How can I make God to reveal himself to me?

[xTx]

Being a former skeptical agnostic doing a customized version of the Pascal's Wager, it is very inconvenient for me to not have results, because the lack of results feeds the logical possibility that Christianity may not be true, so I have to fight back those negative thoughts when making a new attempt.

Hi TruthSeeker -

please correct me if I misunderstood:

(1) want God to reveal Himself to you

(2) tediously do the right thing then get frustrated 'throw towel in' and start the cycle again because you want to keep trying, are a doer

(3) occasionally wonder if Christianity is true or even if God exists

(4) have been trying for more than 2 years

I think your struggles are normal. I face similar struggles. I was an atheist, then I started exploring religions. It is not easy at all.

Today, I am focusing on the word of Jesus as recorded in the Bible. [I too get cold feet and get question popping in my head, "what if Christianity and everything (all religions) is untrue? what to do?" When this happens, I focus on the words of Jesus for to me His teachings are good. I am attracted to Christianity because Christianity teaches LOVE. And, I feel the world needs a LOT OF LOVE. To me, if all is 'fake' at least there is LOVE. And, LOVE cannot be fake. It is real. We all can feel LOVE. LOVE is invisible but when it is there, we LOVE the feeling of being LOVED and giving LOVE.

When I find I am lacking in battery (to carry on with Christianity), I just LOVE God. Break the barriers. Let LOVE into my heart by thinking and doing positive things. What you do is great: listening to Christian songs etc... brilliant.

What is your definition of God revealing Himself to you? How would you like Him to do that? What is your expectation?

 

[TruthSeeker3]

I can tell you that your description of faith is a lot more regimented than mine. I am a very relaxed Christian, even worldly by most common standards of assessment. But I have been blessed with strong faith and a clear concept of Christian truth. I might recommend considering the meaning of John 8:34-36 in context of Hebrews 10:14. Find out how many Christians say they don't sin, and find out if they are telling the truth. Then you will know how to be free of sin, and why common Christian teaching states that we are powerless against it.

Faith is not achieving perfection, it is accepting His commandments and obeying Him. If He wanted us to be perfect, He would make us perfect, and that is what is written He has done by atonement. However, we must still learn, and how would we learn if we did not make mistakes? We all make mistakes. Repentence is acknowledging your mistake and implementing change. It is an ongoing process of honest reaction to His direction with regards to the events in your life. His commandments therefore are not all specified in the bible, but are actually Him living and speaking to our heart. I like what that Paul guy said to you a bit earlier.

Ok, I understand the point that everybody makes mistakes, but I don't want to stray from the main issue: I want to find God, I want to make God reveal himself to me, because I am somebody who wants to find the Truth. This is a serious real existential issue for me. Indeed, if I achieve to find God, that would be a existential revolution.
The problem is that the things I have been doing have not worked at all. And as I explained, I am trapped in that back-and-forth vicious circle.
When you talk about the way to live faith, it sounds pretty good for some standard believer, but the problem is that I am not a standard believer. I am a bit complicated person in psychological terms, and I recommend you to read my previous post in response to @paul1149 to get a better idea of how I work.

Do you know why?

It is better to believe the earliest as possible because tomorrow you can be dead.

 

[TruthSeeker3]

I'd say, don't try to find God. Just be Loving, and Compassionate and try to find ways to help those in need. If you do those things, God will find you.

The spiritual feedback will come back to you from those whom you are Loving and compassionate with...and who you helped because they were in need. You will see the gratitude in their eyes.

The lessons you will be learning are how to be Loving and Compassionate and finding ways to help those who need help. It's not always easy to learn those things, but the pay off is huge because that's how God is made a reality in ones life.

.

Thanks for the advice, but I have two objections to it:

1) I am a extremely very cold person, and I actually feel love for almost nobody. In fact, when I try to do good works, things that would be cataloged as works of love, I do them within a rational plan and without feeling love at all while I do them. To make it clearer, when it comes to doing good deeds, my approach is the following: I have previously induced in myself a psycological mindest of "doing the things correctly". In that state, I am alert all the time to do things the best as possible. Therefore, I rationally identify situations when I am supposed to act lovingly, so when those situations appear, I do the corresponding good work. But the whole process is totally rational and I feel almost no love.

