Four years ago, after many personal problems, depression, tendency to homosexuality (in my thoughts), and a growing unbelief toward God, I felt the need to know God.

I prayed, crying over my sins and asking the Lord for mercy and forgiveness. And he answered. He let me know the message of salvation in Christ, and I accepted it. I was so thankful. I found myself continually thanking the Lord for his love and his salvation, asking him, “Why have you saved me? How could you have loved me?”

He changed my life and my thoughts. He removed depression and homosexuality from me, and gave me great peace and the joy of calling him “Father.” He made me a new creature.

Just a few days later, as I was reading the Bible, Satan was almost successful in convincing me that I could not be saved because of my past sins, but the Lord helped me. A couple of days later, while I was reading Mark 3:29 about the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, I remembered that since I was a child, sometimes blasphemous thoughts against the Lord had popped into my mind. I hated those thoughts and didn’t know what to do against them. So, after reading that Scripture, I was soon convinced that I had committed the unforgivable sin.

The pain was horrible. Until that moment, I had felt a strong communion with the Lord. I longed for his love and his will more than anything else. But now I felt like a child rejected by his father. I didn’t understand that the Deceiver was trying trick me with his lies, like he lied to Jesus in the wilderness. I thought I was the only Christian on earth to have this problem.

I can’t adequately describe my distress. I was overwhelmed with devastating depression, turmoil, confusion. I cried for weeks asking God not to forsake me. I still loved him and could somewhat feel he had not really gone, but it was as if I were in a pit and couldn’t understand what was happening above.

Slowly I became bitter and angry with God, but I repented of this attitude again and again asked him to forgive me. I cried a lot, praying incessantly, but each time with less faith than before. The blasphemous thoughts multiplied and I felt powerless. My doubts about God’s love increased. It seemed to me that he was a God of love who loved everyone, except me.

In those months the Lord helped me by letting me know stories of people who had committed gross sins against him and were not forsaken. He let me find two sermons, one by George Whitefield and another by C.H. Spurgeon, who talked about my problem. Those thoughts that I had presumed to be only my problem, were clearly described as an attack by the enemy.

I began to understand that I had not been rejected, but was just in a spiritual trial. I asked God for forgiveness and help. The buildup of months of resentment and bitterness, however, had weakened my faith. And when those thoughts came again stronger and more intensely, I could not accept that they came from Satan, rather than me. I concluded that my heart must be hopelessly wicked.

So I again fell into discouragement, unbelief, depression, and crying. All the while, I kept praying and asking God for help, but my prayers were mere laments than having any expectation that God would respond. Every now and then, I realized that God had not abandoned me, but then I remembered my former irritation at God, my unbelief, my failures, and I felt that God could not accept me anymore.

Gradually, however, the Lord helped me and restored me. Once again I asked God for his forgiveness.

Many churches in my country are cold and I didn’t feel love and good doctrine in them. Last year, the Lord sent me a brother in Christ who invited me to visit his church. I felt Christ’s love in that place and in all of the people there.

I felt refreshed and enthused, but after a while I couldn’t feel the Lord’s presence anymore. I felt barren, while all my brothers and sisters in Christ seemed always joyful and radiant.

I prayed and looked for communion with God. On rare occasions I found it but even then it did not last.

I began to see that part of the problem was that even if I know God’s promises and what Jesus has done for me, my faith was based primarily on my feelings, rather than what God has done. Moreover, those promises have become to me like a “law” (if I do this, God will do that) rather than his promises being God’s undeserved gift.

All these things had saddened my soul to the point that for a few weeks I had once again some bitterness against the Lord, and even started thinking that God could be cruel to people, leaving them to suffer instead of saving them. I repented of those thoughts, because I know that the Lord is truly love. But this is yet another failure that I have collected. These trials have been very hard for my small faith, so whenever I can’t feel his presence I easily forgot his help and his promises, and become the enemy’s prey again. When I see the years behind me I feel so discouraged, and often feel like the people of Israel of old when they were in the wilderness and God had to forsake them there because of their unbelief.

[Comment by Grantley: It is common when we are defeated to interpret God’s actions negatively. In reality, the Lord did not forsake the Israelites despite their lack of faith. He simply kept them in the wilderness where he continued to miraculously look after them.]

Sometimes I wonder if God could ever forgive and restore me, and even if I know that he has done it in the past, I just don’t have the strength to get up and pray with faith.

So I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I found Grantley’s pages about the unforgivable sin and blasphemous thoughts! They described my condition perfectly, comforted my soul greatly, and finally showed me the way out. I have asked the Lord for forgiveness and now I’m free!

Like Christy, whose testimony is on this website, I had kept my problem a secret. I never mentioned a word of it to my family, my friends, my pastor, because I thought nobody would understand. And the saddest part was that I was denying myself the help I desperately needed. I couldn’t carry that weight all by myself, and without that support I more easily fell for Satan’s lies. I had also started thinking it could be a form of demon possession, that I had lost my salvation, and so on. Like Christy, I know what it means to be mentally tortured, screaming at the top of one’s lungs, and being plagued by those terrible thoughts. Sometimes even the thought of suicide came to my mind.

Even though it all started with those blasphemous thoughts, the problem slowly changed when I felt that the Lord couldn’t forgive me. I felt too much shame to seek help and despised myself for my reactions, unbelief, murmuring, etc. and I believed that the Lord had abandoned me. I missed so much because I failed to apply to myself God’s special promises. I kept thinking they applied only to other people. Now, I know that God’s promises are for everyone – even me.

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.