dorothysreflections

[dorothysreflections]

Lost, and found

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4

What does it mean to live on the Word?

For most of my life up until a couple months ago, I was never in a position where I had to confront this question. A question that is arguably, one of the most important confrontations that open up the gates to exploring what walking in Christ truly means.

We live in a broken world, that which is filled with sin at every corner. So commonplace, influencing society, social media, all of our subconscious thoughts and desires. Seeing advertisements where the words ‘sinful’ and ‘temptation’ are keywords that drive sales. Where premarital sex is a rite of passage and a societal norm. When it’s an every man for himself environment, where showing vulnerability is interpreted and transcribed as weakness. When we ourselves continually sin and follow the temptations of our flesh time and time again. How are we meant to navigate such a dark and unfulfilling existence?

If one word could describe the entirety of my life thus far, it would be lost.

Going through life as the eldest daughter of a first-generation asian family with barely any guidance propelled me into a life of a few things.

Feeling like I was on my own, and that asking for help or being vulnerable was abnormal. Through out my years growing up, there were times where I expressed my feelings to my parents, and was met with cold words. Words that did not validate my feelings, words that made me feel like I shouldn’t have said anything in the first place. When expressing my anxiety and depression about school, the response I got was “just power through”. As if I wasn’t allowed to feel the emotions that I was feeling. Over time, I developed an unhealthy ability to suppress my feelings, to the point where I wasn’t even aware of them.

Feeling like my needs are unimportant in comparison to the people around me. Growing up, I was a quiet kid. I felt a barrier when I was at school compared to when I was at home, I felt that I could not express myself in the ways that I wanted to. I always felt that if I showed who I really was, I would be judged. Because of this, a lot of my needs went unnoticed. And overtime, I learned that expressing my feelings was not important. Especially when there were more important things to deal with than feelings, as I learned from my parents, getting good grades.

Feeling like I was self-made, that everything I had was thanks to my own hard work.` At some point, I felt confident in where my life was. That I was happy with who I became, what I physically had, the life that I built for myself. All of the things that I accomplished on my own thanks to my continual effort and resolve. But in reality, I became self-centered, I lacked humility, I focused on the world and my life in the world. I ignored the parts of myself that I felt inner conflict about, the parts that would drive me to lie, to engage in sexual acts, to judge, to act selfishly.

I look back on my past and see all of the times that I sinned for my own benefit, and suppressed my innate and God-given moral compass. Over time, guilt became a foreign concept to me, there were times that I sinned and they warranted no consequences. They became commonplace, sins in a world full of sin. But God has now opened my eyes. He has taken everything that I was once so proud of. My relationship, my social life, my self-centered perspective. All as a consequence of my own sin and selfish desire, living apart from God and completely living in the world, I am left in isolation.

But to my surprise, I am not alone in this isolation. God has been with me at every moment. He has been with me through the entire process, He was there when I turned my back towards Him and when I returned, He has kept record of my every tear that was shed and every prayer that I have prayed. He has shown me how much of a sinner I truly am and how badly I need to be saved. He has opened my eyes to how broken I am, how broken this world is, how everything on this earth is temporary and how at any point, the enemy can carve a foothold in my life and destroy all that I love. Relying on God was a foreign concept to me, but through out this isolation, I have learned that all I truly need is God.

My relationship with God did not exist until everything was taken away from me. The moment I was at my lowest is when God picked up the pieces. When I fully submitted to Him and surrendered my life to Him, is when the change began. When I sobbed to God in my pain that I don’t want to be in the drivers seat anymore, is when I was overwhelmed by this unexplainable peace that transcends all understanding. At my lowest was the moment that I really understood that God was with me, and in my repentance, He has answered my every call. He brought me into a spacious place, in my prayers for wisdom, for Him to change my heart, to make me anew in Christ, to meet me where I am and help me die to myself every single day.

The worldly desires that once flooded my brain are no more, the constant stream of brain-rotting information that comes with social media, music with lustful themes that I once streamed repeatedly is now racket to my ears. The feeling of needing to be constantly busy, obsessing over being in the know, clouding the time that I could have been spending with God, to which I am now.

