My name is Sydney Pritchard.

I am a Christian.

I love Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

And I fell.

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In our walk with Jesus Christ, there are moments of absolutely being on fire for the Lord and sadly sometimes there are moments of falling completely short of the glory of God. Sadly for me, that was this past year.

For the last couple of months this summer I took a break from writing because I recognized that the words I wrote in my blog did not seem to match up with my actions. Sometimes in our pursuit of the Lord, something happens. Maybe we get lazy, maybe we get selfish, maybe we seek more of the things of this world rather than our one true Love, whatever it is, it causes us to stumble. It takes our attention away from what truly matters and we're deceived in believing lies that are completely lies from satan and no where near the truth of the Lord.

One moment we're running mightily after the Lord and  on fire for our mission on this earth and before we know it, we become someone we don't recognize and God seems to become someone very distant from in our lives.

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For everyone it's different. Usually theres a moment or a collection of moments that send you in the opposite direction from the Lord. As Christians and followers of Jesus Christ, we all know that our walk isn't always easy but that we can go through some deep waters and some deep struggles! We're flawed and we're not perfect so

sometimes we fall into sin.

Now, the correct response to sin would be to recognize our sins, to confess and repent of them and to sprint back to the comfort of Jesus who loves us and forgives us and accepts us back with open arms. But sometimes even though we know who God is, even though we know how far His love for us extends, even though we know that He redeems us and restores us and forgives us... sometimes we believe the lies that satan feeds us rather than the truth that God has revealed in our lives.

We believe the lies that we're not good enough. We believe the lies that we're worthless. We believe the lies that God is not right there with us. We believe the lies that we're alone. We believe the lies that living a life for Jesus isn't necessary. We believe the lies that we don't deserve forgiveness that we don't deserve the Lord. We believe the lies that we're good Christians and still alright with the Lord even when we blatantly disobey Him. We believe the lies that the pain we're experiencing is going to go on forever. We believe the lies that we are rejected and unaccepted. We believe the lies that the Lord doesn't love us and won't protect us. The list goes on and on but let me assure you...

These are all lies straight from satan. 

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I'm going to be very frank with you. I'm not proud of my mistakes.. but I am open about them because I know that i'm not alone in my sin and my struggles and that we're far from perfect so we're going to make mistakes. My hope is that my vulnerability might just help one of you. With that being said,

THIS IS MY STORY

A spiritual battle i've had to deal with throughout my life is lust and sexual desire. People don't seem to talk too much about the struggles of sexual desires in girls, and I don't know why because it is a very real thing among many women believers. But for me, waiting until marriage before having sex was something that was so incredibly hard, but was so very important to me, not only because the Lord was so special to me and I wanted to honor Him in that obedience, but also because of the fact that it was one of my biggest struggles, which therefore made it an even greater way for me to honor the Lord. Some of you reading this may see this as no big deal and some of you may understand how it is quite the opposite, but my breaking point for me was that, earlier this past year I lost my virginity.

Now, let me be clear, I don't say that as something that I am proud of or even something I recommend because I do not at all. It broke me. Normally I am good about going to the Lord even when i've sinned but for some reason this time around, it was such a big deal to me that I gave into satan and I fully believed that I was unworthy of any love from the Lord. I remember crying in my shower the next day and thinking that I have this amazing Savior that loves me and fights for me and has saved me so many times in my life and is so good to me and I just repay him with that. That after all the goodness that He's done in my life, that it was like I spit in His face. Now even though that wasn't the way God saw me, because I chose to believe the lies that I had been fed from satan, in complete shame I turned away from the Lord. And I stopped talking to Him.

Out of respect for others, I am not able to write about the things that occurred before this moment. For about 2 years before this moment I had been battling through things that had crushed not only my heart but also my spirit, over and over again throughout those  years, and giving into that temptation was the ultimate breaking point for me. After that is was like speeding in a downward spiral. I started hanging out with the wrong people and getting into things I shouldn't have. I started drinking as often as I could, anything to escape this deep pain and brokenness I was experiencing. It got to the point of such brokenness and defeat that I laid in bed for an entire week and was so crushed and beaten down by the weight of satan on my shoulders that I physically couldn't get up. I have always been a good student and grades have been so important to me, but I had become so numb that nothing seemed to matter. From that week of not getting out of bed, I missed 2 exams and 4 assignments and from that point on my grades tanked... and the school notified me that I was going to lose my academic scholarship. The only thing that made it possible for me to go to Baylor.

I was embarrassed and ashamed of who I was becoming, especially since I had been so open about my love for the Lord. The people who know me know who I am and what I had proclaimed about living for the Lord so they expected me to live in a way that glorified Him.. so I hid my sin and my brokenness. I didn't tell anyone, I didn't talk to anyone, I didn't reach out for help because I was so embarrassed and distraught at the fact that I had fallen so far and didn't feel like I was someone that the Lord could love. I got so caught up in the lie that as Christians we're supposed to be perfect and I was in such a dark place that without help from those around me and with not only the weight of satan but also the weight of the lie I was living, I continued to fall and continued to make decisions that crushed me.

