Thread: I'm not sure it's worth following God anymore.
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I'm not sure it's worth following God anymore.
Posted : 30 Jul, 2012 12:03 AM
I will give the long version of the story since I don't want people to get the wrong idea and try to give me advice I've already heard/taken/ and know.
I was a drug addict/alcoholic atheist until I was 19. I got saved by Christ at 19 and became a believer. After growing up in such a home for so many years, it took a few years to figure out everything I had been doing wrong. I still struggled with my addictions and lived very promiscuously.
I didn't attend church for several years and built my faith and understanding of God solely from reading the Bible. In January of 2004, I finally got totally clean (and have stayed clean), stopped sleeping around, etc, and started attending church and Bible study very regularly.
My faith grew leaps and bounds at this time and I spent several years evangelizing and growing Christ. I was very lonely and prayed God would send me someone to be my wife. After 2.5 years of celibacy and loneliness (I was 25 then), I ran into Joan. We had known each other previously from attending Bible study together for a long time. Since I was going to college for Journalism and she was a reporter, we hit it off and I started to tag along with her as she covered news stories for the experience. She told me she had always wanted to date me so we ended up getting together. Eight months later we were married.
I did not know the extent of the things she struggled with when we got together. She was a full-fledged alcoholic and was extremely promiscuous. When we got together, she quit doing both. But I was still going to school and we struggled to budget money and the like as we lived together. I had to take control of the finances as she had driven us horribly into credit card debt to the sum of $14,000. She also had a student loan and a car loan. I came into the marriage with no debt, so I ended up taking on hers.
I got a very stressful job as a Youth Care Worker for a children's home where I was constantly having to deal with fighting and redirecting troublesome teenagers.
As the years went by, we began attending her church rather than mine and became youth ministers there. We attended church regularly, but I became disillusioned with the whole scene because it wasn't very God-centered. We were basically event-coordinators for the kid's weekly church visits. I got burned out on it because I met such resistance every time I introduced things pertaining to faith in Christ. My wife and I argued a lot because she was the paid minister and she didn't like butting heads with the preacher lady. At one point, my wife began drinking again and we fought about this a lot because I told her she had a responsibility to set a good example to the kids in the youth group. She began talking to another man online as well and the woman who Pastored that church actually encouraged Joan to divorce me because I was controlling about the money and was insistent on not allowing sin into our home. At this time, I started working third shift at my job and I was able to relax a bit about my stress.
Well, we eventually left there and returned to my old church. We began working with the youth there and things were going good. Joan was attending a women's Bible study and made a lot of close friends that were godly women. Joan also got pregnant and we had our daughter, so he had to take a hiatus from working with the church for a while.
Fast forward to Daphne being 1.5 years old. I'm still working thirds and I have my life set up so that I spend all morning and part of the afternoon with my wife and daughter and sleep all evening before going to work. We have been married for 4.5 years at this time and we just got the money to pay off the last of the credit card debt. Daphne stopped nursing as well, and so my wife decided to start drinking again.
Since I was so stoked about finally having some the financial freedom I had worked so hard to gain after all those years of budgeting to pay off the credit card, I went and bought my wife some jewelry. I also went home and was planning a surprise Valentine's Day dinner when I looked on the computer and saw she had been visiting the site she had use to talk to the guy online three years earlier. It didn't take long to figure out her username and I also figured out her password. Sure enough, checked her mail on the site and she was talking to another man.
In the course of their emails, she admitted to the other man that she had cheated on me three years ago with another man on the same site. We live in Illinois and I later found out she had the first guy drive from Virginia to Kentucky to sleep with her in a motel room. Well, I didn't keep what I found out a secret and I approached her about it. She decided she didn't want to be with me anymore and was going to pursue this new affair with another stranger she met online from Massachusetts. Some guy five years younger than her with no job, no career, no degree, no faith in Christ.
She kicked me out of our apartment and moved him in three months later with our daughter while I lost everything and had to move in with my brother. We are divorced now and I'm as lonely and humble as I've ever been.
She is having a great time living it up and drinking with her new boyfriend who gets to spend more time with my daughter than I do. I have to pay child support to support my daughter and him as well while he sits at my house and sleeps with my ex-wife and plays video games (she got a job right after she kicked me out).
