A New Beginning
My family raised me to do four things. First, be a Christian. Second, read the Bible. Third, think critically. Fourth, be honest. For the past 27 years, I have worked hard to do these, but it has become impossible to do all of them. My struggles began when I was 13. At that age, I believed everything I was told, 100%. I just couldn’t make it work in my life. I prayed to God to help me with my impure thoughts, with my gluttony, and with my sloth, but I continued to fail. I knew from Jesus’s words that God gave the Holy Spirit to all who asked and any good in me came from God and any evil was my own, so I really struggled with my continual sin. Even though I was supposed to be reborn and regenerated, my sin nature, my real self, the part of me that deserved to be set on fire forever, kept on popping up over and over again, as if God wasn’t working within me at all. My inner spiritual life was interwoven with an intellectual life of learning about God. I had a 100% Christ...