"Is this it? Is this the Good News?" I thought "because if it is, and the only other alternative is to backslide and lose my salvation...then I'd rather be dead."
These were my thoughts as the Skype sermon finished. There was no emotion, not even sadness. Just a blunt emptiness and I knew I'd reached the edge. Pushed there by each sermon reminding me that I was full of sin and needed to repent. Again. That my piety could be shown in how much I cried during worship, or suffered for the gospel or accepted whatever dire situation life had thrown at me as being God's will and an opportunity to examine myself to identify the sin He wanted to deal with.
I'm sure - in fact I know - that there were people who were very happy with that message, who actually felt set free by it. But no church is a one size fits all, and a message which is meant to convict can very easily condemn.
I was tormented by fear of God's disapproval and filled with despair that I would never be the Christian I longed to be. I was ashamed just to be me. I was ashamed that I had chosen to pursue a degree instead of serving God. I was ashamed and frustrated that I was in a town physically far from the church where I'd been born again, when clearly that was where God was moving.
I had adopted a bad habit of sitting with my head bowed down. My mother often corrected me on this, saying it made me look sad. At the time I thought it was just a quirk, in retrospect I can see that it was actually my body reflecting the state of my soul.
There were moments of happiness, like sunny days in the middle of winter. But like a sunny winter day, there was a perpetual chill in the air and the threat of clouds or, if in Cape Town like I was, wind and rain.
The depression started out like a storm. I've read somewhere that 'depression is frozen anger.' I tend to agree. I was 14 when my life took a turn for the difficult, both personally and as a family. Like any hormonal teenager, I had hopes and expectations which were dashed. But there was also a voice which whispered in my ear that 'God is trying to teach you a lesson, to punish you' and which threatened me with a future of hopes denied. Without even realising it I became angry with God, in the most Christian way possible. I was angry with Him because I felt as though I would never have His approval and that He had destined a sad and difficult life for me, never mind Jeremiah 29:11.
I wish at this point when I had confided in someone they had told me that I already did have God's approval, but I was told to examine my heart further for sin, to repent, to carry my cross, to suffer for the gospel. I swallowed the bitter pill and continued to serve God with the anger gradually settling into distrust, fear and a pervading sadness.
I came to believe that whatever happened to you, was your 'lot.' If poverty happened to you, that was your lot and God's plan for your life. Prosperity teachers received severe criticism, and I participated in gleefully dissecting all the teachers who preached a 'false gospel.' But it's easy to preach against prosperity when you have never had to miss school because your fees couldn't be paid, or you learn to appreciate a diet of soya chunks and sadza because that's all there is to eat.
I came to believe that the truest followers of Christ should abandon everything to serve God, that pursuing a degree so you could have a job was 'worldly.' Never mind the fact that many Christians I've since met actually got saved at university because they met followers of Christ there who were studying.
So I found myself isolated from other Christians, judging them silently for what they said or didn't say; did or didn't do. They may as well have been unbelievers for how I treated them, and I grieve the fellowship I missed out on because of this. At the same time, ironically, I failed to live up to the standard I had set for myself.
As a result comparison became the latest ingredient in the lethal cocktail of thoughts I was drinking daily, as I watched my peers at church serve God full time, get married and generally live the Christian dream. I felt as though I had been spit out of the church I'd always known and I felt forgotten and destined to to be nothing and no one. It didn't help that I was blatantly told that I was in 'Moab,' (ie, not where God wanted me to be) and told that God just didn't have a specific plan for my life. I forgive the people who made these statements, they erred, and I am now free and I know that God is with me always and does have a good and wonderful plan for my life.
I went through the motions, and it culminated in that small Skype-church meeting, where I asked myself if this was the good news. In all truth, up to this point I'd thought all the fault lay with me, that I was just imagining things. I'd never once questioned that maybe the message I was hearing was encouraging unhealthy thought patterns.
My mother soon introduced me to a preacher whom I'd dismissed before as one of the ones I shouldn't listen to. But this time the Holy Spirit opened my ears, and I heard. This teacher preached a sermon on God's love , something I technically knew of but had not fully experienced.
I'd never heard a sermon so gentle yet so powerful before. It felt as though rays of sunlight began to pierce the seemingly endless winter I had endured.
That was 3 or 4 years ago now, and I'm still amazed to see how God has slowly but diligently transformed my heart and revealed the real GOOD NEWS to me.
The good news is that though I have sinned and fallen short of His glory, He died for my sin and I can now have fellowship with Him. Sin is no longer the focal point of my relationship with God. I can come before Him boldly, as a daughter and not a servant. I am clothed in His identity and He calls me by my name. It doesn't matter which country I'm in, He will never leave me nor forsake me. It doesn't matter which church I go to, if the name of Christ is lifted up I am at home there. Wherever I go, He is there, He is the good Shepherd. He DOES have a specific and wonderful plan for my life, He has prepared good works for me to do in advance, and only wants good for my life so I can testify of His goodness. I have been completely set free from the fear of man and the fear of what life may throw at me, because Jesus is in my tomorrow already. I don't need to compare myself, or to feel despair anymore. God approves of me already. I now know that the devil is a liar, a thief and a destroyer who sometimes uses people in church to try and uproot God's word from your heart, but thank God for the people He uses to bring back truth and light! I still stumble, and life can be hard, but instead of fighting God, I'm fighting the good fight of faith, believing God even when times are tough. It's wonderful to go through life knowing God is for you and not against you.
I could go on and on, but words cannot begin to express the freedom I have found in Christ. All I want is to be good PR for God, to people who, like me, where bound by legalism and condemnation, and I want them to know that GOD IS GOOD!
