There was a time in my life I thought that God had thrown me
away. I always knew that God was invisible but I still couldn’t see him, I
couldn’t feel him. I had made progress with him before so it was easy for me to
quickly realize that I was at a standstill. I no longer had that joy that
everyone could see and partake of in my spirit. All through this period, I
really did not have any emotion. I felt so empty; I
wasn’t happy, I wasn’t sad, I was nothing. My mind was spinning but I couldn’t
feel anything. It was like I felt alone with lots of people around me. I could
feel myself drowning and I could do just nothing about it. I cried myself to
sleep several times. I loved the old me, not this present one I couldn’t even
define. What I knew was that I needed love, I craved attention, I needed to be
held and be encouraged. Nothing at that point seemed to matter to me. I knew or
I can say now that I thought I was alone. I had gone far away from God.
For weeks, I couldn’t find the right person to talk to. And
through those days, all I could remember were my wrongs, the negative. All my
achievements and happy endings seemed to disappear. Everyone that had ever
seemed or was a mentor to me, all of a sudden were unapproachable. And so I
kept sinking. I thought about the days that were still ahead of me with so many
fears in my heart. How was I going to live sin free? How was I going to keep
living right when at this age, I feel like this?
I have heard countless times that we as young people are at
the stage where we just want to do a lot of things. Whether wrong or bad, we
are prone to yielding completely to our feelings, emotions and desires. As young
people, we are at a stage where you would naturally do some things that are not
wrong per say and will condemn yourself for it when you realize that it is not
the best or when it has put you in almost destroying position. I said they are
not wrong because we just always want to be free, not to be told not to do
something that we want to so badly or whatever we want to get involved in.
Especially when we have a lot of voices in our heads saying; “do this, be
this”. There are too many “ought to’s”, “should’s”, “you’d better’s” piled on
top of what we want to do or what we want to be. To us, it is that those ahead
of us expect us to do far more than we think we can. I knew these but during
these moments, I just did not feel right and could not apply all the things I
have heard.
I was at home one day when I remembered the exact words of a
mentor. He said “create your future from your future not your future from your
past”. When I thought about this, I realized that whatever is in the past is
not qualified to be in the future. Even the Most High God, our father doesn’t
condemn us when we do wrong things. He does not remember our wrongs at all,
what a caring and loving father. I decided to drop the memories of all the
wrongs I had ever done and how they made me feel. It doesn’t matter how much I
do, it has already been forgiven. We have to live a life free of condemnations
and criticisms. Your greatest condemner is YOU.
So drop the memories of the past, take the lessons and move
forward. Just because the past taps you behind doesn’t mean you should look
back. I realized that I was punishing myself for no just cause. I kept piling
up my wrongs. But these were the words that brought soothing to my soul. You
might not have it in mind to do wrong every time, you just find yourself doing
it bot concentrating on the evil things you are doing will never help you do
the good things that you desire to do.
It is okay that we have a lot of desires. Jonathan Martenson once said “feelings
are like waves, you can’t control them but you can choose which one to surf”. Feelings
are there all the time. We all have emotions and we never know when they will
show up or go away but we don’t have to let them rule us. You discover that in
a day, you have hundreds of emotions. If you find yourself in a mess, probably
you have behaved wrongly or you don’t like the things you do, feeling sorry for
yourself is not the way out.
The next time you have a desire, weigh the advantages and
disadvantages on a scale in your mind. You might never know. You just discover
that it has more disadvantages than advantages. Whenever you have a desire you
are not sure about, answer these three questions concerning it.What do you
want, why do you want it and how badly do you want it? I believe that these
three questions will guide you in a way in determining how good whatever you
want to do is or bad it is. If you find yourself doing the wrong thing, you
have not been self- conscious, you have not been God conscious. Make a decision
today to live your life by decision not emotion; that way you can be rest
assured that you remain free.