I used to hear people say certain things in relation to their faith. The concept of being ‘fearfully made’ and ‘surrendering yourself to Christ’. I in no way understood from the bottom of my heart what that truly meant. Before I was baptized, God touched me with the Holy Spirit. He was with me in my grief over my passing grandmother. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, of course I did. I felt those things completely. But what I did not understand, was what it truly meant to give yourself completely to Him.

I was living with one foot in Christ and one foot in the world, which in actuality, means that I was still completely in the world. I’ve heard some people say that Jesus is their everything. That they could not get by without Him. I thought, oh yeah that makes sense, but internally I wondered, what does that really mean? I did not understand it because I felt no need to change my lifestyle. I hadn’t confronted myself, I did not change my perspective on what my life should look like after having publically devoted my life to being a follower of Christ. At the time of my baptism, it really delineated the moment I accepted that God truly existed, and not as a commitment that I needed to change my ways, to surrender my life completely to Him, and to therefore, spend my life trying to follow the image of Jesus more and more each day. I went from feeling like there was no God, to feeling over-inflated about my faith, to being humbled and understanding my true need for Jesus Christ.

The concept of being ‘self-made’ is one that does not exist. I now understand that this is a false perspective. Living in this world requires us not to rely on our own understanding, but to be led by the Word of God. Although I had to figure out a lot of things on my own, everything that I currently have has been a direct gift from God, and that nothing outright comes from me only. All this being said to emphasize that living on the Word means living your life with the teachings of the Bible as your sustenance. Worldly food and drink is not enough to satisfy the God-shaped emptiness that is impossible to ignore and evident inside all of us.

I never dove into the Word before I had nothing else left. When I was alone with God, feeling so desolate and broken, the Bible spoke new life into me. The comforting way the verses were layed out, the undeniable truth of life that it breathes. It teaches us how to continue on in this broken world. It gives us the blueprint on how to keep going. I am new to the Word, up until this point I had just gone on feelings. My faith was feelings, and when those feelings became flooded by the pressure of my physical life, I fell away. But I now know that I must root my faith not in feelings, but in the truth and understanding that God is eternal, is unchanging, and transcends all understanding.

Every chapter of my life has been one that I could not predict. At each beginning, I have uncovered something new about myself and about my ultimate purpose in life. I had no real purpose before finding God. But now, I feel that I can face the destitution of the world within the embrace of my loving Father. For I know that all things happen according to my own good, that which God can do indescribably better for us than we could ever do for ourselves. All it takes is complete trust, complete surrender, and complete faith in Him.

But if three words could describe the entirety of my life thus far, it would be lost, and found.

[dorothysreflections]

What is faith without a little pain

Over the course of my life, I did not realize how much sin I truly committed. I did not hold myself accountable to my faults, often times, I relied on my willpower. Willpower that worked to a point, but in never acknowledging the weaknesses that I felt, I would reach a certain threshold, fail and give in to my desires either forgetting about the act or pretending like it didn’t happen. I was never honest with myself. It’s a part of me that I have always felt guilty about, but have never truly sat with myself to reflect on and understand. I felt like this side of life was so normalized. With secular media, themes of sex, sin, life without the mention of God, the people I am surrounded with who are not Christian and live their lives seemingly fine with the concept that that there is nothing after death and everything is a coincidence. Even the people I knew who were Christian, often times I did not know they were until I asked them about it. It gave me the impression that being a Christian isn’t that much different from just living as a good person.

