Seeking God Knows What

This kind of ties in with my recent post on spiritual doubt but I am in kind of a quandary about what was taught during the recent sermon series at church. Now the last three Sundays the sermons were done by the teaching associate (who I learned via our Alpha leaders helped found what is now a very larger church in the Chicago area). The series was on keeping your heart soft for God. First off, I felt like he spent very little time teaching us how to do this and a lot of time emphasizing all the ways our hearts are hardened towards God. Secondly, after listening to him, I sort of feel like a lot of doors got slammed shut in front of me in my faith journey.

Doors such as:

YOU DON’T TITHE- SLAM
YOU DEAL WITH DEPRESSION- SLAM
YOU HAVE UNHEALTHY FEAR AND ANXIETY- SLAM
YOU STRUGGLE WITH FEELINGS OF FAILURE- SLAM

There are more I could list but these are the four that keep slamming shut in my head.

I respect tithing and really it is a goal of mine to be able to tithe. When I look at our finances, and if you have read this blog for a bit you’ll understand where I’m coming from, I think: “Give 10% to church or buy groceries OR Give 10% to church and don’t pay a credit card bill.” There is no 10%, particularly a gross pay 10%, there is barely 1%. After hearing these sermons, I think is God going to shut me out because I can’t figure out how to tithe and eat or tithe and pay bills?

It isn’t that I like having to deal with the emotions of depression, anxiety, a sense of failure either. I feel like my constant prayer is asking God to help me with these things. I do try to give it over to God but I’m not very good at that because it seems to resurface down the road. Really, I would give just about anything to feel like I felt last Friday and most of this weekend all of the time. I get the point that he was trying to make to trust God for all things but I am left feeling as if what happened last November doesn’t cut it, that accepting Christ into my life isn’t enough, that now I have to unlock all these doors to be saved. As if God only wants those who are “perfect”, not mixed-up me.