Compliments of the Season! I have not been following up and I am so sorry. But still it is a beautiful day to write blogs.
As I sit here in front of the computer at work hoping my boss doesn’t walk in on me and my colleague looking over my shoulder at me writing this I feel so much better than I felt waking up this morning because I know I’m about to open up to you guys and bare it all.
I wrote here my struggle with lethargy and how I intended to fight it. But the ugly truth is that I was weak and so I became a coward…I backslid. You see, backsliding comes in stages; It starts with losing more and more quiet time; making up excuses for not being able to pray like You used to; blaming the people in your life either for not helping you grow like they were supposed to or for just giving up ocn helping you with your salvation; then the heavy weight of sin comes in, the sins you knew you were struggling with now becomes the ‘reality’ and reminder that you were still bound to them; the indulging comes; the search but lack of remorse; then acceptance of the fact that you don fuck up; guilt; then acceptance of that guilt and the ‘wicked note’ that you have fallen too far. Then the final stage of just going back to the you you though you left behind. This was it for me.
This blog was a result of my burning hot desire for all things God. I wanted to know more and search deeper and share my findings and faith with you guys. But my constant battles didn’t let me post or rather I was too much of a coward to fight. You see, I knew I was being fought I knew it, it was so glaring, I identified the sign and I knew the symptoms all too well. I even had a dream about it before it all began. It began with the doubt that I couldn’t possibly be so on fire without checking myself, I said to myself ‘I’m moving too fast maybe I should slow down?’, I asked myself in silence sometimes if I could really keep on living and let those things be a thing of the past and hate them like I was supposed to. I realised I didn’t the thought of going back so I started questioning my salvation. ‘WAS I REALLY SAVED?’
I tried to shake it off, tell myself feelings don’t matter in the things of God, even wrote a series on it (which I am even yet to conclude) lol, u see, I let feelings get the best of me. I was all feels and no action. I still am.
Salvation doesn’t mean you would be free of the world…if anything it is the moment the war begins, Change is a conscious decision and it requires work input, Grace is that unmerited push we get to keep going, that courage we on our own will never be able to muster up to look sin in the eye and say ‘Not today, Not Ever’.
Sometimes its not sin, it could be anything, new Job, new relationship, TV, even stuff that don’t necessarily bring you pleasure any of these things can take your heart away from God. Even the things we sometimes don’t pay attention to like comparison.
Mine started out as self doubt as a result of comparison between myself and others, I felt it should be taken one step at a time like I’ve seen people do. LOL but God doesn’t follow our patterns, He moved David from shepherd boy to King elect in one day, He made lepers whole again in matter of seconds, don’t get me started on the water to wine story. God is the definition of defying patterns.He teaches as He pleases, He moves as He pleases. But you know the best thing? He does so in our favour, He does so for us. In all His masterfulness we are the centre of his thoughts. I asked myself once ‘Why all this freewill when I am just messing it all up?’ I wanted what happened to Paul to happen to me, bright light, a voice, throw in the blindness if you want anything but the freewill to choose.
But its just Love, He loves us too much and he wants us to want to love him back by choice…what a Gentleman! We have all this love in Him but yet we still crave the ones that often come with an expiry date. I get it tho, lol the loneliness of being celibate wanting to have someone hold you, or even the fear of the truth that drives us to lie, society everyday in our faces telling us we are never enough or never like the ‘perfect’ ones forcing us to self doubt, even in churches these days, no one wants to nurture, everybody wants to ‘shine’ ,be seen. It is a flawed world we live in. The risk of falling into old ways are daily staring us in the face.
But God’s grace is sufficient, we may sin but we don’t have to stay in that sin, He gave us the strength to get back up, He died so we won’t have to suffer that curse. God’s love is unexplainable and is so available.
One thing that we need is discipline, we were not born with it, neither is it taught, discipline is a decision and a hard one too but with God all things are possible.
Don’t let your fears, your doubts, sin, or anything hold you back from experiencing Christ.
1 John 4:4.
I pray that we all find our way back to our first love.
I will by the Grace of God keep doing this.
Love.
Chito.
The21stcenturyyouth 