I encourage ya'll to, as Colossians says "as you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith..."
No matter what life throws are you, continue to walk in Him. I plead with you to do so. Its so easy to stray, to do your own thing, and in the battle against the flesh to let the flesh win. I know how hard it is, and even more so now then before. Since being back from Hungary I have had the hardest time spiritually, it has been one of the biggest spiritual battles I have ever had. And I am ashamed to say that I have been so on and off with the Lord since being back, more off and then on. I realized how horribly weak I really am. Its hard coming off that mountain, I came back and was just on this spiritual high for several weeks. Then slowly I just began to come off. I let myself get so beat down by people. People who expected me to be this way cause I had been to Bible College, or people who wanted me to be this other way. I felt like people were judging me, knew some were. Especially during my hardest times spiritually, whenever I wasn't walking. I knew people were disappointed in me. Because of that I began to focus on pleasing people instead of pleasing God, and it was just a downhill slide from there. It's amazing how every decision we make can be based on whether it will please these people, or those people. So then most things you do are fake cause your just doing them for man.
It goes from that to complete opposite, and letting yourself completely go cause you just don't care at all anymore. You aren't trying to please anyone at all anymore, God or people. The things you do are pretty much defiant against everyone cause your mad, and tired of being beat down. Then people judge you even more.
But ya know what, the Lord is gracious. He was standing there waiting for me whenever I came back. Whenever I realized again there was no way I could survive this life without Him. Whenever I once again realized that pleasing people doesn't matter, it gets you no where. Cause you are never going to please everyone, they are constantly going to be judging you. Pleasing God does matter though, He is the only one that matters. He is forgiving, and loving. I realized again how much He loves me, and just wants me to be with Him. And then I wanted to love Him with all my being, to walk in Him.
The battle is still there though, and will always be there. But the Lord is my strength. He is there to help me through the tough times, even if nobody else is, cause the people are still there, they will also always be there, judging but their opinion of me doesn't matter. People are going to judge you no matter what. I do have people who I don't want to think badly of me, cause I respect them. But I don't want that to consume me. Cause of God's opinion matters the most.
We are to take up the whole armor of God, so that we will be able to withstand the wiles of the devil. We need to take it up everyday. Cause satan is always there, every day. Using different things to get to us, people, money, lust, whatever, he is never going away. But we can fight :)
As I said before, I am ashamed that I have been so off with the Lord, but then I know that through it all He's taught me things. I have truly learned how easy it is to just stray away, so now I won't judge people whenever they go through the same thing as me, cause I now understand.
So I again encourage you to walk in Him, stay rooted and built up, take up the whole armor God. Cause whenever you do that you will be able to withstand the attacks, you can only do it with the Lord, there is NO way you can do it by yourself. I know that now. And don't worry about pleasing men, only worry about pleasing God.
As Paul would say at the end of one of his letters.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
