!!
You did as I requested and I applaud you for that.
Let me tell you exactly what my state was in so that we're clear.
I did nothing but drink for weeks before that coma. Getting drunk didn't put me in the coma, running out of potassium did.
Doc told me I was maybe 1 or two days most away from dying.
Weeks of drinking, watching porn on the computer, just whatever I wanted to do. Weeks. No food, just whiskey. A prolonged period of sinning minute by minute.
AFTER the doc told me I almost died, he kept me in the hospital on an IV for 6 days and released me on the seventh. I came home, picked up the bottle, and a couple of days later lapsed into the coma.
Knowing that, will you still contend that I was saved thru all of that?
Do you believe that had I died I would have gone to heaven?
Sin is that which separates us from God. It is when we are "missing the mark" especially in Hebrew. So yes, drinking to the point of death is a sin. It meant you were turned away from God. That is the biggest sin - turning away from God. Because when you are drunk and in a coma, you cannot hear the voice of God, you cannot obey it.
Yet to me, it sounds like you were really trying to commit suicide. You were hopeless, did whatever you felt like, because there was no purpose to anything. I'm sure you thought you would welcome death. Because alcohol abuse of the magnitude of what you went through is self medicating. How do I know? Because I did it so many times before I was saved, it almost killed me, too!
So yes, I did give up alcohol forever when God saved me. Because the Holy Spirit just ripped that desire/need out of my heart. No AA, no counselling, just the power of the Holy Spirit my life, and giving me the ability to obey God in this area.
Does that make me better than you? Does it make me more saved? NEVER!!
Because I went on to find all kinds of new sin that God had to help me to overcome. Some of the things I didn't even know we're sin, like losing your temper. That has been a work in progress!
So I ask you, did God leave me when I lost my temper? Did he say, "Oh, oh, she isn't acting like a Christian should, so I'm cutting her loose." NEVER!!
Instead, God convicted my heart. He took me deeper into the Word. He showed me how to pray more effectively, and to connect with him. He showed me that I had to step up my obedience in more than one area, with the power of the Holy Spirit.
I've testified before how when I got severely depressed because of my excruciating Rheumatoid Arthritis, I turned away from God for 2 long years. Did God look down from his throne and say, "Oops, I shouldn't have saved her. She is not my child. She doesn't even pay attention to me! (calls out loud- ) St. Peter, take Angela's name out of the Book of Life, AGAIN! Sigh"
What a silly theology! That makes our works, good and bad, the basis of our salvation. That makes salvation all about us, instead of what Jesus did on the cross. His finished work on Calvary. That is the basis of salvation.
We can be secure in Jesus Christ. We only are saved once. True, we need to repent. We need to follow God. We need to do more than just follow Christ, we need to make him the centre of everything we do.
So Phil, I don't know whether you were truly saved before you hit bottom. But if you were, I am totally convinced that Jesus would never leave or forsake you, because his word promises that!
"I will never leave you or forsake you." Hebrews 13:5b
We all stumble and sin. And hopefully, we all allow the Holy Spirit to pick us off and get us back on the path. The narrow road that leads to God. I know by reading your posts here, you are horrified and embarrassed by what you did when you were drinking. But is it the worst possible sin? Not at all!
All sins are evil, all sin is from the devil. But I trust God, that even when sin has a grip on me, Jesus has a tighter grip. I trust that in all those black periods of life, all those days when we make wrong choices, and in all those nights when we call out to God, and wonder if he is there, he is doing a work in our hearts and lives.
I am not your judge. I am not going to put you in hell during those days of drunken brokenness. God is the judge, but his mercy is everlasting. He forgives 7 X 777 times.
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Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times." Matt. 18:21-22
"For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations." Psalm 100:5