All About GOD - Growing Relationships with Jesus and Others
Problem repenting
My pride and my fear of hating myself causes me to feel apathetic to my past sins. I was depressed once and it took a lot to dig myself out of it so now it feels almost impossible to let myself feel guilt and shame even when I try to open up.
And while I'm on the subject of pride. Sometimes it's hard for me not to be jealous of God and Jesus. I mean everything is centered around God. I definitely don't need everything to be centered around me but I would like to feel a little more important than I feel right now. It will never be enough to turn away from God but as of right now I don't like that I feel inadequate and undeserving. And I'm having trouble accepting that no matter what there is nothing I can do to ever be deserving of anything more than hellfire. And just as well it's pretty hard not to be jealous of Jesus for deserving salvation.
In any case this is all a problem with my emotions. Mentally I am controlled and I don't feel angry or jealous at all. Frankly I am just irritated and maybe a little scared that I have these emotional problems interfering with my salvation and love for God.
I pray someone can help me.
Views: 783
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Leonard T on
-
Zachary,
Along with the Word of God biblical based hymns are pretty powerful in that they reveal Biblical doctrine. Amanda posted one and am going to post three more that I think may be of help to you.
Lord Bless,
LTJust As I Am
Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee
O Lamb of God, I come, I Come
Just as I am and waiting not
To rid my soul of one dark blot
To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot
O Lamb of God, I come, I Come
Just as I am Thou wilt receive
Will welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve
Because Thy promise I believe
O Lamb of God, I come, I Come
Nothing But the Blood
What can wash away my sin
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
What can make me whole again
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
O, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
For my pardon this I see
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
For my cleansing this my plea
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
O, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Nothing for sin can atone
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Naught of good that I have done
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
O, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
This all my hope and peace
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
This is all my righteousness
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
O, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow
No other fount I know
Nothing but the blood of Jesus
Whiter Than Snow
Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole
I want You forever to live in my soul
Break down every idol, cast out every foe
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow
Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow
Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow
Lord Jesus, before You I patiently wait
Come now, and within me a new heart create
To those who have sought You, You never said “No”
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow
Whiter than snow, yes, whiter than snow
Now wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow
-
Permalink Reply by Zachary James Gott on
-
Thank you all.
-
Permalink Reply by Seek on
-
You have to separate emotions from it. You think you need to "feel" guilt and shame or you're not sorry for your sins. Truth is, God wants us to realize we sin and repent (turn from it) and follow Him. He never wants us to feel guilt and shame because guilt and shame only keeps one down rather than making them bold enough to speak the Word of God. The enemy can also toss doubts at you, or unwanted thoughts, that make you begin to question your salvation. That's when you need to go to the Word. What does the Word say? Whosoever believes that Jesus is the Son of God shall be saved. If you confess Jesus as Lord, you shall be saved. So what's it take to be saved? Is that true for you? I know one thing I have learned is that if you question your salvation and whether or not you're repentant...then you're saved. Unsaved persons do not have the mind of Christ and do not care if they are sinning or right with God.
So now that you know you're saved, when you get such thoughts, you can attribute them to just what they are. Thoughts. They have nothing to do with your salvation. They're unwanted thoughts.
Romans 7
21 I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.
22 For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:
23 But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
There is an inner war. You want to do what is right. You seek after God. But you still have sin in your body and this war going on trying to pull you towards God or away. That's why we have to learn to fight with the Word. And learn because it is not an overnight occurrence. We have to know the Word intimately, study it, get it deep into our souls and it will take root over time and transform your mind.
You want to feel important? Try this:
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit--fruit that will last--and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. (John 15:16)
I no longer call you slaves, because the slave does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I heard from my Father (John 15:15).
Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you (1 Corinthians 6:19)?
For he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we may be holy and unblemished in his sight in love (Ephesians 1:4)
In Christ we too have been claimed as God's own possession, since we were predestined according to the one purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11)
But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you are saved (Ephesians 2:4-5)!
In whom we have boldness and confident access to God because of Christ's faithfulness (Ephesians 3:12).
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience … (Colossians 3:12).
Since we are created in God's image, we have to learn that we ARE important to Him. We look to the world to make us feel important, but God says we are important. So important that He planned for Christ to come down here and die a horrible death just to give us the right to enter into heaven despite our sins. Now that's love. He loves you, you're important to Him, and that's what matters.
If you start studying what the Word says you are worth to God, you will eventually begin to believe in that worth and begin to feel important.
Since Christ came to set us free, does guilt and shame feel free?