2) I am not just looking for being a good loving person, that is not my main objective (although it would be a natural consequence). My main objective is to have a personal revelation of the real God if he actually exists. My main objective is to find the Truth, and as I explained in my first post, I am currently doing a customized version of the Pascal's Wager. So everything I have done has as purpose to make God reveal himself to me.
If I just become a loving person, that would not satisfy the main objective, because there are loving people practically in all parts around the world. I am not saying that being a loving and compassionate person is bad (all the opposite), what I mean is that it is not my main objective.


To get a better idea of my personal situation, I recommend you to read my responses to other users in this same thread.

 

[TruthSeeker3]

Hi TruthSeeker -

please correct me if I misunderstood:

(1) want God to reveal Himself to you

(2) tediously do the right thing then get frustrated 'throw towel in' and start the cycle again because you want to keep trying, are a doer

(3) occasionally wonder if Christianity is true or even if God exists

(4) have been trying for more than 2 years

I think your struggles are normal. I face similar struggles. I was an atheist, then I started exploring religions. It is not easy at all.

Today, I am focusing on the word of Jesus as recorded in the Bible. [I too get cold feet and get question popping in my head, "what if Christianity and everything (all religions) is untrue? what to do?" When this happens, I focus on the words of Jesus for to me His teachings are good. I am attracted to Christianity because Christianity teaches LOVE. And, I feel the world needs a LOT OF LOVE. To me, if all is 'fake' at least there is LOVE. And, LOVE cannot be fake. It is real. We all can feel LOVE. LOVE is invisible but when it is there, we LOVE the feeling of being LOVED and giving LOVE.

When I find I am lacking in battery (to carry on with Christianity), I just LOVE God. Break the barriers. Let LOVE into my heart by thinking and doing positive things. What you do is great: listening to Christian songs etc... brilliant.

What is your definition of God revealing Himself to you? How would you like Him to do that? What is your expectation?

Good summary of my vicious circle. But as I said to @dlambert in my last post (I recommend you to read it first), I am not looking for being a loving and compassionate person as my main objective. My main objective is to find the Truth, and since I am betting for Christianity in my customized version of the Pascal's Wager for the reasons I explained in my first post, I want the christian God to reveal himself to me.

Now I will answer your last questions. In concrete, I am expecting to have a personal spiritual experience in which God reveals me his existence, his reality, his presence. Now, I am expecting to have this sort of experience because I know many testimonies of personal experiences with God (both inside and outside of the Bible).

According to my current knowledge, the one in charge of reveal God in a direct way is the Holy Spirit, because both God the Father and God the Son are in Hevean (this is stated in the New Testament) and God the Holy Spirit is the one directly present in the Earth as I understand. Which kind experiencies I can expect from the Holy Spirit? The baptism of the Holy Spirit, feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, receive spiritual revelations by dreams or visions coming from the Holy Spirit. In general, the testimonies of personal and profound experiences with God through the Holy Spirit happen when the person is looking for God with all his/her heart during prayers times and suddenly the presence of God comes to their room and they feel it, and usually the person experiences joy, love, peace and an overwhelming yet beautiful presence. I know testimonies of people having this intimacy experiences with God during prayer times for more than ten hours. Even Jesus prayed for about ten hours before walking on water.

As good examples of this kind of experiences, you can see the examples of baptism in the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and also I mentioned in previous posts the book I am currently reading: "Good Morning, Holy Spirit" of Benny Hinn (you can find it googling it).

 

[dlamberth]

Thanks for the advice, but I have two objections to it:

1) I am a extremely very cold person, and I actually feel love for almost nobody. In fact, when I try to do good works, things that would be cataloged as works of love, I do them within a rational plan and without feeling love at all while I do them. To make it clearer, when it comes to doing good deeds, my approach is the following: I have previously induced in myself a psycological mindest of "doing the things correctly". In that state, I am alert all the time to do things the best as possible. Therefore, I rationally identify situations when I am supposed to act lovingly, so when those situations appear, I do the corresponding good work. But the whole process is totally rational and I feel almost no love.

