Journey to Freedom

For the longest time I struggled with a specific sin and for the most part I have kept it from others because when I told them it only made the struggle harder. These people with the best intentions would give me a list of ways to resist temptation, but I knew along with many others that sometimes those lists don’t help but make it worse. I just wanted to be free, because every time that I failed, I felt horrible, shame, guilt, and that I could never mend my relationship with God.

Even when I had resisted temptation for months, I would still end up failing at some point. It was a vicious cycle where I would fail, shame and guilt would come again. I felt so downcast about failing again, I felt like there was no reason to try. So, I would fail again.

But once I started to realize that it did not matter if I failed or succeeded in resisting temptation, resisting became easier. God did not care if I failed or succeeded. He only cared about what I did after I failed or succeeded.

If I failed, did I repent, or did I just fall back into depression. When the enemy comes to tempt me and I fail, but I don’t repent, I feel as though I have invited guilt and shame to be my friends. But if I do repent, I am saying that the cross was for all my sin present and future, and not just for the sin of yesterday.

But if I succeeded in resisting, did I attribute it to myself, or did I give the glory to God. Whenever I decided that I was strong enough to resist temptation I would find myself failing again because of my pride. But when I realized that I am completely hopeless without the Lord’s help, that is where I found the most success in defeating my temptations.

I also found that praying and asking God for scripture works wonders. It didn’t have to be a long scripture but helped me so much in my journey to becoming free.

After I had been doing these things for a while, and not allowing the enemy to use my failures against me, I started to be able to see my freedom. I started sharing the testimony of my freedom, but now thinking back I think my pride started getting puffed up thinking I had done it all by myself.

So, in a moment of weakness after months of success I failed again. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was in myself, but then as I began to repent and pray the Lord reminded me of something I had read in a book not long before.

The book was called “Praying God’s Word” by Beth Moore, and several times in that book Beth mentions how sometimes my freedom from strongholds takes longer than I wish because God cares more about me knowing Him than about me being free. If the road to freedom is taking a long time it could be because God knows that through the struggle it will bring me closer to Him.

However, this is not always the case, sometimes my freedom will come quickly, because in those cases that is what brings me closer to God. I remember the day after I had failed again and how disappointed I felt. I remember hearing the Lord say to me, “I care more about you knowing me, and this may take longer than you like so you can get to know me more.”

Even since then I have stopped being so hard on myself for not being perfect and have tried to remind myself when I feel like freedom seems light-years away that Jesus cares more about me knowing Him than me being free. Because the more I have to learn to resist temptation by leaning on Him for strength, to pray when I feel tempted, or even learn new things about myself through the process the closer I become to Him.

I would also like to encourage you, that He is still there, even if you feel like He is not or that you are just too bad for God to forgive. He still really loves you and wants you to be free from what you are struggling with. But you can’t expect your struggle to go away overnight, because nine times out of ten, what you are going through is bringing you closer to Him, and He cares more about that than you being free.