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?
Soulm8, did you know that several important, successful writers wouldn't have been able to produce except for the torture they'd been through in their lives. Dostoyevsky, for instance, wrote Crime & Punishment because of his human tragedy, extreme poverty and even being jailed! And his famous novel (and a couple others) have been published in numerous languages around the world!!
Praise the Lord for artist's angst! :yay: (sigh)
Dear Lord, I pray for open doors, light at the end of the tunnel, Your guidance and provision on our little brother and that you would pour out your blessings on his daughter, despite the difficulty she is going through. But most of all, I pray for a breakthrough in Soulm8's own prayers with You, that he would feel Your presence SO powerfully and clearly that all doubt will be driven away. Lord, we have witnessed that there is peace in Your presence... not just 'a' peace --> but the MOST AMAZING peace that defies all the storm that rages around us! I pray that you would strengthen my little brother in the very core of his being and that your words will flow from his pen and that, if it is your will, he find favour with a publisher. Lord, I ask that you would provide gainful work so he can pay his bills and that You would feed his soul with manna from above.
I hope that my suffering will bring about something that will help others down the road.
I went to the library with my laptop today and started writing. I made some progress.
I'm currently rewriting the first book I wrote. I sold about 100 copies of it and I think with a proper rewrite, I would have the confidence to market it more and perhaps sell several thousand next time around.
I also have a few other ideas I'm working on including a fitness book to help skinny people bulk up. I believe it's a fairly untapped market and it took me 30 years to finally figure out how to do it myself. Now, I think I can help other men with my body type gain confidence through my knowledge and hard work. So, I'm going to write a book about it.
Although I have never been thru ANY of the situations you've been/are in, I do know (not feel) that I have a right to comment and give support because of the experience (trials) the Lord has put me thru.
I am also sure that this will not only help you push thru but also help you see the great roll you play as a father of that cutiepie.
I was born in Honduras and I was just 2yrs old when my father got murdered. The only thing I remember of him was when he had me in his arms and said something to me in our native language (garifuna) that still till this day I do not remember.
He was gone and most years, so was my mom (because she worked in the U.S). During that time I was faced with many dangers growing up.
My mom during that time, had been going thru trials, evidence being that now there is 8 of us and only 2 share the same father. So there was really no father figure around (that cared or lasted)
Finally my mom brought all of us here to the U.S. and to make the long story short, I was molested when I was eight.
I didn't understand why God took my father away, why he left me with no protection, why I couldn't be a normal girl, with a family like the one on tv.
I also started saying how he didn't really care about my well being... (died because he liked to drink and start joking around to the extreme while playing bet games) because he put HIMSELF in that position.
I was angry at him, at my mom, at God, at everyone. I did not like going to school because I felt unlike the other girls who seemed loved and cared for, had their father around for everything.
I was trying to find that love in anyone I could.
Eventually I grew and wondered angry and tierd of fighting/holding everything in. 7yrs ago God had placed me at a church that challenged me emotionally and spiritually and I learned to give my load of sadness and hurt to him, got saved and even learned to forgive and be forgiven. Something I never thought would come to pass.
My point:
Don't allow your daughter to go thru uneccessary burdens being that you are around to give her what God had placed you in the world to do (love,protect,give word,encourage,fight). Fighting for your salvation is a fight for your daughter and the family to come (if God so wishes).
Don't give your daughter the chance to look back and hate you for your inability to thrive for her.
God is definitely not to blame because we do have free will and we tend to forget that when issues arise, even AS Christians.
Know that we are children of the light and therefore cannot live with the darkness (depression)
Know that God will be there no matter what, even if we have faith the size of a mustard seed.
He not only waits for us to get to the narrow finish line, but runs along side us and fights the great fight with us.
In the end when you reach triumph (and you will!), tears will fall down your face because you never thought you'll see the day that you will see the light at the end of the tunnel, coming out as the righteous man, God intended you to be.
Although I have never been thru ANY of the situations you've been/are in, I do know (not feel) that I have a right to comment and give support because of the experience (trials) the Lord has put me thru.
I am also sure that this will not only help you push thru but also help you see the great roll you play as a father of that cutiepie.
I was born in Honduras and I was just 2yrs old when my father got murdered. The only thing I remember of him was when he had me in his arms and said something to me in our native language (garifuna) that still till this day I do not remember.
He was gone and most years, so was my mom (because she worked in the U.S). During that time I was faced with many dangers growing up.
