Response to Krystal (Notes)

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(NEW) Response to Voice Messages

First off, thank you for being so open and honest with your journey, I’ve been enjoying listening to you and getting to know you better. We’ve pretty much only talked about religion, which is fun, but it can also be pretty heavy and overwhelming, esp. with my ability to not keep things short and concise xD. Sometime id like to hear about your other interests cause it seems like we have similar tastes in music and the outdoors. Nevertheless, It sounds like you are dealing with a lot and I’m sorry for all the stress, confusion and sadness you may have been experiencing this past year. Dont think you have to understand everything right at this moment or that your faith is going to be lukewarm or that you are not being genuine. I think you are on the right track even just by thinking about these topics. It seems like you are genuinely wrestling with these ideas, and I'm excited because I know the power of my God and I cant wait to see what good things He has planned for you. It seems like you all ready understand that God is a personal god, and that this is a personal and internal battle, but know that this is your battle, and God is fighting for you! I’m just here to remind you that you are not alone! If anything maybe my purpose here is to overwhelm you with giant messages so you know that people care and are here to support you. :) Here are some additional thoughts regarding things you touched on, if you are interested.

Doubts are Valid:

I think pretty much everyone has doubts about their faith at some points—its part of our human experience. We all will have spiritual highs and spiritual lows—our human life is incredibly complicated, and everyone wants to try to make things so simple, but its just not like that. I also can understand the worry about being misled and having 10 thousand people all telling you something else, and then seeing how many different subsects of Christianity there are and being overwhelmed, confused and frustrated. I also understand looking at people of other religions and thinking, “Man whose guys are completely brainwashed by the community they grew up in.” I had a friend that was Mormon (LDS) so I'm at least partly familiar with their beliefs.

Here are my brief thoughts on Mormons (LDS)⁠

. The stronger your faith becomes the less you will doubt. I mean dude, there are still people who have been Christians for years who still have doubts, I still have doubts sometimes, but not so much recently. Maybe reading about Thomas who walked with Jesus and doubted his resurrection may help you see that Jesus even understands and meets us in our doubts. (John 20:24-29)

Hearing and Decerning God’s Voice:

I still tend to have this same struggle.

See an example of that here.⁠

BUT, we should be focusing on hearing God through scripture. Those are God’s words, and he does speak to us directly through reading the Bible. But I also understand your struggle of trusting that it is God’s word but written by inspired men. There is a great quote from a pastor:

“I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and they claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.” —Voddie Baucham

Honestly, I’d rather you listen to his sermon on why we should trust the Bible, rather than spending the time reading anything I’ve written here. If you have any time, you can find that

here⁠

(29 mins). In your words “God is in the timely, patient business.”—Discerning God’s voice is often a process that requires patience. Trust that God is working in your heart, despite how you feel or what you think. The closer you get with God, the easier you can hear His voice, and feel his love. I’d also say seek guidance from mature believers. It one of the reasons God wants us to be in Church, so that we can be in the presence of God and learn from others so that we dont have to figure everything out by ourselves. But, I think it is important pray and ask God to guide you to where you need to be, to help ease your mind, and that you can actually trust in Him. I understand more than anyone that trusting people can be hard, so take it step by step. Its okay to take baby steps and move at a pace you feel comfortable with.

Finding Faith After a Break Up:

I actually went through something similar last year. If you are interested in that story, you can find that

here⁠

. But, I know whats its like to lose your the life you thought you were going to have—youre not only grieving a loss of a relationship, you are grieving the loss of the life you thought you were going to have. I wouldn't ever wish that experience on anyone, but that life event did end up having a positive impact on my life. I am so much more happy and mentally healthy than I have ever been, and I cant emphasize this enough, I would not be where I am today without God and me coming back to my faith, and I believe that with 100% of my being. All that to say, I definitely understand what its like being blindsided by a break up, it really changing up your life, grieving the loss of a past life, as well as, a relationship. I am sorry that someone told you that God took your relationship from you, I do not believe that is how God works. The Bible tells us to be careful of speaking on behalf of God unless it is something He specifically commanded.

See more here⁠

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Grieving the Loss of the Life You Were Living:

I feel like this is best saved for an in-person conversation. This is partly because I dont really know anything about your life, and I dont want to assume anything incorrectly. I’d love to talk more about what aspirations you think you'd have to abandon in order to follow God. You say there are “worldly” things in your life that you love and you think they hurt God’s heart, I’m not really sure what you are referring to there. I know you briefly had mentioned that you had pursued modeling, and I do think there is a way to glorify him in that industry.

I also loved my previous life I had before moving to VA, and I think I had a lot of things going for me. But I also love my life now, it took awhile for me to build a new one, but I am pretty happy with where I am at, and I'm also proud of the progress ive made, and if i can dig myself out of a hellhole and find happiness, and contentment, then I know you can as well.