-
-
I just feel so emotionally insensitive that I know if I did want to sin I could easily accept it. And I guess I feel like if someone wronged me the way I've wronged some people I would want them to feel sorry, not just resolve to never do it to anyone else. I feel like I don't have a conscience basically.
It's like Good has my mind, and Evil has my heart. I've never shyed from a hard truth and I'm not resistant to growing closer to God and I never rationalize reasons to hate Him and yet I feel jaded and desensitized to the world and I feel like I have trouble expressing emotion and feeling compassion and sympathy for the pain and joy the people around me feel. I feel like I don't care how they feel.
I've been searching for the words to say and now I found them. That is definitely my biggest problem.
-
Permalink Reply by Amanda on
-
I don't believe God made us with good and bad emotions but that all of our emotions, including guilt and shame, are normal and right responses, such as feeling ashamed and guilty when we sin. Adam and Eve weren't ashamed until they had sinned, Genesis 2:25; 3:10. Shame and guilt motivate us to repent. Zephaniah 3:5 says "the unjust knows no shame."
Emotions only become problems when they are avoided, ignored, and aren't properly dealt with but are pushed down, denied, buried, and allowed to fester and grow. An example is when sadness and grief turn into severe depression. Another is when fear becomes a panic disorder. Anger can morph into bitterness.
Shame naturally comes with sin and can lead to condemnation unless we seek forgiveness from God, or healing in the case of having suffered shameful maltreatment by others and feeling guilty and ashamed because of it.
Oswald Chambers was a chaplain who offered hope to men who were broken and disillusioned by war. He told them, “No man is the same after an agony; he is either better or worse, and the agony of a man’s experience is nearly always the first thing that opens his mind to understand the need of redemption worked out by Jesus Christ. At the back of the wall of the world stands God with His arms outstretched, and every man driven there is driven into the arms of God. The cross of Jesus is the supreme evidence of the love of God.”
Saint Paul sought to move people to shame in 1 Cor 6:5; 15:34.
Shame is something we experience both when we sin and when someone hurts us by sinning against us.
In Psalm 69, David feels shame. In its verses, I see that the Messiah felt it, too (19-21).
Just because some emotions are painful doesn't mean they are bad emotions. Our mistake is in refusing to acknowledge our emotions.
Hebrews 4:16: “Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God’s unmerited favor to us sinners), that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find grace to help in good time for every need [appropriate help and well-timed help, coming just when we need it]” (Amplified Bible).
Zachary, can you remember a time when you were emotionally sensitive and not numb and emotionally detached?
-
-
Yes it was when I was very young. Probably up until I turned 10.
-
-
We have a group here called Helplines http://www.allaboutgod.net/group/helplines/user/list?overrideMobile...
I will continue praying for you and I'm here for you, as your "walk alongside friend" in this journey.
He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God has been there for us. II Cor. 1:3-4 (MSG)
-
-
I'd like to but it's hard to get all that set up. Really I was just hoping to get some quick advice and a few opinions and then work myself through my issues. I can understand now that it may be a more extreme case though honestly I was hoping I would find someone who had the same problem.
-
Permalink Reply by Carla on
-
As we go through different stages in our lives we each have issues to overcome. The main thing to remember that even though the specific struggles may be different, the way we deal with them is the same. We bring them to the Lord. This, of course, takes submission and humility. It's a process. Christianity is not for the faint of heart. It takes an incredible amount of courage to say "I need God in every moment and every second of every day" We see our weakness and know our need for a Saviour. To be a Christian and live the life is to be courageous...not in a puffed up kind of prideful way...but the opposite of that. Humility and Submission is key.
Submission to God as Full Authority over your life. He is already Saviour, but He also wants to be Lord. God's Kingdom has a King...Jesus is KING of kings and LORD of lords. Simply put, since He is King and Lord, He gets to say how we live. Humbly admit that you need Him to tell you how to live, and submit to His ways. If you don't know His ways, get to know them. There's no shame in not knowing His ways as a new believer. This is part of the growing process---learning them.
Our feelings are real, but as a born again child of God, they are now also in full submission to the Holy Spirit, and what HE says about you and for you. The Holy Spirit guides us to serve others, think of others as better than ourselves, forgive, show grace when others mess up, and mercy when needed. We are to seek Justice, Love Mercy and Walk humbly with God. We will begin to grow fruit...The fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control. Do you know that a fruit tree typically takes 5 years to bear fruit that is significant and sweet enough to eat?