2) I am not just looking for being a good loving person, that is not my main objective (although it would be a natural consequence). My main objective is to have a personal revelation of the real God if he actually exists. My main objective is to find the Truth, and as I explained in my first post, I am currently doing a customized version of the Pascal's Wager. So everything I have done has as purpose to make God reveal himself to me.
If I just become a loving person, that would not satisfy the main objective, because there are loving people practically in all parts around the world. I am not saying that being a loving and compassionate person is bad (all the opposite), what I mean is that it is not my main objective.


To get a better idea of my personal situation, I recommend you to read my responses to other users in this same thread.

Your not understanding what I'm saying. Lets see if I can be more blunt. The way a person can have a personal relationship with God is by seeing God in other human beings.

The "way" to see God in other human beings is to BE loving and compassionate and help those in need. Being that you do not want to do those things, you will never have that relationship with God that you talk about...period!!! That's just the way it is.

When you take out of the formula the very things needed to you will never, ever get to the desired results.

.

 

[TPeterY]

Hi TruthSeeker -

please correct me if I misunderstood:

(1) want God to reveal Himself to you

(2) tediously do the right thing then get frustrated 'throw towel in' and start the cycle again because you want to keep trying, are a doer

(3) occasionally wonder if Christianity is true or even if God exists

(4) have been trying for more than 2 years

I think your struggles are normal. I face similar struggles. I was an atheist, then I started exploring religions. It is not easy at all.

Today, I am focusing on the word of Jesus as recorded in the Bible. [I too get cold feet and get question popping in my head, "what if Christianity and everything (all religions) is untrue? what to do?" When this happens, I focus on the words of Jesus for to me His teachings are good. I am attracted to Christianity because Christianity teaches LOVE. And, I feel the world needs a LOT OF LOVE. To me, if all is 'fake' at least there is LOVE. And, LOVE cannot be fake. It is real. We all can feel LOVE. LOVE is invisible but when it is there, we LOVE the feeling of being LOVED and giving LOVE.

When I find I am lacking in battery (to carry on with Christianity), I just LOVE God. Break the barriers. Let LOVE into my heart by thinking and doing positive things. What you do is great: listening to Christian songs etc... brilliant.

What is your definition of God revealing Himself to you? How would you like Him to do that? What is your expectation?

Very well said. One can best find God through the Heart.

To know Love is to know God. And to know God is to experience Love.

 

[TruthSeeker3]

Your not understanding what I'm saying. Lets see if I can be more blunt. The way a person can have a personal relationship with God is by seeing God in other human beings.

The "way" to see God in other human beings is to BE loving and compassionate and help those in need. Being that you do not want to do those things, you will never have that relationship with God that you talk about...period!!! That's just the way it is.

When you take out of the formula the very things needed to you will never, ever get to the desired results.

.

Ok, but as I said you in my first objection, I am an extremely cold and rational person and I don't feel love and compassion for anybody and I just can simulate them artificially by doing external good loving works.
When I see other people, I don't see God, I just see other people. So, in order to see God when seeing other people, I would have to create in my mind a mental association between other people and God, but that would just be some kind of psychological trickery that I am not looking for.
To be for precise, I am looking for a personal spiritual experience in which God would reveal his presence to me. I know lots of testimonies of this kind of personal experiences both in the Bible and outside the Bible. According to my knowledge, the one in charge of revealing God in a direct way is the Holy Spirit, because both God the Father and God the Son are right now in Hevean (according to the New Testament). I actually know many testimonies of people who claim to have had personal experiences with the Holy Spirit. As a reference in this matter, I have mentioned the book "Good Morning, Holy Spirit" of Benny Hinn, but you can see examples of real spiritual experiencies with God throughout all the Bible and with the Holy Spirit specially in the book of Acts.

 

[dlamberth]

Ok, but as I said you in my first objection, I am an extremely cold and rational person and I don't feel love and compassion for anybody and I just can simulate them artificially by doing external good loving works.

