I was raised in a church with a strong focus on keeping the levitical laws and end-time prophecy. Keeping these laws ensured our salvation. Growing up with the mindset of earning God’s love, I felt like I could never do enough, and felt that God was always angry with me.

This led to me spending much of my life in anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame. I believed Satan’s lies about my worth. Coupled with issues at home and abuse, I struggled to imagine a world in which my heavenly Father loved me when my earthly father did not. This led me to a crisis of faith, that ultimately led to suicidal ideation in college.

I could not understand the balance between this loving Jesus I’d heard of, and the punishment for sin. I got plugged into a church, and there began to slowly understand the gospel. Still I struggled a lot feeling like Jesus’s sacrifice covered my sin. This, coupled with a strong authority structure and spiritual abuses conflicted with what I was reading in the Bible. While this was difficult, the Holy Spirit was keeping me and encouraged me to run to the Lord and those I trusted with difficult questions.

Over the past several months, the Lord has been clarifying his character, helping me understand much I truly need him and the full extent of Jesus’s sacrifice. Understanding the depth of God’s love will be a lifelong journey, and I am grateful to now understand the full gospel, that Jesus completed the work on the cross, and his grace is sufficient for me.

I am excited and grateful to live in the Lord not from a focus centered on my works and sin, but on the glory of God. Amen!

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