My Story - Learning to Live the Spirit-Filled Life

The following link is a PowerPoint presentation of some of the key principles that I have learned over this twelve+ year journey.  I have used these slides in group discussion and presentation. I plan to elaborate on these slides in future posts.  Here's the link:
Learning to Live the Spirit-Filled Life (v2-20-2011b)

I know now from the experience of regularly applying these principles that God's commands are not burdensome, and that Christ does give abundant life.  Now I love God from my heart, and I regularly experience the Spirit producing fruit in my life.  I have been living a victorious life for more than a year and a half.  Perfectly?  No. Consistently?  Yes.  I still have plenty of frustrations, trials, and sin struggles, but these no longer daily defeat me like they used to.  

I've come a long way on this journey from where I began, but I know I still have a long way to go!  As always, I invite any comments you have -- I'm eager to learn from others on the journey!

My Story - No Peace With My Faith

Though I finally came to peace that there wasn't a contradiction between James and other books of the Bible, it took me a lot longer to come to peace about my own faith.  I was often paralyzed by scrupulosity OCD as I analyzed whether or not I had true, saving faith. Moreover -- even if I did have true faith -- I felt frustrated and defeated in trying to live out God's high calling to obedience.  

Since my early days of seeking to know God, I worked hard to try to obey God and to do good works because I thought that God wanted me to.  But this did not bring me the peace I was longing for.  I struggled:

• Why did my efforts to obey seem like a burden, when God says that His "commands are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3)?  
• Why did the Christian life often seem like a choking chain rather than the "abundant life" offered by Christ (John 10:10)? 
• Why did I often resent God rather than loving Him (Matthew 22:37)? 
•  Why did I rarely experience the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22)?

I was deeply frustrated with the gap between my daily experience and what the Bible teaches can be the reality of a deep, intimate relationship with God.  I was tired of living in defeat.  This longing in my soul resulted in a twelve+ year journey of searching and discovering, applying and testing Biblical principles of how to live victoriously in Christ.  So where am I on this journey now?  See my next post...

Note:  If you have OCD, I want to encourage you not to get caught up in overanalyzing such questions about your own faith like I did.  It is worth asking God whether your faith is true or not -- Paul does tell us to examine our own faith (2 Cor. 13:5) -- but I am convinced that this examining does NOT mean through constant analysis or obsession.  It's a deception and danger to get stuck there.  Some principles that I will share in a link in my next post have been keys to my moving forward (1) out of obsession over such questions about if I had true, saving faith (2) into freedom from OCD and (3) into confidence that I do have true, saving faith.  

And one more note -- it all takes time.  I have rarely experienced huge changes overnight, but by God's grace I have been persevering through the learning process that He knows has been good for me to go through.  And it's been worth it.