Christian orthodox

@GreekCatPerson God sees you ❤  and he hears you whenever you speak to him or pray, he's always listening🙂 and God loves you, he loves us all, we are all his children. Though the past May not have been easy,  he understands and he forgives. How to repay God, all he wants is for us to do the best we can, spread love, hope and faith. And there's no time like the present, to be that good person ❤❤ gives you a giant tiny hug, and God bless you ❤

@GreekCatPerson First, I want to let you know that you are heard and seen brother. You deserve to have a place where you feel you belong and where you feel welcomed and loved. It warm my heart to know you found a pastor who will accept and love you and ask the deep questions. Most people do not really understand all that a minister does, but spiritual counseling is one of those roles. Personally, it is one of my favorite roles as a minister, to counsel and hold space for people. We are all human and the Bible says that we are all sinners, but when we repent, ask for forgiveness, and renew ourselves daily, we are washed anew. We, as humans, hold onto those "sins" even when we have been forgiven by the Divine Creator, and we allow our minds to create so much pain around this idea and feel like we must be deserving of forgiveness and we continue to revisit the sin and pass judgement on ourselves over these deeds when God has said that he has forgiven and forgotten. We allow judgement, most of the time judgement of our own self, to guide our life due to the pain and the constant desire to "prove ourselves worthy".

This is the way society has taught us to be, but as humans we also have been created from the Divine Creator, in this divine image, so we carry this divinity inside of us and we should always try to remember who it is we are at our core. We must learn to forgive and move forward (even when others still struggle to forgive and move forward) with each lesson because each obstacle we face, each decision we have made in the past, each experience we have gone through....they are all lessons. And a lesson always has a takeaway, so we must learn to take those precious takeaways and leave the rest behind in the past where it happened. We use those lessons to move us forward and take them with us so we can do better the next time and help others as they come against those same obstacles that might have knocked us down, knocked us on our knees, or even knocked us out. But our ability to get back up and to press on, that resliency, is part of that Divine Spirit inside of us. I often find myself reminding myself and others that our greatest life lessons and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts. Other people will find healing in your words and in your story. God never wants you to waste a hurt. Because in this world, pain is inevitable, but what you do with that pain and taking that lesson and using it for good, well, that's your choice. 

A quote that I often tell myself and share with others goes like this: "God voluntarily allows you to go through painful experiences to equip us for ministry to others." Look at the life of Jesus, did his greatest pain not become one of the greatest ministries of all time? God uses the "broken" and the "outcasts" all throughout the Bible to show us that every human being is worthy of redemption. This pain not only brings you closer to walking in the shoes of Jesus, but it also sends you out into the suffering world to minister like Jesus. Your experiences, lessons learned, and empathy gained through suffering are the very things that make you the best person to help others, and through this we heal and find purpose.  What suffering have you endured? How has it changed you, taught you, and improved you? How can you use your suffering to serve others who are suffering? 

It is often the very things that we thought would destroy us, or the things that we thought we could never heal from, these become the very things that God has the power to redeem (if we allow Him to), these are the things that we can turn around and use to help others. Sometimes we think that we have walked through the storm or the trial in vain and that it has stolen so much from us, but when we feel this way, it's so important to shift our perspective and see that when we go through these times, we experience God at a new level and we never truly walk out of it empty handed. There are blessings in the battles, if we just look for them. God gifts us with comfort, grace, compassion, wisdom, discernment, greater faith, and strength. He also gives us the opportunity for more effective ministry. Romans 8:28 becomes very real to us. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” There is a purpose for your pain, there is a reason for your missteps and misdeeds, YOU have a purpose, brother. 

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and so we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also boast in tribulation, knowing that tribulation produces patience, patience produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  – Romans 5:1-5

Many years ago I was pondering about what would make me happy and what it was that happy people had that I didn't and I realized that the people that I know and see who are really, truly happy are the people who have learned how to be in service of others.  It costs us nothing to serve others and it gives us all everything, if we just allow it. A quote I have tried to live by says that "The greatest tragedy is not pain or death, it is living a life without purpose. You can not fulfill God's purpose for your life while focusing on your own plans." There is so much power in your story! I hope you can use it to help others find peace, and you might just look back and realize how much peace it has given you as well. 

I'll leave you with one more quote from Bianca Sparacino, just something I recently read and shared in a peer group that really affected us all, "yes, sometimes life is going to kick your teeth in. Sometimes it is going to confuse you, sometimes nothing will make sense, and everything will be messy. But you’re going to learn. You’re going to fight tooth and nail, and you’re going to grow. Slowly but surely, you’re going to grow...Trust me when I say that one day it’s going to hit you — that you woke up happy, that you’re smiling for no reason, that your hands aren’t shaking anymore. One day, you’re going to remember what it was like to be you a year ago, or three years ago, or even a week ago, and you’re going to be so glad that you fought. You’re going to be so glad that you kept going."