Quote:
Originally Posted by movingon
Hello. I've been lurking here off and on for awhile, and would like to ask a question for other ex-members of the Local Churches.
How do you become normal? How do you learn to just enjoy life without thinking that God is going to judge you because you should be more spiritual? I didn't mean to ramble on and on like this but I could really use some help.
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You are not alone, I can surely relate to this. The short answer for me is to ask the Lord.
I have found that I now have very little trouble "enjoying worldly things" when I'm with my wife. While I'm "having fun," I'm also helping her to "have fun," and often this is pleasing to the Lord. Personal "pleasures" are another matter. Sometimes I am perfectly peaceful watching sports, and sometimes I've "had enough."
The difficulty is that the scripture sometimes supports what the LC taught us. Restrictions in the flesh are good for us. We
should be concerned that our new found liberties, since leaving the rigors of the LC, do not become an occasion for the flesh.
Many years ago the Lord helped me see thru some of the hypocrisy of LC demands. Since I served with the children occasionally, they talked about their family life. One older brother always condemned pleasures like Cedar Point, an amusement park in Ohio. Then one day his kids were talking about how much fun they had at Cedar Point. Like I said -- hypocrisy -- making demands on others that you have no intention keeping.
In the past we often did not interact with the Lord about all these items since we
knew they were all "worldly." We saints were also subtly taught to be spies on one another. Consequently, we were often robbed of the simplicity of asking the Lord about all these items in our life.