About 6 years ago we planted a pear tree and an apple tree in our back yard. Every year the blossoms would come, they look pretty at first, but they couldn't handle the strong winds and rain...they all fell off (as they do), but no fruit would grow. Last year we got about 5 pears and 3 apples... This year I'm excited to see them because the blossoms were plentiful and are beginning to bear fruit. They have been strengthened to the point of being able to hang on. I'll try to remember to let you know how they do when they are harvested in the Fall.
Think of yourself as a fruit tree, and while you are growing you will learn Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control. (Read Galatians chapter 5)
What are your thoughts as you read this?
Love In Christ, Carla
-
-
Zachary,
I understand some of what you have shared and can personally identify with it, even if I've not been through what you've been through. I understand that not all people can handle the pain that surfaces with old experiences. I understand thinking that it's better not to even try to feel that pain. I understand thinking that it's better not to share it, and thinking that being alone with your feelings isn't always safe. So, it's better just not to feel, at all, period.
I understand suppressing the pain and the reality of a childhood that was filled with abuse, neglect, poverty. The identity I formed was one of being damaged, unwanted, unloved, and I often wished that I had never been born.
In the Scriptures, Jesus personally interacted with those whom He healed, and it probably doesn't mean anything, but I've noticed that, in some specific accounts, each one who was healed had shown a willingness to participate in their own healing.
One had willingness but was so disabled that he was unable to participate in his own healing and when Jesus asked, "Do you want to get well," he replied "Sir, I have no one to help me" (John 5:1-17).
The one who had been to many doctors but instead of getting better, only grew worse, showed a great willingness to be well. She thought, "If I just touch His clothes" (Mark 5:21-34).
The one who had been blind from birth "went and washed" (John 9:1-7).
Not feeling my feelings is less scary than facing what I need to do to heal. But God asks me to participate. My mind is being renewed, day by day.
With Christ in you, you have a new identity that you will grow into, and you, too, will become able to love again, weep again, care and have compassion again.
I like how Tozer says it here:
"Now compassion is an emotional identification, and Christ had that in full perfection. The man who has this wound of compassion is a man who suffers along with other people. Jesus Christ our Lord can never suffer to save us any more. This He did, once for all, when He gave Himself without spot through the Holy Ghost to the Father on Calvary's cross. He cannot suffer to save us but He still must suffer to win us. He does not call His people to redemptive suffering. That's impossible; it could not be. Redemption is a finished work.
"But He does call His people to feel along with Him and to feel along with those that rejoice and those that suffer. He calls His people to be to Him the kind of an earthly body in which He can weep again and suffer again and love again. For our Lord has two bodies. One is the body He took to the tree on Calvary; that was the body in which He suffered to redeem us. But He has a body on earth now, composed of those who have been baptized into it by the Holy Ghost at conversion. In that body He would now suffer to win men. Paul said that he was glad that he could suffer for the Colossians and fill up the measure of the afflictions of Christ in his body for the church's sake."Man - The Dwelling Place of God by A. W. Tozer, chapter 25
http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.25.htm
-
-
I actually used to be similar. The only time I showed emotions was when I was personally hurt. I didn't empathize with anyone hurting. And it's one of the reasons I turned to God. I WANTED a better heart, wanted to care about others. I can still struggle with it at times. But I've prayed for years for God to give me more patience with people and more compassion. I also try to remind myself of reasons I used to do exactly what they do that irritates me. IE: I drove 90 mph and cut people off. Now I don't and when someone does and I get irritated, I tell myself it could be a single mother rushing to get her kids ready just to have one throw up on her dress and now she's late to work and already on thin ice with her boss. It helps to put it into a possible reason to not be so harsh in my feelings toward others.
I use to tune people out. Don't care...don't bug me I'm busy...here's a quarter, call someone who cares. I never said "I love you" to family or friends.
The only thing that has turned any of that around is pray pray pray. Think on scripture that says to love one another. And even if you don't FEEL a connection, try to show interest when someone needs a friend and some sympathy. Eventually you start to feel and actually care about that person.
As to having feelings before age 10, did you experience a traumatic incident? Likely something happened. Between 8 and 9 my parents divorced and I was molested repeatedly by my uncle and had a criticizing mother. My mother and I didn't start getting along till about 2 years ago. Took a lot to repair the relationship. I'm certain my childhood experiences caused my emotional withdrawal. Ask God for healing.
As for the heart and mind at war, read Romans 7. Study it until it sinks in.
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next ›
Welcome to
All About GOD
The Good News
Meet Face-to-Face & Collaborate
© 2024 Created by AllAboutGOD.com.
Powered by