Sorry, other than some sort of blessing landing on you, you will never know the presence of God. Without even the desire to know love, it just isn't going to happen.

.

 

[paul1149]

Can you explain me how can I reach this "surrendered and secure in Christ" state?

Truth, you've described your situation very clearly. In that Isaiah 40 quote I mentioned, he introduces it by saying "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!" I think that's what you're trying to do: get yourself aligned with Him so He can come alongside you.

This is a good thing, but even good things can be taken too far. If you are depending on your own ability to get in line with God to save you, it's not going to work. As Isaiah says, the best we can do is prepare His way. He says elsewhere that our righteousness is as filthy rags – that's our righteousness, not our sin. Ultimately salvation and relationship is up to Him. Hebrews 13 tells us Jesus is both Author and Finisher of our faith. And on the night He was taken, Jesus tells the disciples that He chose them, they didn't choose Him.

This is where Galatians 3.24 comes in. One of the purposes of the law is to teach us that we cannot save ourselves. We continually transgress, and on our own we fall back into the hopelessness of Romans 7. Sin is at work in us. If we are honest with ourselves we can save ourselves a whole lot of striving: we need a Savior, period. We simply cannot reach God's standard – absolute perfection - on our own.

This is where trust and surrender come in. After proclaiming His sovereignty – a sovereignty that has every right to be exclusionary - Jesus offers an astonishingly gracious invitation:

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” -Mt 11.28-30​

Your inability to be able to keep up the paradigm can actually work for you, if you let it be the teacher that leads you to Christ. That's how the failures in my life have worked for me. Because they drove me to the wall, I had nowhere else to turn. Ironic how it works. The very Lord of Glory, and we go to Him as a last resort! But He understands us, and such is His lowliness of heart that He accepts us even on that basis.

And He uses that same irony for His own purposes. Once we realize how unspeakably lopsided our relationship with Him is, we are forever captured by His love. This is a immense deep sea that cannot be refused. "We love because He first loved us." Romans 8.28 says He works all things for the good for those who love Him.

An old friend used to say that the hardest 18 inches to traverse was the drop between the head and the heart. James 4 graphically depicts how arduous navigating that 18" drop can be. I hope this has helped in some way.

 

[TruthSeeker3]

Sorry, other than some sort of blessing landing on you, you will never know the presence of God. Without even the desire to know love, it just isn't going to happen.

.

It is not that I don't have the desire to be loving and compassionate, the problem is that I am not able to be it. I can't self-create love and compassion in myself, I can only reproduce external works of love out of rational decisions. How do you expect me to be loving and compassionate if I don't have love and compassion in my heart?

 

[Soul2Soul]

Hi TruthSeeker3,

Thanks for sharing a bit more. I cannot be entirely sure God may reveal Himself to you in the way that you might be anticipating. That is not to say that God may not communicate with you in a dream for example but ultimately it is up to God to decide that. I think if you look at Jesus - even though he performed miracles some of those that witnessed the miracles still found it hard to believe outright that Jesus was divine. Think about doubting Thomas - he had Jesus in his life and knew what Jesus did and preached yet he still had doubts. I believe that what ultimately convicted Jesus' followers was that Jesus preached the truth.

I would say that God ultimately reveals Himself to humans through His Word - which was of course through Jesus and his message. Today we have God's message contained in the Bible. I think God's revelation to you is in establishing truth from scriptures. Can I suggest you do a study on "truth" using as many scriptures from the bible. If you come to the realisation that God's Word is truth .... would you need additional evidence?

I think the subject of the role of the Holy Spirit in one's life is quite different amongst believers and I would suggest reading books that have varying perspectives on this issue so that you can weigh up all the POV's and reach your own conclusion: a book that I would recommend is entitled "The Spirit" by Douglas Jacoby - well worth the read.



I

 

[TruthSeeker3]

Truth, you've described your situation very clearly. In that Isaiah 40 quote I mentioned, he introduces it by saying "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!" I think that's what you're trying to do: get yourself aligned with Him so He can come alongside you.

