Dear Reader,

I am writing this letter to you and others to publish how sinful I am, to repent of who I am and publicly acclaim my desire for my God's help in renewing myself in the example of Jesus Christ.

I desire to please myself so much that I am unable to do what is right. I struggle knowing that I should desire to do what is right, but yet nowhere can I find in me a working desire for that. I do not want to do good, yet even when a fledgling desire sprouts up a war breaks out in me between it and the desire to please myself. I am chained a slave to my love for myself and I want to be free! I am confident that God has not left the victory in this war solely in my own power for then my natural desires will win.

When I was much younger I had a selfish fear of being sent to hell. Then when I was about fifteen or sixteen two problems started plaguing me. The first over which I fretted was: How can I know anything at all? The second was: I can't stand myself and the things I want.

If I looked at my motivations for doing things and for wanting things, I began to see how they were all rooted in selfishness and pride. I love myself with a desperate love and everything that is in me I twist to go in that direction. This understanding grew on me over time till I began to hate myself along with loving myself. I began to see that I needed help from outside myself.

The problem of how I know anything also churned around in my mind for the longest time. How can I put sure confidence in anything I think I know? Can I know something if I have observed it and personally experienced it? No, because by that very method I have observed that I can be deceived by my senses and incorrectly perceive things. Can I know something because I understand an explanation for it that sounds reasonable to my mind? No, because I have thought I understood things that I now know were incorrect, so how can I know what I now understand is true? And I know I am often able to justify things to myself that if I did not want to do the thing that I justify in the first place then I would not believe in my justification for it. I can convince myself that I did not do anything wrong if I do not want to apologize for it. How can I know anything at all?

How was I to resolve these two things. I could see that there is a standard outside myself to which I must be reconciled both in my knowledge and in my heart. I am unable to know anything, and I am unable to do what is right.

I do believe in my own depravity and total lack of desire to please God. Yet I do believe that there is in me a small desire to please God, but that it never came from me myself. I believe in the Bible's truth because I chose to believe it and I chose to believe it because I desire to believe it and I desire to believe it not by myself but because God first loved me and gave me that desire as a gift of His grace. Of my own self I would walk another way. But God makes me walk in that light because He loved me of His own sovereign free will. When I of my own desire stray out of the right path God drives me back with His whipping switch and forces me to desire to get back on the right road. Many times I know I should do right, but I do not so desire and then I feel that lash in my heart till I turn about and do right. Sometimes that lash must be quite painful for me to finally turn. All the walls still stand in my heart between me and loving the truth, but now I wish to be a different man and to desire to do what is right in my Lord's eyes.

I see that I should publicly acknowledge this and be seen as having joined those in whom this repentance and desire has been worked and who are called Christians. And so I wish to be baptized.

I am still sinful in my desires and immature in my mind and heart. Please be patient if I am ignorant or if I stumble.

What I see that I should do from here on is to follow out my beliefs in my own life and other beliefs as they are proved to me to be true.

  • The only sure way I can know the truth is through the Bible.
  • Every Christian doctrine in which I should believe must be necessarily deduced from Holy Scripture.
  • I should allow no other man to stand between me and my Lord as a priest. I should diligently seek out the truth for myself.
  • I should do only those things in worship to my God of which He has approved.
  • I am able to do good only by the grace of God, of my own self I would try to please myself.
  • Everything I have and receive from God is for my own good, when looked at through His omniscient eyes. If I were burnt at the stake it would be a blessing.
  • I should apply the talents, gifts and opportunities God has given me toward glorifying Him by obedience to His word.
  • I should love my responsibilities that God has given me. I should take hope and joy in fulfilling my Real Needs.

I know I believe in these things and will try to apply them in my life as God gives me the grace.

The specific things that I desire to work on now in my life are these:

  • I want to study my Bible more.
  • I want to batter down the inhibitions that stand in my heart between me and doing what is right.
  • I want to build a closer relationship with my family and help my parents in the work that God has given them to do.
  • I want to mature in my outlook on life.
  • I want to teach myself to be able to give an answer for everything I believe and to be able to clearly communicate and logically defend it before others.
  • I do not want to participate in the world's unrighteous system, but I want to show by what I am doing that I do not believe a lot of the things most people believe and instead I am building an ark.
  • I want to prepare for the future.

I hope that you will approve of this my repentance and my desires for the future. I hope I may remain in my God's grace with you,

Nathaniel Bluedorn

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