a comment i made here, to the monday, feb. 14th /05 blog ...posting in case the blog author decides to remove the post it stemmed from.

"...Make your relationship with God your ONLY worry." Randell hit the nail on the head...exactly what all of us (semi-)regular commenters have been trying to persuade you accept. Persuade to accept? Yes. You already KNOW this stuff we say, you KNOW that it's true, but you refuse to feel it in your heart. You refuse to BELIEVE it with the core of your being. You refuse to LIVE it out.

"He is giving you all these trials and tribulations so that He can bring you CLOSER to Him." Ricardo hammers the point doubly-so. You are very far from Him right now, and armorless... There is only so much fighting that your brothers and sisters can do for you. We are all willing to help and to FIGHT, but in the end... we all still have our own battlefronts where God is sending us, and testing our strength. Allow me to quote my own blog for a moment.

"It's in the rough times that God tests where we put our faith... in Him? or in other stuff? No, He doesn't WANT me to be sad / mopey / teary-eyed / (insert negative emotion here) all the time, but sometimes... He introduces it into my life because it's the only way for Him to communicate to me...that i'm not being obedient to Him in some area[s] of my life. That there's something i'm not letting go of. That HIS plan and MY plan are different.

But once i'm in His arms, and i've vented whatever negative emotions up to Him, and I've run out of words to say... He can softly whisper the instructions of His plan for me."

Now don't miss the point: "vented upwards to Him." You've got to start there, with your relationship with God... and with nothing else.

[Jesus, in John 15:1-6. Read each line carefully.]
"He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit...He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
Remain in Me, and I will remain in you.
No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.
Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit,
apart from Me, man can do nothing.
If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers;
such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned."

Being cut off from the vine... from God, or from the community in general... Don't decide to cut yourself off from the only people who would have even an INKLING of understanding of your circumstance, your feelings, AND your faith.

"Don't wait for God to go to drastic measures to get your attention...He will do ANYTHING to get your focus back to Him." Ricardo's right again; things will only get worse the more you put God on the shelf. God is an attention-hog... but deservedly so, don't you think?

This is the year of choice, as i've said before. Don't think we still don't understand what you go through, or what you feel. We have all been there, and we all lapse into those feelings from time to time (for the reasons stated in my blog). My only worry now is that you become numb to the feelings, and develop a sense of apathy towards everything... satan will win you over for a long time, if that ever happens.

Praying for you is exhausting work. It's time you decided to pray with us, so you can claim the wonders God has for YOU in this life, and for you alone.