I accepted the Lord as my Savior when I was 17 years old. However, I did not know how to, or even that I could, walk in the victory that was now mine as a child of God and joint heir to the throne.

Due to various forms of abuse from early childhood to young adulthood, I continued walking as though I had not been set free. In a manner of speaking, I picked up the chains that now laid at my feet, wrapped them around my neck and continued walking in the hopelessness and despair I had known all along. To my knowledge, there was not a day that went by when I didn’t think about killing, (sometimes trying to kill) myself.

Operating under a lot of preconceived, misguided notions about who the Father was, who Christ was and what actually took place spiritually when I gave my life to Him, I “tried the Lord” on and off for the next several years. Never truly understanding His truth, His mercy or His grace.

In 1995, suffering from the physical pain of an abscessing tooth and lot of emotional turmoil, I took all of the pills I could find that said, “may cause drowsiness” in an attempt to stop all of the pain. When I woke up in the hospital a brief thought crossed my mind that said, “God hates me so much He doesn’t want me in heaven and Satan hates me so much he doesn’t want me in hell.” That went through my mind because at the basic level I still did not understand that I could walk in assured victory. I continued buying into the enemies lies that said I was a “worthless, good-for-nothing-but-sex, nobody,” constantly doubting my salvation.

Through my tears and desperation, I said, “I know enough about Your word to know that You said You would not give us any more than we can handle.

I spent the next two years in treatment and therapy (the world’s primary answer) for depression by the end of which (February 1997) I still wanted to kill myself. However, having promised my doctor I would never try to kill myself again, I did the only other thing I could think of. I cried out to God, believing on one hand He loved me and on the other hand He hated me as much as I hated myself. I realize now that this constant inner conflict was the struggle between my old “sin nature” and my new created nature as a child of God in Christ.

Oddly enough, through my tears and desperation, I said, “I know enough about Your word to know that You said You would not give us any more than we can handle. Well I’m telling You I can’t handle this and since You won’t let me kill myself then You need to do it for me or You need to fix this mess I’m in, because I don’t know what to do anymore.” The reason this strikes me as odd, is that I now realize that I knew very little about His word. If I had, I would have known that the Word does not actually say that “He will not give us more than we can handle,” that is just something I had always heard.

It does, however, say in 1 Cor. 10:13 that “No temptation has overtaken you as is common to man: and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able…” On the contrary, a study of the Scriptures, shows that God constantly gives us more than we can handle (i.e. Moses, Job, Esther, etc.) so that we can learn to say, “Lord, I can’t do this without you. I need your Holy Spirit to guide and equip me, otherwise, I’m going to mess it all up!”

Needless to say, I had finally given up on my own efforts to try and fix the problem. I put my messed up life in my Father’s hands and said, “fix it”. (Of course, actually being able to comfortably call Him “Father” is taking a lot longer.)

It was in 1997, when I finally reached my wits end and turned the reign of my life over to God, as best as I knew how anyway, that God was free to affect my life. Not that He could not nor did not affect my life before then, He did. However, due to my quenching the Holy Spirit’s work in my life, He would only go so far. God is a gentleman who respects the free will that He so graciously gave to man. He will not infringe on a person’s right to choose even knowing that the choice His child is making is not a good for them. He will allow us to make the choice and try, to teach us, grow us, love us, and help us through the resulting consequences, if we let Him.

Suffice it to say that a lot has happened in my life since that day in 1997. It definitely has not been easy, which He never once said it would be. In fact there are several instances in Scripture that indicate that life, hard and impossible without God, is very hard but very possible with God on our side. The Lord uses all of our experiences, both good and bad, to continually draw us closer to Him and give us a deeper understanding of His love, peace, mercy, strength and grace. He continues to teach me all that it means to be His child.

I have made several mistakes along the way, and will most certainly make many more, but the Lord has been and will be faithful to carry me through each trial. I now know in my heart that there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set [me] free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1-2). I now “know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love [Him and] are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). And I am now fully convinced that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate [me] from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

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Update 03.05.19: I wrote this background history / testimony for a bog I started in 2012. At that time I talked about how in 1997 I put my "messed up life" into God's hands. I was tired of trying to "fix it" on my own. And, in the last paragraph, I talked about having made "several mistakes along the way. I would love to be able to say that was the end of my struggling against God but it was not.

I continued to make a lot of mistakes and, truth be known, will probably continue to make many more mistakes in the future. But, for all of my continued struggles over the years, the essence of what I wrote in 2012 remains unchanged. He continues to "cause all things to work together for [my] good" because I love Him and He created (called) me for a purpose. And I believe now more than ever that there is "no condemnation" and absolutely nothing can separate me from His love, including my own foolishness every time I try to take the reins back.