When Nothing Is Working

Wonder why you are NOT receiving: the virtues, personal changes, help with your struggles or relational problems, or psychological healing you are asking God for?  Have you asked God what more you need to be doing to cooperate with Him to give you what you are asking for? Have you asked God how you are blocking Him?

You ask God for strength, you ask God for patience, you ask God for courage, you ask God for trust in Him, you ask God for help: to be a better person, to stop being angry, to stop being afraid, stressed, anxious, etc., to stop feeling depressed, to stop your addiction, to set better boundaries, to stop watching porn, to be better in a relationship, etc...but nothing changes...so you blame God and invent all kinds of assumptions as to why...Here's the Truth...YOUR FAILURE TO REPENT

What does repentance really mean? To repent means to be completely self-aware of what we need to change within our self, fully blame our self / our free will to be choosing it, be truly sorry to God that we are choosing it, fully want to change, and start actively practice trying to change.

The problem is usually that we haven't specifically repented of what it is we want to change and we ESPECIALLY haven't repented of WANTING what needs to change in and with us up till now. We are failing to do ALL our parts of the work. Work that God cannot do for us because He cannot control our free will to choose. Controlling our free will would be unloving and God cannot do anything unloving. 

We have to properly repent of choosing what we are asking God to change in us, or properly repent for choosing the absence of what we are asking God to spiritually/psychologically give us...along with accepting the temporary emotional suffering that comes with saying "no" to our bad wants/desires (what are called temptations). We have to take FULL responsibility for our interior and exterior acts of our free will to choose. Free will acts that include all that we: are attracted to, like, dislike, want/desire, expect, believe, think, and psychologically feel (emotionally and otherwise).

Why? Because until we correctly repent we are either not wanting to choose to cooperate with changing in particular specific ways with our free will and intellect, because we think we aren't at fault / haven't done wrong in particular specific ways, directly related to what we are asking God for.  And again, God cannot go against your free will to choose, whether we are ignorant of and fail to understand how we are making our choices or not.

Yes, there is a correct and necessary way to repent. We need to consciously actively choose to be sincerely sorry to God for being/doing this, that, and the other, or failing to be/do this, that, and the other, as the case may be. AND most importantly, consciously actively be sorry to God for WANTING to be/do this, that, and the other, or failing to be/do this, that, and the other, as the case may be, up to the present point, and every time we are/do so there after, all of which means that we really do want to change.  If we fail to be sorry for the fact that we wanted to be/do this, that, and the other, we are failing to take full responsibility for our free will to choose our interior and exterior acts, while failing to live in the Truth; and God is Truth.

For example, if you want God to give you a virtue, you have to first repent that you having been rejecting the virtue up to the present (and each time if you do so again in the future), and repent of having been WANTING to reject being/doing the particular virtue. For another example, if you want God to help you stop feeling angry, you have to FIRST repent (be sincerely sorry and fully want to change) of you having been choosing to be angry up to the present (and each time you do so again in the future), AND repent of WANTING to feel/be angry.  For another example, if you want God to help you stop feeling insecure; and feel confident, you have to FIRST repent that you have been choosing to be insecure; not confident.

What?! No I don't, because I don't make myself feel insecure or angry or unvirtuous, nor do I want to feel insecure, angry or unvirtuous! This is exactly why you are not receiving the changes in yourself and the help and healing from God that you are asking for.  When have you spent multiple hours a day in contemplative prayer in Eucharistic Adoration asking God to show you everything we humans need to be doing in order to be healed of all sin and psychological suffering?  With your declaration, you expose your ignorance of psychology and moral theology; of how to recognize many sins, because you are failing to ask God and cooperate daily with God to teach you what is a sin and how to recognize all of them. You are lacking in self-awareness, because you are failing to ask God and cooperate daily with God to show you all of your own sins. You believe lies about what actually causes all psychological emotions and feelings and therefore you blame all of your psychological emotions and feelings on externals. And you fail to know the Truth about what being and feeling insecure really is; pride, selfishness, and fear (see my blog article "The Insecure Truth").  And you have obviously never asked God to show you the Truth about any of this.

