Last year was a time of spiritual regression for me. As the youth group I had been part of for three years began to fall apart, my main mode of association with the church I was attending likewise broke apart. Most of the people in the church were older by many years and I didn't have much in common with them. I was at the age where I could fit in either the teen/young adult youth group or the adult group. There were maybe three adults whose ages were within ten years of mine, and then after them there was easily a 20-25+ year age difference. I didn't fit in the church, I didn't have a role, and there was no possibility of me ever doing anything in it.
This meant my walk in faith became ever more solitary. And walking alone is never conducive. The end result is that while I didn't leave God or Christianity, I did backslide a bit. I'm still in the process of recovering. One of the things that worried me was, had the Holy Spirit left me? Coming from a Pentecostal background I was taught that the Holy Spirit was a fluid, dynamic personality, giving gifts and faith as he saw fit. Whether you had the Holy Spirit and how much depended on both divine will and your cooperation with it. I noticed that I didn't have quite the enthusiasm or will to follow God as I had in the past and I worried that the Holy Spirit was no longer in me because of my sins.
When I asked a member here on CC about it, she reassured me that if I believed that God was real and that Jesus was resurrected, etc., then I did have the Holy Spirit. Of course I believe these things. I've devoted over five years of my life to this. Did I still have the Spirit? Yes.
A couple months ago I came across Ephesians 1:13-14: "In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory." This in conjunction with my recent move to Lutheranism showed me something profound and comforting: I can't do anything that is so "bad," be so unfaithful, that the Holy Spirit would leave me. It doesn't work like that. The Holy Spirit remains in me when I'm a bold Christian, and when I barely act like it. The Spirit is the seal of my salvation, the means by which I am in Christ, and the sign that there is no condemnation upon me. God is very forgiving and gracious toward me, and I am awestruck by that.