Reminders of Struggles From the Past

This past week has been a hard one for me. It seemed like every time I turned around, something was reminding me of mistakes I had made in the past, of things that had hurt me and other people. All week, I fought against the feelings of being worthless, useless, unwanted, unneeded, feeling like just so much trash thrown aside. Like I couldn't be good enough to be used by God. As though I can be "good enough" for God! That's the awesome thing! I don't have to be. Why? Because Jesus was.

Tonight, in the sermon my youth pastor preached to a roomful of teenagers, college students, and a handful of adults, he shared a story from shortly after he became a Christian. In his story, he told us how he had struggled with decisions he had made before he became a Christian and how he felt like his sins had made him dirty and filthy and unusable to God. Until one day he heard someone preaching. They pointed out that God takes all of our sins from all time, all the "not so bad" ones and all the "bad", "super bad" and "unforgivable" sins, and He throws them as far as the east is from the west and remembers them no more. Psalms 103:10-12 says, "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor regarded us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

Isn't that amazing? Our God knows everything we've ever done and thought, every little word or action, and even with as horrible as we may think they are on the "Sin Scale", He forgives them. Every. Single. One.

Gone. Just like that. Faster than we can blink or snap our fingers. Forever gone.

As my youth pastor shared with us tonight, that truth set him free from all the sin that Satan had been bringing up and throwing in his face. From that moment on, when he realized God didn't view him as worthless or unusable because of his sin, but saw only the saving grace of His Son, Jesus Christ, and had thrown every one of those sins to the farthest ends of eternity, my youth pastor was freed from his struggle. In Romans 8:1, we are told, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Now, the Bible doesn't say that being a Christian is gonna be easy; far from it! But, it does promise us that we won't be given more than we can handle. Maybe we think we can't handle it, but with God's strength holding us up, we are more than conquers. As First Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you be able to endure it." And in Romans 8:37, the Bible says, "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us."

So on days when Satan is throwing your past in your face, trying to tempt you to go back to your old ways, or telling you that you aren't worth it, you're useless, you're just trash, you're ugly, you'll never amount to anything because of this or that...just remember whose opinion actually counts in the end. And it sure isn't Satan's! God has taken every sin you've ever committed, no matter how bad or unforgivable you think it is, and He's thrown it away and doesn't remember it anymore. As my youth pastor's wife has told me, God has thrown your sins in the Sea of Forgetfulness and posted a "No Fishing" sign. He sees you as pure, clean, and a deeply loved child of His. Don't ever forget that!

In Christ,

Esther Faith

An Absence Explained...And A Hope For The Future

It's been awhile since I did any blogging, much less on this site, as my previous posts testify, but it was suggested to me that I start posting again, so I'm gonna give it a shot and see how it goes.

Just a bit about what has happened since I was last active, and I'll be quiet.

In January 2013, I started my second year of college, and in February of that year, I decided to change my major from English to Criminal Justice. Because I was already in the other classes and partway through the semester, I couldn't switch my schedule around to work with my new major, so in the fall of 2013 and the spring of 2014, I took all of my required Criminal Justice classes.

In May of 2014, I graduated with an Associate in Arts, an Associate in Science, and an Associate in Applied Science in Criminal Justice.

I would continue my schooling through Missouri Baptist University, starting my Bachelor in Criminal Justice in the fall of 2014, and soon to graduate with it on May 3, 2016. In the fall of 2015, however, I started classes to receive a certificate in Computer Forensics, a specialty within the Criminal Justice field that was offered at the local junior college. This certificate will be completed in December of 2016, due to a class--part one of two--which was cancelled this semester.

Rewind back to November of 2013, and my Pappy passed away. That was when I stopped writing. To cope with the pain of losing him, however, I would sometimes write poems, letting everything inside me flow out onto the paper. It helped, some. But I couldn't make myself go back to my books.

Why?

Pappy was my editor, and every time I sat down and tried to work on one of the manuscripts in the Love Blossoms series, I couldn't do it. My writing spirit was broken, shattered when I received the news of Pappy's death. He lived in Arizona with my Grammy, and throughout 2011 and 2012, he edited the first book in the series, Love Blossoms On Snowy Mountain, marking up his proof copy of the book as he found mistakes. He would call every week and tell me what he had caught, and I would correct it.

And for the first time in my life, Pappy wasn't there for me to call and get advice from, or talk about the books or how my math class was going, tell him about the guy I liked, or laugh over memories with. And for the first time, when I sat down with my manuscript for the second book in the series, Love Blossoms On Pine Creek, which Pappy had been an avid supporter of and had wanted to read, I couldn't work on it. I sat there and bawled like a baby.

To this day, I've been able to occasionally go back to those manuscripts and do a few little things, like read a part of one or do some editing on a few paragraphs of another, but I haven't had the heart to even continue writing that series, or stick with the editing until at least a part of it was done. I've started numerous short stories, but never finished a single one.

I'm hoping to be able to go back to the Love Blossoms series eventually, but I'm still not sure when "eventually" will come. But the whole reason I'm even writing any of this is because my brother-in-law, who I acquired May 22, 2013, suggested I start writing again. However, while he did include the LB series, he mentioned my blogging specifically. He seems to think I have a gift for connecting things in the Bible, such as stories or just different verses, to situations we face in life almost every day. That is what I would like to mainly post about, although I'm sure some posts about the LB series will sneak in from time to time when I finally do pick them back up again.

To end what turned into a slightly longer explanation than expected, I'd like to say thank you for sticking with it and reading the whole post, long as it was, and I hope to see you again in the future. Here's to many more posts and many lives touched!

In Christ,

Esther Faith