My mom during that time, had been going thru trials, evidence being that now there is 8 of us and only 2 share the same father. So there was really no father figure around (that cared or lasted)
Finally my mom brought all of us here to the U.S. and to make the long story short, I was molested when I was eight.
I didn't understand why God took my father away, why he left me with no protection, why I couldn't be a normal girl, with a family like the one on tv.
I also started saying how he didn't really care about my well being... (died because he liked to drink and start joking around to the extreme while playing bet games) because he put HIMSELF in that position.
I was angry at him, at my mom, at God, at everyone. I did not like going to school because I felt unlike the other girls who seemed loved and cared for, had their father around for everything.
I was trying to find that love in anyone I could.
Eventually I grew and wondered angry and tierd of fighting/holding everything in. 7yrs ago God had placed me at a church that challenged me emotionally and spiritually and I learned to give my load of sadness and hurt to him, got saved and even learned to forgive and be forgiven. Something I never thought would come to pass.
My point:
Don't allow your daughter to go thru uneccessary burdens being that you are around to give her what God had placed you in the world to do (love,protect,give word,encourage,fight). Fighting for your salvation is a fight for your daughter and the family to come (if God so wishes).
Don't give your daughter the chance to look back and hate you for your inability to thrive for her.
God is definitely not to blame because we do have free will and we tend to forget that when issues arise, even AS Christians.
Know that we are children of the light and therefore cannot live with the darkness (depression)
Know that God will be there no matter what, even if we have faith the size of a mustard seed.
He not only waits for us to get to the narrow finish line, but runs along side us and fights the great fight with us.
In the end when you reach triumph (and you will!), tears will fall down your face because you never thought you'll see the day that you will see the light at the end of the tunnel, coming out as the righteous man, God intended you to be.
I apologize to every one because my post shows up twice sometimes.
It is my phone fault and am working on remedying the situation.
:bow:
Sooooooo sorry!
About books...
I had seen a while back (on YouTube) an interview that Oprah had with Betty Eadie (died and lived to tell about it). She mentioned that when she was in heaven being shown around, that God had many books that he gives to those on earth to write (inspiration) and hers was one of them (obviously).
I believe you should take a look at it. It even inspired and amazed me.
It is 3:20am, it's raining outside an instant sleep aide yet my eyes are gritty from exhaustion and reading all seven pages after you posted your story. And it sounds like a story full of angst and pain, betrayal and loss and yet this is the world we live in where things like these happen.
The bible says in 1 Peter chapter 4 verses 12 to 13; Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ.
You are facing challenges some of us never dream about but it is not for naught and you will have the victory... why? Because Jesus is in your corner. He will never see the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread. But we will go through things in this life because we have an enemy out to kill, steal and destroy us. The fact that you are still alive and in your right mind tells me that God still has purpose embedded in you that needs to be brought forth in the right dispensation of time. But do not mistake the promises over your life for the will of God. I have been taught that the promises are just that promises but the will of God... what we go through what we suffer through... is going to break us but God is able to mend our hearts and reconstruct us to the right image and representation of Himself. And we will be able to stay in His promise because we have been changed.
Can you imagine how powerful your testimony is going to be and currently is because of what you are going through and what you've endured? God has not left you neither forsaken you and is holding you in his hand the hardest thing to do now is trust in what you cannot see and believe God to be who he is. How can he ever be your provider if you do not lack and your shelter if you are not uncovered. God doesn't allow these things to happen because he''s egotistical and wants you to know his power but he wants you to know him intimately. Not just be a story in the bible but your very reality.
You have a daughter to bring up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to combat and fight and war spiritually for her very soul that even the devil is seeking to destroy. You spoke of Job in one of your replies, somehow I can see God in Heaven saying "Have you considered my servant (insert name here)" lol and the devil whining that he has a hedge around you but only if he'd remove it you'd curse God and die. And God knowing his child says "okay but just don't kill him."
You will not die but live and God will get the glory. Stop speaking about what you see and start speaking the Word of life. Speak life into your situation and continue to do so even in the tougher times. Keep talking to God and wait on his instruction. Pray for your ex wife and her bf yes I said pray because they too need deliverance and salvation. Do not look at what they have or are getting away with for only a little while will the wicked inhabit the earth but thank God our treasures, our eternally great reward is found in and is Jesus.
I am going to make a concerted effort to keep you in prayer because I have faith that God will see you through, make sure you walk blameless and uprightly before him and wait to see the hand of our God move mightily on your behalf. Don't limit God by your words let him be God in your situation. God bless.
