Failure After Freedom

Hi everyone! I would like to start by apologizing for taking such a long break from writing. I’ve been MIA since March, which I never planned to be, but we’re about to get into why I’ve had to take a break and how I’ve gotten back to a place where I can continue with the blog.

It’s been two long months. April and May have been humbling to say the least, and enlightening to say the most. In the past two months, I’ve experienced failure— by choice unfortunately, pain, sorrow, functional depression, and just overall a period of unexpected disappointment. However, I’ve also experienced God’s love, his grace, redemption, joy, and a smile and laugh in my spirit. I can’t say that before going through the things I have that I’ve ever experienced these things in so much fullness. And honestly, this is a recent development / realization, like within the past week or two.

So, the reason I named this post “Failure After Freedom” is because after releasing my last post, “Freedom is Yours”, I fell—HARD. As much as I hate to admit it, I ruined my own witness, whether people knew about it at first or they didn’t. But I believe in freedom and healing through the confession of our sins, transparency, and more importantly, living a life of repentance. I want to be totally real and authentic with you guys. I also know that through our personal testimonies we overcome the shame and guilt that the enemy tries to keep us in after we’ve messed up. I want to be an example that if you drop the ball at 99, you don’t have to start back over at one. You have the right, the authority, and the privilege, because of Jesus, to pick the ball back up and keep moving forward. Understand, if you have been delivered from a certain sin, but then you fall back into that same struggle, God has not disowned you or revoked your salvation. He understands what it’s like to be human in the earth, and he knows that we are not perfect yet, but rather we are being perfected through him. There is so much grace for the mistakes, and that’s because he loves us deeper than we could ever intellectually grasp. However, even though this notion is true, I will not ignore the other side of the coin which is also true; that if you continually abuse God’s grace and are unrepentant, salvation can be lost.

God is a jealous God, and I fully understand that now. Any sin that you continue to run back to is an idol. In the books of Ezekiel, 1st & 2nd Kings, 1st & 2nd Chronicles, and 1st & 2nd Samuel, we see the story unfold of how the Kings of Israel and Judah caused the people to sin and God to turn them over to their idols. As a result, they experienced famine and exile. Even worse, they experienced a life contrary to God and in many ways void of experiencing his glory through them. The Bible makes it plain that he will have no idols before him. Before. Before in this context not only applies to idols in our hearts being put above him, but also it means he will not even tolerate being in the presence of an idol. This means that even if you claim to be Christian, even if you’ve been baptized and follow the Christian traditions, even if you speak of him boldly to everyone, his Spirit will not dwell within you if you have idolatry in your heart. He is holy, so he will not dwell in a defiled temple.

I know guys— this is a lot! This is a huge pill to swallow, and I pray that if you feel convicted at all in hearing this, that your heart may be softened and open to receiving his correction. I also want you to understand that conviction is not condemnation. Do not condemn yourself to hell because your eyes are opened to a blind spot in your life, but rather REPENT. That’s exactly what I myself had to do.

After posting “Freedom is Yours”, I knew temptation would be coming quick and in a hurry. Anytime you choose obedience to the Lord, the enemy fights even harder to stop you in your tracks. The thing is though, he never evolves; he always uses the same old sorry tactics, and unfortunately, if we are not careful and watchful, we fall into his traps. He is not all knowing, but he watches and studies us. He’s had years to understand the ways to provoke the flesh. We on the other hand are having our first and last experience ever to be human. So, what I’m saying is that I did not do my due diligence in keeping watch over my own spirit, and I walked right back into the same temptation all over again. This time though, I knew it was different, and I was choosing disobedience. I traded that moment just to avoid sitting with the discomfort of choosing obedience, and immediately regretted it. God made it clear every time I opened my Bible, or even got on my phone to go on social media or watch You Tube that I was wrong. I knew he wanted no parts of the idolatry that was still very apparent in my heart, and that really caused me to take a step back and question who I really was.

Soon after I was reminded of the proverb “Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.” (Prov. 26:11) I felt disgusting. The burden that came with that conviction was so heavy on my heart, so for the past two months, I have been doing the work. I have been looking inwardly and asking God to reveal all the ugly things in me (and trust me he does!). One day I was reading, it had to have been maybe a week or two ago, and I came across Ephesians 5 verse 5. It says, “For you may be sure of this , that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of God.” Now by this point I had finally gotten to a place of being back on track with full pursuit of sexual purity. However, there was a huge stronghold in my heart and it was protecting idolatry. That stronghold was jealousy (or covetousness). I had been asking God to help me with that prior to reading this verse, but I could tell there was still some part of my soul that was holding on to bitterness and self pity. After reading this verse, a fear came over me that I cannot explain. It was like my soul left my body. I felt the anxiety of what it would be like to live my whole life thinking I was going to spend an eternity with God, just to get to the end and for him to say he never knew me because I had ignored probably the deepest sin I’ve ever experienced in my life. Truly I believe the fear of the Lord fell on me.

I repented again, and he has just been truly blessing me with wisdom, revelation, and a heart that is reverent toward him. I am so thankful for how gracious God is and that he gives us warnings through the word (and through people) so that we are able to humble ourselves to him fully. I am so blessed for the opportunity to pursue living a righteous life. I won’t be redundant because I believe if you’ve gotten to this point in the post, you can see the big picture. Repent. I was free and I still messed up. But because of the goodness, mercy, and love of God, I have been able to turn away from my failures and come to him boldly and authentically. He knows everything, so I don’t sugar coat my confessions to him. After walking with him in this journey, everything just feels so much lighter. Yes, I went through a hard season due to my own disobedience, but he has brought so much light into my life after walking with me and guiding me through it. The key is to involve him indefinitely and primarily in everything you do, feel, face, etc. Know that there is redemption for every failure as long as you continue to pursue Him.

That’s all for now!

Much Love,

K.V.B.