The seventh method: I don’t know how to behave in the church. And what happens if I am badly received?
It’s all right, this won’t last for long. Be patient. Smile. Work on yourself (see that you’ve already started to get a benefit!) Say humbly: I’m sorry, I don’t know anything around. But I want to learn. Please tell me… If you’re that humble, even the most severe old women will be pleasantly surprised, will soften and they will harass you with their motherly care. But don’t trust them in everything right away, even if this thing might seem easier (easy doesn’t always mean good) About the spiritual problems talk with the Orthodox priest. You’ll find out very soon the most important thing of all.
Acquire spiritual experience: the technique preferred by our invisible enemy is to make a mountain out of a molehill. Someone told you a certain word (and he might have even regretted it) and you’re ready to give up on the permanent, irreplaceable good which brings you a great joy, a benefit in this life and in the future – eternal life. Can these things be comparable with anything else?
The eighth method: I’m not much of a believer.
If that’s your case, there’s no other better place for you than the church. Cause there faith is strengthened the most.
We are all on the way. We all want to have a stronger faith, to be closer to God.
We should not adjust our life to our small faith, but we should strengthen our faith instead.
Tell me the company you keep to tell you what you are, a saying goes. If you choose justice, beauty, purity – you will become wiser and kinder, purer and happier.
Pray with the words from the Gospel: “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief.” (Mark 9, 24)
God will help, God will give. Everything is possible for the person who believes. This is in fact an evangelical truth.
The ninth method: Trust in God, but don’t run idle.
Right like this. Beware of evil and work: pray, fast, go to the church, do good deeds for Christ’s sake. The Christian who trusts God has many things to do. First of all with his own self. With the sinful thoughts, feelings, senses, with his obstinate passions, with the spiritual diseases: pride, idleness, lack of faith, anger, love for money, despair, fornication, greed…Just do something!
And of course you should take care of your usual affairs – making the sign of the Cross and praying.
If God blesses your works, you will succeed in everything, you will do everything in time and everything will be beneficial. Without God we can spin around a place all day long and in the evening when we can look around and say: How did the time pass? I don’t understand. And what happens if a whole year passes in this way? Or a lifetime? We could save a few minutes and if we lost decades, we might not even care.
When you go to the church, you don’t waste your time, you save it.
