Sin in everything

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ohyah007

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i’m am having a huge problem

im am seeing sins of
lust
pride
greed
love for material things

in everything i do

i cant wake up and have a normal day without being scared of upsetting God. every minute of the day something new comes up.
I am scared to make friendships with people of the opposite sex becaue im scared that it may lead to impure thoughts or a relationship that contains lustful acts. I am scared to listen to music. I am scared to buy new clothes.

right now i only see God as a tyrant
but i really want to love him, i just am having loads of trouble

has this happened to anyone else

could somebody help me???
please 😦
 
ohyah007 said:
i’m am having a huge problem

im am seeing sins of
lust
pride
greed
love for material things

in everything i do

i cant wake up and have a normal day without being scared of upsetting God. every minute of the day something new comes up.
I am scared to make friendships with people of the opposite sex becaue im scared that it may lead to impure thoughts or a relationship that contains lustful acts. I am scared to listen to music. I am scared to buy new clothes.

right now i only see God as a tyrant
but i really want to love him, i just am having loads of trouble

has this happened to anyone else

could somebody help me???
please 😦
Click to expand...
You may be suffering from what is known as scrupulosity. You need to get a spiritual director/regular confessor to advise you.

God Bless
 
bilop said:
You may be suffering from what is known as scrupulosity. You need to get a spiritual director/regular confessor to advise you.

God Bless
Click to expand...
I agree with bilop.

But for now, I will say that we do sin a great deal. Jesus said that even the just man falls seven times a day. But He also said God loves us. How does that make sense?

The Bible says we are made in the image and likeness of God. That being the case, we can, in some measure, see things as God does. So we can see the potential for sin everywhere if we pay attention at all. We can see selfishness in even our most unselfish actions. (We feel good about them, don’t we? That can be seen as selfish.) If I eat a hamburger, I know that somebody in the world is starving. How, then, do I get half the hamburger to him or her? Maybe, not being emaciated, I should somehow get the whole hamburger to him or her. Do I have a moral justification in even drinking clean water? In a sense, I don’t, and sin in drinking clean tap water because I’m not sharing it with somebody who doesn’t have clean water.

But God created us as we are; as mixed creatures who constantly fail at the perfection we feel we must have to “deserve” being in the presence of God.

Is God’s purpose in creating us to put us here and expect perfection of us? If so, we would rightly be terrified of Him because He has set us an impossible task, with the most horrific consequences if we fail in it.

But we are told that He loves us and want us to love Him. That’s a whole different thing isn’t it? Remember when Jesus admonished the disciples about their notion of the Fatherhood of God? He asked whether, when a son asks his father for a fish, does the father give him a snake? When the son asks for bread, does the father hand him a stone? It is the very “parent-ness” of God that Jesus tried to impress on the Pharisees and on the disciples.

St. Therese of Lisieux, one of the “Doctors of the Church” and therefore worthy of belief said an astounding thing. She said that if she committed every sin there was to commit, she would not be afraid of hell. Why would she say a thing like that? Because she “got it”, that’s why. She loved God. She tried to avoid offending Him, not out of fear, but out of love. She knew God wanted one thing only…her.

We often feel awfully unloved in this world. It’s a hard place, and we sometimes take our notions of God from it. But the worlds’ ways are not God’s ways.

Again, I encourage you, as bilop did, to get a spiritual director and follow his/her advice without question. But I also want to tell you one of St. Therese’s stories; the one about the rabbit.

A rabbit suddenly became aware that he was being hunted. The hunter was a king. The rabbit ran, but the hunter gave chase. The rabbit dodged through thickets and over rocks and did every rabbit trick he knew to elude the hunter, but the hunter only gained on him. With each stride, the rabbit’s fear mounted. The hunter got closer and closer, and the rabbit’s heart boomed with terror. Finally, the rabbit ran into a sheer cliff he could not climb. The rabbit was utterly exhausted. The king rode up close to the rabbit, weapon in hand.

