Spiritually Lost

  • Christian Chat is a moderated online Christian community allowing Christians around the world to fellowship with each other in real time chat via webcam, voice, and text, with the Christian Chat app. You can also start or participate in a Bible-based discussion here in the Christian Chat Forums, where members can also share with each other their own videos, pictures, or favorite Christian music.

    If you are a Christian and need encouragement and fellowship, we're here for you! If you are not a Christian but interested in knowing more about Jesus our Lord, you're also welcome! Want to know what the Bible says, and how you can apply it to your life? Join us!

    To make new Christian friends now around the world, click here to join Christian Chat.
M

MyWorld

Guest
#1
#1
I feel really spiritually lost at the moment. I haven't been to church for a long time because my parents fostered me when I was 12 so they deemed me old enough to decide if I wanted to go with them and I went at the start but then I discovered partying and sin when I was 14 so I stopped going. But now I have a son and I want him to grow up with good, Christian values so I need to work on them in myself before I can teach him anything so I went to church on Sunday and to be honest it was awful, I hated it. Obviously they're aware of what's been going on in my life so when I turned up I felt like I was being judged by everybody there. Nobody would speak to me at all. For me church is about being welcomed, compassionate and understood no matter how bad what you've done is and I didn't feel that there. I have ADHD so I struggle enough to sit quietly and listen to someone speak for that long anyway but when I am trying and putting in the effort to pay attention and better myself it seems like it just gets thrown right back at my face. I don't particularly want to go back next Sunday but I want to be able to learn more and dedicate as much time as I can to God and that's a way to do that. I used to be able to focus better on God while at church because everything I can be distracted by in there is related to God in some way but I'm not sure I can put up with the people there right now which is a really horrible thing to say. I doubt that they deliberately acted that way to isolate or condemn me but it really feels that way and I'm not sure how I can move forward as a Christian. I'm not really sure where God is right now but I don't think he's with me and I guess that's my fault. I want to be a good person and I am trying so hard but I need help getting there and I'm praying for help but I still feel alone in this when I know that God is good and wouldn't abandon me but it seems like I can't reach him. How much does it take for a bad person to become good again?
 
T

Tinuviel

Guest
#2
#2
Well, first things first. God doesn't see you as a "good" or a "bad" person based on what you do; rather, he looks at who you ARE. If you don't believe in Christ as your Savior and if you are not trusting in him to save you from your sins and forgive you, all the goodness in the world isn't going to help you. If you DO believe in Christ as your Savior and ARE trusting in him to save you from your sins and forgive you, nothing you can do is so bad that He cannot forgive it!

Don't get me wrong, doing the right thing is still important, but Christ paid the penalty for sin, and if we are resting in Him, God mercifully forgives us our sins so we don't have to go through what Christ did.

As for your struggle with desiring to go to church etc. I think everyone could honestly tell you that they experienced the same thing. In a perfect world we would desire to do that which is good; in this fallen world we desire evil and dislike what is good sometimes. Guess what? we still have to be obedient. My solution is to go to church anyway (or do whatever it is that I don't feel like doing) and pray hard for the desire to do it. Sometimes it takes years for God to give you that desire.

I don't have ADHD, but when I was younger I remember having a really hard time sitting through the service, and my solution (or actually my mum's solution that I adopted) was to take notes. It keeps your mind on what is going on and gives you something to do; also, it makes the sermon accessible to you at any time through out the week when you might want to look back on it.

If the people really were being unwelcoming that was wrong of them, but it also could have been that YOU felt guilty, and imagined that they were shunning you...it happens, I have an imagination that works overtime and I cannot tell you how many times I've imagined an emotion onto someone when they weren't thinking anything of the sort. But whether they were really being unwelcoming or not really isn't the point. You are going to be bombarded with what people think all your life; some people's opinions are valuable, others aren't. You sinned, sounds like you really botched it up big time. But we all do that. Everyone has sinned themselves into a hole that is too big to climb out of. But if you are following Christ, He's strong enough to pull you out and set you on firm ground again. GOD is what is really important. If you've confessed your sins and asked God for forgiveness, nothing else really matters.

I'm praying for you brother!
 
M

MyWorld

Guest
#3
#3
I do believe that God has the power to help me but I don't feel like I deserve that. I have so much on my mind right now that it is difficult to focus on God so I probably shouldn't give up on church. And the point about them not actually shunning me is likely because I also have an overactive imagination so it's probably that and when I go next time it'll be better. I hope so anyway.
 
T

Tinuviel

Guest
#4
#4
Yeah. My advice would be to just hang in there. Read the Bible and pray (because that is the way you learn more about God), and keep going to church. Eventually it should get better.
 
I

integerlost

Banned
#5
Mar 23, 2016
128
0
0
#5
MyWorld said:
I feel really spiritually lost at the moment. I haven't been to church for a long time because my parents fostered me when I was 12 so they deemed me old enough to decide if I wanted to go with them and I went at the start but then I discovered partying and sin when I was 14 so I stopped going. But now I have a son and I want him to grow up with good, Christian values so I need to work on them in myself before I can teach him anything so I went to church on Sunday and to be honest it was awful, I hated it. Obviously they're aware of what's been going on in my life so when I turned up I felt like I was being judged by everybody there. Nobody would speak to me at all. For me church is about being welcomed, compassionate and understood no matter how bad what you've done is and I didn't feel that there. I have ADHD so I struggle enough to sit quietly and listen to someone speak for that long anyway but when I am trying and putting in the effort to pay attention and better myself it seems like it just gets thrown right back at my face. I don't particularly want to go back next Sunday but I want to be able to learn more and dedicate as much time as I can to God and that's a way to do that. I used to be able to focus better on God while at church because everything I can be distracted by in there is related to God in some way but I'm not sure I can put up with the people there right now which is a really horrible thing to say. I doubt that they deliberately acted that way to isolate or condemn me but it really feels that way and I'm not sure how I can move forward as a Christian. I'm not really sure where God is right now but I don't think he's with me and I guess that's my fault. I want to be a good person and I am trying so hard but I need help getting there and I'm praying for help but I still feel alone in this when I know that God is good and wouldn't abandon me but it seems like I can't reach him. How much does it take for a bad person to become good again?
Click to expand...
I was a Christian for many years wanting to be good too, but nothing ever worked out. It was like living in a land of confusion, until my beliefs died off one by one. The only thing I had left was faith because I was seeing horrible contradictions in everything. Until one day I found the answer, and it was very simple.

Solomon says neither turn left or right but stay in the middle. This is the narrow path Jesus spoke of, so what is left or right.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.