Realising how weak I am

So, its been about only a week or two after the 24/7 prayer event, a I'm where I felt so so so close to God, where I spend an hour every day reading the bible and in prayer, and here I am now, only a short time after, struggling for words and leaving only a few minutes in the morning for reading the bible. The effects are pretty intense, firstly, I lied to someone I really care about and really upset her. The pathetic thing was it was over something so small and insignificant, if only I had of said how it was, the whole lame feeling I've had since saturday evening wouldn't have come over me.

When I have been reading the bible recently, I've found myself reading parts of the old testament that I would normally avoid. This is mainly cos I have got into the thinking that only the nice encouraging bits are in the New Testament and the Old Testament is all God punishing people, bit I've realised its not actually like that at all. It generally goes like this: Israel are getting on great with God and he is blessing them, then they turn away from God and it kinda goes downhill, then they totally insult God and continue to go against him, then God says something like "if you do that, I will punish you, because you aren't living how you are meant to be" (and this is where I normally stop and go read the gospels...or a magazine), but if I kept on reading I would see that every single time God says "but if you come back to me and love me, I will love you as my children, I will be your father and you will be mine, I will be your king and you will be blessed"

Today I read Isaiah 32, and the main verse I picked out was 17 "The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence for ever". When I was reading my bible everyday and praying every day, I was at peace. I had this quietness, quietly worshipful in all moments and I was confident. With regards to confidence, I've just started a new job and I know I won't actually be any good at it unless God works through me, but when I was reading my bible and praying everyday, I was confident that God would help me, that confidence has been slowly ebbing away since I stopped.

So this is the conclusion I have come to, and I'm sorry if its taken me 21 nearly 22 years to get it, but without God I'm pretty stuffed. Without him I hurt the ones I love, I become dishonest and I start messing up and work. I'm quite weak really...thank God in my weakness he makes me strong.