Looking for Discernment

[food4thought]

How do I personally know God?

I grew up a non-Christian, and my mind is full of so much crud... most of the time I struggle with knowing God personally. To be honest, I need to explain the nature of my problem more clearly:

I took lots of LSD new years eve 1999, and as a result I spent the entire night having conversations with all my friends in my mind. Of course I recognize that this did not occur in reality! But the effect of it is very powerful in my mind, especially when I try to pray. So now, I don't know what to do with the "conversations" with God that seem to occur during prayer. Before you start worrying: I do not hear audible voices, just thought/voices in my mind. Because of the crud/experience of drugs, I am extremely suspicious of this type of thing in my relationship to Jesus.

I hope I didn't just confuse everybody, it doesn't seem to come out very clearly when I try to give a rational explanation. This is important to me... I believe that the Bible is God's word, I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior, I believe that God has sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in my heart. Now the only problem is the practical day to day experience. I spend time in the Scripture every day, but my prayer life is stale and empty because I can't discern God's replies...

How do I discern the Holy Spirit's voice/guidance from all the other crud in my mind?

I know that the Bible is God's filter, but I think that there is more... something I'm not getting.
HELP!

 

[convinced101]

I dun hav much 2 say... but I turned 2 God only very recently wit things in my life... and I realsied tlkin 2 friends and family that eveybody has different ways of worship such as on eof my friends doesn't even go 2 church but she is as much as a believer than nebody here! if u find a way 2 worship god in ur own way as all the crud in our lives affects every1 differently but God knows wot u a really tryin 2 do!

sorry that doesn't make much sense either I had it clearly in my head bit it is all gone!
hope it helps neway!
convinced101

 

[Wakeup2god]

Test all things by the spirit and the word. If you think God's talking to you check it against Gods Spirit. If a voice says go kill someone you know it's not Gods Holy Spirit cause He wouldn't ask you to do that (bad example but I hope you get my point). Test by the word, does what you're hearing go along with scripture or does scripture forbid it? Check with your Pastor or someone wise who's opinion you respect. Finaly be prepared to recieve an answer by another means. God loves to use other people to speak to us. look for confirmations from others.

Oh, and put on the armour of God. Especially the helmet of Salvation to protect your mind.

 

[food4thought]

Thank you both.

I have been talking to my Pastor about it. I find it scary to talk to people near me about it for obvious reasons... I mean, I don't want my co-workers and friends knowing that I struggle. The hole thing makes me feel stupid, crazy, or both. If it's real, I'm stupid because I'm over thirty and somehow never figured this out. If it's not real, I'm crazy.

All this makes prayer a difficult time instead of a blessing. Any blessing that God sends my way immediately becomes suspect to the paranoid part of my mind. Yet if God remains silent, the rational part of me starts questioning why God isn't there for me, any warm fuzzy feelings I get are immediately interpreted as a part of this whole big pile of confused rubbish in my head... and on and on it goes.

I don't want to whine, but it really is starting to affect my life. I'm still sharing my faith with people at work and online, but my own personal relationship with God is in shambles. I just can't seem to shake the whole idea of people hearing my thoughts, or of me being able to somehow broadcast my thoughts to others. KIDS... DON'T DO DRUGS... EVER!!!

 

[Rage4Christ]

food4 though
You can't. You can never know. There is no secret key, or message that God will "beam" into your brain while you pray. Prayer is a tool to learn the methods of unconditional love, and acceptance of self, and personal transformation.

If you seek "answers" from prayer, you're never going to be satisfied.

Your doubt is actually quite healthy. Keep an active mind. Keep questioning and thinking, and challenging yourself. Do this in good faith, with unconditional love-- and you are on your way to a Christ like transformation.

Remember: God isn't going to do your work for you. There is no "cheat sheet" available through prayer. The burden weighs heavy on you, and you have to do the work.

Christ loves you unconditionally whether you feel God or not.

 

[Tavita]

Hi Food4thought'

You need to stand up and battle for your mind. It's a DAILY renewing of the mind and will take effort on your part to hang in there to overcome with the power of Holy Spirit working with you.