It all felt profoundly numbing. As if there were no consequences to each time I would lie for my own benefit, when I would be selfish and do things simply to quench the desires of my flesh. Seeing porn at an early age, engaging in masturbation, fornication, I really did not see any reason as to disengage, it was just something behind closed doors. It is so normalized in society, I only know a select few people my age who are still virgins. Not only sexual sin, but I have seen my fair share of other sins. Drinking beyond control, taking edibles, being high on party drugs, all came with an environment where those things were normalized and considered cool. I was surrounded by people who had no related discourse and were in fact, excited to engage in these things. It was considered a special event, something to look forward to. I am guilty of that. I cared a lot about other peoples opinions, I craved validation from people that I hardly even knew. I have spent hours upon hours each and every day doom scrolling on my phone, consuming endless information that would leave my brain as quickly as it entered. I have spent a lot of my life, going through the motions, believing that the feeling of emptiness deep down inside me would eventually be filled by me busying myself with all of these trivial matters.

Now I realize, over the course of my entire life, I have been so, so lost. I found it hard to connect with people in my youth, I hid things from my family, I battled anxiety and depression to no end. I have been living as a slave to my flesh, framing my priorities among worldly existences that have always fallen short of the satisfaction that they promised. A satisfaction that cannot be achieved in pursuing the distractions of this world. We live in a broken world. A place where there are endless things to be worried about, frustrated with, sad over. People who will constantly disappoint you, you, who disappoint yourself time and time again. I used to be such a pessimist. I looked at my life and thought, wow, what am I really living for? What point is there to all of this? To spend my whole life working to get a job, work the job and retire at 65 to enjoy 20 more years of my life when my body is breaking down? To meet death at its bitter end? It was a tough pill to swallow.

I wanted to believe that there had to be more to life than this. I recently came to Christ a year ago. I grew up in a “Christian household”, but the only thing Christian about it was going to church on Sundays until we stopped going all together. I saw Jesus as a fictional character in a children’s story book. I doubted the existence of God as I had never felt anything when I prayed. I was so blind that I would even say that I was Christian to people knowing full well that I did absolutely nothing to confirm that fact. I came to Christ thanks to a very important person in my life. He was the first real Christian influence that helped me along the path to God. Eventually, I got to a point where one night, I broke out into tears in my bed. I couldn’t stop sobbing. There was no distinguishable reason as to why I was crying so hard, all I knew was that I felt this overwhelming feeling in my chest. Like my heart was overflowing with love. And all I thought at the time was that this had to be God touching me. Over the course of the next few months, I worked towards my baptism with a mentor, and I felt like I had finally found the meaning to my life that I had been searching for. Reassurance that earthly death was only the beginning, that I would be with my Father in heaven, that I was loved and cherished. I failed to understand, however, that although my salvation was immediate and that my sins were forgiven, work still needed to be done.

I realize that I had a superficial understanding of what faith really meant. Yes, the conviction I felt was real, I believe that God is real, but there were still elements of myself that were ungodly. That I thought disappeared out of existence the moment I was dunked into that water. I suppose that I had the perception that Christianity was an addition to my already apparent lifestyle. At this point, I was in a long term relationship with the man that helped me into Christ, I had become more involved with the church, and felt like I was thriving in my faith. But in reality, I had no idea what I was doing. I served on the worship team, I hosted a small group, I brought my sister to accept the Holy Spirit, but I did not work on my personal relationship with God. I would pray in bed on the odd night I would remember, and fall asleep half way through. I thought the idea of reading the bible was daunting, I never once opened up a single page after baptism. My partner would express his desire to do devotionals together, but something in me was unmotivated to do so. In a sense, I was performatively Christian. I thought of myself somewhat highly, I had pride, I continued to sin. But as I have always done, I suppressed all my feelings of guilt, and pretended as if they didn’t exist.

In the Christian circle, it is known that the enemy (Satan) attempts to bring down those who are newly Christian with all his power, as they are a great threat to him and his schemes. Somehow along the way, I forgot this fact, and became vulnerable in my faith. I let someone into my life that I thought I could trust, that I considered a good friend, who was also Christian but in reality, he was not and embodied temptation. I believe that the enemy worked through him to tear me down. At this point in my relationship, we had already discussed marriage, our futures, and were intertwined in each others lives. There were elements that both of us were made unhappy by, but I had suppressed how I felt just as I did any other negative feeling in my life. I failed to communicate to my partner, life got busy and our relationship suffered, and in my vulnerability, I gave into the temptation presented by this friend who had ulterior motives. I was deceptive after the fact, I wouldn’t let myself process what had happened until it was too late. My partner eventually found out and broke up with me. I felt like I lost my life. The person that I thought I would be with forever was gone in the blink of an eye. I had no one to blame but myself. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I felt isolated, as if my reality was a nightmare.

