When Religion Breaks You: Rediscovering The God You Never Knew

The Weight Of Never Enough

I have spent the last several years deconstructing my religious belief system. For years, I lived under the weight of feeling like I was never enough. The gospel message I heard growing up in church left me feeling unworthy of God's love and acceptance.

I was taught that I was inherently flawed and a sinner who needed to be saved.
But saved from who or what?
Myself? God? Jesus? The devil?

“Sin,” I was told.
I needed to be saved from sin but what does all of that really mean when you’re a child?

The Gospel I Was Taught

I was taught that sin separated us from God and that we would spend eternity in Hell if we didn’t confess those sins and ask Jesus for forgiveness.

I was taught that sin was this evil nature we all inherited from Adam and Eve after “the Fall.” In my church, they called it Adamic Nature. This inherited nature was supposedly what caused us to do things that were evil or against God’s nature and His laws.

They told me that we inherited a "fallen state" and all of Humanity was condemned because of Adam and Eve’s transgression. This inherited sin nature is what causes people to struggle to stay faithful and obedient to God. This meant we needed a Savior who could undo what had been done to us because of the Fall.

I was taught that Jesus came to die for the sins of humanity, in order that we might be reconciled back into a right relationship with God. Jesus’ death would pay the penalty for our sins. I was taught that Jesus took our place, lived a perfect and obedient life to God on our behalf, then died and was resurrected. 

This made Jesus the mediator between God and man. He would be the one who would entreat God on our behalf because salvation had been purchased through His blood.

So, by saying the "sinner’s prayer," believing in my heart that He was the Son of God, and that He died and was resurrected from the dead, I would be considered “saved.”
This salvation was said to be a free gift, given by God through Jesus, to all who confess His name, believe His gospel, and do good works. This meant God would only see us through the blood of Jesus and we would be considered righteous in His eyes.

They taught that this gospel would transform me from a sinner to a saint as long as I could stay close to Jesus, read His Word, engage in prayer and thanksgiving, go to church, keep my tithes paid, and live according to all His commandments.

If I could maintain this lifestyle (living right) for the rest of my life, then and only then would I be considered worthy to go to heaven.

If I could not live up to these standards, then I would go to hell.

Unless, of course, I happened to have a chance to ask God for forgiveness again for any sin I may have committed before I died. If I got lucky and had that chance, then I could be saved "again" and go to heaven.This sort of resembles the situation where the thief on the cross asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His Father’s kingdom in Luke 23:42. In other words it was like "death bed repentance."

I lived in a constant state of repentance. Always trying to remember to repent of anything that I may have done wrong because if I didn't, and something happened to me, then I could die and go to hell. This was exhausting!

I believed all of this. I drank it all in.

And even though I had proven to myself that I couldn't "live right" over many years of struggling to stay obedient and faithful to God's standards, and meet everyone's spiritual expectations of me, I still preached it with passion and conviction for years.

Until one day I just couldn’t do it anymore.

The Collapse Of My Religious Identity

Religion didn’t just influence how I viewed God — it shaped how I viewed myself.

It put me on a religious hamster wheel. It is the never ending cycle of repenting, striving, failing, isolating, repenting again. It kept me in a place of trying to get back to God and always trying to feel “right” again.

At first, I called it conviction.
But over time, I realized it was something else: shame.

Guilt told me I did something wrong.
Shame told me I am something wrong.

And religion seemed to feed that message.

Every time I slipped, I felt unworthy. Every failure reinforced the belief that I was fundamentally flawed and a disappointment to God, to others, even to myself.

And when you believe you’re fundamentally flawed,
you stop trying to be loved and start trying to be good enough to deserve it.

That belief slowly poisoned every area of my life.

It affected my marriage, because I didn’t know how to love without fear nor receive love without suspicion. I couldn’t be emotionally present, because I was spiritually exhausted. I was always chasing worthiness, instead of offering presence.

It affected my friendships and ministry, because ministry (for me) had become a performance. I realized that I wasn’t serving from love as much as I was from fear. Fear of being disapproved by man, not ever good enough for God, and afraid of going to hell for not doing God's will.

It affected my finances and career because when you live believing you’re never enough, you unconsciously sabotage opportunities, relationships, stability, and peace. When my identity collapsed, so did my stability.

I entered a deep state of depression. I lost my job and I was emotionally and spiritually exhausted. I felt like a disappointment to God and a burden to friends and family.

I lost confidence in my self and God. When my faith crumbled, not only did I loose my religion, 
I lost my sense of self.

I was in a place where I could no longer recognize the person I had become.

When You No Longer Recognize Your Self

I don’t know if you’ve ever been at a place in your life where you felt like you had lost your identity and sense of self but let me tell you, the pain is real, and the devastation can be life-altering.

I lost everything.

I lost jobs, homes, cars, and money.
I lost self-respect, my marriage, friendships, my ministry.
I lost my sense of worth, my passion, and my dream.

Buried under the rubble of religion, I could no longer reconcile my life and my pain with my faith.
What I had been taught didn’t match what I was living.
The God I preached didn’t seem to show up in the ruins of my life.

I had believed in all the formulas. 
If I would pray this, confess that, do better, try harder, stay faithful, don’t waver, then God would bless me.

But what happens when your life still collapses and all of the old answers just don't work anymore?

What happens when your belief system doesn’t hold up under the weight of real pain?

When the version of God you believed in no longer speaks to the place you now find yourself in?

That’s where I was. I was broken, confused, empty, and spiritually homeless.

The Voice

It was in this dark night of my soul that I finally began to question everything I believed about God, religion, and salvation.

During this season, something happened that I still struggle to fully explain.

One day, while I was taking my lunch break at work and completely distracted, playing a game on my phone, I suddenly heard a voice.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t external.
Yet it wasn’t just internal either.

It felt like it came from somewhere deep within me, but also somehow outside of me — almost as if someone was speaking to me in my ear and within me at the same time.

And it said:

“What would you like to know?”

I paused
I wasn’t praying. I wasn’t studying. I wasn’t worshiping.
I wasn’t even thinking about God.

But the voice came to me in spite of where I was or what I was doing. 

So I decided to engage it. To listen.

What happened next turned into a dialogue.

It was not one that lasted a few minutes, or even a few days, but a conversation that continued, off and on, for almost two years.

I asked questions. I listened. I responded.

And I wrote it all without judgement just as I heard it. 

Was it God?

Was it my spirit finally awakening?

Was it something deeper than my old belief system could explain?

All I can say is this:

That voice did not condemn me.
It did not shame me.
It did not demand anything from me.
It invited me.

“What would you like to know?”

The God I Didn't Know

Out of this dictation came questions and answers that changed my life.

The answers that were given to me challenged everything I thought I knew about God. They didn’t fit inside the framework of the religion I had inherited. They didn’t reinforce fear, shame, or striving. They dismantled them.

Through this experience  and many others of which I will write at another time, my entire religious belief system began to unravel. It was pulled apart, examined, and then slowly, gently, sown back together.

But something was different.

I felt like I had met someone

A version of God that I had never known before.

Not the God of guilt.
Not the God of distance.
Not the God I had tried so hard to please.

But the God of love.
The God of freedom.
The God who wasn’t waiting on the other side of my perfection, but was already present in the middle of my collapse.

What Comes Next

I have felt led to share my story, and I will begin posting what I am calling Excerpts from My Dialogue with God.

This will be a series of blog posts that include portions of my conversations with God along with the many questions and answers that I believe will encourage and inspire you, just as they did (and still do) for me.

So stay tuned…
More is coming.

Much love,
Stacy

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”
— Proverbs 27:17