Last night while I was out celebrating graduation with some friends (seriously I've been using the excuse of yogo--you only graduate once--to let my life be in a constant state of celebration haha) I said the geekiest thing ever that summed up me being a psychology nerd and a Jesus freak.
"Guys I had a dream the other night that the rapture happened and I got left behind. Maybe I had this dream because I was in REM sleep and when you are in REM sleep your brain paralyzes your body so I was unable to be lifted up with everyone else into heaven."
My friend Robert laughed and my friend Kyle just looked at me blankly and said, "That was seriously the most nerdy thing I have EVER heard."
But the reality is that I had that dream because I've had a few days lately where I have been questioning my own salvation. Last night I was woken up by a thunder storm and I thought, "Oh my goodness it's happening. Jesus is coming back and I'm not going to go." (Seriously I then proceeded to continuously shine my cell phone light on my roommate to make sure she was still there. Paranoid, much?) Or I've thought, "I could very well die right now and I just don't know if I am going to heaven." And I've even had thoughts of "Sometimes, Jesus, I get sick of disciplines and following You and I just want to do life my own way."
After much prayer I know that my thoughts were just me being ridiculous and perhaps a bit of a spiritual warfare. Because Scripture tells me His blood covers ALL of my sins, regardless of what they may be. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Most importantly, I know that Isaiah 54:10 spoke so much Truth into my heart yesterday:
Though the mountains be shaken
and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Even if I stumble and fall and push Jesus away at times, He still loves me. This covenant will never be removed.
But I was very caught up in the fact that I felt stuck in a period of carelessness. I was pushing myself away from God and fellowship and reading His Word. I just didn't care. And what scared me the most was the fact that I never heard about my friends questioning their salvation or being in seasons of carelessness, reinforcing my beliefs that maybe I go through these cycles because I'm not actually saved.
So I confessed these feelings to some friends yesterday and every single response was "I get in those phases frequently, too." Why don't we ever talk about this?! Guys. We are a community. We need to help each other. We need to be honest when we're struggling because we can't fight these battles alone. As a relatively new believer (it's been 2 1/2 years now) I had no idea that anyone else ever struggled with these thoughts because people don't talk about them and so it led me to thinking that something was wrong with me. If we confess our sins and our doubts to each other we will realize that we are not so isolated or abnormal.
We are moving on in our lives and dispersing from Fredericksburg. We need to remember the bonds between us. We need to be honest in our times of joy and in our times of struggle. We are built for community and we need to never forget that.
No comments:
Post a Comment