Roller coaster ride

[papadave]

I was reading the bible the other day and thinking how, beginning with Adam and Eve and all through the history of man, after seeing the power of God man still rebels. Well call me Man.
As a child, religious education was not part of my upbringing. ( although my older brother and sister went to catholic schools and revived all the sacraments of initiation ) There were crucifixes hung in almost every room but that was about it. Oh and when I did something really bad I was told it was a sin. ( what exactly is that?? ) But I felt God was there. I would pray every night hoping I was doing it right. Every time I said a bad word I said sorry God. I felt he was was there helping me and life was good.
Then I thought that God wasn’t so important in my life and made a lot of bad decisions. Some of the things I was doing and places I was going were putting my life in danger and I know he was there helping me through. Then I actually joined the Church and God turned things around. Then his importance to me began to fade.
I could go on and on. Right now I am having a strong draw from God. I feel so close to God, Jesus, Mary , and the saints. I pray that I can learn from human history and not repeat the get close to God, get comfortable, fall from grace and feel alone, look for God and find him there, and feel even worse than the last time for not trusting in him roller coaster ride that so many have been on.
Lord Jesus I pray that all may know and feel the love that You and the Father have for us and not wavier in our faith in the plans that you have for us of eternal peace if we only believe in and follow the teachings of the Son our Lord JESUS :amen:

 

[YosefYosep]

Sin and rebellion is embedded in man’s nature. We are weak creatures and from time to time will rebel against God. Look at the Israelites in Judges. They went through 7 awful cycles of falling away from God, descending into sin, and then returning to God. My point is that we are all vulnerable to sin and will occasionally fall away from God.

Your drawing away from God could be “spiritual dyness” which is a method God sometimes uses to draw us closer to him. It’s sort of his way of teaching us to walk in his grace. He holds our hand and then lets it go for awhile. We’ll always find ourselves coming back to Christ at the end of our dry periods sort of like the Israelites. The periods where we feel alone and abandoned shows us how much we need the Lord in our life.

At the end of all my dry periods, where I would feel depressed and distant from God, I came out a stronger follower of Christ, and I felt closer to the Lord than I would before. Use these periods of feeling helpless and alone as periods of teaching. It is the Lord teaching us how much we need him and how he is always there for us.

There’s a little poem called footprints in the sand where a man looks at his whole life which is symbolically displayed as footprints in the sand. There are two sets of footprints, the man’s and God’s. The man notices that during points of anguish or sorrow in his life that there were only one set of footprints. The man asks God why he abandoned him during those awful times. God responds by saying, “That’s when I carried you.”

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