The Galations incident.

In January, 1980, the man who had led me to Christ 2 years before sat down with me and wrote out the fruit of the Spirit, as outlined in the NIV version of Galations 5:22-23. "22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." He then asked me how I thought that I had progressed in the fruit of the Spirit over the last 2 years. My responses might be familiar to some: "Definitely more love, forbearance, kindness, and gentleness.", "Joy, peace, goodness, and faithfulness, hmm...hard to tell.", and "Self control, ouch!" He then told me that he had seen "no improvement in love, no improvement in joy, no improvement in peace..." and so on, through every one of the fruits. I was devastated. He then said that he didn't believe that the Holy Spirit was at work in me.
Our "Discipling meeting" (in the Navigators' style) ended then, and I went on down the street, practically staggering in shell shock, praying "Oh God, how have I managed to fail at something that noone is supposed to be able to fail at?!" Ever since then, I have been in severe doubt of my own salvation, and even humanity. I have tried to kill myself 4 times--it probably says something about my competence that I am still alive and kicking. I have learned to endure, and am not presently suicidal, but I still want to discuss this with someone who will actually listen to me, rather than transmute what I say out of all recognition through their own prejudices. No offense intended, but that has been a common experience of mine, even with supposedly trained counselors, psychologists, and psychologists.

I wish your spiritual mentor had not done that to you, he seems to have violated the precepts of Galatians 5 in having done so. In my experience, and we were always intended to experience God, not merely know him in an outward form, He works on the inside first before you see it on the outside.
He is far more concerned with what we need that with what we want.
Anything that doesn't line up with Galatians 5 is from the other side.
Bless you friend

Thank you, shittim. I think that he was expecting at least some outward expression after 2 years of new life. The fact that he didn't, even though I had, left me doubting my own perceptions, as well as my salvation. Being my "Discipler" in the Navigator fashion gave him considerable spiritual authority over me. The things that happened after this incident also didn't help.

ok, so there was a pattern, or other events in addition, sounds like the adversary was attacking you in this chain of events.
Keep talking to Him, He will never leave us or forsake us, and when we come to Him in humility and a contrite heart He will never turn us away.
Bless you brother

Greetings Forlorn!

First of all, it is not the responsibility of that man or any man to monitor your spiritual fruit progress, but God's alone! By doing so, he put himself in the place of the Holy spirit. God knows the heart. Jesus says, "I am the One who searches the hearts and the minds."

After we come to Christ, as we continue to go from faith to faith, we are being transformed into the image of Christ, i.e. we are taking on His nature which are the fruits of the Spirit. This is sanctification, which is the process of being made holy and which is a life-long process, of which some bring forth some 30%, some 60% and some 100 fold. That man had no right to say that to you. He himself needs to examine himself, because what he did was wrong! All one has to do is look at the results of what he said he said to you. In fact, judging by the results of what that man said to you, it seemed to be a Satanic attack through him, meant to get you off of your stand in faith. He was a stumbling block to you!

You ought to continue in faith, knowing that you have salvation because you believe in Christ as the One who paid the penalty for your sins. Continue in the word and in daily prayer, being confident in your salvation. And as scripture says, be eager for every good work. The fact that you are concerned about your state with God shows that you are concerned about God and have a repentant heart. You could not have this attitude unless the Spirit of God was with you.

Shrug off what that man said to you, as an attack, knowing from the word of God that you have forgiveness of sins and eternal life because you believe in the Son of God.

Oh and just fyi, it's Galatians, not Galations.

Oops! Galatians it is! In other errata, I finished by repeating "psychologists", when I intended to write "psychiatrists".
Otherwise, I am carefully considering all of your good advice from the previous post. I am less concerned about whether he had the right to grade my performance in Christ, and more concerned with just how accurate his estimation was--or wasn't!

Well, the point is that you believe in Christ, therefore, according to the word of God, you have forgiveness of sins and eternal life. And as you continue in faith, you will become more and more fruitful. It's a life-long process, which the Holy Spirit is performing in you has you continue in faith. You shouldn't be worried one bit about this other persons rating. It sounded more like he was sitting in judgment, i.e. passing sentence.

People will let us down, Christ will never let us down.
bless you brother

Amen and Amen!

