Dear John, I got your letter dated June 7.  I’m very glad you wrote me.  I can see from your letter that you are feeling pretty stressed about your situation, and I don’t blame you.  I can tell that you are struggling with many things in your life, and I hope I can help you a little.
First, I certainly understand why people don’t attend church.  They have a lot of other things on their minds and they kinda lose contact with the people they know in church, and then they don’t really have any reason to go.  They don’t think they’re getting much out of it anyway, so why waste the time on it?  I’ve been there many times in the past.  I still feel the same way about some of the people in my church right now.  But there are a few people in my church that I have a close relationship with; people I like and they like me, and we sorta see things the same way.  Every time we get to talk we enjoy the experience.  It sorta renews our spirits.  Makes us feel like somebody cares.  Seems like that’s what we all need more than anything else, is for somebody to care about us; somebody we like and respect to care about us.  It’s really lonely when we don’t have anyone like that.

So we fill up our lives with other things, when we’d really rather have someone to talk to and share our hearts with.  We sorta shut everyone out and try to carry the whole load by ourselves.  And that’s very hard to do.  When the guys from church ask you why you haven’t been coming, it’s not because they’re trying to condemn you, but because they care about you.

Maybe the reason you’re under so much pressure is because you’re trying to take care of your problems all by yourself.  I know even better than you that we just cannot take care of our problems all by ourselves.  We need God and other people to help us.  We need a LOT of relief, and we just can’t get it by ourselves.  The only way we can get any relief is to surrender our problems to God and let Him take care of them and take care of us.  Until we do that, we will constantly be overcome by our problems, instead of the other way around.  I pray that you will surrender, and wait for God to show you what you need to do about all your issues, in anything.  Maybe what He wants you to do is just wait on Him, and He will  bring you out of this darkness into HIS marvelous light.  I pray that for you.

I’m glad that you’re not doing drugs, or lust, or other worldly things; but you have a death grip on your life; you are focused on controlling everything about your own life.  That’s the hardest thing to overcome.  God doesn’t want that.  He wants you to surrender everything to Him and then trust Him to take care of them and you.  I pray you’ll do that.  Even if you don’t, I pray you’ll write me back and tell me how you’re doing.

I love you Brother. I’m still praying you’ll let go and let God do whatever He wants to with your life.    Your brother in Jesus, Tex