Memoir of an Apostate

The history is pretty simple - I was a Christian, a devoted one who walked with the Holy Spirit (and you can't convince me otherwise) who, during college, left the faith.

I was an agnostic for 7 years, and I HATED the church and spoke innumerable heresies and insults toward Christ and His people.

Through the direction of a friend, I came back. Or atleast, I did what I could. Jesus is precious to me, and I mourn over who I was and what I had done, wishing it away like it were a dream.

But, like plenty of others, I just can't seem to get past Hebrews 6, regardless of how much I try and wish for freedom in Christ.

Hebrews says that what will remain for people like me is nothing but a fear of impending judgement. Ain't that the truth.

And when you're in my position, you're really kind of left with two choices.

1. Live like the devil, because it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to be justly burned.

Or...

2. Get it in your head that you're going to try to win yourself salvation by telling others about Jesus and directing them there. Logically, you understand that you can't win salvation by works, but you figure you've got nothing to lose, so you might as well try. (Interestingly enough, Hebrews 6:10 becomes your hope... people can't live without any hope).

So that's where I am. Do I think I'm saved? Nope. Nothing I can really do at this point - as Hebrews said, I cannot be renewed. Do I love Jesus? Yes.

So let's see if I can't get someone else to, someone who has a chance, yeah?

The only way out I can see, logically speaking, is if I've been saved all along. That the years I spent shaming Christ and willfully rebelling, I still somehow belonged to Him. And wouldn't that be a thought!

But it doesn't hold with Hebrews 6. It just doesn't.

Not sure why I'm here. Helps to write out and organize my thoughts.

But to all of you: NEVER walk away. Never deny Him. I can tell you, there's nothing for you out there...

That is, except a fearful expectation of judgement.

hi,i want you to consider a different slant to your problem.i want you to take a long time in the study of the blood covenant and all that it means and all that the bible teaches about it. i want you to focus on david asking if there was any in the house of saul around that he might honor the covenant he made with jonathan. jonathan had a son named mephibosheth who feared and hated david for he was hiding in the wilderness to avoid any contact with david:for he was told that david had usurpt his throne and was rushed out of the palace and dropped and crippled in the process as a child to avoid being killed by david. he was brought to david and david gave him honor and his inheritence instead.Jesus cut a covenant for God and man(you)for you... He took the wrath of the father on His self for all of your sins.He also is the enforcer of this covenant forever making intercession for you and promised that you would in no wise be cast out and that He would never leave you or forsake you. even if you like mephebosheth grew to hate Him and fear Him for all the wrong reasons.His mercies are new every morning and you have very little to do with your birthing;old and new.jimp

At the onset let me tell you I agree with growingone. Now having that behind me I want to ask you a question.

Is there a possibility that you are engaging in another sin[s], perhaps secretly or overtly, that you are unwilling to repent from, leave? Sounds to me as though this is the thing that is keeping you from experiencing forgiveness but the devil has you convinced it is something else, like apostasy.

Think about it. Also take note of the quote by Ravi Zacharias on the bottom of my post.

I too deeply respect the truths and wisdom I have heard from growingone and ginnyrose. I would however have no reservation in questioning that which you are so sure of. You say you were saved as a teenager. So was I. I had a love for the Lord, the lost, His word, bible studies, bus ministry, Sundays and Wednesday night fellowships, defense of the faith, prayer, and a list of other things that accompanied my life. It. would be 33 years later having been in the church raising my family, teaching High School Youth, and sitting amongst the better minds in my church that God would show me His Mercy and Grace. I was saved one night when least expecting it.

I, like you was sure of my salvation, until God showed me who He was and who I was. I did not need to know what Jesus did for me because that I already knew. What I did not know was who God was and in light of that being revealed, who I was ( this bringing about true repentance and not the kind of a wounded conscience that virtualy every person on this planet has save the mentally incapable). Once I knew who God was and what I was the blood of the spotless lamb of God could be applied.

No one in our church would have ever questioned my salvation. It was only after God saved me that men questioned not my prior salvation but my sanity. If you listen to men on this web site who have given their lives in service to God then you will hear a common concern amongst them. In an age that will go down as the age of the cheap gospel ( not too far from the Nights of the crusades riding into the water for baptismal salvation) we must understand what will be the problems and grave results of it's offering.

