flipflop2234

Here's my current issue. As a kid, I believed in non-denominational Christianity because that's what my parents believed, I became a pretty lukewarm non practicing Christian from the age of 13 until I returned to my faith at around the age of 17. As I approached January of my senior year (2017), I truly committed to making Christianity my life. I began to see real change in my life after I began to read the word with intent to obey, joined a bible believing church, and prayed more often. I was seeing myself change my mind about how I wanted to live my life and I became more aware of how different my perspective was on life and my goals in life. I kept cutting out sin where I saw it and seeking to grow in my faith. I have been reading about repentance lately because I wanted to see if my repentance was genuine or not. I keep on seeing things about how repentance requires brokenness over sin and sorrow but this didn’t seem to be the case for me.Upon my return to the faith I understood I was a sinner and in dire need of Jesus to save me from the wages of sin (death) and gladly asked God to forgive me by Jesus’ sacrifice with confidence in God’s mercy and promises to those who put faith in Jesus. This made me happy and not sad but these articles are making me fear that because I didn’t go through a season of emotional sorrow towards God about my sin before expressing my faith towards Jesus and vow to turn away from sin that my repentance isn’t genuine. I can’t force myself to have emotions that aren’t there and this scares me. What do you think?

Right now I'm kind of freaking out. I am afraid that I do not have the Holy Spirit/ghost. I'm very worried that my repentance is out of fear and that my coming to Christ was not a calling from God, but me trying to save myself. Come to think of it when I did come to God I was very afraid of hell and I still am. There have been times where I have been filled with joy and happy to serve the Lord because of how overjoyed and sure I was with Peace knowing that I was saved. I have aknowledged that I am a sinner and I need God to forgive me through Jesus's sacrifice on the cross. I know that I have to trust him and have faith in him for my salvation. I believe in Jesus but I can't tell if my belief is real or not, I have faith in Jesus but I don't know if it's real or not. I've sought to live according to God's will and I've definitely produced some fruit, I've also turned away from a lot of sin in my life and have asked jesus to help me overcome sin daily. I constantly pray to God in prayer thanking him for the trials he puts me through and I hope that this is just one of them. I am worried sick that I do not actually have the Holy Spirit and that all the things that I've been doing have just been my feeble attempts at saving myself and that God has not called me at all but my stupid, mortal, sefish, horrible, sick, twisted mind has lead me to God as a sort of safety net for insurance. I want to be sincere and I want to serve God but I'm just so afraid that he hasn't really called me and the fact that I'm putting so much effort into learning about God, doing what his word says, turning away from sin, and praying to him is just proof that I am not sincere and that my efforts is attempt to overcompensate. I'm crying while writing this because it's so sad to think about god just looking at me shaking his head in disgrace at me because I wasn't one of the elect that he has called to him and he hasn't granted me the gift of repentance and faith for salvation because it's not his will to save me. I know God is sovereign and just to choose who he hardens and who he has mercy but serving to glorify god is extremely hard with the end destination of my fight of faith being second death. I have spread the gospel to people even when I really was embarrassed and scared for awkwardness and even brought my friend to faith in Christ but it's so hard to serve with this constant fear that God condems me. I call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and God to forgive me and rescue me daily, I aknowledge that I'm sinner daily, I ask God to fill me with the Holy Spirit daily, but I just feel like the fact that I still struggle with the feelings of unrest, uncertainty, and condemnation shows that God has handed me over to my own terrible twisted mind and that my purpose is not to be a child of God, but a vehicle for God's wrath as desribed in romans 9. I go through feelings of not doing enough to please God and that I have to be more obedient to feelings that I am trusting too much in myself and not enough on grace. I feel horrible and have gone from panic mode to sheer sadness and tears while writing this. Please help me. Tell me the truth about what you all think and not just stuff to make me feel better please.

Thanks man. Yeah I have been readin the Bible every day one of two ways. One: pick one chapter and really chew on it and reflect on what it means, reading it through in different translations Two: Read through a large amount like a novel and just get as much of that good word as I can!

I attend a Bible believing baptist church and my best friend is the person that enticed me to come to his church. I love the church and have gotten to know the pastors and love the fact that there is not great emphasis on tradition or ceremonies. The sermons are usually long and I like the speaker.