Don't mind my asking, but this has been an issue for over 40 years??

You should be able to know whether you are in Christ and progressing in the sanctification and fruit of the Holy Spirit without any man being able to point it out to you. I have never born witness to these discipleship programs designed by organized man man ministries. Maybe you should find a Spirit Filled church near you. Just Google "Spirit Filled Church Near Me" and start visiting them until you find one that you can tell are full of on fire soul winners and find some new brothers and sisters in Christ to grow with. Don't allow anyone to be the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit. Accountability and learning from seasoned Christians is great but these discipleship programs take it to far, almost cult like. It is disturbing that he could get in your head like that.

To breno785au:
I know. It's ridiculous, on the face of it. I actually haven't been sitting on my hands all this time, though. More on what I have been trying in my reply to Scribe, below. In addition, I have been seeing Christion counselors and psychologists, when I could afford it. In between, dealing with the hard scrabble of being alive,
To Scribe:
I have been in Spirit filled churches, but they weren't much help. Most of the members just seemed to say "Get over it!", but I couldn't do that without knowing for certain that he--call him Mike--wasn't accurate in his estimation. Others kept focusing on whether Mike had the right to estimate my spiritual progress, while I am much more concerned with whether or not he was ACCURATE! Bless their hearts, they prayed hard for me, and one group even tried to exorcise me--a surreal experience--but nothing helped me to have any confidence that God actually loves me, or that Jesus hadn't rejected me. Scribe, you are the first person to address the question of whether Mike was accurate: please tell me more, if you can.

Since the obvious advice that I have mentioned, and that you have already received from various sources. does not seem to be dealing with the issue in your own mind I suspect (but can't be sure on an internet chat site) some sort of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that could be a demonic attack or simply an explainable mental process people put themselves through based on a "feeling" they are trying to achieve. In this case you are probably trying to "feel" a clear conscience and right standing and fellowship with God and you have a nagging suspicion that you are not truly repentant or bearing fruit acceptable to God.


Lets use the example of someone who checks their front door to make sure it is locked and 30 minutes later they feel the overwhelming need to check it again. They think "I already did that" and then they question themselves "Didn't I?" and they feel not sure, and this feeling does not go away, so they get up and go check it again just to put the nagging feeling to rest. Now many of us have experienced something like this before and we were not chronically OCD. However there is something similar of a spiritual nature where you have a nagging conscience about whether you are "pleasing God."

This man who told you where you were failing and whether he is accurate or not has become the focal point for you in your quest for a clear conscience and in order to capture that "joy of the Lord" that you feel is missing.

I could be way off, so understand my descriptions of what you might be going through is more of a question to you.

So you might be thinking:
Should you own it (the man's opinions) and repent? Would that be the end of it? If you do that and he was wrong are you sinning by false confession? If you don't own it are you being stubborn and not repentant? And if you are not being repentant are you going to hell? Are you no longer in fellowship with God? Is there something between you and God because you are not dealing with the issues the man pointed out, have not agreed that he was right, or somehow can't see what he sees?

True repentance is no easy thing, and yet it is a prayer away. If you simply tell God that you believe that Jesus paid the price for all of your sins and these failures that were pointed out to you, and you lay them at the foot of the cross and believe that the Blood of Jesus washes you clean, and that you are righteous in the eyes of the Lord despite all of your past failures, and that God sees you as righteous, and blameless because of Jesus, and that if this man was right you acknowledge it and if he was wrong you understand that all of our best efforts are as filthy rags anyway and so it really does not matter you are going to depend totally on the righteousness of Jesus Christ to justify you and not your own TRACK RECORD which is what this man was pointing out.


Then after praying like that just begin to worship and praise Jesus and maybe even sing a song to Him. You might sing scriptures since it is the Word of God that Jesus used to defeat satan's attacks we should follow that example. Saying "It is written: 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Every time the thoughts come tempting you to analyze the list the man gave or whether he was right or not, just begin to Praise and worship Jesus out loud until the thoughts go away. Do this for two weeks if necessary. I believe youe spiritual OCD will be broken before the two weeks are up.

