Whenever I needed an explanation on how to do something and my Dad could not explain the magic needed to make it happen he use to say that you would have to hold your jaw just right. Meaning that he didn't know how you do it -you just do it. So here I am, on CF, at a loss. What to try next?
About me: I grew up thinking that the majority of the world was composed of Atheists. I was floored in my teenage years when I realized that 95% of the world believed in something more than science. I was horribly upset, confused and felt so lost and divorced from society. I had met a few ultra verbal Christens in my life but hadn’t suspected that I was in such a minority until my mid teens. So I began talking to anyone who would care to share their thoughts on faith. I read dozens of books on Christianity, began going to Youth for Christ, listened to Christian talk shows, listening to Christian music, found a nice Christian girlfriend and tried to read the Bible. I began to pray daily but after about a year I gave up because I never felt the presence of God nor could I believe in any way how a God could possibly exist.
In my mid twenties I began to read books about world religions just so I could try and understand how the majority of the world thought and felt so differently than myself. In my early thirties I began listening to Christian VS. Atheist debates and began to feel as if I were an Atheist. Then I moved to the bible-belt and was surrounded by Christians. So I began to reanalyze the difference between myself and the majority of the population. I began to pray daily, began to read the bible and would stay up late every night listening to persons of faith talk about sin nature, grace and forgiveness. I prayed the sinner’s prayer and begged God to come into my life.
I never heard, felt or sensed anything other than a man, in his thirties, upset, as his family slept.
So, that is the current state of things. My question is, how did you give your life to God? What happened next? Did you feel Gods presence?
Hello Jimtem, I can see from your posts that you're interested in knowing the truth of who God is, you're not like the typical atheist troll who wants to come and prove how right they are to not believe in God. So I'm interested in discovering the root of the problem you have with accepting God for who He is. I just wonder what your current perception of God is, because we tend to pick up a lot of ideas through life about this, and it forms a kind of mental image, perhaps of an artist painting a canvas that grows, and then watching it grow. So what I want to tell you about that, is what I learned when I came to accept what He says, that whatever someone tells you about God is probably not going to benefit your understanding of Him if you don't know Him personally. This is what I discovered: that hearing
about God is entirely different from hearing
from God. Of course, it wasn't until I accepted that God is the one who the Bible tells us about, that I was able to accept that the Bible is the official "Word of God". What does that mean to you? I'll tell you what it means to me, that the person who claims to be the artist of the world has spoken to and interacted with humanity on many occasions, and some relevant bits of this activity are documented in the Bible. If you believe it is true, you will be hearing the truth about what He has done on earth. If you don't believe it is true, then you simply can't hear the truth about God, because you've already decided to believe that it isn't true. Anyhow, anyone can tell someone what they know until they go blue in the face, but it is the listener's decision to make whether they will hear what the speaker is saying. The listener decides whether to accept, reject or distort what is said.