This is a good thing, but even good things can be taken too far. If you are depending on your own ability to get in line with God to save you, it's not going to work. As Isaiah says, the best we can do is prepare His way. He says elsewhere that our righteousness is as filthy rags – that's our righteousness, not our sin. Ultimately salvation and relationship is up to Him. Hebrews 13 tells us Jesus is both Author and Finisher of our faith. And on the night He was taken, Jesus tells the disciples that He chose them, they didn't choose Him.

This is where Galatians 3.24 comes in. One of the purposes of the law is to teach us that we cannot save ourselves. We continually transgress, and on our own we fall back into the hopelessness of Romans 7. Sin is at work in us. If we are honest with ourselves we can save ourselves a whole lot of striving: we need a Savior, period. We simply cannot reach God's standard – absolute perfection - on our own.

This is where trust and surrender come in. After proclaiming His sovereignty – a sovereignty that has every right to be exclusionary - Jesus offers an astonishingly gracious invitation:

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” -Mt 11.28-30​

Your inability to be able to keep up the paradigm can actually work for you, if you let it be the teacher that leads you to Christ. That's how the failures in my life have worked for me. Because they drove me to the wall, I had nowhere else to turn. Ironic how it works. The very Lord of Glory, and we go to Him as a last resort! But He understands us, and such is His lowliness of heart that He accepts us even on that basis.

And He uses that same irony for His own purposes. Once we realize how unspeakably lopsided our relationship with Him is, we are forever captured by His love. This is a immense deep sea that cannot be refused. "We love because He first loved us." Romans 8.28 says He works all things for the good for those who love Him.

An old friend used to say that the hardest 18 inches to traverse was the drop between the head and the heart. James 4 graphically depicts how arduous navigating that 18" drop can be. I hope this has helped in some way.

Thanks for your words, but they still sound a bit abstract to me. How can I practically, concretely go to Christ? How can I do that in concrete?

Just to give you some examples, I have tried to find Christ by making the sinner prayer more than 10 times, but it has not worked. I have spent some time fasting and awakening early in the morning to pray and read the Bible, but beyond some good psychological and temporal good feeling, I haven't had a real spiritual encounter with Christ.

Can you explain more concretely how I can go to Christ? What real concrete things should I expect if achieve to actually go to Christ? Please, try to give the most concrete answer that you can. Thanks in advance.

 

[paul1149]

You may find your answer in James 4.

 

[oi_antz]

Ok, I understand the point that everybody makes mistakes, but I don't want to stray from the main issue: I want to find God, I want to make God reveal himself to me, because I am somebody who wants to find the Truth. This is a serious real existential issue for me. Indeed, if I achieve to find God, that would be a existential revolution.
The problem is that the things I have been doing have not worked at all. And as I explained, I am trapped in that back-and-forth vicious circle.
When you talk about the way to live faith, it sounds pretty good for some standard believer, but the problem is that I am not a standard believer. I am a bit complicated person in psychological terms, and I recommend you to read my previous post in response to @paul1149 to get a better idea of how I work.

Nobody gets concrete knowledge of God, they get experienes which they can tust is God, but there is always that doubt because that is what defines faith. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see. Think about what that means. It means we hope for things and believe in things we do not see, and faith is what gives us the certainty that we are corrrect.

Your problem is that you are chasing after some emotional experience, probably you have seen other people behaving emotionally and you think that is the fruit of The Holy Spirit. not necessarily. You mentioned to dlamberth that you have never had love in your heart, but have you ever seen someone's poor situation and wished better for them, or even helped them? Nothing but love for a stranger, the golden rule would motivate that. So, don't be so obsessd with emotional experiences, they are only chemical dependencies of the brain.

