I was so accustomed to reading my Bible and reading the AA books, or the devotional "One Day at a Time in Al-Anon".
Yet the sense of emptiness in my life was all encompassing, too.
We cannot have life, we cannot serve the living God with His Life in us if we think that we have to keep taking our inventory, watch our thoughts, and feelings, and make sure that we never sin or fail.
If we have to keep an eye on our feelings, protect ourselves from the shame and slights of other people, then we will never do anything or go anywhere.
For four years, when I was a student at UC Irvine, I had become so used to a life of reading religious books and keeping myself righteous through what I thought and did.
There is no life in that, and when the time came for me to step out into the world, I was absolutely terrified.
I had no idea what I would be facing out there. I had no idea, no certainty, that God was with me to face all the trials.
How could I? I was not walking by faith at all, that is, faith in what Jesus had done for me at the Cross.
I look back on the periods of great pain and suffering which I had been through.
I was so easily angered, and I walked around in great fear, unable to control the feeling that someone was going to hurt me or do something bad to me.
Never would have I realized, looking back them on what I know now, that my oor understaind of the forgiveness of God, the grace of Christ, was what was missing in my life.
As long as I had this awful sense that how I felt and what I was thinking was the cause of so much pain in my life, I knew that I could never do anything.
Because of that evil cult, because of the wicked notions that I was all alone in this world, and that everything somehow depended on me, no wonder I was not ready for adult life.
I did not have a good conscience before Christ at all.
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