I was the Lord of my life while professing Christ all those years. There were areas of sin that I was not willing to let go of. So is scripture true when it says that one cannot serve two masters? For that which the rich young ruler would not give up is the very thing that makes him master over his vapor like life. That in extreme contrast to being a slave to Christ where nothing is worth holding onto.

"Jesus is precious to me, and I mourn over who I was and what I had done, wishing it away like it were a dream."...fearapostasy

Joh 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

Joh 6:37 All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

The fact that you even have a desire for the Lord has been given you by the Father. He is drawing you by the Holy Spirit.

Do not build a doctrine on one verse, but rather look into the whole counsel of God.

Respond to His drawing of you and let Him dispel all lies and lack of proper knowledge of the Word. His Spirit will not contradict His Word. You cannot say that He is precious to you if He is not drawing you and if you have become completely reprobate.

Take heart. He loves you.

I would second the recommendation that you read John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. John Bunyan, who by the way, was the author of Pilgrim's Progress, found himself in your exact position, wrestling with the same verses.

What follows are some extracts from His book Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. I encourage you to read the whole book, you can read it online at..;

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bunyan/grace.html

Now began my heart again to ache and fear I might meet with disappointment at the last, wherefore I began, with all seriousness, to examine my former comfort, and to consider whether one that had sinned as I have done, might with confidence trust upon the faithfulness of God, laid down in those words by which I had been comforted and on which I had leaned myself. But now were brought those sayings to my mind, 'For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance' (Heb. 6.4-6). 'For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries' (Heb. 10.26, 27). Even 'as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright; for ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears' (Heb. 12.16, 17) .

Now was the word of the gospel forced from my soul, so that no promise or encouragement was to be found in the Bible for me; and now would that saying work upon my spirit to afflict me, 'Rejoice not, O Israel, for joy as other people' (Hos. 9.1). For I saw indeed there was cause of rejoicing for those that held to Jesus; but as for me, I had cut myself off by my transgressions, and left myself neither foot-hold, nor hand-hold, amongst all the stays and props in the precious word of life...

Then that scripture gave me hope, 'I will never leave thee nor forsake thee' (Heb. 13.5). O Lord, said I, but I have left Thee. Then it answered again, 'But I will not leave thee.' For this I thank God also...

Now as touching this, that Esau sought a place of repentance; thus I thought, first, This was not for the birthright, but for the blessing; this is clear from the apostle, and is distinguished by Esau himself; 'He took away my birthright (that is, formerly); and behold, now he hath taken away my blessing' (Gen. 27.36). Secondly, Now, this being thus considered, I came again to the apostle, to see what might be the mind of God, in a New Testament style and sense, concerning Esau's sin; and so far as I could conceive, this was the mind of God, that the birthright signified regeneration, and the blessing the eternal inheritance; for so the apostle seems to hint, 'Lest there be any profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright'; as if he should say, Lest there be any person amongst you that shall cast off all those blessed beginnings of God that at present are upon him, in order to a new birth, lest they become as Esau, even be rejected afterwards, when they would inherit the blessing.

For many there are who, in the day of grace and mercy, despise those things which are indeed the birthright to heaven, who yet, when the deciding day appears, will cry as loud as Esau, 'Lord, Lord, open to us'; but then, as Isaac would not repent, no more will God the Father, but will say, I have blessed these, yea, and they shall be blessed; but as for you, depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity (Gen. 27.33; Luke 13.25-27).

When I had thus considered these scriptures, and found that thus to understand them was not against, but according to other scriptures; this still added further to my encouragement and comfort, and also gave a great blow to that objection, to wit, that the scripture could not agree in the salvation of my soul. And now remained only the hinder part of the tempest, for the thunder was gone beyond me, only some drops did still remain, that now and then would fall upon me; but because my former frights and anguish were very sore and deep, therefore it did oft befal me still, as it befalleth those that have been scared with fire, I thought every voice was Fire, fire; every little touch would hurt my tender conscience.

