Faith without works is dead

There is a woman who I have followed online for years, and who I tried to follow in person (though she deflected me to her protege instead), for whatever reason, probably an unspoken prideful, frustrated feud between us, removed me from my friends' list. 

But that's the not rub - the rub is that she hasn't published anything on her blog or profile since last year. Life happens, right? She's getting married soon, to an amazing man who is so inline with her and her son and her group of companions, a group that I never fit into, because according to them, I wasn't sober if I was on my medication. And I was so desperate, I went off of it for a time. After that I went away from them for a long time. 

Another deterrent was their literature and inspiration consisted mostly of the exorcism kind. And this made sense, because her, them, me, we're all in the business of grabbing the hand of those in hell, and bringing them back to earth. But I didn't have their conviction, their skill in rhetorics, their conversion experiences, their confidence. And another handicap was that I came in prideful, a converted baptized Catholic since 2010, though I did still try to learn from them.

Now I am in my second year of being under spiritual attack, and I feel that I really need these people. But even going back through her blog archives, I can't seem to find the solution. There is simply not enough instruction on prayer, and I am also anti-ritual. But God, her words, her understanding, her complete fearless conviction, I want it so badly.

And when I would come across entries where she was just quoting writers or even longer passages of scripture, I was unsatisfied. And in deciding earlier this week to return to "preaching", I recalled that I really only repost from my two favourite preachers, Spurgeon and Chambers. And they are wonderful, but they aren't "mine". They aren't my inspiration, my creativity, my words. 

I have zero idea what to say, probably because I don't have a direction yet. Something that worked really well from this group, really what their main focus is, is the corruption of the Twelve Step Program of Recovery. This I can get on board with, because there are large gaps between the readings and the recovery. For now, I think the greatest gap is faith without works. 

So I will try to roll with that for now, because I am confident about it, and I see it really not working in the fellowship, yet members saying that they just need to "hand it over", or "pray", or "call someone". No, there's more to it than that, and the frustration and the disappointment and the repetitive struggles are evident when I listen to people who are using these methods. And frankly, it's fake and uninspiring. I dare say it's the reason why the turn-over rate is so high, and the success rate so low.