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Sometimes I have intrusive thoughts that, for example, if I anger someone, God will punish me back. If I get angry with someone, something bad will happen. I have trouble trusting God and always think I’m a bad person, that God is angry, irritated, or sad with me, and sometimes I can’t pray properly because of these thoughts. Everything needs to be “perfect”, so I’m always guilty, afraid and everything else. What can I do to change these thoughts beside therapy that I’m already doing? (Even writing this text and putting these thoughts out there and having someone respond seems like a bad thing.)
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God is love. For those who are in His love, it is natural that He reproves us because of sin. Yet even while He does not take away our lives, He allows curses, calamities, and sickness to come because of sin. Some suffer pain through illness, some through their work or business, and others through financial trials—but all of these are within the grace of God. However, people do not regard pain, sorrow, tears, suffering, and mourning as God’s grace.
Because human life is accustomed to thinking that only joy and pleasure are God’s grace, most people despise sorrow, tears, mourning, pain, and suffering. Yet God gives us affliction, pain, sorrow, and tears so that, through my suffering, I may understand the suffering of my brothers; through my pain, I may understand the pain of my brothers; and through my tears, I may understand the tears of my brothers. But instead of this, people cry out only about their own suffering, their own tears, and their own pain. There are no beautiful Christians who, for the sake of their brothers who share the same suffering, tears, and pain, seek love and pray before God to receive His love on their behalf. Christians alike seek only their own blessing, happiness, and success, and as a result they simply repeat sins, chasing after the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Sin exists in order to give us humility—so that through the sinful flesh which cannot help but repeat sin, we are made to continually realize that we are sinners.
Even if we spend our entire lives awakening, resolving, and determining within ourselves, we cannot escape the sinful members and habits of the flesh that inevitably repeat sin. Truth is to lead us to obtain the power of God that makes us free from them. In other words, truth is to guide us to receive the divine power revealed in God’s love—power that surpasses the limits of human will, pride, and determination—and the true shepherd of God is the one who leads us to this truth. God’s truth is to lead us to receive His power so that we may escape the sinner’s path, where, because of words and theories, believers are stirred only to self-reliance, awakening, resolution, and determination, yet can do nothing but repeat sin throughout their lives.
If you truly desire to receive abundant liberality and overflowing thanksgiving in love, you must first leave behind the worldly life of the flesh in which sin is inevitably repeated. Christ said that we must deny our entire lives, even our very lives, and take up our cross to follow Him. The life of Christ is not about joy and pleasure according to the flesh. It is to deny one’s whole life and to make the hope of Christ, pursued through the love of the cross, one’s sole goal. Only then can one be led to freedom from sin by the power of God’s love.
Christians today believe in God while mingling with the world and material wealth, and thus theirs is a faith of the flesh, inevitably repeating every kind of heresy, lawlessness, corruption, falsehood, and evil deed. Because their faith is only for their own happiness, blessing, and success, they live lives bound to commit sin, always chasing the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Therefore, no matter how good a sermon they hear, human awakening, resolution, and determination cannot overcome the habits and members of sin, which, depending on circumstances, always repeat. They sin and repent, sin and repent, until death, and thus repentance loses its meaning. The purpose of repentance is to keep from sinning again; but if sin is repeated, that repentance becomes meaningless. Indeed, such repentance often causes people to take their sin lightly, or to become bold and shameless about their sin. This shameless faith—becoming proud and brazen in sin—has become the very center of Christianity today, taught and learned by pastors and congregations alike.
This is a faith of the flesh that cannot align with love, that makes one an enemy before God, and that dishonors the love of the cross. It is a faith that can never be an example or model like light and salt.
I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.(Romans 7 : 21~25)
For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.(Romans 7 : 14~18)
Because in the flesh there is nothing but sin, the reality of Christianity is that sin can only be repeated until death. Christianity is a religion made by man, and therefore it is natural that the limitations of Christians are the same as the limitations of humanity. God is Spirit. It is only by grace, through which the power of God is given, that one is freed from sin; being stirred by words, awakened by teachings, or making resolutions and determinations changes nothing at all.
Yet today, all the doctrines of Christianity and the teachings of its pastors alike put words at the forefront, teaching only to stir awakening, resolution, and determination based on self-reliance. This is the lamentable reality of Christianity. Such things are man’s teaching and man’s inspiration, not God’s teaching and inspiration. God’s teaching and inspiration is the divine power revealed within His love. True truth is to lead us to receive nourishment within His love, and in that nourishment to obtain God’s grace, teaching, inspiration, wisdom, and power.
If you truly desire to know, learn, and receive the overflowing gratitude, abundant liberality, gentle joy, and vast wisdom and truth of God that follow the love of Christ, then first read the e-books Judgment and Moses’ Burning Bush(Author : Yo Han Lee). Then visit the Moses’ Burning Bush website(https://mosesbush.com) and ask every question you desire.