Now, since you asked for a description of what it was like when I converted, I'm going to give you a brief overview, because I could easily get carried off with detail. I was baptized at age 17. At that time I had been involved in a small remnant of a larger church, where the Holy Spirit was strong and genuine among the believers. However, I didn't understand spirituality, I was attracted to the story of Jesus and all the stories of the Bible because I had a lot of love for life and respect for whoever God is, which I trusted to be the one who Jesus spoke of. So I was baptized young. Then when I left my hometown to study, I never got involved in another church (part of this was due to feeling that my belief was better than anyone else's), so I gradually drifted further away from Jesus and at one point even had a falling out with God over the issue of lust, and then when I had a fall-out with my father, I renounced the Bible in hurt and became quite anti-Christ, even idolizing the antichrist and believing I was capable of being that person. Then just last year, after I'd graduated and was stable in good employment, I happened to watch a movie called "Religulous" by Bill Mahr, and it was right up my alley. This movie heavily challenged Christian beliefs and brushed upon Islam and Judaism, then summarized so strongly
YouTube - Religulous - Ending Scene that it got my hackles up. I agreed with Bill that religion is not a good thing for the world, then Google Buzz sent me a thread where people were discussing the assumption of what God is. I put my 2 cents in and sure enough, since I was so wound up, I got right involved in the discussion. This topic took my thoughts day and night for three weeks until eventually I was so frustrated that I knew within myself I love life, I want to give praise to the one who gave it to me, but why is it that I couldn't say my beliefs were true without having some doubt? So I was sufficiently ready to finally hear what God had to say, and I only gave Him one chance to speak, but I was genuinely ready to listen. And I think that is the problem we all have as we fight to establish what is the truth about God, we are literally fighting against God with every reason we can muster to prove how correct we are. But that isn't what you need to do when you want to know the truth about God. All you have to do is listen to what He is telling you and be honest about what you believe is right for the sake of being right about Him. Don't argue if you don't agree, don't say that what He says is not true, but just listen and try to learn, because God is the creator of everything and the single source of wisdom. Just accept what you can accept, think about what you can't comprehend, and swallow your pride when you know that He's telling you that you are wrong. I know when I was ready to hear Him and I asked the Christians on that thread to show me something from the Bible that God wanted me to know, what He said to me made so much more sense than I could ever make of my own and quite clearly, what He told me was a lot more than what the verse says. Now, you want to know what changed, what it felt like? I'll tell you what it felt like when I turned my back on the evil that gripped me, the fear that the world is watching me (Truman show), threats that any moment now the government is going to barge in and take me away (which proved when it didn't happen, that this world belongs to God), instant and unjustified rebuke from my close friends when I told them the good news of my salvation, even implying that "holy" is not a good thing, a constant battle "yes/no" in my thoughts to try and get me to fear Satan, being referred to a mental crisis team by my employer for simply mentioning my faith (of course, the level of certainty a Christian puts in what they say can be frightening), and for the first few days a personal one-on-one dialog with God the Father (the Father Jesus refers to), as He lifted me up, out of fear and into His love. Yes, this was a very real spiritual experience and all that stuff really happened to me. Anyhow, I don't want to scare you with how real the spiritual matters are because Jesus is supreme, but let's discuss your particular problem with coming to know God. I would like to examine your attitude toward Jesus, can you tell me whether you accept this passage, particularly the sentence I underlined, because I think this is the crux of the Christian faith:
Mark 1:1-13 (New Living Translation)
Mark 1
John the Baptist Prepares the Way
1 This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.[a] It began 2 just as the prophet Isaiah had written:
“Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
and he will prepare your way.
3 He is a voice shouting in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming!
Clear the road for him!’[c]”
4 This messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven. 5 All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 6 His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey.
7 John announced: “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am—so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. 8 I baptize you with[d] water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit!”
The Baptism and Temptation of Jesus
9 One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. 10 As Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him[e] like a dove. 11 And a voice from heaven said, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.”
12 The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness, 13 where he was tempted by Satan for forty days. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him.
Is this passage something you understand fully? Do you realize that the magnificent artist who made a perceivably infinite universe and trillions of humans opened the heavens and sent His spirit upon Jesus at His baptism? Do you understand that this really happened, or do you presume this is just a myth?
Just so you know what I'm saying is that you need to discover a reason to honor God. For me, that reason was the fact that I was upset with the chaos in the world, and I just had to get to the bottom of it. Just so happened that everything I thought was right got turned on it's head and then I discovered that God is right at all times. Now here I am on the other side of the fence, chatting to you about how green the pasture is over here! But if you think the human follows a carrot on a stick, you'll probably soon realize that the ones with an integral interest in truth aren't so easy to persuade 
there's certainly plenty of "magic" going on to make that work, as almost all of it is unseen and therefore very difficult to learn. And even when you get it right, you can be thoroughly in the dark as to what you did right, be unable to repeat it, and that can also be frustrating.