But be prepared for the attack to shift. Something new will come along for you to torture over. A new accusation that will tell you that you are not right with God because... (fill in the blank) Do the same thing, just begin to Praise God and tell him how much you Love Him and how you are glad that the Blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin. Sing a song of praise to the Lord. Do this until your mind is off the accusation and when it comes back start the Praise again.

This kind of spiritual OCD is not uncommon. The Joy of the Lord and the clear conscience will be tangible most of the time, but there will be times when we get attacked and we have to remember not to base our faith that we are righteous on a "feeling." Or our track record.

I did not give a lot of scriptures because I get the impression that you already know them. You probably already know what scripture verses to speak out loud like the one I gave from 1 John 1:9 when you are declaring your faith that you are sinless in the eyes of the Lord because of Jesus Christ. Praising and worshiping the Lord when under mental attack by singing and just telling him how much you Love him is also a powerful weapon in this warfare and my contribution here is to let you know that this method of worshiping rather than analyzing the accusation has been used by others who testify that it worked and set them free and they have never had the problem repeat itself years later.

One of the reasons I mentioned "a Spirit Filled Church" is that some people have never just sang to the Lord out loud with lifted hands of surrender and told him they Loved him making up their own words and singing their own song. This kind of worship and praise is not what they are used to. I can point them to a Spirit Filled church and they might discover that this was what they were looking for but did not know where to find it.

There is a whole new level of relationship with the Lord when you can break that ice and be free in your expression of Love to Him and it will help you to break through this mental war you are going through.
Someone who is only worshipping God in their head and with mental intellectual assents will feel uncomfortable singing to the Lord alone with exuberant praise the first time they try it, but I believe their whole life will change for the better as a result.

And if none of this applied to you, I believe it will help many others who may read it on CC because there are many forms of "spiritual OCD" that satan uses to attack us. He is called the accuser of the brethren for a reason. It is his number one strategy in this spiritual warfare we are engaged in.

Whew!
Thank you, Scribe! It will take me a few days reading and rereading this to gain a full understanding of this, and to figure out how to put it into practice, A few things stand out to me now, though:
First, Mike didn't mention specific sins, but left me with the blanket statement that "the Holy Spirit isn't at work in you". I don't know how it is now, but back then the Navigators believed in predestination, i.e., God has predestined some humans to be saved, and there isn't anything that those not predestined can do to be saved. So, the implication is that this is the result of God's choice, not my sins. Back in the 80's I saw arguments over this doctrinal question escalate almost into fist fights, so I am not going to endorse anything myself.
Second, when I sin, I immediately confess and repent in prayer. Sadly, my uncertainty over whether or not Christ's saving work actually applies to me keeps me in a state of guilt, shame, and remorse.
Third, I was actually starting to sing love and praise to God, in the manner that you describe, just before Mike said his piece. Since then, my mind and heart have been in such a state that I cannot honestly do that, even though I have seen and truly believe that He is good, loving, and worthy of all praise.
I do hope that what you have written to me helps others, though.

The best way to receive healing is to give healing, find a church and go there to be His hands and feet, to bring comfort, healing, and service to others, He will reward, Christ always does and never fails, He cares for you. so do we, friend.
blessings

So you see that Mike was wrong. It is the Holy Spirit that makes you care enough to want to be right with God.

Mike is an idiot. The Holy Spirit did not tell him to tell you that the Holy Spirit isn't at work in you. And People are not predestined to go to hell and there is nothing they can do about it. That is a lie.

So reject Mikes advice, realize that your desire to please God is a proof of the Spirit's work and read the Bible. Faith comes by the Word of God. Get out of your head and into the Word. And don't hang out with people like Mike. Don't worry about feelings, the feelings will come when you are walking by faith. If you focus on feelings your going to be OCD.

Google Assemblies of God Church near me and go talk to the pastor. You need better doctrine than what you were taught.

Thank you again, shittim and Scribe!
I'm in a good church. Hard to do much of anything right now with everything shut up tighter than a drum due to the pandemic, though.
I'll keep reading the Word, though most of it makes me very depressed.
One question. When I read Hebrews, faith is described using feeling words: "confidence" and "assurance". How do I practice faith without those feelings?

It will come by choosing to believe it without feelings.

Ah! In my understanding, belief without feelings isn't really belief--i.e., belief is a feeling. Honest question: how do I believe without feelings? I really do want to do this.