Bible Discussion Thread

I have been a believer my whole life. I was saved and baptized when I was 13years old. I have not treated my salvation the way I should have over the years. For the last 2 years, I have been questioning my salvation. It has been very hard. At the first of July, it felt like The Lord was cutting me off because heart had gotten hard. My question is this, if I were saved, would I have felt that the Lord was cutting me off?

Hello Lola4ever. From what you have written & not knowing all that you have experienced in your life, my first thought is that any person who has been truly saved (i.e. made an unforced conscious decision to depart from one's awful sinful state to that of longingly looking to Jesus for their salvation) is born again from God & receives His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God indwelling you & ministers to you in every way possible; such as in your desires, needs, aspirations, when tripped up/trapped by sin, of counsel, encouragement, teaching, warning, and even discipline). Even at the tender age of 13, you should have experienced some of this & sensed the ministry of God in your life.

Now what took place later on (maybe as you went into your late teens & twenties) you would know, but my belief (even from my own experience) is that the Holy Spirit very quickly alerts us when the line of godly living is being crossed - for that is His Work in our lives. Did you ever sense this alerting & correcting work in your life? Even as the Lord spoke to a Church in The Revelation, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent". ( Revelation 3:19). Because Jesus loves His children so much, His discipline is always given in love & for full restoration. When a person who believes he is saved & has absolutely no sense of the Spirit's Ministry of guiding, convicting & drawing back into fellowship, then that person has never known the Lord, for He always deals with us as children & not as illegitimate. ( Hebrews 12:5-10).

From your submission, it appears that you have sensed this estrangement from the Lord but now felt that He has cut you off. I think that the Lord has brought you to this point in time to repent & return to your first love, having allowed you over the years to taste the world & indifference to Him & find them unsatisfying & sinful. He sometimes allows us slack, but He will always draw us to repentance & restoration. Is this you?