But one day, as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, is my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, He wants my righteousness, for that was just before Him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever (Heb. 13.8).

Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations had fled away; so that, from that time, those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me now; now went I also home rejoicing, for the grace and love of God.

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

1John5:13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

I have always been encouraged that God's mercies are new every day.

One of my favorite quotes is "It is never too late to start doing what is right."

Here is a poem for no matter where life finds you.

Never Too Late:

“It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late—

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand “Oedipus,” and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers
When each had numbered more than fourscore years;

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had begun his “Characters of Men.”

Chaucer, at Woodstock, with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the “Canterbury Tales.”

Goethe, at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed “Faust” when eighty years were past.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say,
“The night has come; it is no longer day”?

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress.

And as the evening twilight fades away,
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
It is never too late to start doing what is right.

Never.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As I read your post I thought of someone who struggled with his faith.. similar to what you describe. His faith was tossed to and fro. He lived an apostate life.... far from God. A "willful rebel" if there ever was one.and he "HATED the church and spoke innumerable heresies and insults toward Christ and His people." until Grace began to work in him.

He is John Newton author of "Amazing Grace". His bio may be a good read to encourage you in your faith.

The fact that your conscious is sensitive to the things of God and your sin is good.

Here is a quote from Ronald Reagan:

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin".
You can apply apostate and Christian to that.

All of us are ill deserving sinners.
….and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable(O) riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is(S) not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2

Sin will take you further than you want to go.
It will keep you longer than you want to stay,
and it will cost you more than you want to pay.

(Fearapostacy)I would like to take the thread back to your original post. It's not that I don't think highly of Bunyon but forgive me if I don't make the connection as I do not see Bunyon as an agnostic or one unrepentant. I don't mean to disparage the help of those who care to offer you assistance.

I am confused by some of your words. I don't think at all that your history is simple. I desire to understand what you are saying. My initial confusion begins with the statement you make that seems to be made defensively. That is that you were a Christian in your teens and there is no man that can convince you that you were not. That is a very decisive statement considering within a short period of time you would go from the surest belief existing (that can never be born in human reason) for one that the bible itself says is not possible. All men are held responsible for knowing God exists by virtue of the evidence of creation. The agnostic does not know whether there is a God. The Christian will lay his life on the line defending that not only does this God exsist, but that He can also be known. He is known intimately by the Christian. To not know whether or not this God exists would make your direct and deliberate attacks upon His son and Bride seem a bit odd (excuse the use of that word as I am not trying to be curt).

Can you explain what you mean in the third sentence "I came back, or at least I did what I could"?

Regarding the two Hebrew verses I believe the first applies to those who being exposed to Christ are now entertaining the law once again (Jews)

The other verse would be the natural proclivity of the regenerated sole to serve his Master. Far be it from anyone born of God to turn around and attempt to earn their way into the Kingdom by stepping over the broken and bloody body of the only work that can save. That being the work of Christ.

As far as the two options you end with. The better of the two would be to live like the devil. The reason I say that is that God has shown in scripture to have a great contempt for those who make nothing of the blood of his son and try to storm the kingdom by their own works. I would not however leave you so discouraged as I see a good sign in that you are here and you are dealing with eternal matters. I would not comfort you with an assurance that I or anyone else should not give. Only the Holy Spirit can give one such assurance. When He does you will know it without a doubt.

What a testimony you would have to be one who cursed God and came to be one of His greatest witnesses? I will pray for that.

John 12:37 But though He had performed such great miracles in their presence, they did not believe in Him--
38 in order that the words of Isaiah the Prophet might be fulfilled,
39 For this reason they were unable to believe--because Isaiah said again,
40
41 Isaiah uttered these words because he saw His glory; and he spoke of Him.

