Psalm 42:5
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God!; for I shall again praise Him,
my help and my God.
Hey, I'm pancakes. Please allow me to share what Jesus did for me in 2019 and again in 2024.
I grew up in a pretty stressful house, and experienced what I then at 8 (and for the next 20 years) called depression, and what I now know to be something else entirely. Back then, life felt lacking-- friends, safety...a lot of alone time. I was disappointed a lot, and I think my heart grew cold and unfeeling. Tried really hard to get what I wanted and time after time my efforts failed. I stopped trying in middle school and started reading books to avoid everything, and then I started reading romance and playing online video games.
Around 14 I started getting involved in church and serving and confessed faith in Jesus with my mouth and got baptized. I did a LOT of serving. but I didn't have fellowship with people, I didn't have the fruit of the spirit. I didn't forgive, I was judgmental, prideful, loved myself more than others, selfish, yelled and called my brother names, spoke badly of my dad, Hated deeply, and looking back... I don't think I really loved God.....I wasn't changed.
The romance books at some point couldn't do enough for me, I needed more. So I ventured out and read other content. I went and I searched and I found porn. I watched and at some point I felt an immense feeling of fear and a presence in the house, I was 15. I remember waking up at different points around that time and into my early 20's with spiritual attacks, dark spirit figures and nightmares and and physical attacks by strange spirits, even being held down and attacked with fear.
It went on like this for years, and I had too much shame to tell anyone that I had this issue. I couldn't stop (I tried so many times for 10+ years to stop including begging and pleading God to help me). I could white knuckle abstinence for 5 months (only a few times), but always relapsed at the 6th month mark, but somehow knowing I could get myself to 5 months gave me enough false sense of my own power to keep trying year after year. I even tried a 12 step recovery program at some point, but I hid in my car with the phone and I gave up after the first meeting because I couldn't imagine hiding in my car and be found out, it was too suspicious. So I gave up and hid my shame.
years later this depression got worse, my life got worse, people at my job hated me, my family hated me, I was angry and abusive, I didn't have friends, I was 27 and realized I didn't have control over my mind or actions anymore. So decided to go on a road trip. (I wrote about it on this christian chat forum site in 2019). So I took my car and put a mattress in it and drove around the US for 3 months and when I was in Oregon a thought came to mind "what if I don't actually believe in Jesus?" and a second thought... "it's okay to admit that you don't believe in Jesus". I know now that was the Holy Spirit talking to me. So I addressed and acknowledged Jesus and admitted that I didn't believe, and asked him to help my unbelief (Like that guy who asked to help his unbelief in the New Testament). I always avoided addressing God by name and just called him "god" when I prayed. This time, I addressed God by name and called him Jesus. I didn't believe at first, but I hoped it would be true, and that was enough.
After this, I got the immense urge to go home and go back to church and I did...and went to a bible study on Saturday. This warm feeling in my chest urged me to confess to this lady who kept telling me how God freed her from alcoholism. So I told her and she got me into an in person recovery program. So I kept it up for 5 years, made friends, Got sober. Started really falling in love with Jesus. Yielding to him, hearing his voice.
On year 4, I was abruptly left by a boyfriend and went into a very deep depression and in the middle of it I kept hearing "no one will love you, you're worthless.....it's all hopeless" The same crap I was fed as an 8 year old. So I was at work and I heard Jesus say "Rise/get up. Are you going to keep letting them do this to you?" So I listened and obeyed. I replied back to these evil thoughts and said "HE doesn't think so" and I pictured Jesus on the cross and THE DEPRESSION LEFT!!! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE! It comes back to taunt me, but now I don't come into agreement with these thoughts anymore and the spirit of heaviness leaves just as quick as it came. THANK YOU JESUS FOR YOUR AUTHORITY!!
I hope you can be free as well.
an aside: I used serving as a way to convince myself that I was "saved", I used writing on this chat forum to convince myself that I was "saved", I used being youth group leader, a tither, a person who was bold enough to preach the book of Jonah in my college class to tell me "I was saved". I didn't follow Jesus. I followed myself, leaned on my own understanding. Pancakes told pancakes that she was saved, I believed myself. I was God in my own mind, deceiving myself, and being deceived.
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And [a]desperately wicked;
Who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God!; for I shall again praise Him,
my help and my God.