What did the rabbit do?

With his last ounce of energy, he leaped into the arms of the king. The king had pity, and the rabbit was saved.

Think about that story while you are hunting for a good spiritual director. God is that king/hunter, and you are the rabbit. He wants you to leap into His arms.
 
I should have added this.

Loving God is doing what? How do we do that? Again, I might recommend St. Therese’s “Little Way”. She knew she would never accomplish great earthly endeavors. She would not convert nations or anything like that. What she did was try to have a consciousness of God’s love and of doing things for Him as she could.

She knew God loves His people, so she went out of her way to serve them, within the limitations of the life she had. It often took very small things. She might take the heavy end of something two people were carrying instead of the light end. She might comfort someone she didn’t like. She might make it a point to do a little more work to lighten someone else’s load, but always in secret. I remember how good-humored she was. She had a little “joke going with God” about a nun whom she intensely disliked, but whom she constantly praised. One day that nun asked Therese why, exactly, Therese held her in such high esteem (which she didn’t). Therese replied (truthfully) that she did because in that nun she saw the face of Jesus. She meant it, but not in the way the nun thought.

She also focused on the ways in which she was blessed. Now, living in a Carmelite convent is not exactly a luxurious life. But there were little things. A spring day, a sweet smell, a warm room on a cold day. She made a conscious effort to see God’s gifts in those things, and thanked Him for them.

She did have a pivotal “conversion point” in her life; a day when she was very young, when she suddenly realized how self-centered she was being. It was at that point she decided to live “outside herself” by devoting her life to God. It was that decision that caused her to no longer fear sin or hell. It was on that day that she really and truly realized that God is a parent.

St. Therese had experiences with people who were scrupulous; who worried about their sin and their merits and their salvation constantly. I recall one story in particular about her experience of a nun like that. I can’t remember exactly how that experience turned out, but I do know that shortly after St. Therese’s death, her holiness and her proper understanding of God burst onto the Catholic world like a bombshell. Her writings are kind of hard to read now because of the flowery way she wrote. It was the way people wrote in her time, not the “jounalistic” way of expression we now think of as “normal”. Even so, our Church leaders would do well to study her writings and ensure that we know about them and understand them. Our world is getting a bit “hard-edged” just as it was in her time.
 
so is the story about the rabbit is saying that we should be scared of God at all times until we can realize that he loves us?
 
ohyah007 said:
so is the story about the rabbit is saying that we should be scared of God at all times until we can realize that he loves us?
Click to expand...
Not exactly. We have every “objective” reason to be afraid of God. But we do not seem to realize, oftentimes, that His heart is soft toward us. We should know NOW that God loves us, even if we are just taking that on faith. That’s really what faith is…it’s trust. We just plain are not going to achieve perfection. We ought to work on it in reasonable ways. But as with St. Therese, most of us are capable of approaching it only in “little ways”. We aren’t going to impress the Creator of the Universe with our lives. But He doesn’t demand that. What does He want? He wants us. We, ourselves, are the only thing we can give Him. So, in order to do that, we go to Him even if we’re afraid.

I do not want to give you the impression that St. Therese did not, at times, feel as if she was abandoned. She sometimes did. But she did not fear. She pursued her “little way” and she trusted.

That she was right, we can rightly believe. Many, many, many miracles occurred through her intervention after her death. I could tell you stories. But you would do better to read the writings of others about those miracles.

Oh, tonight when my wife and I say our rosary, we will include you. My wife’s middle name is “Rose”. Read the life of St. Therese and consider the possibility that this rosary will be your first “Rose”. Remember that I said it.
 
God is not a tyrant. Every sin is a sin for a reason. You never sin if you don’t want to. You never sin by accident. This all you probably know. Now you need to talk to a priest, perhaps find a spiritual director.
 
ohyah007 said:
although that video gave me goosebumps at the end,
i still cant come to feel secure that i am doing enough

Matthew 7:13-14 and the Catechism have really got my hopes down.

what can i do??

