So, it turns out I am an introvert. At what point does one realize they are one? I wonder. A TV show? Someone characterizes you as one? For me, it took leaving the comfort of university and being thrown into the real world, and it was not pretty.

I can’t lie; I have grown up quite sheltered. I never really had that many friends, never went for sleepovers, and mostly just went to school and came back home. My grandmother was also a teacher, so I spent my holidays at her place practicing my handwriting, studying the Cambridge dictionary and doing mock tests. This has really shaped my work ethic and who I am today, so I am grateful, don’t feel sorry for me lol (can I add a LOL while writing on here? I’ll get more professional with time).

When I went to university, my first friend was my roommate, and her friends became my friends. I had the same five friends throughout university; I kid you not. I didn’t have close friends from my class or other cohorts.

And I never thought this was strange.

I loved my friends, and even now we are still very close. We travel to see each other, help each other with our careers, and show up for each other’s milestones. I simply thought I had found amazing and kind people, and that was enough. Of course, they had other friends too, and I interacted with them, went out with them, laughed with them, but outside those settings, I rarely maintained those relationships myself.

And when I say I had no friends in my class, I don’t mean I sat alone in a corner. We greeted each other, worked on assignments together, and studied together when modules got difficult. But outside those spaces, our interactions rarely went beyond “hi” and “hey” while passing each other.

But the thing is, this gave me a very rosy view of the world. Apart from bullying in high school, which I think contributed to me closing up, I thought everyone was kind. I thought I had left high school behind and I thought adulthood meant maturity. Looking back, I had unknowingly built myself a perfect introvert’s paradise and had absolutely no idea.

The first crack in my sheltered world came during work placement, and with it, the first clue about who I really was. The work environment was good, but I felt tired of having to be with people every day. Conversations felt taxing and by the end of the day I was exhausted and went straight to bed. I enjoyed my work, I enjoyed learning, but I did not enjoy having to be around people all the time. To make matters worse, they would ask me why I didn’t interact more and told me that chatting was important, which made everything worse. I eventually got used to being around them, but I still could not hold a conversation the way they expected me to.

Then after university when I landed my first job, I realized I put myself in a bubble in uni. People have so many different characters and people can be mean, and boy was I shocked. It was whiplash. It was like high school all over again but worse. You meet people with different methods of bullying; workplace bullying, hierarchy bullying, and the quiet kind where someone simply makes you feel invisible until you start to believe you are. I wondered how I had never encountered any of this in university. I realized I had surrounded myself with what felt safe, and now on this other side of the world I could not simply choose to stay inside that safety. I was not ready to handle these experiences, and building the emotional stamina to do so has been, and still is, a journey.

When I asked my friends if they had experienced any of this before, they said they had met people like that in university. I was shocked. But then I thought about it. Maybe university, for them, had been a training ground. The friend group that was warm to your face and cold the moment you turned around? A preview of the team that smiles in meetings and shuts you out of everything that matters. The senior student who made freshers feel small? A rehearsal for the manager who uses their title like a weapon. They had already met these characters in a lower stakes environment, learned how to read them, learned how to move around them. I had not. I had been safe, and safety, it turns out, does not prepare you. Their ability to brush things off was so much stronger than mine and they could move past situations that would send me home, phone switched off, in tears.

The person I was becoming did not feel like me. I did not know who I was or how to find my way back to who I had been, simply put, happy. But was that really me? Or just a sheltered version of me, one that had never been tested? The real world did not change me. It revealed me. It was loud and unkind enough to show me who I am when things get quiet, someone who needs that quiet, who draws energy from stillness, who was always this way but never had reason to know it.

The journey back to myself is slow but it is sure. I feel myself becoming happier. I find myself not caring on some days, and I know that one day it will be most days. Maybe this journey isn’t about “getting back” to who I was but becoming someone stronger while remaining soft. And maybe one day, I will finally become the me I want be: silent, but strong.

This is a heavy question, one that many Christians quietly struggle with. We walk daily with God, spending time with Him, seeking His face. But then something happens. Maybe you’re trusting God for a breakthrough, and you find yourself arguing with a brother or sister and struggling to forgive. Then a thought creeps in: Maybe this disqualifies me from receiving God’s blessing.

