Struggles of a New Christian

Letting go of what you know and trusting that God's way for you and your life is better, is harder than I thought it would be. Every time I see this picture, I'm reminded of the battle I fight with myself to let go of what I think of as my norm and trust that God's way is better.

I thought once I committed myself to God, all I had to do was make the decision to do His will and pray for his strength and support and that would be it. I knew there would be temptations but I didn't expect to be experiencing this battle with myself: the battle between my old life and the life God wants me to live. It seems like a no brainer right? That's what I thought too until I started putting it into practice.

I started studying the Bible closer and found in it a path to God. No matter what mood I'm in, no matter what's going on around me, whenever I pick up the Bible and study it, I always feel God speaking to me and answering my multitude of questions.

On the down side, studying the Bible has brought to my attention many sins that I've never paid attention to before or noticed as being sins before. The more I study the Bible, the more I learn about what it means to live life according to God's will and the more I pinpoint lifelong habits that I have to change.

But that process is HARD and sometimes it feels easier to want to fall back into old habits because that has been my norm for so long, that it feels easier to give in than to fight against it. As I started to question this whole faith journey thing, I did what I would do if this pertained to anything else and looked up ways to help me with this inner battle I was having. When I went on Youtube, I came across a devotional by Joyce Meyer called "Becoming One with God" and it literally was God sent.

In this devotional one of her points was that there is an adjustment and resistance phase that's normal for most believers to go through, when they first start trying to live life according to God's will. This is because you are trying to reprogram yourself out of lifelong habits so it's bound to feel weird, confusing, and out of alignment with who you are.

I'd never heard of this before so as I share my journey on here I wanted to be authentic about that in case that maybe something some of you are going through. The way she explains it in the devotional, before we decided to walk with God we had our way of doing things and as we start walking with Him we learn of His ways of doing things. Because God wants to form a union with us, the goal of our journey with God is to become one with Him. There is an expected discomfort phase in the beginning of our journeys until our old ways die off and there is a resurrection that happens when we have fully become one with God (I hope this made sense, if not feel free to check out the devotional here).

I was relieved to learn that what I was going through was a normal part of a journey of getting closer to God but I was surprised that I had never heard of this before, which is again why I wanted to take the time to highlight this here. It's normal to feel resistance and out of alignment when you first start walking with God. You are shedding off an old version of you to become new in Christ and that process will not be easy, but will get better. I'm not there yet, I'm still in the discomfort stage but I take comfort in knowing others before me have made it to the other side, so I will too!

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