Hello
Im a 20 yr old university student in England. I got saved at the age of 16 (AUG 2007), it was the most glorious moment of my life. I had been going to church my whole life and embedded in sin but now, at long last I was able to get to know Jesus intimately. Unfortunately the joy of being with my First Love only lasted 3 months. I remember during these 3 months I would always fast 1 day of a week ethen it increased to a couple of days a week I didn’t really know why I was doing it..all I knew was that I wanted to get closer to God and fasting helped. Around Jan 2008 I started having thoughts about why I was fasting and what would happen if I stopped. I started thinking that it is wrong to use fasting to get closer to God, because I felt like it was the only reason I would pray in the morning and evening. This led me to stop fasting to prove to myself and those thoughts that I am able to pray without fasting once or a couple of days in the week. Slowly but surely I started loosing the desire to pray and read my Bible and I know I had backslidden.
I remember frimly that when I backslid my school grades the drop with it aswell. Before I stopped fasting and praying I would always make sure that I had spent time with God before I would start on my school assignments etc. But when I stopped spending time with God as much I couldn’t focus on my studies..I would be trying to study and be crying at the same because I knew I was supposed to be spending time with Jesus. In the end I didn’t get the grades I wanted at the end of High school (summer 2009) but I still managed to enter into a university.
There were a couple of times when I would cry out to God and plead with Him to show me what to do because I didn’t want to be far from Him. At one particular instance I used Jacobs example of struggling with the angel and made my mind up that I wouldn’t stop praying that day until I heard God speaking. However I only started playing at about 1pm and had till 3pm because I had to pick up my little brothers from school. At the last minute God came through and I cleatly heard the Holy Spirit saying Psalm 32, so I read it and I started weeping because it exactly answered my prayers. I got up to pick up my brothers and suddenly out of nowhere thoughts of resentments towards God for showing me that particular scripture stated creeping into my mind and got I angry because of verse 8. I felt rebuked by it.
Fast forward to summer 2009 where I started seeking God again and got the conviction of proclaiming my testimony about being delivered from a particular sin I struggled with (masturbation). I wrote a poem about it and sent it to friend of mine among other poems and she believed we should use it to proclaim the goodness of God but I didn’t because I was too ashamed.
Anyway with that poem at the back of my mind and knowing cley that I was supposed to testify of what God had done I entered into a relationship in sept 2009 knowing very well that I wasn’t supposed to be in one because I heard the Holy Spirit literally saying “Wait’’ one night before I was going to speak to the person. So I entered the relationship and even sent the boy my poems and seeing that he was encouraged by it because he struggled with it aswell, I used that to justify me being in the relationship. The relationship ended in November 2009 because I was under too much conviction, it was affecting my spiritual life and I was also disobeying my eartly father who also told me not to be in any relationship whilst I am at uni.
After with the guy I still talked to him a lot and that just aroused more sexually immoral thoughts in my mind which ended in me falling back into masturbation. With that came depression because it was one sin I told myself never to fall back into again. During this time I had backslidden again and was acting like I was a good Christian whilst I was naked before God. I used stuff like researching about the end times and knowing facts about the Bible to quench my inner thirst and hunger to be with God, and to fool myself that I was actually with God.
Mean while I was still in communication with the boy, though I knew I had to break up the communication with him as it increased my lustful desire. I would pray that God would take away any desire in my heart to talk to him but deep in my mind and heart I knew I didn’t want to. It came to point that I just cried out to call to cause something to happen that would make me stop talking to him and sure that same week the boy told me that he was in a different relationship. I knew God had answered my prayer because I stopped talking to him telling the boy that it would be unfair to his girlfriend. Everything was going well until one day he told me that he had broken up with her and thus we could talk again. Initially I knew it was wrong but again I started agaian..this went back and forth until sept 2010.
I started my 2nd yr of uni and I couldn’t concentrate, I was/am depressed with suicidal thoughts or sometimes thinking I shouls just live my life anyhow because I know I failed God by going after my desires. and I continue to fail him. I felt like I was bringing shame to His name infront of non-christians, because they would see me in my depressed state doing stuff as if I wasn’t thinking clearly. Again I cried out to God for many days until he gave me Isaiah 48:8-12. I Was glad God spoke to me but again I felt rebuked by the verse 8 of this scripture, but still I continued to seek God and every time it seemed I would get close to God than BAM I would fall into sin.
I struggle a lot with the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes & the pride of life (I get very prideful sometimes when I get closer to God or start knowing more things about Him). I don’t know what to do every time I want to get closer to God I end up sinning, I know I am not consistent and now I cant even study nor seek Gods face. The desire is not there. I feel like am slowly drowning.
Thank you for reading.