Some of you may be  wondering how I could keep making decisions even when they were crushing me. For weeks I wallowed in a pit of despair over the fact that I would decide I wasn't going to sin but when it came down to it, it was like I didn't have the strength to resist. But when we choose to sin, or we choose to believe the lies of satan instead of running back to God, we no longer have the protection and the authority over satan in our lives that we had with Christ. By giving into him, we give him full power and reign over our life, and we wonder why we fall so hard and so fast. It's because we handed the keys of our life to the master despair and destruction.

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Now, I tell you this not to have a pity party or to get you to feel sorry for me, but I tell you this because I know that there are some of you out there who are Christians, who do love the Lord, but have fallen and have messed up and don't know how to get back. I know that there are some of you out there who have lost your way and have isolated yourselves not only from people but also God out of your embarrassment and shame. I know that there are some of you who are holding on to unforgiveness towards yourself and beating yourself up over your mistakes and it's killing you.

Well, I am sitting here thankful today that I have the pleasure of telling you that..

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY

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After things got really bad in my life and I had hit rock bottom, the Lord continued to fight for me because even though I was believing these lies about myself and the Lord, there was something in me deep down that kept telling me that what I was believing wasn't true. Later I realized that it was the Lord fighting for me and pulling me back to Him, but at that time the Lord placed a memory on my heart where someone had asked me what the turning point was for me that cleaned my life up and brought me back to the Lord..

and I told them that it was the day that I started calling a lie, a lie and the truth, the truth.

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I am a firm believer that there is absolute POWER in the name of Jesus. In His name we have complete authority of satan and he has absolutely no power in our lives. Phillipians 2:10 says this,

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

When we live in Jesus, when we find rescue in Him, whenever we give our lives to Him, we receive the authority that he has on earth, and satan has no power! None. For those who feel like they're lost or have fallen and don't know how to find their way back, it's time to find the lies in your life and in the name of Jesus, you command those thoughts to flee from you and you claim the truth that God has laid out for us. Jesus gives us this authority, but when we step away from Him and into sin or when we choose to believe the lies of satan, we no longer are giving authority to Jesus but giving satan authority in our lives.

When I remembered this truth, even though at the time it didn't make sense to me, I decided to step out and faith and believe that if the Lord says something is true, i'm going to believe it's true. And here's the truth:

Jesus Christ died on the cross so that He could SAVE us. Every day, every minute, every second He saves us. Not just when we're stellar Christians, not just when we're are at our best, if anything the more broken we are, the more drawn to us He is. He knew that we were going to fall that we were going to mess up so Jesus Christ died on the cross to show you that regardless of the things that you have done in your life, He loves you, He adores you, He accepts you, He treasures you, He forgives you and He will accept you back with open arms a hundred times over!! 

Yeah, you sinned, you messed up... But news flash, we all do! Not a single one of us are worthy of the abundance of love, grace and mercy that the Lord provides, yet He doesn't care! You could come to Him with a list of every reason why you don't deserve His love and He'll say, "I'm so in love with you anyways." The truth is that we don't have to hold on to our sin and our guilt and our shame because the Lord has not only forgiven us but has placed our sins under the blood of Jesus where they are wiped clean so that we are renewed and purified and redeemed.

For me the truth was that getting drunk, or having sex outside the bonds of marriage or finding my acceptance from the world was wrong and a sin. For me the truth is that our sole purpose and privilege on this earth is to glorify and serve the Lord and to make His name famous, not to gratify our own desires or to live for ourselves. For me the truth was that Jesus Christ believes in us and gives us the strength and power to overcome all things. For me the truth is that living for Jesus IS so necessary!

WE ARE CHOSEN

Jesus has chosen us. He has chosen me and He has chosen you. It doesn't matter where you've been or what you've done, Jesus has chosen us to move in His spirit throughout our nation, which so desperately needs it.

When we find the lies and we walk in truth, we walk in Jesus. And when we walk in Jesus, we walk in favor and protection and might. When we walk in Jesus we walk in freedom knowing that the devil will flee from us when we resist him, and that all things are possible in our lives through Jesus Christ. We are protected in Jesus Christ and receive favor from the Lord.

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As i've been walking in truth and using the authority of Jesus to command satan to flee from me, the Lord has revealed His might and His goodness more than ever before.

'I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.

-Jeremiah 24:7

Since then, Lord has loosed me of any spiritual bonds that happen through sex and has purified me once again. The Lord has restored my joy and has taken away my guilt and my shame. He has overflowed my heart with His love and has put every broken piece back together. He has provided me with discipleship and even went as far to somehow help me to keep my scholarship so that I can stay here at Baylor even when I didn't deserve a single bit of it. He has brought a favor over my life that I don't ever want to be away from again.

"Come, let us return to the LORD For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.

-Hosea 6:1

The Lord is so gracious and kind and He LOVES you and has open arms ready to heal you, restore you and provide you with such an incredible future.

You just have to go to Him. You just have to believe.