The Seventh Time

I made a blog name change a week or so ago and I have sat down multiple times to write my second post to explain the name but I felt God telling me each time, not yet, but I felt a nudge to write this a few days ago, so here I am.

The past couple of months I have began to dream about one day starting my own ministry and when I started this blog I thought it would be the first step in that direction. With this, I began praying about what the name of it would be and for months nothing came to me. One day I was listening to one of my favorite pastors online who is currently on a sermon series called "Consistency", that day his sermon was based off of Psalm 24:16, " For the righteous falls seven times but rises again." Days after listening to this, as I was praying I felt God saying, that's it, The Seventh Time. After more prayer I decided to change the name of the blog and here's why.

Before I became a Christian I couldn't find many Christians that were vulnerable/ transparent with their struggles before and after becoming Christian, and when I did, the story I heard was, "I struggled with sin before I became a Christian but when I became a Christian God removed all of my desires to continue with my old ways." Once I finally became a Christian and all my desires for sin weren't taken away immediately it lead me to believe that there was something wrong with me and I was the only Christian that still fell into temptation, which lead me back into a life of shame for years to come.

It has been a long journey out of that shame and it took me years of falling before I was able to accept that it was normal.The past 6 months I have been reading through the book "Fervent" by Priscilla Shier, this has assisted me majorly in my journey. The chapter from this week talked about the pressures we place upon ourselves and the pressures the enemy places upon us. Yesterday evening, as I was talking to a friend, I told her " I never would have been able to admit this a year ago because I never saw it, but I am a perfectionist. I used to not want to give anyone a reason to look down upon me, so, I would put the pressure on myself to do everything perfectly and if I wasn't able to I would quit." This is how I went about my faith as a new believer, I would try my best to be a perfect Christian and when I would fall I would quit until I felt the urge to try again and then I would go through the same cycle time and time again, not realizing that I never would be perfect. I'm now convinced think the reason God didn't wipe away all my desires for my old way when I became a Christian was because I had to learn what it really means to fall and rise again. If it was up to me I would have given up on the first, second, third, or seventh fall and just gone back to my old ways but I had to learn to rise again and if this would have been the case I never would have fully grown into the person I was meant to be.

My question tonight is where are you, are you the non Christian that wants to give your life to Christ but is afraid you might fall? Are you the righteous man that didn't expect to fall and is tempted to give up because becoming a Christian wasn't what you expected and you are still trying to be a the prefect Christian but its not working? Or are you the Righteous man that has fallen and risen for the seventh time but you aren't yet ready to be vulnerable about your journey. I fully believe that God is able to take the desire for our past ways immediately after we become Christians but I also fully believe that God has to take some of us through the process of trial and error a few times to learn a lesson before we can set aside our old ways. I want this blog to be a place where I share some of the strategies I have learned, which have assisted me in my journey of falling and rising, I also want this to be a place where I can inspire those who have walked down the same road I have to use their own story to help another rise again for the seventh time.

This world is full of people who need to see the righteous fall for the Seventh time so they can teach them