Thank you for choosing to look at this blog! I am completely new to blogging and anything of this sort, so it’s been a bit of a faltering start so far on the tech side, but I hope the actual content makes up for that!
Well I’ll begin by introducing myself and what I’m hoping to achieve. I’m Carolyn, a Christian, a wife, mother of two teenage children and a growth group leader at my church. I don’t claim to have any special or superior knowledge, just 30 plus years of living the Christian life and a love of Bible study.
What do I mean when I say that I’m a Christian? Well, for me I was taken to church from birth by my Mum and Dad, and back then there was no Sunday school or Junior church for children to go to, so I was in the services listening to the sermons. I’m an introvert and a deep thinker, so at the age of nine soon after a sermon about the need to be forgiven by Jesus for our sins or face the eternal reality of hell, I was scared and wanted to come to Jesus for forgiveness. I prayed a simple prayer, saying sorry for the things I’d done wrong and asking Jesus to forgive me and come into my heart. I remember that at that time I wasn’t sure if God had heard me so I kept praying a similar prayer every night for quite a while, until I thought to myself that I was sure He’d heard by then!
Life is never all plain sailing, so there were challenges growing up, of bullying, for example, but God was merciful and I kept trusting Him and in the truth of His word. I found that the real challenges began once I’d left school and struggled to live up to all that teachers had told me I would achieve. This all culminated in a crisis point in my early 30s when I felt that all I’d done up to that point had been a failure. I got to the point where I didn’t want to go on anymore. I felt that my life here was a waste and that I’d rather be with the Lord in heaven. During this time, I kept praying and asking God where was the love, joy and peace that I believed should be part of the Christian experience? God answered my prayers with an almost miraculous situation where the pastor at my church ran out after me following a meeting and asked a very pertinent question. I knew then that God could see me as I cried out to Him and that He did indeed love me very much. I sought help from a Christian counsellor and learned a lot of things about myself and the love of God. I had made an idol of different things, academic success, for example, and when things went wrong I was devastated. I had not taken to heart Bible passages about how much He loved me. My perspective on life changed after this time, and I acknowledged that my life was His to do with as He pleased. He had placed me in the circumstances I was in for His own purposes.
At that time the following verses from Psalm 73 came to mean so much to me:
“Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (v23-26)
There have been many challenges since that time, but now I feel the security of His love and it’s got me through some difficult times. I admit that I struggle with the fast pace of 21st century life, and I don’t feel myself to have a strong personality. In fact I’m very much like the highly sensitive person described by Dr Elaine Aron! The purpose of this blog then is to share stories of how God can take and use faltering, nervous Christians today, just as He used weak and stumbling people in the Bible. It always encourages me to see that many of the Bible personalities were deeply flawed individuals, but God in His mercy and grace used them to achieve His purposes. In future posts I will look at some of these characters so that we can gain encouragement for our own lives.
Thank you very much for your time, look forward to posting again in the next week or so.
Faltering Steps of Faith 