I will say one thing my friend, as I was growing up I asked Jesus into my heart innumerable times, everytime i swore, or any kind of sin broke out. I was in a bondage to this ritual. I thought I was a Christian because I had raised my hand to accept Jesus into my heart when I was 10 and was taken through a prayer and hey -presto you're one of us. But something was not right in my heart and I knew it, I used to pray every night before sleep and I read all of the new testament. For years this went on with me, every time i commited a sin, if I swore to look cool in front of my friends I would have instant conviction for it and say a quick breathed out prayer saying sorry.
Sometimes I had been so bad I would try to bargain with God for my salvation. I would promise not to do it (whatever it was) again if He would just forgive me this one last time.
You see I never truly understood the gospel and I had not been brought to an end of my self righteousness though I was so blind I couldn't see it. I was continually trying to please God by my own lifestyle and thought that I could be good enough if I really tried to be to live a Christian life up to the standards the bible sets down and I continually failed to do it, eventually I gave up trying and fell into a life a promiscuity, drunkeness, drug use and generally living for my own pleasure. I would continually justify this to myself by saying quick prayers to God to say sorry and promises to try to change but they were half hearted at best.
Then when I was about 21 my eyes were being opened to what I was like inside (it must have been the invisible working of the Spirit drawing me to Jesus), who I really was. I remember walking out of my house one day and seeing a blanket of snow and a scripture echoed in the back of my mind which was an offer to make me white as snow, I asked God for this. I became more and more aware of my sinfulness and someone was leaving gospel tracts on the bus I was getting to work, I kept picking them up and taking them home and reading them, one particulary spoke to me was describing how Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves towards our neighbour and God everything finally everything just clicked that very minute at a bus stop I layed it all out to God, I told Him that I wanted to please Him, I had made a real mess of my life because I had lived for self all this time, I acknowledged that His moral demands were righteous and the fact that I could not live up to them was because I was a captive to sin not because they were unreasonable. I trusted and handed over my life to Him and asked Him to do with me as He wills no matter how hard. I surrendered and handed over every aspect of my life to Him as my Lord and asked Him to take away any part of my life that was unpleasing to Him and I meant it. I trusted that though His shed blood I was made clean.
There was a change in me from that day, I was trusting in God from then on and not myself, God gently set me apart from the life I was living and opened my eyes to all the things in my life that were wrong and one by one they were taken away, some were painful to lose and some were absolute joys to be rid of (smoking for example). There was no instant quick fix, I wasn't all of a sudden this a perfect Christian either but I knew and recongnised these new desires and this new nature inside of me that definatly was not there previously and as I surrendered (took up my cross) to the will of this nature it brought such joy and blessing to my life and I was overflowing with a joy unspeakable and the bible that I previously could not truly get to grips with spoke to me from every page and I read it front to back every single word of it.
Asking keep on asking and it shall be giving to you.
