My Battle with Disgusting Intrusive Thoughts

I am thankful for this website helping me cope with intrusive thoughts.

I’m currently a sophomore in high school. I’ve been reborn in faith since around the beginning of this school year and for months I’ve been plagued with blasphemous intrusive thoughts and fear of the unpardonable sin, and of damnation. The pure horror and terror and feelings of loneliness and hopelessness are so profound. It’s a relief to see from this website that I’m truly not alone, and that there are people out there who understand.

I read about the unpardonable sin in the Bible and fear instantly gripped me because I misunderstood it to say there was something I could do that would eternally separate me from God’s grace, dooming me to an eternity in hell, no matter what else I did in my life. I was then immediately subjected to a barrage of disgusting, profane thoughts about my God, and the Holy Spirit in particular.

I can’t believe that I’m confessing this, but the thoughts that plagued me were initially swearing at God and the Holy Spirit. Later, however, they began to transform into sexual thoughts about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Until I read a testimony about this, I never thought I would actually come-clean about the fact that they were sometimes terribly sexual in nature.

I used to turn to Scripture, hoping for something to alleviate my mental anguish, but only finding easily misinterpreted verses that I wrongly perceived as condemning me. I could barely bring myself to read the words “Holy Spirit,” and when I stepped into a church – a place supposed to be a safe haven for religious worship – every alarming thing stepped up a notch. I almost dreaded going to church because the thoughts became much more relentless there. On one occasion I was shaking, sweating, and felt like throwing up because of the war going on in my mind. You really hit it on the head, Grantley, when you described it as “spiritual rape.” I’ve had multiple episodes where I’ve just cried and cried and cried, feeling like such an utter failure to the one Person that I never want to let down. I’ve sobbed myself to sleep some nights, when the thoughts won’t stop and the guilt just keeps piling on.

I feel like such a terrible, horrendous abomination to God sometimes, and in some situations I find myself wishing that I had never been born, although I’ve never considered suicide. I’ve found some peace in knowing that intrusive thoughts focus on whatever it is that a person most fears. So the fact that mine revolve around God shows how vitally important God is to me and how passionate I am about reverencing him. My subconscious or evil spirits or whatever is driving this, is targeting what I cherish most. Previously, I used to see my ugly thoughts as reason to believe that I really didn’t love God at all and I was terrified that these thoughts were revealing where my heart truly lies. As it turns out, they didn’t show my dissatisfaction with God, but rather confirm how eager I am to honor him. I had also mistakenly presumed that my extreme feelings of guilt, loneliness, and hopelessness were God convicting me of my wrongdoings and I was convinced that he had decided to sentence me to hell on earth, before hell in flames. I’ve since realized that this was not God at all and I had let myself be fooled by false alarms and misinterpretations and I had needlessly pulled back a little from God when he not only accepted me but was actually eager to have fellowship with me.

How can one possibly describe the feelings of horror and hopelessness to anyone lucky enough not to have not experienced this truly startling and faith-testing phenomenon? How can one attempt to put this bizarre form of torture into any kind of language? How can you describe to such a person what is it like:

* When you can’t decipher the voice of evil from your own, and when you ignorantly dismiss the truth and validity of God’s Word, and replace it with entirely fallible and malleable feelings?

* When you have convinced yourself that God has no forgiveness left for you, and that he has completely and eternally forsaken you, only to eventually come to the saddening and bewildering realization that he never truly left your side at all, but that you, yourself, had needlessly kept him at arm’s length by falling for false alarms and misinterpretations?

* When the formerly private residence of your mind is now subject to spiritual rape dozens, if not hundreds, of times each day?

* When you’re hopelessly convinced that no matter what you may do in the future, there is absolutely no forgiveness for thoughts that you never gave consent or birth to, that are far too horrifying to even attempt to relay, but you take these temptations as your own unpardonable burden, simply because they appear in your mind, even when your heart stands firm in its resentment of these blasphemies?

* When you can’t seem to find any refuge, whatsoever, because the very battleground is your own pathetic mind?

No one but the True God and one who has been victim to it can really appreciate or conceive the raw terror and feeling of utter loneliness and helplessness that arrives when your own mind violently morphs into your own personal torture chamber.

One of the most saddening effects of this situation is how I could be in the midst of a thousand people, yet feel so unbelievably disconnected and alone; suffering in silence while trying to smile, and acting like everything is okay.

For the longest time, I felt like the Bible was a book of doom and gloom, because the enemy was trying to distort a good message into something seemingly hopeless. I stopped reading the Bible for a little bit, because I almost felt scared of some of the things it says. However, I’m reading again, and now before I do I ask God to show me something that I need to hear or ask him not to let me misinterpret the message. I guess in my mind I feel like the odds are stacked against me, but I keep on telling myself that if you follow God and love him, and try to live your faith every day, God will accept you every time.

I think one of the hardest things for any of us to accept is that God loves us so much. I feel like if everyone could understand how much God cherishes us and could see how prevalent his intercession really is throughout our normal day, there would be a lot more faith, everywhere. But real faith is about believing, not seeing.

I’m relatively open with my parents about this issue, although I couldn’t bear to tell them what my thoughts have actually been. We’re planning on seeing a doctor or therapist for treatment.

Although I still have those horrendous thoughts, I’ve been a lot better at just shrugging them off, knowing that the fact that they have plagued me is fundamental proof that I love and treasure God. I’ve also come to realize that this situation is my cross to bear. I’ve taken peace in the idea that if God would never hand me anything that I couldn’t in some way benefit from (Jeremiah 29:11). This road is not guaranteed to be easy, but with God, impossible becomes possible. So thank you for this website and for helping me to see the truth behind this plague!

Important:
Get your pastor and those who care about you to read Scrupulosity and the pages it leads to. Few will be able to understand and support you without reading them.

More Testimonies:
Haunted by Blasphemous Thoughts & Dirty Phrases

To Skip Testimonies: When a Christian Commits Gross Sin

Not to be sold. © Copyright, 2013, 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.