I went through the most excruciating mental pain I have ever felt in my life. I cried for most of the day, I considered going on antidepressants. I booked a therapy consultation online. I had no appetite and had extreme feelings of hopelessness, guilt, and shame. At times I considered ending my own life, even though I knew I would never actually go through with it. Then I remembered God. I prayed for the first time in a while. I repented. I asked him to forgive me of my sins, for turning my face away from him, for not relying on him in my weakness. I had not known how to rely on him in weakness. I wasn’t honest with myself in what my weaknesses are. I saw my faith for all of the good things, the joy, the smiles, the camaraderie, I didn’t know to what extent the evil forces of the world existed, how manipulative the enemy is, to take advantage of my weaknesses and temptations with such ease and calculation. I didn’t know how to rely on God when I needed his power. When I really needed it. When my willpower alone was not enough to hold back evil. Ever since I repented, I have a clearer head. I now realize that I cannot live another day without God. Without speaking to Him, without hearing His truth. I refuse. I have conviction in that fact that God is life itself. There is no life without God. I came face to face with all of my sin only after all this has happened. It has been a very painful road, but it is said that God works through pain and suffering to make our paths straight.

Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. 2 Corinthians 7:10

I feel my path is as straight as ever before, I no longer feel attached to my phone, people’s opinions, even sexual desires. I have learned to bring all that I struggle with up to the Lord, and he has dealt with them for me. My putting my trust in God has been a long road, but I believe now that I have experienced this clarity, I am finally able to trust in him wholeheartedly.

I have asked God to change my heart, to make me anew in the name of Jesus Christ who died for my sins, to become a godly woman to make Him proud. I know that this will take work. Habits need to be made, self-discipline is the cornerstone of a relationship with God. When I wake up, I pray, I read the Word every day, I reflect, I pray some more. I have asked God to help me submit to him fully, something I didn’t realize I needed to do before, but now that I am, I feel at peace. There have been many prayers that have brought me to tears with how overwhelmed I feel in God’s presence, in his love. I can no longer listen to secular music, I feel the need to turn away from the things that I once engaged in such as gossip and negativity. I have decided that I am waiting until marriage from this point forward. I now know that Christianity is not an addition to my life, in fact, I believe it is not possible to have one foot in the faith and one foot in the world. Following only the parts of Christianity that I want to follow, and not the parts that I don’t defeats the purpose. I feel the inclination to go all in and walk in the name of the Lord in all of the things that I do. I refuse to give the enemy a foothold in my life anymore.

Perhaps I may not have ever come to this point in my faith if not for what had happened. Although I do regret all of the sins I have committed, I have learned from them, and am on a journey of healing and growth. I am no longer afraid of acknowledging my sins, I have brought them up to God, and I have acknowledged that I am a sinner and am in desperate need of God’s love and forgiveness. Before all this, it was as if I had been jaded to what life serving God really means. It truly means to offer up your entire self to Him and his purpose, in everything that I am and all that I do. I have not known a love greater than the Lord Jesus Christ, and am forever indebted to his sacrifice for me.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” Isaiah 43:1

My greatest loss is the person that I thought I would be with forever. He is an amazing person, as a friend, and as a partner. I believe that he is godly. Unfortunately, I was not the girlfriend that he deserved. But there is a big part of me that believes that this is not the end. That maybe God has a plan for the both of us, that He brought this man into my life for a reason, that our relationship has greater purposes in His name. I know that God has a plan, and all things will happen according to His will, I will continue to foster a more intimate relationship with Him in the hopes that he would answer my prayers, that my heart will have changed for good, and that my partner will have found forgiveness for me somewhere along the road.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Praise God.