Hey, I'm pancakes. Please allow me to share what Jesus did for me in 2019 and again in 2024.
I grew up in a pretty stressful house, and experienced what I then at 8 (and for the next 20 years) called depression, and what I now know to be something else entirely. Back then, life felt lacking-- friends, safety...a lot of alone time. I was disappointed a lot, and I think my heart grew cold and unfeeling. Tried really hard to get what I wanted and time after time my efforts failed. I stopped trying in middle school and started reading books to avoid everything, and then I started reading romance and playing online video games.
Around 14 I started getting involved in church and serving and confessed faith in Jesus with my mouth and got baptized. I did a LOT of serving. but I didn't have fellowship with people, I didn't have the fruit of the spirit. I didn't forgive, I was judgmental, prideful, loved myself more than others, selfish, yelled and called my brother names, spoke badly of my dad, Hated deeply, and looking back... I don't think I really loved God.....I wasn't changed.
" People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone. " [2 Timothy 3:1-9]
The romance books at some point couldn't do enough for me, I needed more. So I ventured out and read other content. I went and I searched and I found porn. I watched and at some point I felt an immense feeling of fear and a presence in the house, I was 15. I remember waking up at different points around that time and into my early 20's with spiritual attacks, dark spirit figures and nightmares and and physical attacks by strange spirits, even being held down and attacked with fear.
It went on like this for years, and I had too much shame to tell anyone that I had this issue. I couldn't stop (I tried so many times for 10+ years to stop including begging and pleading God to help me). I could white knuckle abstinence for 5 months (only a few times), but always relapsed at the 6th month mark, but somehow knowing I could get myself to 5 months gave me enough false sense of my own power to keep trying year after year. I even tried a 12 step recovery program at some point, but I hid in my car with the phone and I gave up after the first meeting because I couldn't imagine hiding in my car and be found out, it was too suspicious. So I gave up and hid my shame.
years later this depression got worse, my life got worse, people at my job hated me, my family hated me, I was angry and abusive, I didn't have friends, I was 27 and realized I didn't have control over my mind or actions anymore. So decided to go on a road trip. (I wrote about it on this christian chat forum site in 2019). So I took my car and put a mattress in it and drove around the US for 3 months and when I was in Oregon a thought came to mind "what if I don't actually believe in Jesus?" and a second thought... "it's okay to admit that you don't believe in Jesus". I know now that was the Holy Spirit talking to me. So I addressed and acknowledged Jesus and admitted that I didn't believe, and asked him to help my unbelief (Like that guy who asked to help his unbelief in the New Testament). I always avoided addressing God by name and just called him "god" when I prayed. This time, I addressed God by name and called him Jesus. I didn't believe at first, but I hoped it would be true, and that was enough.
After this, I got the immense urge to go home and go back to church and I did...and went to a bible study on Saturday. This warm feeling in my chest urged me to confess to this lady who kept telling me how God freed her from alcoholism. So I told her and she got me into an in person recovery program. So I kept it up for 5 years, made friends, Got sober. Started really falling in love with Jesus. Yielding to him, hearing his voice.
On year 4, I was abruptly left by a boyfriend and went into a very deep depression and in the middle of it I kept hearing "no one will love you, you're worthless.....it's all hopeless" The same crap I was fed as an 8 year old. So I was at work and I heard Jesus say "Rise/get up. Are you going to keep letting them do this to you?" So I listened and obeyed. I replied back to these evil thoughts and said "HE doesn't think so" and I pictured Jesus on the cross and THE DEPRESSION LEFT!!! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE! It comes back to taunt me, but now I don't come into agreement with these thoughts anymore and the spirit of heaviness leaves just as quick as it came. THANK YOU JESUS FOR YOUR AUTHORITY!!
I hope you can be free as well.
an aside: I used serving as a way to convince myself that I was "saved", I used writing on this chat forum to convince myself that I was "saved", I used being youth group leader, a tither, a person who was bold enough to preach the book of Jonah in my college class to tell me "I was saved". I didn't follow Jesus. I followed myself, leaned on my own understanding. Pancakes told pancakes that she was saved, I believed myself. I was God in my own mind, deceiving myself, and being deceived.
“The heart is deceitful above all things,
And [a]desperately wicked;
Who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9
endures forever