God will reveal himself when you believe

[chosenpath]

or in other words you must believe in God before you think you experience God.

This is yet another problem I have with Christians. I remember a friend of mine became a hardcore Christian for a short while and during this time he once called me up late at night to tell me about a "God" experience he had. He was paralyzed and he felt a presence in the room, which he attributed to God. Looking it up later he found that it was sleep paralysis a common thing that people have attributed to one supernatural explanation or another.

The point is that if you DON'T believe then reality seems, well like mundane reality, but it would seem that if you DO believe then just about anything can be attributed to God.

With this in mind how can you separate the two? How can you ever be sure what you think is God's work is truly from God and not just your imagination?

First you have to ask yourself has man ever been able to create something out of thin air without using any of the elements already accessable to us here on earth (Which God created)?

 

[drich0150]

Like the rest of the Bible this is up to interpretation.

Actually most of the "interpretation" has been done for us. Jesus says directly in that passage starting at verse 13If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

If we are willing to give a gift with good intentions (we being evil,) then would not the lord give a gift like the holy Spirit with everything you need to except him? a part of the Gift of the Holy Spirit is the grace in allowing us to take small steps in excepting him. The "knock" being one of the first steps I have labeled, in excepting him.

"Desire to know God " is about the same as you need to believe before God will reveal himself to you. The danger in this approach is that if you really want God to reveal himself to you then you could interpret just about ANYTHING as God revealing himself to you. So how can you tell the difference?

The "danger" you speak of is very Real,l and many of us have fallen into worshiping the things we interpret as God.. I do think in the beginning most of us are all guilty of seeing God in everything that goes our way.
Again, The Grace in processing the holy Spirit at our own rate of understanding is apart of the gift of the Spirit. We are only charged with Loving God with all of our ability to do so. Because there is no right or wrong way to love God with all of your heart, mind, strength, and spirit some of us may wander off into worshiping God by seeking signs and wonders. Even though we are called to grow past needing things like this to verify our faith, some of us weren't built that way, and that's OK.. But for them it will severely handicap their ability to have and maintain a relationship with him..

As I said, we all start out seeing God in just about everything.. But for me there was a point in which I had to choose between what scripture teaches about seeking signs and wonders, and what I had come to know as my relationship with God. We all will be eventually faced with growing in our faiths or remaining stagnant.

It is in choosing God and not our own understanding of him, will we see a difference between "naming and claiming God" all over the place and actually knowing when you are in his presents. when we learn to put our perceptions of who/what God is, and how he is represented by our different denominations down, and seek him independently. We will Establishing our own genuine relationship with him, then we will come to know our Shepard's voice..

We can accomplish this in concert with a good Jesus Christ centered church, but to expect find God solely through what the church offers... It is doubtful that anyone will be able to navigate through all of the religion and not be convinced into worshiping the religion itself.

So basically it is in time and desire to know God will we find him.

 

[GoodNewsJim]

I didn't believe in God when he spoke to me.

Hope that helps.