You say that you want God to reveal Himself to you so you can have faith, but that is the opposite of accepting His grace. He already has revealed Himself to us, in the most glorious way. Nobody can ignore it. You only have to decide if you will "open your heart to Him", which is a phrase meaning to be sensitive to what He is telling you. Not to be emotional, just to be sensitive to that little angel/devil that goes on inside. For instance, I was at a backpacker's once and I heard this young guy on his cellphone saying to his friend how he had no money and was hungry and was thinking about shoplifting and I thought I would like to give him some cash for food. Well I slept on it then when I went to work the next day, I remembered but I felt so ashamed that I walked out without doing it. God was giving me heaps about that and before I got to the elevator, I conceded with Him to read one verse. It was a verse about fasting, and I knew I didn't like fasting and to fast involuntarily is worse, so I went and did what I was ashamed to do. That is what I mean about the angel/devil inside. That is what I am saying it means to obey His commandments. That is also why I am saying that our relationship with Him does not rely on spiritual or supernatural events, but on our willingness to listen to Him.

It is better to believe the earliest as possible because tomorrow you can be dead.

And if you commit to a reason not to, then you will become more stubborn. I am sure there are other good reasons, but that is the meaning I get from the context of that statement.

 

[dhh712]

It is not that I don't have the desire to be loving and compassionate, the problem is that I am not able to be it. I can't self-create love and compassion in myself, I can only reproduce external works of love out of rational decisions. How do you expect me to be loving and compassionate if I don't have love and compassion in my heart?

I used to be somewhat like this though on a milder scale. Some people I could feel compassion for, but not all (not very many). Unfortunately, it required the work of God to change me and there was nothing on my own I could do about it. I can't explain that to you in concrete terms either since it's not something accessible to the physical senses.

What is your purpose in discovering the truth though? Is it to the glory of God? That is the only reason He will give you the ability to believe upon Him, in order so as to glorify Him. From what you wrote it seems you want belief in God to work something positive in your life. Unfortunately, that is not what the Christian religion is about. It will benefit one's life but not by starting at the self and working up to God. Certainly you've read in Scripture where God loves humility and hates pride. Christians are people who humble themselves before God, who understand that their possession of faith is nothing of their own doing but that God from His free grace and out of His eternal mercy and compassion for us condescended on us believers with the gift of being able to believe upon Him.

If God has ordained you to believe upon Him in your life it will happen, but it will likely not occur by making Him work for you in the way you want it to happen (though certainly it could happen this way). Belief might be had by dependence upon Him, trusting in Him that He knows what is best for us, and the knowledge that all the world and all that happens in it is for the glorification of God. This is definitely a mindset though, a perception that is brought about in the life of a believer once they've come to a knowledge of God as their Lord and Saviour. Perhaps you can ask someone in the Christian Apologetics section about more concrete examples of this--those folks have much better arguments for the evidences of Christianity (I'm afraid my knowledge is quite lacking in that area).

 

[2sparrows]

If you think you can "make" God do something then you've some misconceptions of Him and are liable to have a god reveal themselves to you.

 

[bling]

Ok, I understand that the christian God has a supreme concept of love, but how can I make God reveal himself to me?

Do you want to be loved for how people perceive you or be Loved in spite of the way you are?

Would you want to sacrificially Love the unlovable (those that are out to take advantage of you)?

How do you feel about having to humbly accept pure charity? What would make you do such a thing?

Are you happy with your life and if not what type of person do you think is happy with their life?

What do you want to change in yourself?

 

[TruthSeeker3]

Hi TruthSeeker3,

Thanks for sharing a bit more. I cannot be entirely sure God may reveal Himself to you in the way that you might be anticipating. That is not to say that God may not communicate with you in a dream for example but ultimately it is up to God to decide that. I think if you look at Jesus - even though he performed miracles some of those that witnessed the miracles still found it hard to believe outright that Jesus was divine. Think about doubting Thomas - he had Jesus in his life and knew what Jesus did and preached yet he still had doubts. I believe that what ultimately convicted Jesus' followers was that Jesus preached the truth.

I would say that indeed it's scriptural that God can reveal himself to you, I will give you some references:

John 14:21-23

21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” 22 Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” 23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him


The promise is clear: If I love Jesus and keep his word, then God the Father and God the Son will reveal/manifest to me.

John 7:37-39

37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.


