I have struggled with the concept of sin for a very long time. You see, when I heard sin I hear “evil” and “bad”. I have not been able to separate being evil or bad from being a sinner. I could not understand the true concept of sin and it has held me back from God for a long time. When I was a child, my family and the other occult members that abused me, used the Bible and God’s Word against me. So words like sin and hell were reserved for times when I was disobeying and were used…
Suffering comes in many forms and for me, it has always come from the deep emotional pain of shame and regret. I have harbored for many years the shame and regret of most of my sin, yet instead of confronting it as I should, I continued to bury it deep in the recesses of my psyche. Not to say I was ever without excuse because truth be told the sin of participating in the sacrificial murder of one’s own offspring through satanic rituals when you are merely a child is not a sin of one’s own making. It is a…
When I first came to Christ I was very leery of the idea of sin. For me, sin was something that was used to punish me. I was often told I was a sinner, which was equated to evil, bad, terrible, and holding a one-way ticket to hell. This wasn’t used as a segway into the need for Christ and the mercy and forgiveness He died to give us, it was used as a rod of discipline to keep me in line. The only forgiveness I heard about was being forgiven by obeying the adults in charge of me, and…
Forgiveness has been something that I have struggled with all of my life. From the time I was born, I was being physically and sexually abused by my family and at the Mormon Church. I grew up feeling worthless and abandoned; constantly lied to and betrayed. I was beaten down for having gifts from God to see and talk to Him, and was taught that I was generally stupid and altogether evil. All these things shaped the core of who I was. Instead of growing into a tender young girl who loved the Lord, and wanted to help and serve…