Romans 8: 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

Brother many who thought they were part of the kingdom were not, because God had hardened their heart, if the Holy Spirit of God has compelled you to come home, the Prodigal son, then He has given you an olive branch and wants you to be his adopted son, and if the Spirit of God is still convicting you of sin, and drawing you to be a child who should be disciplined, for those who are not disciplined of the Lord are not His, for God disciplines those who are His/
If you have come home, it's God who drew you,
Be assured only God's grace compels you to acknowledge the fact that you need Him, and need His mercy and Grace.
Praise God, and remember that Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.Rom 8:1

there are many many theologians who have many different intrepertations of heb 6 and 10:26
So all you have to remember is this, all things are possible with God, yes with man it would be impossible, you could never do it in your own strength, but by God's grace you were able to come back and repent.
Quite a testimony of God's mercy...Love Him.
God bless you.
Poet

fearapostacy: Didn't Peter deny Christ three times, and Jesus said He had prayed that Peter's faith would not fail?

My wife tells a story of a man who she met who she said was the only person she had ever encountered who had probably lost his salvation. He used to follow Christ, but had come to a point where right and wrong were no longer defineable to him. His conscience was so seared that he no longer knew the difference, literally. Although we cannot judge it, we both agreed that if a man can identify apostacy, this was it.

Obviously you are not (were not) in that postition. What makes a man come to Christ? The drawing of the Holy Spirit. What causes a man to know that he needs to repent? The conviction of the Holy Spirit. Based on what you have said, I don't have any concerns that you might be apostate and forever lost. God has drawn you and you have responded. Praise God you are loved by Him and He has restored you.

I have been going through the same thing.I was raised going to church sometimes regularly othertimes not so much and had always prided myself on having a special relationship with Jesus from the time I was a little child. I had a beautiful childlike faith and remembered hearing that I could speak to God freely and the He was my father since I accepted Jesus and I would believe everthing the bible said. So I would talk to God. I used to invite Jesus to sleep in bed next to me when I was scared at night. Then I went through alot of family problems. I had been a strange child compulsivly confessing and always feeling guilty. Then when I was about 11 years old I went through a severe depression because I thought I was gay ( probably due to some abuse I had experienced as a child)now I know Im not gay, but I was confused and rebelled at about 13 and got into wicca and then satanism. I know that I must have said blasphemous things as a satanist and I also lead other kids into the same kind of rebellion. I was proud arrogant and outspoken.I drank heavily got pregnant had an abortion at 15. I was then married at 16 to the boyfriend who introduced me to satanism.I decided to come back to the faith of my childhood but I continued to go back and forth and had a rough time to continue not drinking to numb my conscience from the affairs I had had even after coming back. Then I got pregnant by my sisters common-law husband and we went to Venezuela and there I really wanted to get my life back on track. When we came back to the states I urged him to go to church with me and realized that we couldnt stay in this sinful relationship. Ironically I moved in with my sister then back in with my ex husband for a bit to get on my feet though he didnt want to work it out. Then I worked at a Christian daycare center and went to college. My life seemed to be on track then I fell into a relationship with my husband who isnt saved. I had been going to a baptist church that taught once saved always saved. So I thought I was fine and I also believed in age of accountability and felt like God understood that I was just going through a rough time in my early years. I was an armenian and then recently came to reformed theology. I came across some passages about the falling away and the blasphemy which I had always had explained away and now I feel like I fell away and blasphemied. I kept thinking that I was a very rare case of someone who felt this way until I came across this forum and I have been terrified of dying ever since and feel like it must be my time soon or why would I have been shown this.

(Fearapostacy)

Don't take that scripture out of context. The writer of Hebrews was doing just that...writing to the Hebrews (Jews).

Some of them were in danger of reverting back into the Law and out right denying that Jesus died on the cross for their sins, that He was the Son of God, and in danger of reverting back into the Mosaic Law of works for salvation. It was this denying that Jesus was God manifest in the fleash and that He died for their sins.

You are are not in any danger if God is dealing with you. That's because He isn't going to deal with you unless He intends to have mercy on you. If He wasn't dealing with you, you just wouldn't care at all.

Now, let's look at some scripture shall we...

James 5:19-20
King James Version (KJV)
19Brethren, if any of YOU do err from the truth, and one convert him;

20Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.

Galatians 6:1

1 Brethren, if a man is overtaken in ANY trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.

1 John 1:9
King James Version (KJV)
9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

...do you accept the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins?

if so, then just say it here and begin again.

Remember that Jesus spoke of the prodigal son which you are and which I was.