Ben oh my gosh. Thats really cool of you to open up to everyone like that!

16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Ok, there’s a lot here to read, but please bare with me

     You see, Christians are not ‘good’ people. We are not the nice goody-two-shoed people who are always happy, never depressed and who always ‘have it together’. We are the broken down, depraved, unrighteous people who almost never have it together.

     You see, Jesus didn’t die to save a bunch of good people who thought they had it all together spiritually, He died to save sinners.

     A Christian is simply a sinful person who has accepted that nothing but God’s forgiveness can make Him a ‘good person’, can make him whole, can make him clean. A real Christian has history, and a lot of it, just like I do.

     The Bible says the punishment for sin is death, and so Christ demonstrated His great love (and His justice) by dying instead of us. That’s the definition of a Christian, not a holy person, but an unholy person who has come to the place where he can only be righteous by accepting Christ’s forgiveness for him when He paid my and your debt no the cross when He died.

     So don’t be surprised to hear of Christians who struggle with depression, drugs, sexual immorality, and who have low self esteem.  A Christian with ought Christ, should have low self esteem because of their sins.

     That is who we are, dirty broken sinners who have been freely justified by God’s grace. That is all. I still struggle with sin, and imperfection, and sometimes I get so caught up in it, that I forget that God loves me for who I am, not for who I should be, and that most of all, God’s love has no conditions. God didn’t say when I became a Christian, “I’m going to love you IF___”… God said, “I’m going to love you no matter how much you fail, fall, make mistakes, and completely fall apart and no matter how ‘unlovable’ you think you are”.

     God’s love is not based on who we are, but on who HE is. That’s part of what makes God so wonderful, is that I don’t have to come into His presence ashamed of being dirty, and I don’t have to try and ‘clean up’ or put on an act for God, He already knows my dirt, and He sees past that because of what Christ did, He forgave it already, HOWEVR, Yes, God loves me for who I am, but also, He loves us too much to let us stay that way. Pretty soon, when you become a Christian, you won’t help but be able to grow and to change and to ‘clean up’. You’ll WANT to change and grow like Christ in His righteousness, you will NOT BE ABLE TO NOT  become more holy. You desires will change in view of all that God has done for you in forgiving you, and you will WANT to change. It’s not a matter of working hard to love God so we can earn His forgiveness, we work hard at loving God cause we already have been forgiven. We love out of gratitude, not out of guilt, (although, some immature Christians still live that way, I used to be one of them).

In short, I still struggled with low self esteem and depression and all the sins that go along with them because,  I lost sight of God’s grace, and I stopped focusing on God’s perfectly sufficient unconditionally love for my life, and I got caught up in my own weakness, and insufficiency, and guilt. I forgot that God doesn’t care what I look like, and stuff, and I just got caught up chasing after the world’s acceptance, when God already loved myself and accepted me perfectly, in spite of who I was and what I’ve done. A Christians righteousness stems from a gratitude for what Christ has already done by forgiving us, not from being holy and righteous already. If you think your holy already, then Christ cannot save you.

I hope this helped, if not let me know, also
I would LOVE to talk to you more about this Amber, I invite you to start talking about it, and I also chalenge you to redefine what you think 'christianity' is all about.

Wow Ben, I would have never guessed that about you. But yeah, just remember that God made you in his image, and because of that he sees you as gold. You are so important to him and it's because of who you are, not what you look like, how you sound, how tall you are, what colour your hair is ect. God loves you just the way you are. And you shouldn't think that you need to please people by your exteirior so they like your inteirior, because if the people you call 'friends' are only there because of how you look, that's all they care for. God loves you Ben and so does everyone else in your life. And that's right, you are fearfully and wonderfully made! And you are such a strong man of God and I am so proud of you!! Never for one second put yourself down Ben because you are beautiful-inside and out!!

:) 

Wow, you are so brave! I second that previous comment when I would never have guessed this about you...just goes to show you can't judge a book by its cover...or a person by their outside appearance..You already know that i struggled with most of what you described..and i know its so hard...God bless you so much for, like how you said on my blog...being transparent. For not only will opening up and sharing with people minister to you...but your "realness" will also very much encourage and help the people who read your words. God bless you so much my friend. And I am so happy that God has brought you so far...=)

Lara: Wow... I am continualy amazed at how many people connected with this random blog of mine. I totaly didn't expect so many people to respond like this. God truly has used this blog. I'm so glad I wrote it. Your right, anorexia is'nt a deseas, but it's rather I believe an affect of low self esteem which can be caused by many many things. The Bbttom line is that our self esteem is found in Christ. I have a freind  who is in a psychology class. One of his assignments is to stare at himsel fin a mirror and repeat the phrase, 'I love you, your perfect the way you are, your trustworthy'. I remeber him telling me about it, and thinking how stupid it was, becuase that is totaly contrary to what a christian's mindset is or should be. Becuase we have our sin nature ingrained wihtin every one of us, the deeper we seach our own soul, the more darkness, depravity, brokeness, and dispair we will find. That is why we base our self esteem on the way God sees us; through Christ's sacrifice. That is the only way we will find self confidense, self esteem, or self love.