great…I know you don’t have the answers..just looking for a little insight.
I got your last email, but then I accidentally deleted it. I did read it, but just so you know…I wasn’t ignoring you! Hope all is well. Thanks for the input.
I love your site. Keep it up !