I came to faith not long ago and for the first time in my life I felt like I could actually breathe. Then a season of health worries shook me and showed me how thin my trust really was. Somewhere in there I let go of the habits that kept me close to God and started looking into other beliefs, and now I’m in a fog where I don’t know what’s true anymore.
I’ve said things about God in my anger that a real believer wouldn’t say… and I’m scared that means I was never his to begin with.
A little while ago I was at the point of giving up entirely and I asked for a sign to keep me here. Something did stop me, and it felt like grace. But small everyday things keep going wrong and I wonder if I was only spared so he could watch me stumble.
If scripture really says he laughs at those who don’t believe, then where does someone like me go to ask honest questions without feeling mocked for asking them?
I guess what I’m really wrestling with is this: if you’ve ever felt like you slipped out of God’s hand, how did you find your way back?
Read all of Psalm 37, not just verse 13. The wicked in that psalm are people who plot against others and are getting away with it. God laughs because their power won’t last and justice is coming. People say awful things when they’re hurting. The Psalms are full of raw accusations aimed at God. Coming back starts small. One honest prayer, or one conversation with a Christian you trust. Tell God where you’re, even if the whole prayer is “I want to believe, help me.”
If giving up means you might hurt yourself, please don’t face that alone tonight. Call someone you trust, or 988 if you’re in the US. Your life is worth protecting while you work through this.
‘I wonder if I was only spared so he could watch me stumble.’ I recognized that line right away because I’ve thought the same thing.
There was a stretch when I had drifted and every small thing that went wrong felt like a verdict. Car won’t start, and my first thought was there it’s, he’s letting me know. It took me a long time to see that as fear dressed up in scripture. Anxiety will grab any verse and turn it into evidence against you. You said you’re scared you were never his to begin with. People who were never his don’t lose sleep over whether they were. When I was furthest out, saying things to God I still wince at, I noticed I was still talking to him, angry and accusing. You don’t argue with someone you’ve decided isn’t there. That argument was the thread that held. About the sign you asked for, trust the first read. The version of you that was at the edge saw more clearly than the version of you now, keeping score of every bad day. As for where to ask questions without being mocked, you already found one place. You asked here. Nobody laughed.
Go read Job. He accused God of hunting him like a lion and refusing to answer him. His friends said the tidy things about God’s justice. At the end God tells those friends they haven’t spoken rightly of him, but Job has. The one who yelled at God in his grief is the one God called honest. He would rather have you angry and talking to him than polite and gone. Jesus said no one can snatch his people out of his hand, and the emphasis there’s on his holding. You said the health scare showed you how thin your trust was. Thin trust is still trust. A kid with a weak grip crossing a parking lot isn’t going to get lost, because the parent is the one doing the holding. Don’t try to sort it all out before you talk to God again. You can pray while confused. You asked for a sign to stay, something stopped you, and you still called it grace. Someone who had slipped away wouldn’t be lying awake worrying about it.
Verse 13 is comfort for the threatened. Psalm 37 is written to people upset because cruel people seem to be winning, and the laughter is about violent schemes not getting the final word. The whole psalm opens with “don’t fret.”
When I’m unsure what I believe, I try not to treat every inconvenience as a message from God. For a week or two, read one Gospel slowly and ask only, “What is Jesus actually like here?” Set the scary theories aside and look at how he treats people who are afraid or doubting.
If “giving up entirely” means you might hurt yourself, please tell someone nearby today and contact emergency services or a crisis line. You deserve real human support while you work through the spiritual questions.
Verses 12-13 make a big difference. The laughter comes right after the wicked plot against the righteous, so it’s aimed at them. Psalm 37 started to feel protective to me once I noticed that, and “Don’t fret” got a lot easier to hear.
If they take you up on it and keep reading, they’ll get to verse 24 about eleven verses later, where the Lord holds the hand of the one who stumbles. So the same psalm that has God laughing in verse 13 has God grabbing a falling person in verse 24.
For a long time I read the Psalms the way you’re warning against, one verse at a time, and whatever verse I landed on set my mood for the week. A verse with the chapter torn off will say anything you’re afraid it says. Someone made me sit down and read a whole psalm straight through, and the scary line got buried by everything around it. Psalm 37 all the way through should be near the top of the list. Takes about ten minutes without commentary or skipping.
Angry and talking versus polite and gone. I did the polite version for a few years back. Kept going to church and saying the right things out loud. In private I didn’t say one real word to God because I was furious with him and somehow thought that wasn’t allowed. Nobody noticed.
What cracked it open was a friend who said what you did, that the Psalms are full of people yelling at God and he kept every one of them in the book. Sat in the car and told him exactly what I thought of how things had gone. First real conversation between us in months. Your point about the emphasis being on his holding-I wish I had understood that back then. I kept measuring my grip and panicking every time it slipped, and the whole promise in John 10 is about his hand.