Worried that God will reject me

[flipflop2234]

(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? 

Edited May 13, 2017 by flipflop2234

[4LdKHVCzRDj2]

1 hour ago, flipflop2234 said:

Has God rejected my plea for fellowship and mercy asked on the basis of his son's perfect sacrifice because of my actions?

No, I believe you are here right now and thinking about it because you answered Him, and realized how far you actually were from Him all this time.

 

Continue seeking the Lord Jesus with all your heart, read His Word, ask Him to teach you everyday. You will learn everything.

 

I was in a similar state where you are right now some months ago... Man, I thought I knew the Lord back then actually (because I didn't).

 

Very good to know you decided to hear His voice and come to Him. He loves you very much.

 

God bless you!

Edited May 13, 2017 by 4LdKHVCzRDj2

[NOONE7]

On 5/13/2017 at 8:02 AM, flipflop2234 said:

(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? 

Hello

Keep on seeking the Lord diligently as it seems you already are!

Take care. 

[Guest]

You have listed some of those verses that we all do when we are condemning ourselves...here is another good one...

Matthew 7: 21 - “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

The thing is, God meets us right where we are, and he knows our faults and shortcomings. We are not perfect, nor ever will be on this earth, in our fallen state. Redeemed yes, but not perfected yet. God is faithful to His promises to not remember our sins. We live under His grace and mercy covering, not as a license to sin, but rather experiencing His unending Love for us, providing "70 x 7" forgiveness of sins.

Pm sent...

[JTC]

Hey Flip, I should've written a book when I was young enough to remember everything. You know how you said God was always in your mind, even if He was in the back of it. I was like that at 5 yrs old. My mother was a devout Catholic Christian who really loved God. My father had this dumb idea that God was only for children and women. So we almost never went to church. In grammar school my best friend was a Jewish kid. So from an early age I wondered who was right, us or them. It's not about that. I'm just trying to impress upon you how God was always in my mind. In spite of that my intelligence made me an atheist from 18 to 28. Actually at 26 I think God decided He had enough with my atheism and He started to change me. Being of God is life long journey and you're only at the beginning of it. I also want to say we are not living in the days of Esau. God deals differently with us now than He did back then. It was hard to be Godly when I was a kid but compared to now it was easy. And yet it certainly didn't seem easy. At least we didn't have porn in our phones and at our fingertips. Porn is a terrible thing, both for us guys and the girls. It ruins lives. It's addictive as bad as any drug. I'm in my 60's and sometimes I still think I want it. But I finally learned to not even look at it. But it's not easy.

I think you will be fine. That doesn't mean a life of smooth sailing. You'll probably hit many storms. But always remember that even when you were a kid you loved God. I hope I'm encouraging you because that's what I mean to do. I bet someday you'll be the 60 yr old guy encouraging some other young person. 

Have you ever tried listening to the Bible in addition to reading it? Try it, especially the dramatized versions. Sometimes when reading the Bible you get confused as to who's saying what. In the dramatized versions different people say the words of the various people who speak. It's almost like watching a movie. Often I open 2 tabs 1 with the actual Bible and the other where it's being read. I can spend hours doing that. It's just another way to keep God on my mind instead of the things of the world. The devil likes to use the Internet against us, but God in His infinite wisdom put it on people's minds to find ways to use the Internet for God. And they did. 

And you can always come here and someone will encourage you. 

God Bless. 

[Kelby]

Your story is very similar to mine. Seek after God, spend more time in His word, fast, pray. Don't lose hope 

4 who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 

1 Timothy 2:4

[Willa]

God points out our sin so that we may turn from it in the strength the Holy Spirit provides.  Christ in us.  He also does it so that we don't become self righteous.  He shows us to compare ourselves with Christ and not with each other. God never condemns.  He gives us peace. 

Rom 8:31  What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Rom 8:32  He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Rom 8:33  Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.

Rom 8:34  Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Rom 8:35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

Rom 8:36  As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."

Rom 8:37  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Rom 8:38  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,

Rom 8:39  nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Satan condemns us.  He is the accuser of the the brethren. He is a liar and the father of lies.  Satan causes doubt, confusion and turmoil.  If he accuses us of sin, it may be true.  We are sinners saved by grace.  But the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.  And God looks at us through blood covered glasses.  It is more important to see others as Christ sees them--to see their need instead of their faults; we all need His love and forgiveness.  God wants us to reach out to others in compassion and walk according to the Spirit.  When we walk in love we fulfill the law.

[mat007]

God would never reject you. He loves you. People often reject Him because they are attracted to other things (such as sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.)

[Wayne222]

God does not reject you. The fact that you want to be with him proves that. Because no one wants God unless the holy spirit draws them to God. So don't read those verses and think your condemn.  He said no one can take us out of his hand. That includes us. Some people reject God and don't want him. But that's not us. Because we love God. So don't worry anymore.