Recently Converted !!!!

Hi again folks

This is a little bit of my story - sorry if I blab on too much...

Some of you may remember me from back around January/February posting a couple of threads about magic, the pentagram and stuff like that (one still seems to be running - I'll have to check it out). At the time I was trying to get Christian views on things and straighten out a couple of mis-conceptions.

There was one young lady known as supermagdalena who seemed to take concern for me and tried to point me in the right direction. She said she would be praying for me too.

Well... it happened about 5 - 6 weeks ago. Don't ask me what happened, I just woke up, one Monday morning, absolutley terrified. I was terrified for about 3 days. I could hardly eat, sleep was difficult to come by and my stomach was constantly doing loop-the-loops. But I was also wierdly excited because I had finally achieved (I had!?! - maybe someone up above had a hand in it too... ) what I have been after for about 4 or 5 years now. I woke up knowing that what the bible states about Christ and God is true.

This has been quite an amazing 5 or 6 weeks. I don't out of hand regect everything I have done before, because I now know I was sent along that path for a reason. Thats not to say others should do it... but I always knew I was being sent on that long winding path for a good reason. I'm the sort of person who has always needed experience to convince me but having gone through that fear and excitement that I did a while back, I would never have handeled it if I hadn't been introduced to other ideas first. The magical side of my studies lead on towards deeper spritual research that I can't go into here - (space won't permit).

Why was I terrified? Because I was right basically. My slowly maturing thoughts and ideas about what must be out there i.e. one God, creator of all, have been proved correct - to me at least - and the power and presence I felt (and still feel - but to a lesser, calmer degree) was so strong that I had trouble dealing with it. I was scared because I had absolutley no idea what to do next. 'Oh my God, I was right - now what?' A week later I took courage in hand and went, voluntarily (that was a unique occurance in my life in itself), to church for the first time.

I can't say that experience was particularly inspiring. The ceremony was dull and the priest had this habit of smirking which led me to feel he was laughing at us. Now that was probably wrong but I left quickly and gave it a couple more weeks. I have since gone to a different church several times which is far more satisfactory.

With thanks to God and to Jesus I can now proudly afirm that I am Christian.

But..... there's always one isn't there.... Anglican, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Puritan, United Reformed etc etc etc....(And I do wish some of those TV Evangelists would learn that we don't need shouting at - c'mon guys - I'm not deaf y'know - I'd watch their TV channels more if they'd just turn the volume down - thats what microphones are for - to stop you from having to shout!!!)

They all claim to be the true church - the Catholics seem to think they are the only legitimate one (for acceptable reasons I guess - given their theories behind the existence of the Pope, and their teaching on the Eucharist)... as do the Baptists according to one web site. I feel I don't want to affiliate with any of them in particular. I want to affiliate with Jesus and God... but according to various teachings I must get Baptised. This means making promises to whichever church does the baptism. Something I don't want to do because I don't feel any of them have got it right therefore I don't want to restrict myself to any one tradition and make promises I might regret either. I'll gladly promise to God but how do I get baptised without having to promise allegence to any one particular church.

Answers on a post card please.

BTW - supermagdalena - if you read this... thanks.. yes you were right, as I knew at the time. I had a feeling for about 3 or 4 months that something major was going to happen to me and I also had a feeling this was going to be it. This is why I originally joined the forum... to check things out... but WOW... I never thought it would happen the way it did... thanks again for your guidance.

Peace, Goodwill and long life to all
Wookie

Thanks for the replies folks....

GraftMeIn..... yes, I appreciate that during Baptism you make promises to God, but I get the impression that most churches expect you to fall completely in line with their line of thinking before they will consider baptising you.

For example, I know that the Catholic church expects you to bring your children up as Catholics (I assume the rest do too but I haven't got that far yet)and you have to promise this at some point. If you don't, I assume you won't get Baptised. Doing your best to bring up your children in a Christian family is certainly to be encouraged but to try and force them to one particular line of thinking is too restricting in my mind. The Bible is far to complex a book to expect everyone to read and understand it the same way. Some will see certain truths in it and some will miss them completely but spot others. For any one tradition to claim outright that they are the only route to Christ is verging on pride and narrow mindedness as far as I'm concerned.

There are shouts of heresy all over the place between various lines of Christian faith, and I detect a lot of 'interpretation' differences (which has obviously led to the various lines of tradition), I just don't like the idea of being forced to take a line of thinking (apart from Gods line of thinking - that line is completely acceptable to me )

For example, if I were to be baptised an Anglican then if I were dropped somewhere where there is only a Catholic church I'd be stuck for Communion if I wanted it, unless I converted.... maybe I'm wrong... but I think that is the way it works. There was a story on some website a while back where the Pope had condemned an Irish politician for taking Anglican communion when it was known she was Catholic.

I dunno... I will wait, pray and see. The non-denominational idea sounds good. I don't know of any in my area at the moment. I just want to be baptised - without the ties to tradition - just ties to Christ and God.

BTW - I live in London, UK. So if anyone knows of non-denominational churches around Leyton, East London ... lemme know and I'll pay them a visit.

Thanks again....

Peace, long life and happy stuff to all
Wookie

Hi sOuljah

Yep... already doing that... to let out a little secret, it's a Catholic church I go to. The services seem far 'happier' than the Anglican one I went to. Saying that, it is still early days and I need to look around more. I have been studying various sources on the Catholic faith and I have several doubts about it - various dogmas that just don't ring true for me.

Eg. Indulgences? Where does that come from - in the Bible I mean. I understand the theory behind the forgiveness of sin but indulgences and the practice of getting the person who just confessed to go and do something as a penance does not come from the bible as far as I'm aware.

Also the infallibilty of the Pope. I understand he is the head of the Catholic Church and apparently anything he decides, rules on or preaches is concidered infallible but recent events in the States shows that this may not necessarily be so. I think most people would agree that certain Clergy should have been removed a long time ago.

Anyway - to vere away from that hot topic... I am looking into everything. Some traditions I have glossed over and almost ignored, others I am concidering and others I have yet to start on. I think I have leanings to the Catholic faith at the moment but there are too many niggles for me to commit to it yet. It's early days yet and - God willing - I have a fair few years ahead of me so there isn't too much of a rush just yet.

Peace 'n' stuff
Wookie

Thanks for all your replies.

I guess I must follow my nose as it were. I believe God reaches me through intuition. By this I don't mean those little ideas that pop into your head and you think 'ooh.. groovy, I'll go with that!' I mean that certain knowledge that whatever it is, it's 100% true, just and right. This sort of stuff comes out of nowhere and often when you least expect it. I have learnt to trust this over the last four years and it's led me here. This route has been rather unconventional to say the least, but here I am.

I tend to avoid anything that preaches that it is the only source of true doctrine (other than the bible that is - I let that one get away with it ) I guess the Catholic Church may well have a genuine claim to this but that will come out in the wash. I know there is a huge amount of information around and I have a huge amount of learning to do . Since I love reading, I don't think this will be too much of a problem. There is info on the net to keep anyone happy for several hundred years, thankfully I have been guided through all the pit falls of dubious teachings and I trust God will carry on guiding me. I'm quite happy to go wherever he guides me. He hasn't done me wrong so far.

Well, I'd better get back to work. I've just finished watching England get through to the next round of the world cup , so I guess prayers do get answered..

BTW - I tend to ask direct questions, I do hope I don't offend anyone in other posts. That is not my intention, any questions I ask are from genuine interest/concern and only prove my ignorance or lack of understanding... please bear with me.

In peace
Wookie

Thanks for the links folks - much appreciated.... I'll be checking them out soon..