:sad_bye:
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You can talk to your priest. When one is down he will always polarize himself to the negative. There are plenty of Scripture references that show the forgiveness and infinite love of God. Jesus did not come to call the righteous. He came to call sinners. We ALL fall in that category. As many times as you seek forgiveness is as many times as Jesus will forgive you.

God MADE you to be with Him forever. WE are the ones who choose to separate ourselves from Him. Yes, we do many things to do that but His mercy infinitely surpasses any sins that we can commit. He is ALWAYS there for you and He is love.

It seems to me that you are in despair and spiritual guidance is in order. Jesus would not want to see you this way. He did not die for you so that He could find some technical loop hole to bring you eternal death. He died for you to bring you eternal life.

I am not sure where the Catechism brings you down but if it is in those sections that speak of hell or mortal sin then it must be taken in context. Are you reading the whole of the message?

If perfection gets you to heaven then we are ALL doomed. Close up Christianity and call it a day…teachccd
 
I think it is GREAT that you can see your sins. Keep looking, and keep repenting. And, keep in mind that fearing the Lord is a good thing.

I have had these struggles in the past and I thought that they would never end. For me, it was like a rude awakening where I suddenly became aware of my filth, sin.

Seek prayers! Come to know Jesus as Savior. Come to hate Satan and all his deception, pride and temptation. Come to realize that it’s Satan who is the tyrant and who has you bound with sin.
 
ohyah007 said:
i’m am having a huge problem

im am seeing sins of
lust
pride
greed
love for material things

in everything i do

i cant wake up and have a normal day without being scared of upsetting God. every minute of the day something new comes up.
I am scared to make friendships with people of the opposite sex becaue im scared that it may lead to impure thoughts or a relationship that contains lustful acts. I am scared to listen to music. I am scared to buy new clothes.

right now i only see God as a tyrant
but i really want to love him, i just am having loads of trouble

has this happened to anyone else

could somebody help me???
please 😦
Click to expand...
Dearest friend

Stop worrying. I have been struggling to grow spiritually for 20 yrs and have made some progress and I look back and see nothing but a big mess and all I did was have a good desire most of the time. Just have a good desire and don’t worry about anything incl. your failures or even lack of progress at times. Just persevere and it will come. It seems to me all God wants is our desire. We really aren’t capable of much, not even the desire, and God knows this and still he loves us and blesses us and seems to be obsessed with us he’s so madly in love with us. Do you see what I’m getting at. The way God sees you is as the most beautiful thing in the world and he’s madly in love with you. He doesn’t see your faults like you do. He just loves you and will give you what you want if you persevere. But don’t be loathing yourself because your not perfect. If God loves you as you are should you not love yourself?

God bless you:thumbsup:🙂
 
Oh, yes! I agree this is a GREAT thing…a special grace from God. Especially when you see how many people out there have not been granted this insight. However, I do understand the heaviness of this insight and how this can lead to scruples.

I try to remember that the more we realize down to our bones how unworthy and helpless we are from keeping ourselves from being “stained”, we can’t help but cry out for God’s mercy. We become beggars! How could our Lord Jesus not look down upon us with compassion. Remember - Jesus does not perceive or judge like we do. Our thinking is faulty. We come to our conclusion that He will treat us like other humans which is not the case if we are repentant.

Think of it this way…when a young child falls, a Father will immediately run to her and lift her up into his arms. However, the Father attention is caught when the child first cries out in pain and calls for help due to helplessness and fear.:bighanky: This is the beginnings of repentance. The lifting up is God’s mercy and grace.

Peace in Christ,
:blessyou:
stteresasgirl
 
Oh, I wanted to add I also believe that you need a spiritual director for guidance. Plus, when scruples develop, what happens is that it paralyzes you from acting in response to God’s graces as you become enveloped in self-absorption. It is a difficult thing to deal with and I will pray for you. Also, remember that God has a purpose in this.

Peace,
stteresasgirl
 
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