on the bright side, you had the guts to admit it. even if it was to strangers on the internet. i, on the other hand, said nothing about it on sunday and probably wouldn't have, either...
i got really frustrated with having to constantly fight myself about everything. it's so exhausting. so, in a momentary fit of anger and bitterness, i slipped up too. oddly enough, it did absolutely nothing for me...someone's been switching out the coffee with decaf, and I suspect it's God ;) even if, at the moment, there's that aforementioned frustration and bitterness going on. hmm.
random side note? i'm in love with this song...it's a remake of an old hymn called "Not What my Hands". The remake is by Aaron Keyes, and it's...amazing. Exactly what I needed to hear today. Wish you could hear it but it's not online anywhere, I'll post the lyrics for you...really, you don't notice the hymn language when you're listening, but...
Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul
Not what my toiling flesh has done can make my spirit whole
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God
Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load
ch.
These guilty hands are raised
Filthy rags are all I bring
And I have come to hide beneath your wings
These holy hands are raised
Washed in the fountain of your grace
And now I wear your righteousness
Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin
And that alone O Lamb of God can give me peace within
Thy love to me O God not mine O Lord to Thee
Can rid me of this dark unrest and set my spirit free
(Ch)
Bridge
We are broken we are yours
We are broken we are yours
Thy grace alone O God to me can pardon speak
Thy power alone O Lamb of God can this sore bondage break
And no other work save Thine no other blood will do
The strength of that which is divine can bear me safely through
(Ch)
Tag
And now I wear your righteousness
And now these holy hands are raised
Washed in the fountain of your grace
Holy hands are raised
Washed in the fountain of your grace
I praise the God of Grace ,I trust His truth and might
He calls me His, I call Him mine, my God, my joy, my light
My Lord has saved my life and freely pardon gives
I love because He first loved me, I live because he lives
Last edited by aquatickitten : 14-11-2008 at 05:20 AM.
Reason: typos. probably still missed some.
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
[quote=dazedandconfused;1215278]the whole point is that HE's the one who does the changing...we CANT do it by ourselves...
Sure, so why doesn't he? I remember when I was 6 or 7 (it was the first primary school I went to) that I prayed to be someone else so I didn't have to keep being me. Now sure, I had come up with the wrong solution, but basically I just didn't want life to be so unbearable. So why didn't he change me/the situation? I really believed he would answer ('cos this was something serious, instead of 'extra pocket money' or 'passing my spelling test' and stuff like that - I could understand that he didn't always get round to those ones...!)
god works in odd ways that we dont expect in his time frame. he answers all of our prayers but not how you expect it
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
just wanted to check in before I go to classes...Tokoloshe, I have a reply for you but it takes more time than I've got ATM, so I'll post later. Raspberryren, glad you found us :)
Another round of intro's, I guess? LOL. I'm Jacie, 18, at community college and then hopefully a neurosci major, and then med school.
Last edited by Freedom Fighter : 14-11-2008 at 04:14 PM.
Reason: adding
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"
Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
im ren and im 15 and God is honestly the only one who gets me through the day. i pray to Him every few minutes, whether its just a quick request or a quick "hi" im constantly praying and im prayign He will help me beat the urges once and fror all.
lately though, im feeling alone, like God has abandonded me....
Julie, 21 , sitting on my butt right now, just got home from work. I call myself "christian" but these days I wonder 'cuz lately it seems to be a misnomer..... :(
I try to love the sinner but it's more than the sin will allow. I've looked a long time into the dark,
hoping the truth would show me how
~Bad Cliché
i made this post in the MH board but ther was one bit i thought maybe Christians might help me with better
Quote:
i always go to church on a saturday with my mum and it's such a wonderful thing but how can i go when i ought to be dead, how can i receive the Lord in communion when i am worse than nothing. but 'my'/Miriam's parents mustn't know what i'm thinking because they're convinced i am human, they'd try to stop this. i want to go and if i don't go they'll know something's up.
if that doesn't make sense, the whole post's here: http://www.recoveryourlife.com/forum...ad.php?t=72843
but it is quite long
any advice with the church thing is appreciated (though i feel i've asked this before, sorry if so!)
pax
Felicia, 18, hopefully headed off to college in January. I walked away from God when I was younger, and am now trying to work through some of my reservations about Him due to some negative church experiences to find my way back.
i'm eryn and i'm 16 =)
rasberryren: i actually feel the exact same right now lol...
but no...God will never abandon you. that's whats keeping me going..
tokoloshe: (i'm not saying this is how it is in your case at all) but for me it was that i wasn't actually a christian..and i didn't really care what god wanted to do with my life...i just wanted him to just swoop into my life and make everything go away and make me happy and perfect and he didn't, now that i have given my life to him, he's changed me soooo much...i still screw up a lot, but i'm not anywhere near the person i was before.
i think that sometimes god allows us to go through something to strengthen our faith in him. whatever the situation, god has a purpose for it, and even though to us it may seem like what we're going through could have NO good outcomes, we don't know the future like God does...so i think that as hard as it is, we just have to trust Him..
Last edited by dazedandconfused : 14-11-2008 at 11:32 PM.
