#stillwithme

  Most days, I wonder if God still walks with someone like me, someone who believes in him yet still stumbles and falls. Someone who cries out to him, quotes scriptures from memory, and sometimes posts Bible verses online, yet behind closed doors, falls into sins they swore they conquered. Someone who says they love and trust God but still loses the battle with the flesh more often than they would like to admit.

Yes, He does.

After my hardest breakup, I thought that it was for me. I felt hollow, like the pain no one sees, but it sits with you all day. I got more tattoos, hoping the pain of a needle would silence the one in my chest. But nothing worked. I still didn’t feel whole, and the shame was louder than the healing.

One night, I cried out, ‘God, if you’re still with me, please say something’. And in the stillness, he held my hand in a way I could feel but not see.

That was the beginning of my understanding of God.

   The world can be loud, but so can my desires, and though I know what the Word of God says, sometimes my choices reflect something else entirely. What hurts the most isn’t just failure, it’s knowing I knew better, and yet, I chose the wrong thing just for a moment. That gut-wrenching feeling of realization right after the sin, when you sit in the dark and in silence, wondering, ‘What have I done again, and why do I continue to do this?’ There’s this internal war that Christians do not always talk about openly- the war between the flesh and the Spirit.

In Romans 7, the Apostle Paul admitted that even he struggled:

‘I want to do what is good, but I can’t seem to carry it out.”

This part of the chapter comforts me and lets me know that I am not alone, and it’s not just because failure feels good but because it reminds me that even Paul, a spiritual giant, a disciple of the Lord, knew what it felt like to wrestle with his own humanity and the holy spirit.

Even now, every time I fall back, shame and guilt are quick to follow. They whisper, ‘You should be ashamed.” ‘You want God to be in you, but you keep doing this. There is no coming back from this. How could God still want someone like you?’ However, deep in my spirit, I also hear another voice- a gentle whisper that keeps telling me to get up, to return and come back home because he promises to ‘never leave us nor forsake us’.

  Joshua 1 verses 9 is also another scripture that keeps my eyes and faith upon God even when I fall. It states, ‘Do not be afraid nor dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee, whither soever thou goest.’

In this scripture, wherever means that even in the midst of our mistakes, even in our own transgressions and mess, the Lord will always be there with us. Even when you’ve wandered into places where you never meant to return to, the God we serve doesn’t meet us only on the mountaintop, but he walks with us in the valley too. In essence, falling doesn’t disqualify us from the race. The war inside us is proof that we’re still in the fight, and the Spirit of God hasn’t given up on us, and we shouldn’t either. God is not surprised by our struggles. He’s not waiting for us to impress him; he’s waiting for us to return, and that’s one of the reasons why he died for our sins.

So, if you’re asking like I did, ‘Is God still with me even after this?’

The answer is yes. Always yes.