I'm afraid that my repentance is not genuine. I have confessed my sins to the Lord but I am afraid that the only reason I have come to him as out of fear and that I love the Lord's gifts and not him. I greatly fear hell, for good reason, it's hell. I have had to deal with many doubts and fears during my walk with the Lord but this one has really scared me. After my confession to the Lord and plea for forgiveness, I have of course attempted to turn from my sin. I haven't had much trouble addressing the habitual sin in my life that I can cut out and the Lord has been graceful in allowing my successes such as my ceasing of masturbation, pornography, lying, cheating, and even stealing. This conviction is usually never in the form of a discernible "godly sorrow" or crappy feeling but rather a realization that I need to stop followed by fear of disobeying the creator of heaven and earth. My change of action usually comes from me reading a sort of warning or forbidding passage in scripture and seeing that it applies to me and then I pray for strength and motivation to cease said sin and ask for forgiveness for doing it in the past. I am usually lacking in remorse over the past sin because I have confidence that Jesus payed for me in full and get a sort of motivation to stop because I've been set free from the bondage sin and get assurance of eternal life because of my apparent growing in faith and obedience. This usually has worked with my realization of the wrong committed in combination with fear of God's Wrath if I disobey him as my means of motivation. I have asked God to transform my fear into a perfect love that is spoken of in the Bible that drives out fear and I've asked him to help me love HIM and JESUS rather than just the gift of eternal life, peace, and joy. I've said that I'm sorry to the Lord and I wish that I have never committed those sins but I'm afraid that I don't feel sorry enough for the actual acts. I want to feel Godly sorrow for my sin and I know that my sin is basically spitting on Jesus in rebellion but I can't force myself to feel sorrow even though I want to! I typically find out that I am participating in a sin and confess it and seek to cease it right away to conform to gods will but a brokenness or sorrow is usually absent and I just pray that God would strengthen me to continue in abstinence of whatever sin is relevant. Is the path that I'm on looking healthy or do I need to do some serious reevaluating? Is my conviction through reading and hearing God's word followed by an urge to change my ways not of the spirit and of my own decietful heart? Id love to hear what you guys think.

(I posted this earlier in the wrong section) So I started going to church at a really young age and I was put into the grade school program at the mega church near our home. I don't remember how or when I was saved but I always believed in Jesus just because that's what I was told by my parents. I followed the example that my parents did and just treated religion as a sort of chore that you do on Sundays. As I Grew into the middle school program I started attending a church camp once a week every year (mostly because the camp was extremely fun despite the church aspect) for that one week I was always super "on fire for God" and wanted to be a good Christian. Of course having very shallow roots I always fell away to my own childish endeavors with very little Christian role models in my family and no huge push from my family. I got a refresher every year at camp just to repeat the cycle "I want to be a great Christian" and then just going back to the world. I hardly knew the Bible at all and just prayed to accept Jesus at Camp every year and I thought that that would suffice for my salvation. I basically took Godly grace for granted, and concluded that if I believed in Jesus that was enough and I could do whatever else as long as it wasn't "too bad". This definition was of course from my own moral ideas rather than God's. I stopped going to Camp when I was 13 and my family also slowly stopped attending church regularly. I no longer had constant reminders of God but Christianity was always in the back of my mind and I had the distant constant thought that it was right and that I should become a devoted Christian someday....but not now of course. I kind of ignored it all throughout my high school career and would revisit it every once in awhile but never really cared too much. When I was taking a tour of the Capitol building my junior year of high school, we heard a code red over the loudspeaker and it was said that somebody in the building had a gun. I was so afraid because I didn't feel right with God so I just downloaded a Bible app on my phone where we were hiding and just started to read and promise God that I would be a good Christian from then on. I made it out of the building fine and kind of forgot about how scared I was. Fast forward to my senior year of high school and I really started to open up the good book. It was slow but I was just reading through the gospel at my own pace but got discouraged here and there. There was finally a point where I started to genuinely try to abstain from all the sin that I was knowingly doing that was forbidden in the Bible. That's where I am right now. I have been reading the Bible lot and joined a good bible-believing Baptist Church. I now realize the true gospel. We are saved by grace through faith and not our own works. We can only please God with faith and your good works should be evidence of your faith and obedience to God, not your means of salvation. I was mistaken in thinking that the head knowledge that Jesus is Lord was enough and that I could just keep on sinning as much as I wanted. After reading parts of the bible such as Hebrews 6:4-8 and other warning such as when Esau was rejected in his repentance though he "saught it with tears". I wonder if I am beyond repentance. Ever since my slow but sure repentance I have quit looking at pornography , quit cheating in school, started volunteering even after not needing volunteer hours, and I've been trying to take captive of my thoughts and judge my actions by what God's word tells me to do. I was doing ok until I came to warning passages such as these "lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears" Hebrews 12:16‭-‬17 NKJV "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame." Hebrews 6:4‭-‬6 NKJV For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Hebrews 10:26‭-‬27 NKJV Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. Matthew 13:3‭-‬6 NKJV and they've just made me feel scared as if God is given up on me and my own deceitful heart is fooling me into thinking that I am in fellowship with him. Of course I fear God and his wrath and that's part of the reason I obey him, but I really want to love him. I have prayed that he would turn my fear into the perfect love that is said to drive out fear. When trying to impress one of my atheist peers before putting down my firm roots, I said that religion was made up by men to find meaning in life. I feel horrible about this and I feel as if I've betrayed God and that this would be impossible to forgive because I had already heard the gospel and accepted it. I don't know if I really meant this because of the fact that I am so drawn to God in the present but it doesn't change the fact that I said it and I am afraid I committed irreversible apostasy. I just wanted to know what you guys think of my situation and what your perspective on it is. Do fit the picture of an apostate as described? Am I in the same boat as Esau? Has God rejected my plea for fellowship and mercy asked on the basis of his son's perfect sacrifice because of my actions?

