[__ Prayer __] Prayer request for myself and a friend

[UncertainBranch]

Hi, I'd like to ask for your prayers for a friend of mine named Krysta. She's a professing Christian but she seems to be drifting away from Christ and into a more secular lifestyle. She doesn't know what the term 'born again' means or signifies, and she said she doesn't read the Bible. I'm scared that she might not actually know our Lord, and I want her to be saved and freed from the bondage of sin.

She recently told me that she wasn't ready to be born again because she was "still sinning." I've tried to explain things to her but I think she's getting irritated and frustrated with the faith in general. Please pray for her, and keep her in your hearts.

I'd also like to request a prayer for myself as well, as I find myself in dire straits with my own faith. I've only been quickened to our Lord for about 8 months, but I've gone the way of the Israelites in the wilderness, desiring to return to bondage and apostatising. I've done things that make me unable to forgive myself, and I find myself with a guilty conscience before God, no matter how many times I confess. I'm terrified that I'm rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit and the atonement that bought me.

The more I study the Word, the more I come to understand the complex subtlety and damning nature of sin. I read passages about being cut off and rejected by the faith, about becoming entangled in sin after having been freed, and finding no more place for repentance.

I find myself seriously doubting my own salvation on an almost daily basis, and I can't die in this state. I'm fearfully morbid, and even when I see God's hand move in my life (the Holy Spirit moments are few and far between now), I simply cannot rejoice and hold fast to that confidence that I had in the beginning. It's just not there anymore, and I don't know if it's possible for me to ever get it back.

When you've been saved and you start doubting your salvation, you're rejecting Christ's finished work on your behalf. I'm aware of how serious this is, but I just can't seem to disentangle myself from the state that I find myself in. I can't pray anymore. I try to, and I'm occasionally able to do it honestly, but I feel dead inside. I can barely pray for more than a few minutes, and they're always empty, shallow, vain prayers. I no longer seem to be able to truly believe that I'm quickened to Him in a way that makes my heart sing and glorifies Him. Now it's all become very self-centered and self-concerned, and I honestly have no idea what to do anymore.

People tell me that I'm eternally secure, but I no longer seem capable of truly believing it. My heart has been hardened to a point where I'm really concerned and I can barely function normally, constantly worrying and doubting everything. I have terrifying nightmares every single night -- last night I dreamt that my own father, whom I love and am on excellent terms with, crushed my genitals in his bare hands. I have dreams of every type of perverse fornication and wake up feeling utterly distant from God and disgusted with myself.

I hate blaming things on demons, because I don't think anyone really understands what they are and they become a scapegoat and an unhealthy focus for Christians as "battling demons" rather than making disciples and living after the Spirit, with our eyes firmly set on God. But I think that there are deceiving spirits trying to twist Scripture around to my own destruction (there's a verse that says that, can't remember which though ATM).

I remember talking to a person in my dream last night, and she said something to the effect of, "If you knew what I really looked like, you'd be horrified," or "you wouldn't want me the same way" or something along those lines. I don't necessarily think demons are showing up in my dreams, but I think something spiritual is going on just under the surface and it worries me.

I've noticed that my relationship with God seems to revolve around my remaining in good standing with Him through obedience, to somehow "atone" for the vile sins I've committed since I've been saved. I know that you can declare your salvation void, "even though the works were completed from the foundation of the world." I know that those who cling to saving belief are saved, but those that fall away into unbelief are worse off than if they'd never come to the way of righteousness. I no longer know with these verses if I'm twisting Scripture or if I'm feeling a sense of condemnation from them that is dismantling my faith piecemeal.

I'm sorry to rant on about this, but I have no one else to talk to. I'm staying with family during a transition period where I'm moving to a different state, and I don't have any friends. The only people I ever talk to tell me to "just LET Jesus save you." But the Israelites in the wilderness were unable to enter due to unbelief, and I've come to understand what that can mean firsthand, to my own severe regret.

Before I came into this state of fearful falling away and uncertainty, I would pray for HOURS. I'd roll out of bed with a smile and pray the whole morning through, in blessed fellowship with the Father. I talked to Him all day long. Now I can barely face Him, and when I do, it's forced.

 

[UncertainBranch]

Sorry, I ran out of space. Sometimes I can break through with open honesty, but it's usually just to beg tearfully for forgiveness, to ask Him to restore me, to bring His comforting shalom to my soul again, to help me and guide me. But I know that He already has. And this crushes me all the more, because I realize that I'm begging for Christ when I already have Him, I've already known Him and been baptized with the Holy Spirit. I can "believe" intellectually, but my heart feels shut off and hardened, and it no longer seems to be something that applies to me personally.

When I see people shout with joy about how Jesus has saved them and given them peace and comfort, I catch myself feeling a hot ping of envy, and it worries me deeply. I used to rejoice over that. Now I'm starting to realize that when you no longer believe He's forgiven you, or that you've committed the unpardonable sin, His Spirit can no longer properly function the same way in you. He becomes a somewhat distant concept, and not a personal redeemer. This absolutely terrifies me, and it seems to be warned about in many verses in Scripture.