While I truely am sorry for all you have gone through you must realize that these types of things in our lives are to make us stronger. God works ALL things out for good for those who love Him.There is a reason your marriage did not work out. We may not always understand or know why we have to go through the things we do but God does. He knew this was going to happen even before you were born and He knows what your future holds you must trust Him and keep your focus on Him. Now I know this is hard especially when you have hurts, pain, struggles,and circumstances all around you but if you take the focus off of yourself and focus on the One who can help, heal, and restore you it makes it much easier. He is the Lover of your soul and in Him and Him alone will you find ALL that you need.
Moichepit, I'm truly heartbroken at what you had to go through. Thank you for serving God and being here to encourage me with your testimony.
As a youth care worker, I've heard a hundred stories similar to yours and I've had to take care of those broken children. It offers me a great deal of hope to hear of one who surrendered their pain and loss wholeheartedly to Jesus Christ. Guess I should learn to do the same.
I understand that your heart has been broken and you surely do not deserve what has happened to you. I commend you on finding Christ and want you to know that your faithfulness with God has not gone unnoticed just because this has happened to you. God isn't a God that wants bad things to happen but sometimes the enemy uses people that will allow things to happen in our lives.
God loves us and of course He doesn't want His child to be in pain. No one would want that. However, one thing that you must understand is that God did not cheat on you, unfortunately, it was a woman who didn't take her covenant before you and God seriously when she stood at the alter that lead to this adulterous behavior. God didn't leave you, God did not cause this harm, in fact, to some degree God protected you because you ended up finding out of this behavior and God allowed it to be shown into the light from the darkness that she was doing.
I say this not for you to start hating your ex-wife because, building hatred in your heart will only make your further away from God because He wants us to love and pray for everyone (even our "enemies" ). But something to understand is that you can not/ could not control your ex-wife's behavior. And there may have been nothing that you could have done to have prevented this. I say this because if she still had struggles within her that were never resolved, whether she goes to bible study or not, she will continue to struggle until she gets delivered from these problems and resolves them. It's unfortunate, but she made a willing choice to do what she did and she chose to do something out of the will of God. You can't charge God for her behavior or for not being with her. Perhaps the silver lining is that now, you are free from her and her wreckless behavior putting you in danger and hurting you even more. If you want your daughter with you, continue to pray and have faith that God will give you the desire of your heart, if it all be in His will. If not, pray for her safety and spend as much time with her as you can.
I pray that you take all of what I say in love. I've been there with pain, disappointment from someone that you truly thought loved you and was someone to claimed to be in Christ. Heart break and deceit comes in many shapes and sizes, etc. But remember, the bible states that it is better to trust in God than to trust in man. (Psalms 118:8) People are but of flesh, they make mistakes, they hurt people, they hurt themselves. Therefore, we must learn to put our true confidence in the God that keeps us alive and follow His path and will for our lives rather than our own personal lives and agenda. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in the concern of our lives (what we want for us, right now) that we forget about our true purpose in life. I know you want someone and are lonely. I totally understand that. But what may be more important between you and God, in this season, is for you and God to set things in order in your life so that He can send you who you truly were supposed to marry instead of perhaps that person that you found but wasn't sold out to her own fear of God and respect for the sanctity of marriage.
I know in many cases you find yourself feeling like you have been left out there, but do know that your God is there. Trust in Him and He will direct your path. Put your focus on your relationship with Him and things will get better. God is a jealous God and we can't have any other god before Him. Not ourselves, not our desires, not man, not woman, not children, not money, not marriage, nothing. So, establishing that relationship with Him even more than you have every before will help you get through this. Trust me. I've had very hard times in my life and although it hurt to trust and focus on God, as I look back now. I wouldn't be alive today if I had not done so. This situation will not break you and you will get stronger! Bring your hope and faith back to God and he will help you become more complete and will lead you to the better martial relationship and give you His spirit to discern what truly lives in the heart of people. I truly hope this helped.
I just wanted to say, it's worth following God always.
God has brought me a tremendous way in the past month, more than He has in a long time. I'm truly grateful to all the people who have prayed for me on here and those who have encouraged me so much. God bless you all!
No, my situation isn't better. No, I don't have an awesome new job or any real hope of some awesome new job. In fact, homelessness is looking to become a real certainty lol. But, all that aside, I have the Holy Spirit and the grace of God giving me peace. A treasure far above all I've have lost.
Thank you most of all Jesus for reminding me that you are the only one worth living for. The healer of the broken-hearted, my Lord and Savior. :hearts:
