A Wandering Soul Desiring God

Hey all.

I'm an aspiring Christian convert, I suppose. After a year of studying various faiths, mainly the history and elements of Christianity and Gnosticism, and chatting with people from both ideologies, hearing their personal thoughts, I feel like just from what I know now about the reality we live in, that the God/Jesus concept is probably our closest form of spiritual truth.

Thing is, I feel like I'm waiting for a spiritual epiphany. A direct experience. The thing that always turned me off about Christians was the cult-like mentality (the only way I can describe it), and it felt like I was just observing people in a mass delusion.

Then after hearing some personal testimonies, I became more curious. It clearly seemed as though these people went through a transformation, because you don't just make a huge leap in thought and behavior out of nowhere, or out of will alone.

Bottom line: I want a relationship with Jesus Christ. I read the Bible, I've recently started praying heavily -- like desperate, tearful prayers. It feels silly, but I do it. I want to feel what others feel. I want to be saved, I want the "armor of God". I don't want to keep questioning my reality. I want to know that Jesus is with me, as sure as so many others seem to be.

I want to be reborn.

St_Worm2 said:

Hi Artless_Ascetic, first off, WELCOME TO CF I'm glad you found us

As for those personal testimonies you spoke of above, and the paradigm shifts in thinking that seem to happen both overnight and permanently to these people, I have had such an experience myself (I'll be happy to tell you about it sometime if you'd like, as well how I became a Christian).

Actually, I was raised in the church and loved it. I was baptized as an infant, went to Sunday School, got confirmed, sung in the choir, and then attended regularly through college (you know, the whole 9 yards) so, of course, I always thought I was a Christian .. until the day I actually became one that is (at age 30).

I believe that you can have the epiphany/experience you are looking for. Have you told God what you just told us yet?

Also, if you don't mind me asking, why do you want to become a Christian? (just to be clear, this is not a test, so there are no wrong answers, I'm just interested )

Thanks! Praying for you.

In Christ,
David

Romans 10
9 If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved;
10 for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.​

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I have told God these thoughts. In the back of my mind, there are still doubts/questions about certain things, which may be holding me back from fully embracing the faith, but as of right now, I believe in God and I've been praying a little everyday. I'm not sure if I should keep repeating the same prayers or not.

I want to become Christian because I want to attribute meaning to my life. I've dwelled for so long in nihilism and it brought nothing but more darkness and depression and hatred, where I thought it would bring liberation.

Also, learning about the system we live in - the elites believe in Lucifer/Satan and worship him, and there is a constant suppression and mockery of Christianity, though no other religion is given this treatment. So why would they even do this? There has to be an opposition to their beliefs, a God to counter their "god", in order for their symbolism and beliefs to even matter. If they believe in Satan, then they also believe in God.

That's just my take.

John 1720 said:

Welcome to CF Sister,
I think I know exactly where you are and am praying the Lord will bind your wandering heart to His.

The Lord once said of a man who was truly amazed by the truth and virtue pouring forth from Jesus, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." I would say too that I believe you are even at the door dear sister.

The Scribes: Which Is the First Commandment of All?
(Matt. 22:34–40; Luke 10:25–28 )

• Mark 12:28-34 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” 29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 30 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”32 So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. 33 And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”34 Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

His Words already seem to be burning pretty deeply in your heart, which means the Holy Spirit and your heart are one in affirming the truth and the love of God you have found in the Word. Christ is both Son of God and Son of Man so he knows all our struggles in human form. I remember all so well my great desire to be reborn in Christ and praying for it to happen, as well as being encouraged by a good brother. Suddenly I just understood and realized to my great joy that Christ had taken my sins and former rejection of Him and cast all that as far as the east is from the west. It was so hard to get past my own sins as well as my former arrogance against Christians until I truly saw the great grace of God in Christ. You will be reborn when you receive the Holy Spirit from above and please know that it is the Father loving desire to give you your spiritual rebirth.
​

• Luke 11:9-13 "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"

So dear sister I would advise you to persist in your seeking, knocking at heaven's door and praying. Keep expecting the fulfillment of faith whereby you shall receive the greatest gift from heaven above that you have ever known. I'm confident in my soul that the joy of the Lord shall fill your soul and be yours. From everything you have already told us all the signs testify that God has already begun preparing your soul to receive the indwelling of Christ into your heart. Just let yourself fall deeply in love with the Risen Savior who gave His all for you! We too, who are here cheering you on, already have all fallen in love with Jesus. Know too that the angels also will be rejoicing over you as well as us! Luke 15:4-9​

• John 3:8 (KJV) — The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
• JESUS PRAYER FOR HIS APOSTLES AND ALL WHO WILL BELIEVE THROUGH THEIR WORD (which happens to be recorded in the Bible) - John 17:20-23
• 20 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; 21 that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 23 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.
  • John 7:38 "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of their heart will flow rivers of living water."
  HIS LOVE WILL NEVER FAIL US!!!
  The Songs and voices are endless and that really is because He has put an eternal song into our hearts for as many that will come to the amazing grace of God. He put a new song into every generation.
• Mark 12:14-16 Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant 16 and said to Him, “Do You hear what these are saying?”
  And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read,
  ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise’? ”

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Thank you for your wonderful words. I truly needed them. I hope to someday be at the place you all are at.

John 1720 said:

Good morning sister,
I have little doubt from what you write above that you have already sensed and tasted that the Lord is very good but I also surmise that you still find yourself at the threshold of yet taking that final step of faith of entrusting Christ with your life and following Him to the new life, reborn in Him. However, you should know sister that the final step is never an act of blind faith because God is always showing us that His goodness surrounds us. We can always sense that more deeply as He begins to open our eyes to those discoveries of wonder and enlightenment, which you seek. I believe also God wants you to have sight of these cherished things and enrich your faith in Him. Accept the joys of heaven as a child accepts their Christmas presents - it I a gift from your loving Father in heaven made possible through Jesus Christ His beloved Son.

• Matthew 18:3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

It is said that when we are fully formed and complete in Christ then faith shall be our sight. I for one believe that to be a truism. Many years ago I once stood at the same threshold you now find yourself, and it weighed heavily upon me until I crossed my Jordan. However, in hindsight, I now know that it was the very Holy Spirit of God working upon my anguished heart to enable me to see that my crisis of faith was a most crucial decision of great import and consequence for me. It is our own spiritual blindness, which is brought on by the worldview of this present age, that prevents us from seeing that the kingdom of God is readily right before our eyes. The Kingdom, Jesus states, is within us . It is within our grasp and to be grasped as Paul testified before the Athenians. I think the Athenian story is still quite applicable to our age and well worth at least a cursory exegesis of the passage. There is much to glean and mine there but even a reconnaissance flyover yields treasure applicable to us.
Paul in Acts 17 addressed the philosophers and intellectuals of Athens. While these were not nihilists they were immersed in pagan polytheism, which, similar to nihilism, is just another deadly lie that provides no hope for lost humanity. Just as nihilism crushes any hope, false hope is no hope either . These intellectuals of the day were steeped in the science, mathematics and philosophy of their day and they would have commanded great respect by their community. They probably were smart enough to see through the ends of their own manufactured system of empty traditions. Paul was definitely telling them something new that day, something they had not yet heard and most of it made sense to them. This can be inferred because we do not hear a single objection until Paul gets to the part about the risen Christ, the coup de grace' to sin and death and the climax and hope of the Gospel.

So, as we can see, it was the mention of the resurrection of Christ that was the sticking point for these intellectuals of the day. Today it is still the cross and the resurrection that is the stumbling block for many ensnared in unbelief. Yet we also see here that some of them believed and joined the band to hear more. That is a development in the story well worth considering. Now why did some "believe "but most "not believe"? We may surmise they all were pretty much cut from the same intellectual cloth, traditions and worldview. Why are the responses so different then? Well one possible explanation is that the Bible tells us that "God resists the proud while He gives grace to the humble". We can examine the wisdom in that later but it follows that it is not our intellectual prowess than brings us to God. The fact is that prowess and capacity may unfortunately puff us up greatly. That self love and pride therefore actually may blind us to God's love. Now it is not intellectualism, in and of itself, that blinds us; for no one is more intelligent than God and He both sees all and has given humankind intellectual power as His blessing to use for earthly good. We are designed to be the caretakers of the earth and you need great intelligence for that God given task. However, when we begin to ascribe our intellectual power to ourselves, rather than in humility being thankful for the insight and reason God gave us, then we make ourselves into proud elitists and liars. In a way I see it as a form of thievery since we abscond from God with the attribution of the rightful source of intellect. We are all too happy to credit intelligence to our personal account and declare that to the world so pride and theft go hand in hand.

So I really don't think it was a question of intelligence that prevented most from believing but rather their own estate of how they viewed the deeds within their possession ( i.e. they desired to view themselves as entitled intellectuals and take the glory of that entitlement which they sought within the temporal world and times in which they lived. Conversely I believe the few that did believe already had become lovers of truth previous to Paul's message. I say they were prepared because Jesus Himself declared it. If we play fast and lose with the truth we undermine ourselves. Jesus declared that lovers of truth and He Himself would hear and understand the message He came to disseminate to all of the earth.

• "Jesus answered, "You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." - John 18:37

I have always thought Pilate's response, "What is Truth" very interesting. It is recorded in modern English as terminating with a question mark, but I rather surmise it was most probably a rhetorical question, possibly even coupled with a sarcastic tone. Jesus was very careful to verbally answer only truthful questions of the heart. However, I cannot relinquish the possibility that the Truth answered by meeting Pilate's gaze even given the conjecture it was merely a rhetorical question. I am a believer that God does attempt to answer our questions and obstacles that get in the way of trusting Him but I also believe most of us are just not paying attention to His response and like Esau squander that blessing.

Getting back to those who put faith in the Good News, and hence became citizens of hope that day, I declared that God had been preparing their hearts all along to hear; this so they might give heed to the Gospel of Grace. Christians define Grace as the free and unmerited favor of God towards sinners and former enemies of His Kingdom. So the seed of the good news of Christ wouldn't fall on the wayside for those few souls that day, nor would the fowls of the air pluck off and steal the booty of potential everlasting life. Instead it would be planted with a glorious investment of hope in order for it to spring forth and flourish. This would in turn cause a great transformation to occur in their lives, as each began to resembling the light of Christ in manifest ways to a lost and dying world.

The Gospel of Christ or the Good News is always God's love story to those who are yearning to break free from their own self-induced, self-ordained pursuit of vanity and emptiness of the world's system of me, myself and I. You have spoken above that you already have begun to see through much of the world's vanity and emptiness. However, many will continue to pursue temporal pleasures over the love which springs eternal to the very end and their time here expires in vanity and never having embraced the message of truth or the love of God. How important is a message? Well RNA carries the true message of DNA in recreating all the living cells within our bodies - if their a transcription error it has error correction built into it but devious mutant messages can still cause cancers that can kill us. The life giving message of the eternal Gospel must also remain true in construct as delivered by Christ to His Apostles and His Apostles to us as well. It is our spiritual DNA that will bring in an eternal harvest of life to all within the communion of the faithful.

Dear Sister, I would suggest to you that the wisdom which you have expressed above is very much sourced in God who has already been calling you to Himself in love. You've also expressed some insights that attest to the goodness of the Lord in transforming lives of people you know. I have seen that transformation in others as well as myself when I became a brand new creation in Christ. So I think you have already begun your journey of faith. You already have your feet in the water yet you have not yet entirely crossed over the Jordan to the other side. You say you are praying and you desire this Godly transformation. That is good dear sister and goodness comes from God! Believe that God also desires this for you with great love for your soul dear sister. That truly becomes manifest in the dying and undying love Christ has accomplished for you, even as it was also accomplished for the rest of us.

I still cry and am humbled like a little kid every Good Friday when I think of the love the Lord displayed for lost humanity on that cross He bore. I cry just as I did the very first day that I finally understood it. There was a time that I didn't understand how the cross paid my debt. That changed for me as a young petty officer when my Chaplain told us how a young man had given his life for his brothers by covering an enemy grenade with his own body. "We honor that noble sacrifice and love among our brothers in arms", he said. Jesus said, "'Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends - John 15:13. That is why the president chose to honor his loved ones last week and why we who serve also honor that man's love for his friends. I assure you those friends of his will never ever forget him as long as they draw breath. But why is it you men can see that sacrifice for what it is and yet be totally blind to this very same thing and yet a far greater thing that Christ did for you? It was His sacrifice He was announcing that day to His apostles, a sacrifice upon that shamefully cruel instrument He would take upon Himself for our sakes the worst the enemy could hurl at Him. The Father also anointed Him to bear our sins, for love's sake, making Him the penalty for each of your deadly and shameful sins. This Jesus volunteered to do for both Mercy and Justice. Most of you know your sins can rip your souls to ribbons, limb from limb. Why then do you dishonor the sacrifice He made for you at such terrible cost?" Something in me just broke as I listened to him and I heard other guys I served with crying as well, some of these were pretty tough guys. I knew He was speaking truth to us and was also convinced that my sins also held Jesus to that cross. It was personal and I just wanted to run to Christ and tell Him how sincerely sorry I was and I understood the sacrifice of His love for me. I wanted with all my being to belong to Christ, to follow Him and to honor Him even with my life if necessary and to finally be a true child of God. I had much to learn about the extent of His grace, loving my enemies, not letting my left hand know what my right hand was doing, and simply learning to love others as Christ sees them and loves them. I had at least two brothers who came alongside me in that journey of crossing my Jordan to the other side. Similar to the Galatians Christ had begun to form in me after that process.
- Galatians 4:19 . There would be stumblng and mistakes along the way but Christ was steadily forming Himself in my soul and He had begun a good work in me. I truly was in a very meaningful and loving relationship with God that transformed my life and set me on a course that has continually called me deeper and deeper into ministry. I'm still there. Metaphorically, I still tend to view my present state in Christ in embryonic form. I am in the process of becoming and I see myself as far from done. Eternally speaking I know it is already sealed by the promise of God but temporally speaking I'm simply just one of His works in progress. So I understand that God is still very much growing my spiritual eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch as well as enabling my hands and feet to move by His power. I've read through the Bible several, several times over but each time I find more gold in there I hadn't seen before. God has reshaped me, given me victory over former corruptions. I have also seen Him reclaim many so called lost causes during my ministry. It astounds me how He gives hope to the hopeless. He has also added purpose to my life and provided me with virtues I never had - this is the fruit of the Spirit which God gives to every true believer as they grow in Him.
I hope my testimony of where I once was and how Christ saved me and made me His encourages you dear sister. As I prayed for you I had a deep sense you will complete your journey and know Christ fully to the depths of your soul. Only God knows how He will shape you but He is a Master at creating and crafting remarkable and wonderful things from nothing. I wish you all the blessings of God on your journey in this life and may it be all for the Glory of God He will create within you.
In Christ, Patrick

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Very eloquent, thought-provoking stuff. I appreciate it very much. I have a lot to contemplate and study, still. May I chat with you a bit in PM? My lack of post count and likes apparently disables me from being able to send a message out, but others can message me.