What?! No I don't, because you can't put restrictions on how God helps and heals people! This "straw man" arguement is EXACTLY why you are not receiving the changes in yourself and the help and healing from God that you have been asking for. To believe that someone explaining how God logically functions is "putting restrictions" on how God does something is arrogantly presumptious at best.

Let's start with your pride, know it all perspective and attitude, of thinking you're right and no one else could possibly know a Truth that you don't have and that disagrees with you, with no facts to prove it, and your lack of repentance for your pride and thinking you know it all and are right about everything you think and believe, while you are projecting your assumptive false belief, of there being no requirements for us to properly cooperate with God. A false belief which also needs to be repented of.

Why do we have to repent in the way I just explained above?  Because God IS Truth+Love+Virtues, which means when we are not having or doing or being (aka choosing) any one of them in any particular specific detail at any time, we are rejecting God in that way and degree. And if we want God to give us the Truth+Love+Virtue, He will be replacing the absence of the Truth+Love+Virtue that we have been choosing, and therefore wanting, or failing to want and choose (as the case may be) by either commission and/or omission for all this time.

Every interior/internal behavior we humans: are attracted to, like, dislike, want/desire, expect, think, believe, and psychologically feel (emotionally and otherwise), along with all external behaviors in non-verbals, words, and deeds, and what we fail to do, are our FREE WILL TO CHOOSE...and when we humans make an immoral/bad/wrong/sinful/false/unrealistic/dysfunctional/irrational/evil choice, WE WANT TO DO SO, in part or whole.

There is no void in us; we are either actively choosing, in multiple ways, what is Truth+Love+Virtues or what is false+unloving+unvirtuous. We are constantly making choices every moment; we are never doing "nothing" intellectually and physically even when we think we are doing "nothing". 

For, lies+unloving+unvirtuous (Badness, Unrighteousness, Evil), is the absence of Truth+Love+Virtue (Goodness, Righteousness, Holiness) and vice versa. This means that if we are choosing one in any particular specific detail, we are NOT choosing the absence of it. In the same manner, if we are NOT choosing one in any particular specific detail, we are automatically choosing the absence of it. Therefore, failure to make a choice is a choice. Doing nothing is doing something wrong.

And just because we think we are or are not interiorly or exteriorly doing a particular behavior, doesn't make us automatically right, because we can be lacking in self-awareness (either willfully or not), choosing to believe lies about ourself, rationalizing, making excuses, blaming, in denial, selective memory, etc.  So unless we are directly asking God daily to show us exactly what we need to be repentant of and spending quality time with Him listening to His answers, we will know very little if anything that we need to be repentant of.

God IS Truth+Love+Virtues and we cannot have Him give us what we ask for in this area until we repent / are sorry for what we are and have been choosing that is false+unloving+unvirtuous either by commission or omission, and the fact that we wanted to, BECAUSE all that is false+unloving+unvirtuous IS THE ABSENCE OF AND REJECTION OF GOD, and therefore we are rejecting Him. 

How can God give us Himself; Truth+Love+Virtues when we are actively rejecting Him? He can't! Being repentant (aka I'm sorry specifically for X, and for wanting it, and I want to change) is the only way to actually want to receive and cooperating with receiving what we are spiritually/psychologically asking God to give us. If we don't do this, then we really don't want from Him what we are asking for. The Truth doesn't stop being true just because you or I don't believe it.

We also need to know and understand enough about who God IS, because when we believe lies about God and Who He IS, we reject and disobey what we need to do in order to cooperate with Him to help us, because He cannot go against our free will to choose to believe lies and every lie we believe is a direct rejection of Him Who IS Truth.

When we think a Truth is a lie, then we are choosing to reject and disobey the Truth. When we think a good is an evil, then we are choosing to reject and disobey what is good.  When we think what is helpful is not helpful for ourselves, then we are choosing to reject and disobey what is helpful for ourselves. God cannot give us what we are freely choosing to reject and disobey.

God is Truth+Love+Virtues. Therefore, Truth is Love, Truth is Freedom, Truth is Peace, Truth is Bliss. Willful ignorance; aka not wanting and not having the Truth hurts and makes us suffer. Thinking we are right when we are wrong while not wanting to investigate if and how we might be wrong, is the worst thing we can do to harm ourselves. This is Pride. And Pride is the base of all sin.