What I Mean by Saying You're a “Light”

So, me and you have had very different levels of exposure to Christianity. For me I was born into a Christian family, homeschooled to 9th grade, then went to a Christian high school, then to a Christian college. I been surrounded by Christianity my whole life. And I use to struggle with that thought all the time. Like man, what if I am actually being brainwashed? Everyone I know is familiar with Christianity and generally says they believe it. SO, I decided to step away from Christianity for about 4ish years, just to see what like was like on the other side—and Ill tell you, it lead me to a really bad place (a whole other story). But, I'm thankful for that time, because I was actually able to start to make my faith my own, and not just because everyone around me thought and believed that. To care about it because you actually care about it. Its just a different level of faith when its your own faith. And like I cant even begin to understand what its like to have no concept of a higher power. So to see someone who has never been a Christian before start to take an interest in it all is awesome to see! I dont really see that much these days, at least in my life. For example, I started doing YoungLife and doing high school ministry, and a lot of those kids really dont seem to have any interest, they dont ask questions, they dont seem to have a genuine interest, so its refreshing for me to even see someone like you asking questions, or even wrestling with these ideas even if you arn’t ‘Sold on the Idea’ yet. It’s a “Light” to me because I actually get excited that someone is asking these questions. So to me, its kind of like a kid being excited to show someone their favorite toy. Or meeting someone that's just taken an interest in something you love. It’s exciting regardless of where you are at with it all. So dont feel any pressure, or like you are making me think you are more into it than you actually are, etc.

As far as worrying about being a fraud, find people who you seem to have a connection with or trust, and just be open and honest with them, bounce ideas off each other, have discussions, etc. No one expects you to be perfect! I know I’m sure as hell not, I fuck up all the time. Its just a constant reminder why I need Him so much. And I also know what its like to constantly feel like you're being judged by Christians all the time—its prob my number one complaint with Christians. IT SUCKS! But, find the ones you like, and stick with them :)

——This concludes my dissertation. If you made it this far, id be shocked. Maybe we should try to talk in person haha——

Link Sections:

Mormons or Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints:

Well the leader of that group was named Joseph Smith, and he is a problematic individual for me. I pretty much have a problem is anyone to claims to have some kind of knowledge about God that no one else has. He claims that he had a vison at 14 where God told him that everyone else was wrong, and it was his job to fix religion. So that just seems sketchy to me. The Bible has so many places where it warns people of false prophets, and I do believe he was one of them. If you want to know more about why I think that ask me, but the main point id make is about the concept of “Sola Scriptura” (Scripture Alone), you may have heard Ross mention that a few weeks back in a sermon. We as a church believe that the Bible alone is the ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice and that we do not need “additional texts” such as what Joseph Smith provides in order to be “right.”

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Struggle to hear god’s voice example:

I could not decide what apartment I should move into. Should I pick a cheaper one that I'm less happy with or should I pick the apartment that is more expensive, slightly bigger, and the one I'm just overall more excited about? I kept praying about it and asking God to show me which apartment was the one I should pick and I really didn't hear anything. Maybe he was speaking to me and I didn't hear it, or maybe he wasn't saying anything because he knew that what apartment I pick doesn't matter and I shouldn't worry about trivial things like that. He did answer that for me eventually in a really cool way, if you are curious ask me about it.

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Breakup Story: During covid, I had lost my job as a bartender and had a stumbled upon a unique opportunity and I jumped on it. I started working as a content creator online for the next 3ish years. During the process of that journey I met my ex girlfriend. And she was not a Christian, and at someone point I made one the biggest mistakes I have ever made: Walking away from God in order to pursue her (That's a whole other conversation, ask me sometime if you wanna know about it) During our time together we decided that we were going to build out a van and travel the country together and I would try to change my content from gaming and commentary to vanlife and travel content and bring my partner into it. So I decided to notify my community that I would be “retiring” from professional gaming and moving on the next chapter of my life and they were generally supportive. At the time I was trying to get approval from the place I was living to build out the van setup, but it wasn't really working out, so I decided to move back to my parents house and build the van there. About a week after I had packed up all my stuff and moved from TN to VA, I found out that my partner had been cheating on me with another member of the community I was apart of—I was devastated. To make matters worse, the scandal got leaked online and lets just say, some people had way too much fun with that drama. I was so unbelievability caught off guard by it and never saw it coming. So, I found myself in a new place, away from all my friends, with a “career” that I was unwilling to return to. I try not to cuss, but for the sake of emphasis, yeah, it really fucked me up. I was angry at God, it felt like he was punishing me for choosing a girl (or maybe a lifestyle) over him. But God does not work that way, but I do have to remind myself that during periods of great distress.

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These Bible verses emphasize caution of those who claim to speak on God’s behalf:

Jeremiah 23:16-17 (NIV):

"This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’"

Matthew 7:15 (NIV):

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."

1 John 4:1 (NIV):

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."

Deuteronomy 18:20 (NIV):

"But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.

Its really important to approach claims like “God took this away from you” with discernment and wisdom. The verse from John above says that we need to test claims and make sure they align with what the Bible actually says about God’s character. (I think you should also even be sure to test me on any of my claims and call me out on anything you dont think aligns with the Bible as well!) The more you learn about our God, the more you will start to see/understand the way he works. God has a plan for everyone, think about that analogy I told you about last weds about the tapestry:

What God sees vs. What we see

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(This isn't the best picture, but you get the point lol)

We all have bad experiences in our life and we might not understand why God would “let” something like that happen. But He sees the whole picture, He knows our path, and we need to trust Him that He will direct us on the path that IS best for us.

Proverbs 3:5-6 (ESV):

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths."

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