Ren...others have said it much better than I, so I'll direct you to them. I'm not really qualified to say anything on this one, due to the log in my eye...;) The Dark Night of The Soul.
waiting in the dark, i'm going to reply to your original post, ok?
tokoloshe:
I don't know you, and I don't know what you've been through...I only know my life. I don't want to minimize or write off the hurt you're feeling. Pain sucks. Feeling abandoned and alone sucks. I'm sorry you were hurt, and feel betrayed. But I truly believe that God heard your every prayer, and that his heart breaks when you're hurting. I don't have a definite answer for you. I don't even have a definite answer for myself. This is what finally showed me, convinced me of the depths of God's love, that he did not withhold any good thing from me because of anger or sadism. I know it's long, but it is really worth reading it.
And this is another page, this time about pain and evil and how God could possibly still be good and kind and loving.
Julie: do you say that because you aren't sure what you believe, or because you've noticed that the word christian has come to have a very negative meaning in today's society? if it's the second, you should know that there is a growing number of people who won't call themselves christians because of the ideas it triggers in people's minds--often one of prejudice, hatred, and hypocrisy. instead they use the term followers of jesus, or followers of the way, as the early church did.
Jacie: It's more because I'm really fighting to hold onto what's left of my faith these days. I believe in God and I know he's still there my belief in him doesn't waver much but I don't feel it. To get that knowledge from my head to my heart and to understand that he loves me despite the fact that I'm a major screw up just doesn't seem to happen anymore and I have a hard time remembering that the grace and forgiveness that's preached about applies to me as well as everyone else. I feel like such a hypocrite that I don't even know if I have the right to use that term anymore, for fear that I become one of those people who gives the true christians a bad name. Christian means "Christ Like" and I'm the farthest thing from it right now. If that makes any sense at all. I just feel dead and I hate it because I know there's so much more, and I know it's not what God wants. I love my pastor she's a sweetheart, but when she found out I cut 2 years ago she said, okay..., offered to pray with me again later(still waiting), basically wrote this site off as a pity party, telling me if I needed to be around folks worse off than I to make myself feel better then I needed professional help and never mentioned a word about any of it again. in a way I'm thankful she doesn't understand but I wish she would take the time to try to understand just what RYL is and just how many people it's saved when no one else including the church would - or could help them or give them a second look instead of judging them and looking right through them or ignoring these things as a "secular" problem. I'm not saying that that's what jaded me but I think it helped, I quit even trying to get help from the church at that point. One christian lady helped me more than she'll ever know, she'd been there and gave me some great advice and food for thought, but for some unknown reason about a year and a half or two years ago, she just quit speaking to me or returning emails, now when she sees me she just says hi, how are you and goes on her way. I'm thankful she has never used anything I told her against me, I know she had a genuine concern but I wish she would give me some reason for just walking away. I do thank her though because without her I know I'd be in far worse shape than I am now, she kept me holding on for a while longer. I just feel so hypocritical and so hopelessly helpless to rekindle that fire and that feeling I had years ago, I don't know if I'll ever find my way back there, or if there even is a way back...Sorry Jacie, that turned more into a pointless venting mess than a concise answer to your question :(
~Jewel~
I try to love the sinner but it's more than the sin will allow. I've looked a long time into the dark,
hoping the truth would show me how
~Bad Cliché
Jewel: Ouch. That's pretty close to where I am right now, even down to the pastor (though mine was male) and the christian woman who saved my life and then disappeared on me.
Here's something that God reminded me of literally 5 seconds ago (since we're just starting to really talk again...). We all seem to have this idea that being humble means denying that we matter. That's not true. Being humble means admitting who we really are, believing what God tells us about ourselves. I obviously don't know, but I suspect that when this woman stopped being there for you it really hurt you. I know I felt horribly abandoned, because she was the first person in my life I really trusted, and I started questioning whether that was a good choice. Out of what I thought was respect for her and thankfulness for what she did, I ignored my pain and continued smiling and acting like nothing was wrong. Today, that pain (and all the other pain in my life I've ignored for similar reasons) has had a chance to fester and destroy my connection with God, as doubts I refused to acknowledge entrenched themselves in my heart.
You don't have to take it all with a smile. You're allowed to hurt. You're God's precious child and you matter just as much as every other person on this planet. Don't make yourself into something less. Don't deny that you have a right to be hurt. God's calling me out on this right now, and I suspect I'm about to spend a good part of the night flat on my face sobbing as I open up my heart and soul to him for the first time in a very long time. I grew up being told that I was nothing, that I deserved nothing, that I was only worth what I could do for people, that I had no right to anything and should be grateful for every little kindness, even if that meant being thankful I wasn't being hit harder. I had no right to be hurt or angry. I am learning that not only am i allowed to hurt, but that I am precious to God and he is protective of me and angry that I was hurt, as any father would be angry if their child was mistreated.
Maybe none of this applies to you, but I want to put it out there anyway. I'm about to go spend time in God's presence, and I'm shaking knowing how much emotion it will entail...the pain, and possibly even worse, the hope. Because hope is dangerous. Trust is dangerous.
i absolutely love this thread and all of you guys...seriously...i've been feeling horribly alone right now and just seeing all of the posts of all the people who understand how i feel and are going through some of the same things helps a lot...
Candy Tetris
Mahjong
Othello
Mumu