But let’s pause and ask an honest question. Are the people whose prayers are answered perfect? Can anyone stand before us and say, “When God finally gave me what I prayed for, I had not sinned for two weeks straight; not in action, not in word, not even in thought”?

I would like to see such a person.

God has answered many of my prayers, enough to fill a book, and yet I was never perfect at any point in that journey. What I can say is this: each day, I did my best to seek the Lord, to confess my sins, and to remember what Christ fully accomplished for me on the cross.

And so, I share the first of many verses in this article that will hopefully help myself and many others accept the finished work of Christ on the cross in this journey.

Hebrews 10:14; For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Notice the language here. Christ has perfected us, past tense, while we are being sanctified, present, ongoing.

I have heard preachers say, “Repent, for your sins hinder your prayers.” And they often quote passages from the Old Testament where sin separated people from God, or New Testament passages where specific sins are said to hinder prayers.

But, for the christian on a journey with God, there are times he/she will fall. Scripture is clear;

1 John 1:8–10

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”

So, if sinlessness were the key to answered prayer, then no prayers would ever be answered. In fact, Christ would not have been necessary, any human being would have risen up as the blameless atonement. But that did not happen, because it could not happen, for all have sinned and fallen short. Yes, we fall. Yes, we fail. Some of us struggle with habitual sins. But if we keep our eyes on God, confessing our sins with a repentant heart and choosing to walk with God as we are renewed and let go of the sins, why would God hold against us what He has already forgiven?

Under the new covenant, God plainly says :

Hebrews 10:17–18

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” “Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.”

And then the bible recognizes that people struggle with this sin but reminds us that Christ died for us.

1 John 2:1–2

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

OBEDIENCE ROOTED IN LOVE, AND NOT FEAR

A true believer’s desire to live righteously does not come from fear that God will withhold answers to prayer. It doesn’t come from the terror of punishment.It comes from love. We desire holiness because we have known God. Because we love Him. Because we want to please our gracious Father who gave His Son for us. Scripture puts it beautifully:

1 John 4:18

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

However, the devil is a liar. He brings condemnation and thoughts that are contrary to God’s truth. But we thank God that He has given us a sound mind and the ability to capture thoughts and make them obedient to Christ, 2 Corinthians 10:5. Almost two years ago, I studied this question deeply and came to a place of rest in God’s grace. Recently, though, I read a book on someone’s testimonies showing how they know God answers prayers. Their stories deeply touched me. However, at one point, the author shared something that made me pause. They reflected that although God had answered many prayers in their life, perhaps He did not answer that particular prayer because they were struggling with bitterness. This was someone who had clearly given themselves fully to the Lord. They had opened their home to many people in a foreign land during a mission trip, sacrificing greatly in ways that were evident throughout their testimony. Both the author’s child and a child from their church were suffering from the same disease. When the doctors said both children would die, the author encouraged the other family to believe God for healing.That child lived.The author described marveling at the childlike faith of these newly converted Christians, a faith that led to the healing of their child. At the same time, she suggested that perhaps her own child died because she herself was struggling with bitterness.

That thought brought fear. It tried to condemn me.

But I remembered my journey. And that this is not what I have lived or know and so I went back to my old journal and decided to write this for all those who live in fear and self condemnation.

Salvation is the work of God through and through. He sent His Son. He saves us and He causes us both to will and to do.Our role is to worship Him and love Him freely, without barriers, because Christ already tore them down. It is not our confessions or guilt that saves us. It is the blood of Jesus that has saved us. Brothers and sisters, let us not negate the work of Christ on the cross. The bible says;

John 5:24

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

We are past judgment. The righteousness of Christ is what God sees in us. And if God expects us to trust in Christ’s finished work on judgment day, how much more should we trust Him while we are still living on earth?

1 John 4:17

“By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world.”

Finally, I leave you with this word. We have been called to rid of a guilty conscience and experience rest in God and have freedom to communion until we are transformed by love, association, reconciliation and grace.

Hebrews 10:22

“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”