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?
The book of Job. He suffered greatly and was rewarded for his devotion. Although your daughter isnt with you, she is alive and healthy. You have suffered, but you are alive and healthy. Do not mourn for what you may have lost, a drunk cheating wife. But give thanks for the things you still have. This is the time to come closer to God, not run away from Him. Because, in the end, only God can help you. If you turn you back on Him now, your life will never improve. Go back to drinking and fornicating and all you have worked for, your dignity and self-respect, will be for nothing. Now is the time to plant you feet firmly and weather the storm. If you surrender now to the world, you will be tossed around like a leaf in a hurricane. God is your rock, do not let go now when you need Him the most.
He wasn't rewarded, he was restored. And there nowhere in the entire book of Job did God promise to restore him. As such, there is no promise for me either.
He was restored with more than he had before. The excess of which was a reward. No, he was promised nothing. But such is faith. God did not do this to you. Your wife did. God gives us each free will. Your wife chose the path of evil. Do not do the same. Rejecting God will profit you nothing.
And think of this. Both you and you wife are examples to your child. If both of you choose the wrong path, what do you think she will do? Do you want your child to be a drunkard, drug addict, or sleeping with many men? Youre a man. It is your duty to lead. So, step up, quit blaming God for your problems, and do your job as a man and father. Lead by example. God never promised us an easy life. There are people out there with problems much more extreme. Instead of counting your problems, count your blessings.
I can't put it any better than John does in Revelation, especially in chapters 21 & 22. Or than Paul does in 2 Timothy 2:11-13;
"Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him (Jesus),
we will also live with him;
if we endure,
we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
he will also disown us;
if we are faithless,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot disown himself."
You have endured much in Jesus (and much that I don't understand, having not been through it myself), and only now do you express doubt to us. This much is amazing.
Thank you Bloodnok for something more than tough love.
It seems all I've ever had is tough love.
I forgot to mention that some of the women that my wife and I were attending church with were inviting her over to drink with them while I was asleep in the evenings. They encouraged her to divorce me and have this affair. They all three then left the church and went to another church, but my wife quit going altogether.
I've been burned by two different churches who encouraged my wife to divorce me so she could pursue other men.
I symphatize with your situation.While reading your story theres nothing could say but just sigh.Like what they said and adviced to you stay closer to God and still choose the right path.You have your lovely daughter to whom you could get an inspiration of.You're the only one could guide her right,nurture her God things and ways.Remember as Parent/Father you have your share of obligation,responsibilities to brought up your daughter in good and right path.So draw your strength from your daughter too.Surround your self with people who have true personal relationship w/Christ and really living their lives how true Christian should be.And of course you could always run to your family.
You've had some really good posts here, a man in Christ could better tell you than I. Please wait for the Lord's guidance, it is so worth it. What God has to offer you is so much more worth fighting for than what the world will offer you.
I believe you want to be a strong man in the Lord, and that you know there's so much more out there for you... or you would not have posted this.
Please keep praying, and get guy friends strong in the Lord, go to a men's group who deals with things in a Godly way. I believe it would be uplifting to you. Your daughter is beautiful, and her father is a man in Christ..The Lord's glory and goodness will shine through you.
The Lord has a way of making see things for exactly what they are, it is very sobering and humbling. You write in your profile exactly what you want, you already know what you want. The Lord has put that desire there.