Here Jesus talks about a clear manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a person who believes in him. This is also explained by Jesus to the samaritan woman in the following passage:

John 4:13-14

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”


This is another description of how it would be like to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It would be like a spring of water welling up to a eternal life. Since this is a metaphorical description, we have to grasp its meaning from the symbol: water satisfies your physical thirst, but the Holy Spirit would satisfy your spiritual thirst, which in my case would be closely linked to my existential need of knowing the Truth and the meaning of life. Furthemore, it says that this water will well up to eternal life, then it will clearly have eternal consequences. I imagine that the presence of the Holy Spirit in your heart would produce a total existential satisfaction, joy, peace, love and so on. In fact, I can corroborate my guess with the following passage:

Galatians 5:22-24

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

As you can see, there are real manifestations of the presence of the Holy Spirit in your heart. By the way, all of these fruits are highly esteemed in all religions. Everybody wants to have peace, joy, love and so on, and according to the Biblie, the fullness of these virtues can be only achieved by being filled with the Holy Spirit.

You can also see manifestation of the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. First of all, Jesus talked about it and said that it will give us power to be witnesses of him:

Acts 1:8

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”


The interesting thing of this is that the Holy Spirit would give power to be witnesses of Jesus even to the end of earth, which implies a prophetic statement that the Gospel would be spread around the world, and therefore that the promise of Holy Spirit would be available in order to accomplish this objective. Since the Gospel is currently being preached around the world, that means that power of the Holy Spirit must still be available nowadays.

I would like to add some concrete examples from the book of Acts that show clear manifestation of the Holy Spirit:

Acts 2:1-4

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.


Acts 10:44-48

44 While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. 45 And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. 46 For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, 47 “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” 48 And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days.

Acts 19:4-7

4 And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. 7 There were about twelve men in all.

I would say that God ultimately reveals Himself to humans through His Word - which was of course through Jesus and his message. Today we have God's message contained in the Bible. I think God's revelation to you is in establishing truth from scriptures. Can I suggest you do a study on "truth" using as many scriptures from the bible. If you come to the realisation that God's Word is truth .... would you need additional evidence?

I think both the scriptures and the complexity of the universe can be considered as intelectual evidences for the christian God. I would even include the testimonies of people as another positve evidence. But the problem of intelectual evidences is that they can stimulate your brain to consider intelectually the logical possibility of something to be true, but beyond that they have no life-changing power. Believe me, I have been being aware of a lot of intelectual evidences in favor of the christian God for a long time but my life has not changed. Ultimately, a personal encounter with God that impacts your life in a spiritual level (not intelectual level) can change your life, and I gave some examples of real life-changing spiritual manifestations of God through the Holy Spirit in the previous biblical quotations to reinforce this point. This kind of experience is what I am looking for.

I think the subject of the role of the Holy Spirit in one's life is quite different amongst believers and I would suggest reading books that have varying perspectives on this issue so that you can weigh up all the POV's and reach your own conclusion: a book that I would recommend is entitled "The Spirit" by Douglas Jacoby - well worth the read.

I will consider reading that book. However, for the moment can you share your thoughts about the Biblical quotations I have given you?

 

[TruthSeeker3]

Nobody gets concrete knowledge of God, they get experienes which they can tust is God, but there is always that doubt because that is what defines faith. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see. Think about what that means. It means we hope for things and believe in things we do not see, and faith is what gives us the certainty that we are corrrect.

What you say about faith is true. Even for personal experiences it would be necessary to have faith to believe that it's God who is giving that experience. I would even extend this situation for every experience, including physical experiences: you must believe with no logical necessity that your so-called physical senses are revealing a real physical world and that you're not being fooled with an illusion. For every decision you make in life you must make underlying assumptions which are not logical certainties even when you are not aware of it.

Your problem is that you are chasing after some emotional experience, probably you have seen other people behaving emotionally and you think that is the fruit of The Holy Spirit. not necessarily. You mentioned to dlamberth that you have never had love in your heart, but have you ever seen someone's poor situation and wished better for them, or even helped them? Nothing but love for a stranger, the golden rule would motivate that. So, don't be so obsessd with emotional experiences, they are only chemical dependencies of the brain.

