Top 5 Hardest Moments to Maintain Your Christianity

[phkrause]

For some, admitting you’re a Christian is tough. I’ve never had that problem. I used to be a self-absorbed binge drinker with obsessive tendencies, and thanks to the Lord, I’m now a people-loving Jesus freak. However what the secular crowd doesn’t always realize about Christians is that we’re still human, and we have weaknesses that can still surface under certain arduous circumstances. All very first-world problems of course, but here goes:
Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Galleries/Top-5-Hardest-Moments-to-Maintain-Your-Christianity.aspx

 

ps:If you have others, feel free to add!

Edited July 23, 2015 by phkrause

[Outta Here]

Death of one's spouse, children or parents.

Loss of employment.

Divorce.

Bankruptcy. Poverty.

Rape.

Wrongful imprisonment. 

Diagnosis of terminal illness.

 

 

[debbym]

 

living in major depression

living in active addiction with ptsd

having leadership responsibilities in the church and being severely legalistic.

having been  violated by your SDA father who is an ordained minister.

learning that child molesting SDA pastors have been merely moved from territory to territory over the years, in in the  world mission field.

 

this is just five, not mine personally but from communicating with others these were tough ones.

[debbym]

i believe there is something called emotional inebriation.  It is the opposite of sobriety.  When our emotions are running high, it can interfere with the exercise of faith, and tip the helmet of salvation on our head, and make it hard to hold onto the breastplate of  faith and love.

When a loved one receives a diagnosis of terminal illness we come together and ask for prayer for them, for God to protect them through the trial when pain rises, and fear is aroused, and their hold on faith may be tenuous.  The rocket ride of divorce, or the death of a child,  is also high distress, and loss.  Getting through the ordeal with your faith strong, and your power to love only deepened it is the a great blessing of the Holy Spirit.

To have peace faith and love intact when the rip tides of life make you question your existence, is a gift that only God can give.

When Noah was in the ark and the floods were straining the ark, we are told in SOP that if the angels had not held the ark together, even with all the craftsmanship and the builders following the instructions God gave carefully, the ark would have fallen apart.

So even when we have built solely on the rock of Jesus Christ, in the storms, our humanity can experience human limitations and fail, but God will carry us through as we cling to him alone.  Jesus' humanity failed when he sank beneath the weight of the cross others had placed on his back, but God saw Him through.  Sometimes crosses are placed upon our lives that we cannot hold up under...

God admonishes us to be Sober.  Getting excessively emotionally plowed over our causes does not help us walk in faith and love, whatever the distress we are enduring.  This does not mean we should not have our feelings, but for some of us, heavy emotions are inebriating.  We can chose to subdue our reactions and keep our sobriety.

1 Peter 45:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

1 Thessalonians 5:8 But let us who are of the say, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of Salvation.

 

Titus 2:2 That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.

 

Titus 2:12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

 

1 Timothy 3:11 Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.

 

1 Peter 45:7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.