I'm at a point now where I find it is completely useless to pray or read the Bible. I figured if God didn't think my marriage and my family worth saving when I prayed, what is worth saving? Now, don't get me wrong, I still believe in God and that God has the power to do anything He wants. But He apparently didn't want to save us or He would have.
Now, I'm completely ruined. I could have been a great Christian husband to some faithful woman, but I can't see the point in it anymore. Furthermore, I can't live a life of sin because I detest it. All the women I know of in this town of 13,000 where I live are, basically, just like my wife.
I have no place in this world. People say, "You gotta take care of that little girl." How can I possibly be anything to her when her mother is going to drink, do drugs, and sleep with whoever she wants and her Dad doesn't pray or read the Bible anymore?
Really, I just don't see the point anymore. Whether I follow God or not, I come up as empty as ever.
I just got back today from an awesome float trip down Current River with my friends and the whole time I was having fun, I wasn't really having fun.
I don't want to be lonely anymore and I don't really feel like waiting to meet another wife at a Bible study, who I read the Word of God with, who I minister with, who I attend church with, who I work with kids with to cheat on me again.
I can't see any point in not going out and sleeping with any number of women in this town and just going back to who I was a decade ago. I waited a long time to get lose everything I had worked for and loved. What's the point of waiting again?
Telling someone to take responsibilty for their actions is insulting and rude? I dont softpedal the truth. He is blaming God for his actions and the actions of others.
He said, "Im not sure it is worth following God anymore".
Is it God's fault when someone uses drugs? Is it God's fault when someone's spouse cheats on them? Is it God's fault when someone loses their job and their house?
Do I feel sympathy for him. Yes. But sympathy and $8 will buy you a cup of coffee. I face the realities of life, and it doesnt do anyone any good to sugarcoat things.
Where I live we have a word called "honey-fuddling". It is what you do to a child when they are sick or have a "boo boo". You say things like, "Awww honey, its going to be alright". I refuse to honey-fuddle a grown man. Why? Because from his own words, he pulled himself out of a hole before, with God's help, and he can do it again, with God's help.
The strong survive, the weak die. He can curl up into a ball and pity himself or he can do something about his situation. What he doesnt need is a bunch of people coddling and honey-fuddling him and telling him its ok, everything will be alright. The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.
I laughed when I read your last response Apostelle.
I'm in real danger of becoming like you - merciless. A lifetime of pain and grief, even when God is there with you, can bring a man to a place of hardheartedness. I don't want to be that.
That was funny, soulm8. Im not merciless, Im a man. Too many men, Christians included, have "gotten in touch with their feminine side". I dont sugarcoat things to make them more palatable. You can not deal with your problems by running away from God or sticking your head in the sand.
No one who really knows me in rl would ever describe me as merciless. But those same people would describe me as someone who deals with problems, who doesnt avoid them. Someone who sticks by people through thick and thin.
I say Cowboy up! And I can back it up. I am absolutely empathetic to your situation young man.
I married a gal I had a relationship with prior to my conversion to Christ. I re-got (Ebonics) involved with her sexually 5 months after my salvation.
I married that woman out of the fear that I would be alone if I didn't marry her.
20 years later, she had numerous lies, affairs and eventually criminal events to her title.
But I was to blame! I made the choice to NOT trust God. I,Me,Mine.
It was not the LORDS fault. So there's no reason to NOT follow him; after all he was right all along.
IMHO the very best you can do is square right up with him, tell him the dead nuts truth, and ask his good wisdom that your little girl will not suffer for your errors. And that Jesus bless her and glorify his name through her in time. Remember, God sees you Holy, Righteous and Pure because of the Christs sacrifice.
Btdt,give credit where credit is due and be honest about our own mistakes.
If the journey back into God's arms wasn't so confusing and so up and down and up and down - one minute I'm happy I'm happy I don't have to deal with her abuse and the next minute I'm depressed beyond despair missing her love - I'd be doing great.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Soulm8, the depression you are dealing with is spiritual. O.k.? You rebuke that spirit in the name of Jesus and I promise you that God will give youths covering and wisdom to deal with it. Btdt.