So I started going to church at a really young age and I was put into the grade school program at the mega church near our home. I don't remember how or when I was saved but I always believed in Jesus just because that's what I was told by my parents. I followed the example that my parents did and just treated religion as a sort of chore that you do on Sundays. As I Grew into the middle school progran started attending a church camp once a week every year (mostly because the camp was extremely fun of the church aspect) for that one week I was always super "on fire for God" and wanted to be a good Christian. Of course having very shallow roots I always fell away to my own childish endeavors with very little Christian role models in my family and no huge push from my family. I got a refresher every year at camp just to repeat the cycle "I want to be a great Christian" and then just going back to the world. I hardly knew the Bible at all and just prayed to accept Jesus at Camp every year and I thought that that would suffice for my salvation. I basically took God grace for granted, and concluded that if I believed in Jesus that was enough and I could do whatever else as long as it wasn't "too bad". This definition was of course from my own moral ideas rather than God's. I stopped going to Camp when I was 13 and my family also slowly stopped attending church regularly. I no longer had constant reminders of God but Christianity was always in the back of my mind and I had the distant constant thought that it was right and that I should become a devoted Christian someday....but not now of course. I kind of ignored it all throughout my high school career and would revisit it every once in awhile but never really cared too much. When I was taking a tour of the Capitol building my junior year of high school, we heard a code red over the loudspeaker and it was said that somebody in the building had a gun. I was so afraid because I didn't feel right with God so I just downloaded a Bible app on my phone where we were hiding and just started to read and promise God that I would be a good Christian from then on. I made it out of the building fine and kind of forgot about how scared I was. Fast forward to my senior year of high school and I really started to open up the good book. It was slow but I was just reading through the gospel at my own pace but got discouraged here and there. There was finally a point where I started to genuinely try to abstain from all the sin that I was knowingly doing that was forbidden in the Bible. That's where I am right now. I have been reading the Bible lot and joined a good bible-believing Baptist Church. I now realize the true gospel. We are saved by grace through faith and not our own works. We can only please God with faith and your good works should be evidence of your faith and obedience to God, not your means of salvation. I was mistaken in thinking that the head knowledge that Jesus is Lord was enough and that I could just keep on sinning as much as I wanted. After reading parts of the bible such as Hebrews 6:4-8 and other warning such as when Esau was rejected in his repentance though he "saught it with tears". I wonder if I am beyond repentance. Ever since my slow but sure repentance I have quit looking at pornography , quit cheating in school, started volunteering even after not needing volunteer hours, and I've been trying to take captive of my thoughts and judge my actions by what God's word tells me to do. I was doing ok until I came to warning passages such as these "lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears" Hebrews 12:16‭-‬17 NKJV "For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame." Hebrews 6:4‭-‬6 NKJV For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Hebrews 10:26‭-‬27 NKJV Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. Matthew 13:3‭-‬6 NKJV and they've just made me feel scared as if God is given up on me and my own deceitful heart is fooling me into thinking that I am in fellowship with him. Of course I fear God and his wrath and that's part of the reason I obey him, but I really want to love him. I have prayed that he would turn my fear into the perfect love that is said to drive out fear. When trying to impress one of my atheist peers before putting down my firm roots, I said that religion was made up by men to find meaning in life. I feel horrible about this and I feel as if I've betrayed God and that this would be impossible to forgive because I had already heard the gospel and accepted it. I can't remember ever truly believing in aetheism and I know that less than 2 months after my exchange with my peer I was still reading my Bible. I doubt that I really meant this because of the fact that I am so drawn to God in the present but it doesn't change the fact that I said it and the possibility scares me . I just wanted to know what you guys think of my situation and what your perspective on it is. Do fit the picture of an apostate as described? Am I in the same boat as Esau? Has God rejected my plea for fellowship and mercy asked on the basis of his son's perfect sacrifice because of my actions?