  But if people tell you that life will be wonderful if you are with God, they are misleading you I feel. Faith is no guarantee of an easy life. However your faith in God can give you the strength to endure things you might not otherwise have felt overwhelmed with. There is only one God, and He is the Father. He created everything, and we live for Him. Jesus Christ is our only Lord. He made everything, and He gave life to us. If I feel I do not have sufficient faith to remove any “mountains of difficulty”, I can always ask the Lord for the “gift of faith.” The Lord did not leave me without the tools to overcome my lack of faith. I need to simply ask God to give me the gift of faith that I need for whatever problem I might be facing. If I am faithful to my God, my faith will grow. If I need help, all I have to so is ask God, and then have the faith to trust in Him. Faith is not only a gift, but also a fruit of the Holy Spirit Faith will me through all kinds of trials and tribulations.
Faith is not really that difficult; God made it easy, faith is just moving closer to God. It believes God for one more minute, then one more hour, then on more day, and then the rest of my life. I need not give up on God, because He always comes up with the answers if I just have faith. - Paul wrote from prison to be content in whatever circumstance (environment) you are in because God has a purpose for you being there.
Paul wrote a great deal of his contribution to the bible while in prison. If he had not been in prison he might not have followed the will of God to do all the writing needed to complete his books of the bible. Imagine what the bible would be like if all of those who were called had not followed God’s will and written/recorded what God was presenting to them. The same can also be said when we find ourselves in positions that are less than perfect, like being laid up for six weeks after surgery, facing unforeseen heartache, or even stuck in the house because it is raining. How much better my life would be if I only thought during times like this, “What could I be doing during this time to fulfill God’s will?” Something else I wonder about though.
If I truly believe in God, and He fills my soul, does that mean I won’t have any future self-esteem issues? Or that the ones I have now will magically disappear? I do hope that somehow God does make my self-esteem issues not such a big deal to me anymore. Maybe if I can see my value as I have been told He sees my value, I won’t have any more hate and bad feelings towards myself and who I am.
Right now though, where I am at in this life, insecurity and low self-esteem are the two things I would love to get rid of. Can God help me with this? Can He cure me of this? I have been around people that “walk with Christ.” They have an aura around them that you can almost see and that you can definitely feel. There is a peace in them I so desperately want. I want to take back the power of my self-esteem, but I can’t seem to figure out how to do that. Wanting is sometimes just not enough. For as long as I have been alive, others have had all the power and control over me. I don’t know if it is from growing up in an alcoholic family or not. In a alcoholic home, you never know what is coming, what kind of mood everyone is in at any given time, or what set of rules are in effect at any given moment. And if you did feel you had it figured out, they would all change in a heartbeat and you would be back to trying to figure it out again before you got hurt physically or crushed mentally or destroyed emotionally.
I do know that because of that kind of home life, I don’t know how to act around people even to this day. I have always been a loner because of my low self-esteem. I mean how can I ever feel special and worthy in this world when my own mom didn’t make me feel special or worthy?
Anyone can take away my precious ounce of self-esteem with a look, a word, tone of voice, etc, etc. I would so love to find that self-assurance, that peace, that knowing I am special, that I have witnessed in others that follow God. Maybe I need to learn that there comes a time in my life when I have to stop waiting for my parents to be the kind of parents I wanted them to be and move on. Maybe I have to learn that who they are is not a reflection of my worth. Maybe I need to learn to nurture myself and love myself without being dependent on other people. I have heard it can be done. Why then is it so hard for to figure out how to do this? Maybe if I can truly find my way to God He will be able to help me learn how to nurture and love myself like I have heard God loves me. Or to put it another way, or maybe the same way in different words. When people criticize me for not believing what they do or for anything really, I would like to be able to not let that bother me.
But instead I think and feel they are rejecting me because I am not the same as them. Why do I let just one people have so much power over me? Why do I feel I have to be the same as everyone else? All it takes is one word of rejection. Then the rejection leads to loneliness, which then leads to self-loathing, which then leads to anger, which then leads me to hating myself.
And hate is not good for anyone or his or her soul. I think I need to start believing that I am strong in my own right, secure with God before I can stop allowing others the power to hurt and destroy me. I think that the reason why it’s so hard to try and ignore something negative that your parents say is because as a child you love them so much and you need them in order to survive.
You need them to live and you will do anything it takes to keep them in your life. And all you want from them is to love you back, to maybe be proud of you, and to care about you. Who else are you going to depend on to watch your back if not your family? One of the Ten Commandments I still have a hard time grasping is “Honor Thy Father and thy Mother.” How can I do that when they have hurt me so bad?
If I break a commandment, does that mean God will never be there for me? I that what I have done wrong, is that why God I never seem to get it together, is because I have broken all his commandments? Someone once told me that his or her idea of heaven is to be absent from the body and be present with the Lord. And that there is hope. To know that someone gave up His life so that I may live in happiness and joy and without sin and self-commendation, there would be definitely strength and comfort in that belief. Is that same happiness and joy available to me? That is what I am hoping for anyhow. 
