Hello,
I have a question about your article, "The Beast Within". A Falling Away is required for REAL conversion - we must ALL leave our First Love. You say specifically, "It is a complete and total SPIRITUAL FALL !" You say that we join our own church & enter back into the world that "we thought we came out of."
Well, I can look back in my life and see four distinct years of my life where I left God for another person(I replaced God with another human-being and began entertaining all sorts of new idols). Before this time, I was brought to Christ & learning about God through a process of many trials I had in my life (and still have, to a certain extent). It was almost like I fled from God in the midst of those trials and developed shelter elsewhere. I felt God VERY clearly pulling me out of that shelter (eventually) and it was VERY hard for me to do so. It was painful in LEAVING the false shelter, but Christ comforted me through the process (He binded up my wounds, etc.) And it wasn't until I got out of that shelter (person) that I began to see a lot of lies (I believed in restitution of all, but was not UNDERSTANDING....I had no conception of God's Sovereignty) I had in me and I had a greater consciousness of my sin. I went through an extensive period of sorrow. It wasn't self-centered sorrow, but sorrow that I felt was being experienced WITH me by Christ.
Only in looking back can I see the self-righteous skin I had. The life I lived then seems in direct opposition to the life Christ is giving me now. Through those three years, I was very subtly pushing away God - saying, "No thanks". Only now do I see that I wasn't communing with the REAL God then - I had invented some other God (because I remained a "seeker", yet was not producing any fruit really and would disobey God with the snap of my finger. I was convinced that I could do anything without real consequence).
Are you able to see clearly the Fall that you went through before you were truly converted? Is this something that we can pinpoint in our lives?
Thanks again,
Nicholas
Dear Nicholas:
Yes, if by "pinpoint" you mean the events (that may have taken many years) in which we turned our backs on God and had but a superficial consciousness of his presence in our lives while we sinned our hearts out.
God be with you,
Ray