In order to reply to this paragraph, I recommend you to read first my last response to @Soul2Soul in post #38. There is a lot of scriptural support to real spiritual manifestations from God which eventually may have physical effects, which makes logical sense: God is omnipotent and has created a physical universe, and He can make real physical manifestations if He pleases.
But putting the focus on what you said, you are seemingly reducing everything to a materialistic/physical level, implicitly denying the possibility of having spiritual experiences, which are not physical. As I said in post #38, there are a lot of scriptural evidence (in fact, many are promises) that God can reveal himself in a spiritual level, in a personal intimate way, to a human being.

You say that you want God to reveal Himself to you so you can have faith, but that is the opposite of accepting His grace. He already has revealed Himself to us, in the most glorious way. Nobody can ignore it. You only have to decide if you will "open your heart to Him", which is a phrase meaning to be sensitive to what He is telling you. Not to be emotional, just to be sensitive to that little angel/devil that goes on inside. For instance, I was at a backpacker's once and I heard this young guy on his cellphone saying to his friend how he had no money and was hungry and was thinking about shoplifting and I thought I would like to give him some cash for food. Well I slept on it then when I went to work the next day, I remembered but I felt so ashamed that I walked out without doing it. God was giving me heaps about that and before I got to the elevator, I conceded with Him to read one verse. It was a verse about fasting, and I knew I didn't like fasting and to fast involuntarily is worse, so I went and did what I was ashamed to do. That is what I mean about the angel/devil inside. That is what I am saying it means to obey His commandments. That is also why I am saying that our relationship with Him does not rely on spiritual or supernatural events, but on our willingness to listen to Him.

I agree that faith must be in first place, without experiences, and not the other way around (experiences in order to believe, in Thomas way). However, it's actually scriptural that by having faith in first place you can move God to reveal himself to you. At the moment I remember two passages that support this:

Jeremiah 29:13

13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Hebrews 11:6

6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

 

[TruthSeeker3]

What is your purpose in discovering the truth though? Is it to the glory of God? That is the only reason He will give you the ability to believe upon Him, in order so as to glorify Him. From what you wrote it seems you want belief in God to work something positive in your life. Unfortunately, that is not what the Christian religion is about. It will benefit one's life but not by starting at the self and working up to God. Certainly you've read in Scripture where God loves humility and hates pride. Christians are people who humble themselves before God, who understand that their possession of faith is nothing of their own doing but that God from His free grace and out of His eternal mercy and compassion for us condescended on us believers with the gift of being able to believe upon Him.

My purpose in discovering the Truth is to accomplish my true purpose as a human being existing in this universe. From a materialistic point of view, my purpose would not be but to repeat the life cycle for an standard human being living in the 21st century society: be born, grow up, study, get a work, gain money, buy stuff, have a family, children, die, and that would be all (you can add more customized complexity to this general lines if you want). But if the christian God does exist, and so does the spiritual world, then human life acquires a total different meaning and purpose. Life would have the objective purpose God had in mind when creating us. If this is the actual case, I would like to find it out, and then I would focus all my efforts to live according to the purpose God has for me.
To simplify things, I want to know the Truth in order to live according to that Truth (with everything that Truth may imply). Currently I am trying to corroborate by myself that the christian God is real (so Christianity would be the Truth), as I tried to explain in my first post.

If God has ordained you to believe upon Him in your life it will happen, but it will likely not occur by making Him work for you in the way you want it to happen (though certainly it could happen this way). Belief might be had by dependence upon Him, trusting in Him that He knows what is best for us, and the knowledge that all the world and all that happens in it is for the glorification of God. This is definitely a mindset though, a perception that is brought about in the life of a believer once they've come to a knowledge of God as their Lord and Saviour. Perhaps you can ask someone in the Christian Apologetics section about more concrete examples of this--those folks have much better arguments for the evidences of Christianity (I'm afraid my knowledge is quite lacking in that area).

I am currently focusing in have faith in God and live according to the teachings of the Bible. I am actually trying to develop a believer mindset, and I have the hope that God will reveal himself to me if I do the things according to his terms. There are many promises in the Bible that assures that God can reveal himself to somebody who seeks him with all their heart. I quoted some passages of the Biblie regarding this, you can see my last two posts (#38 and #39)