I was saved at the age of five. When I was twelve I read the Scripture about the unforgivable sin. From then on I started having curse words in my head toward the Holy Spirit. Despite doing my best to reject the thoughts, I could not get rid of them. I was too embarrassed and afraid to tell anyone about my mental torture. I thought everyone would disown me and tell me I was going to hell.

As I grew older, the thoughts became even more intense and disgusting against each member of the Holy Trinity. So horrible were the thoughts that I have never actually spoken them, other than once confiding some of them to my husband so he could understand and pray for me.

The whole thing pushed me into a deep depression most of my teen years. As a result, I dropped out of high school twice and partied a lot. By seventeen I rededicated my life to Christ, but I always thought that I was somehow not really saved because of the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What particularly bothered me is that some of those things in my head I had said in anger toward the Holy Spirit. I think the bad thoughts sometimes were the devil but sometimes they were my flesh.

I dated the same guy since I was fourteen and married him at nineteen. He was the only person I trusted on earth and told about my problem. He would always try to reassure me that I had not lost my salvation. We had only been married for six months when my husband joined the army. When he finished his basic training I was so excited that we were finally able to be together. Nevertheless, I soon fell into severe depression because of my fears about the unforgivable sin. The horrible thoughts that I could not get rid of had returned and worsened. I cried all day and could not eat or get out of bed. Sometimes I would scream at the top of my lungs because the pain of my depression was so severe.

My husband was so concerned he wanted to admit me into hospital. Nevertheless, he stuck with doing all he could to support me and praying over me many times a day. I put Scriptures all over my walls in our apartment and I sought Christian counseling and actively started to research what the unforgivable sin was all about. (I had not tried such research earlier because I was always afraid it would confirm that I had lost my salvation.)

The counseling helped me conquer what had been torturing me all these years. It helped me realize that what Jesus had done on the cross was final. Previously, I had walked around scared of my very mind, because at some unlikely moment a horrible thought would pop into my mind. I would try to get rid of the thoughts by praying and casting them out or reading my Bible but nothing seemed to work. I now think it was because I didn’t realize that Jesus died on the cross, not just for some sins but for all sins.

It was very hard for me to understand that the fact that I was looking for forgiveness was proof that I could be forgiven. I just had to realize that God longs to forgive everyone of everything, just as he says in his Word: “. . . whoever comes to me I will never drive away” ( John 6:37). Today, I cannot even explain what it was that kept me from believing God’s promises and trusting him, but with much grace, God revealed to me that all my fears were lies of the devil.

It is hard to tell people like me just to get over it and believe that God forgives. That approach never worked with me. For me, the best thing was my husband’s support. It helped me so much to have my husband tell me everyday that I was saved and that I was going to heaven and to pray over me. Even when I asked him if he thought I was going to heaven he still always said, “Yes,” and showed me the Scriptures on my walls. I felt if he could know what I had done and still love me, then surely God, who is so much more loving and forgiving than any human, could also love and forgive me.

To me, God’s great plan of salvation seemed too perfect to be true. That is where I went wrong. God is perfect and because of that he will never leave us or forsake us.

I often used to ask myself, “Why would God ever want such a bad sinner as me in heaven with him?” At last I know that that’s the wonderful beauty of it: he really wants us no matter what. That’s why he died a horrible death – so we could be with him in paradise forever. Isn’t that wonderful!

God has worked me through so many things. He restores everything that we have lost, and the Lord is doing that on a daily basis for me. He has given me a son who is five months old and allowed me to handle my husband being in Iraq without depression, which is a huge testimony for me.

I felt better after my counseling but the disturbing thing was that I could never find information about the unpardonable sin.

Never have I heard anyone preach on the subject, nor have I found any books about it. It was tempting to wrongly assume that if Christians do not talk about the unforgivable sin, it must mean that if you did anything remotely close to it, then you were such a goner that there is no point trying to warn or help such a person.

So I was thrilled to find your wonderful website. I was on the Internet, not even looking for anything related to this subject and could not believe I had found it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. It has confirmed many things for me.

No one knew of my secret for years. But now I know that the Lord is a wonderful God who forgives me for anything as long as I come to him. It didn’t happen over night. It took years of prayer and I am still healing. I still get thoughts every now and again but I am better able to take hold of them and cast them out because I now have a spiritual understanding of what Christ did for me and now know that I am secure in my salvation. I know God could have delivered me instantly, but an instant deliverance wasn’t in his plan for me. I look back over my life and realize that my struggles were all in God’s plan to bring me to where I am today.

Healed by God,

Christy

All the Help You Need
To keep worrying that God is displeased with you or cannot forgive you is like worrying that God might die. Nevertheless, anyone hounded by such worries both needs and deserves an enormous amount of support. It’s all here for you, provided free so that you have no excuse, but to access it all, you will have to read it all, and for daily support you will need to return every day to read it.

Not to be sold. © Copyright, 2004, Grantley Morris. Not to be copied in whole or in part without citing this entire paragraph. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings by Grantley Morris available free at the following internet site www.net-burst.com Freely you have received, freely give.