Just so you know that you truly haven't run me off with your comments here, I will let you know that you were very much a part of the reason why I left this website my first time through here as "Live4Him". Not that you committed some great offense, but more so in the sense that you disappointed me, and it was kind of a "last straw" for me in that I felt that you were one of the few bright spots here at that time.
By "disappointed", I mean that I felt then, and probably still do now, that you have a lot more to offer from a scriptural standpoint than you normally offer here. Anyhow, that's just my own personal observation/assessment, and although you might take it negatively, it could also be seen as a positive or a bit of a nudge to share more of God's word here.
That's your call. At my end, I'm just being my usual honest self...even if you think I'm honestly wrong.
You're certainly not the first one here to tell me that you are "disappointed" with me.
And as you take the right to be honest, so will I. My honest answer back is that unless you are my mom, dad, or close friends who have been with me through thick and thin (my most private, troubled thoughts and histories,) you're free to your own feelings, so you go do what you need to do. As I've said, the biggest criticisms I've ever had have always been from other Christians, and always because they want me to be more like them. They have their own definition of what a Christian is, and that's all they want me to be. More of what THEY think I should be. Leaving me with only an empty shell of who I really am.
I was raised in a church culture that was, as I look back, and as I often run into now, an avalanche of "Hallelujah's With No Humanity."
I wrote a thread a while back as an answer to those who want me to be like them and quote Scripture in every post (because you aren't the only one to criticize me for that and see themselves as being sent from God to get me to do more of what they do.)
Many years ago, I read an article about a 45-year-old man who had been raised in a devout Catholic home. Starting from his very young childhood, one of the priests raped him regularly at their church, and he said that even now, he could "see that glittering gold cross dangling around the priest's neck" as he was doing so.
To most Christians, the cross means salvation, Christ's ultimate sacrifice, comfort, and joy. But to this 45-year-old man, a cross symbolized a grown man, a priest who claimed to be the messenger of God who continuously sexually abusing a small boy, and the church that protected that "man of God," but not him.
Those are the people I'm called to. The ones who are quoted half the Bible before they can ever tall their story. The ones who are assumed to be evil outsiders and to know nothing of God. The ones who have also been swamped with hallelujah's, but never once shown an ounce of humanity.
For whatever reason, people have opened up to me about their past sexual abuses throughout my life, starting with a girl at summer camp when I was about 11 years old. It's never stopped, to the point where sometimes now I even get a physical pain that rips through my abdomen, and as soon as it starts, I started asking God who it is, and what I need to do to prepare.
And I don't feel led to bombard them with Scripture. Rather, I feel led to just let them to talk, to go have lunch with them, to learn the name of their children, and to just let them be human for a while. If I have a ministry, it has always been one of friendship, and it goes much slower than most would ever have the patience for. Which is one of the reasons why I write threads -- it's a chance to get to know people.
I'm also here for those who are questioning their faith or might not even have any, but maybe they want to know more. If you're trying to teach someone Japanese, you COULD start by speaking all-out, full Japanese to them, but that's not what I believe I'm built for. Rather, I spend most of my time learning THEIR language first, and look for little opportunities to then talk about faith.
One thing I hate is when people assume I know nothing of the Bible or have never read it. I'm certainly no expert and never will be, but because I don't think it's fair when Christians automatically assume I'm spiritually illiterate, and so I try not to do that to other people. I let them tell me, bit by bit, what they know and believe. Some atheists I've talked to were raised in Christian homes and are quite Biblically literate. I worked with one in college who actually studied world religions as his major, so I try to never assume, nor do I bombard people with passages until I have known them for a long time and generally on a one-to-one basis.
You're judging me for what you know of me here on CC, and you don't know me. If I do have a "ministry," so to speak, it is mostly done through one-to-one correspondence, of which never sees the light of day here on this forum. One of the prisoners I used to write graciously wrote, "Seoul, if you should ever need a witness in heaven to give a testimony of your life here on earth, I will be more than happy to stand up before God on your behalf."
So you feel free to judge me on the tiny slice of what you see here -- that's your own prerogative.
Now if you're right, and I'm doing something wrong, God will surely deal with me. In fact, I tell people, go ahead and pray against me, because if God sides with you, He's going to let me know.
But if I AM being what God calls me to be and doing it in the way that He wants me to, I am not here to somehow appease your or anyone else's disappointment. I'm very used to criticism and so I asked God a long time whom I should pay attention to you.
And He told me, "If someone has taken the time to be there with you during your (what I call crashes -- my bouts with depression,) that is someone who should be listened to."
Pipp, Lynx, and Cinder might be some of my closest friends here, but you'd better believe they take me to task when they disagree with me. They're still loving and they still hear what I have to say, but they know me personally and on a level that takes many, many years to do so, because believe it or not, I don't open up all that easily.
If God wants me to change, He's never shy about confronting me. But I will also put in my own prayer, that if this is how I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing, that He will help me double down all the more and become even more so.
I can't even say I'm sorry to you or anyone else who expresses their "disappointment" in me -- not out of arrogance, but just because it's simply an opinion, and your right to have, but not my obligation to bend to.
God willing, I pray that I will never be what others try to mold me to be. I've always been different and I've learned to embrace it, and I've asked God many times not to let others define who I should be.
So you feel free to pray that God will change me as you see fit, because again, if He agrees with you, He will certainly deal with me because of it.
But if not, and your disappointment is so immense, you are certainly free to either leave again or just put me on ignore.