Satisfaction

I'm writing this more for me so I have something to come back to when I get confused again. I figured if it'd help me. It'd help someone else… either way *shrug*.

For a number of weeks now I've been meeting with my pastor from my church because I decided I was not getting the direction I wanted/needed from the people around me. I was tired of trying on my own to be the Christian that I want to be; better still, the person I was made to be. (Though I can still say I don't know who that person is and I'm still a long way off.)

Anyways, my point:
Talking to him made a good number of things easier to understand. Of course I often understand it in the moment that he speaks on it and then I get all confused again later on.Either way, before I started talking to my pastor, I believed you must work towards your salvation. I'm not saying now that you must not, but now I understand that you can not ever truly achieve it on your own by your own means. What I mean is I believed that once you "achieved" salvation you were instantly filled with His spirit. I believed that you instantly FEEL His presence. And no matter how hard I seemed to try I'd never really felt anything. Note my emphasis on feeling. …I was looking for the wrong things in the wrong places.

Salvation means to work towards the person that our creator wants us to be. To purposefully refuse to do that will keep you from salvation. But every time you consciously choose to do the right thing over the wrong, you do not have a rush of adrenaline, maybe the first time, yes (unless you are special and you feel that every single time). But working towards salvation means changing your lifestyle where it needs changing because it is being shaped by your faith. The rush I believe some feel is them approaching satisfaction.

(Let's make an academic tangent here)
In communications class, we discussed self-concept and how it affects the way we communicate and interact with other people. Every person has current self-concept and an ideal self-concept. The smaller the difference between the two, the closer to satisfaction with one's self that a person can get.

Relating this to our faith, we are internally conflicted when we believe, through our faith, that we were made to be a certain way which we currently are not. Therefore, I can think of salvation as satisfaction in Christ…

…This is what makes sense to me.