I'm realizing that I can't really find comfort in people reassuring me that God is love, quoting 1 John 1:9 etc. My sole source of comfort is wrapped up in Him alone, and I'm absolutely terrified that I've rejected Him and that He's sworn in His wrath that I won't ever enter His rest -- or that I've laid a snare for myself to prevent Him from truly saving me with sincere, steadfast belief.

Esau found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. I think about Esau quite a bit. I've come to realize that when he declared his inheritance worthless, that wasn't just a turn of phrase as we glibly read it. He didn't trust in God's promise that he would receive that inheritance, that he would inherit that promise. The land had already been delivered into his hands. He was the firstborn and heir. But he sold it to Jacob because, if his own life were to perish, what use would he have for it anyway? But this was a subtle, blasphemous way of denying God, because he trusted in his own ability to keep his life, and didn't realize that since he'd been promised an inheritance, he wasn't going to die. God had ordained that he would inherit. God wasn't going to let him die before that happened, because in God, it had ALREADY happened. God is outside of time, and sees the end from the beginning.

In this same way, I'm deeply afraid that we can declare our own inheritance worthless. If you come to God bearing Christ's cross, but relying upon your own ability to bear it, you have rejected the atonement, because you've laid your own hands to the work upon the altar. God has indeed given us the inheritance as a promise, and it IS eternal, secure, and finished. "The works were completed from the foundation of the world," and we were "slain in Him from the foundation of the world." But if you veer off of that path, not just with sin and mess-ups, but with Christ-rejecting unbelief, you can declare it worthless, and you "draw back unto perdition" because you make it so that you were NOT one of those that God had given to Christ to keep, just like Judas was.

Judas was not lost, found, and then lost again. He never belonged to Christ to begin with -- "I have kept all that you have given me, save the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled" / "Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" And yet, Judas believed on Jesus for a time. He was part of the great commission, and he went out healing people and preaching the gospel and maybe even raised them from the dead, who knows. But we all know what happened to him, and he was set forth as an example. The Antichrist, who is also often called the son of perdition, will meet a similar fate.

Anyway, I know that I made this mostly about myself and I went on and on. I sincerely ask for prayer for Krysta and not just for myself. But I can't preach the gospel like this, in this state. I can't serve Him like this, when people look at me and see me eaten alive with worry and doubt, and wonder that if God would reject me and cut me off, what chance do THEY have of surviving temptation and not falling away after they're saved? I bear a terrible testimony, and it haunts me at my every waking moment.

I want so badly for the light of Christ to be found in me and seen in me by others, but I'm so afraid that I've gone back to my old nature and rejected that light, because my deeds were proved evil. I was a sow washed clean, but returned to wallowing in the mire, and thus even though a clean life as a new creature was laid out before me, my returning to the life of a sow proved I was a sow all along, declaring the inheritance worthless.

 

[Eugene]

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Hi Brother UncertainBranch, your very call out for God's salvation is the requirement for salvation.
Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Rom 10:14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
Being estranged from Christ in fellowship most times is our conscience condemning us. I will pray for your faith to increase that you might know the peace you can have. Blessings in Christ Jesus,

 

[UncertainBranch]

Thank you, dear brother. The Father just spoke to me and convicted me, and He's teaching me to trust in Him and not myself, or my own understanding.

The most important thing I've learned thus far in my walk is how God works outside of time, and that His ways are not our ways. The one thing that He's shown me that has opened up many of the scriptures and has helped me to trust in Him is the concept of the indicative-imperative dynamic, if you've heard of that. It's what the beatitudes are based in, and are the prime example of. Jesus declares us righteous, then instructs us to BE righteous.

He has already gone before us (it feels like it's "ahead of" us, but He states in Scripture that He is BEFORE all creatures and all things) to lay this path out for us, and it's waiting for us in Him. Our belief and trust in Him will allow Him to guide us by the hand to the state of being that He's declared us to be (IE, you're eternally saved, so now you are being sanctified that you might BE saved). Time is not linear, as we think of it. It's a physical property, and He can guide us through that, because He is outside of it and is the Master of it and all things.

He has declared me righteous in Him, because He has declared that I have a place found IN Him, and HE is my righteousness. But we have to trust, obey, and "follow" Him. If we have no faith in Him, He will have faith in us, because He cannot deny Himself (indicating that we belong to Him, are one with Him). But if we disown Him, He also will disown us. This is why I don't think these verses apply in a linear time sense the way people think of them ("I sinned after I was saved, therefore I fell away"). It goes much deeper, and your being found righteous or not is entirely tied into your being found IN Him or not. This is why He tells us so often to "remain" in Him.

So from now on, I will pray that, "I believe that you have saved me. Please guide me back through to this belief, and help mine unbelief." And the same for any other "I believe that...." "As I walk this day, please meet me halfway, that we might be agreed and walk together."

For some reason, this is one of the most comforting scriptures to me, and is possibly my favorite:

Ezekiel 33:13-16 KJV
13 When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.
14 Again, when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right;
15 If the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die.
16 None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.

 

[Windsong]

Why not bring your own bible over to her home after you set up a date to have pizza or a take out meal in the privacy of the home? Relaxed atmosphere , you can maybe introduce her to what you think she has fallen away from. Bible study, what it means to be born again. Pray together.
If you care for her you care that she find her way. Bless you for that. God will be with you as he always knows who his children are.
Please let us know how things go with you both.