If you have repented of taking the LSD and allowing yourself to lose the control of your mind to come under demonic control, in prayer take back by faith the control of your mind from the evil one and ask Holy Spirit to fill you and wash your mind in the Blood of the Lamb. Declare and proclaim out loud that the Lord Jesus Christ now has Lordship of your mind and He has sealed you in the Holy Spirit. Give Him your spirit, soul (which includes your mind) and body as a living sacrifice to the Lord Jesus. And from that point onwards believe by faith that your mind now belongs to the Lord Jesus and you only hear His voice, and that no other voice will you recognize.

Ask Him to give you scripture references to stand on, and daily commit your mind to Him declaring out loud your stand in Him now. It may take a little while for the old thoughts to completely disappear but they will. Just trust now that you are only hearing His voice. Get into His word and *saturate* your mind in the scriptures. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God.


(Joh 10:3) "To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

(Joh 10:4) "When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

(Rom 12:1) Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

(Rom 12:2) And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

 

[Theophorus]

Food4thought,

In Eastern Orthodoxy one of the goals of prayer is to seperate the mind from the "nous" or heart. The mind is the realm of rational thought and the imagination. One of the main aspects of prayer is to be be in communion with God. What you want to do is bring your prayers down more into your heart and have them reside less in your mind. The basis of this is the statement in scripture, be still and know that I am God.
One of the "tools" for this is written prayers. You have several in your bible ie. the Lord's prayer and the psalms. Stand do not sit, the idea is to worship without your mind so use everything else. Maybe light a candle to gaze at occasionally. Read the Lord's prayer (Matt 6:9-13) then read psalm 51.
The idea here is not to "create" with your imagination but to let the word of God flow through you. You may become distracted but if you do, speak the prayer aloud, look at the candle and try to empty you mind of everything except the words being spoken. After some practice with this and familiarity with the prayer, you may be able to empty your mind of the words and pray in a "familiar" or routine manner. This is where the prayer descends into your heart, or begins to.
Do not think that saying a prewritten prayer or becoming familiar with the same prayer is somehow not genuine. The purpose is for communion with God, or in the venacular of the present day, to have a relationship with Him. Think about your own closest relationships. Do you always have to "come up" with something to say? Do you always expect a response from your closest relationships? Or is it not more often that your relationships are kind of routine comfortable and relaxed and what transpires between the two of you is often unspoken but is there just by the two of you being in each others presence, is it not transcendant in that way?
By reading the prayers written in your bible, you allow God to speak and not yourself, you bring nothing to the table, so to speak, except yourself. And you subdue your passions in your prayer. Let your mind be still, and have peace.

 

[Silent Enigma]

How do I discern the Holy Spirit's voice/guidance from all the other crud in my mind?

Just go by what the Bible says and ignore everything else. Then you know you've got it right. You don't need to hear any fancy reply for a prayer to be good. Think of the example prayer Jesus gave. Good and simple.

 

[Rae_Psyche]

I think that the fact that you are worrying about this is a good thing. God is putting those worries there so that you do something about it. In other words He is looking to take your relationship further because He hears your prayer. When you are obedient and faithful to Him, He will be faithful to you back. In other words dont be so worried but rejoice in that God wants to work with your mind so that you can move on and become stronger through He that strengthens us.

My advice when it comes to your question is to keep praying. Try to ignore those voices even if they sound friendly because well the Enemy wants us to think He is our friend. Ask God to confirm everything, tell Him that because of you situation you are not really going to believe what your own head is saying to you. As someone already said, God likes to talk to us through other people, this makes it a little easier to know when God is talking to us.

I think you did the right thing by talking to your pastor, and I know that God is seeing your effort. If by any chance your pastor is unable to help you, ask God for a person who will know what to do. Put on the armor of God, cover yourself with the blood of the lamb and try learn about spiritual battle because that's where your battle is.

Eph. 6:12
Mat. 16:19
2 Cor. 10:3-6
Luke 10:19
Exodus 12

And before I forget, ask the Lord to fill you with His Holy Spirit. Hope this helps, and never stop praying, because then you would have lost the battle.

 

[brotherjim]

How do I discern the Holy Spirit's voice/guidance from all the other crud in my mind?

Dear food,

Your drug experience is not the problem. The problem you are having is the same as is experienced by every Christian, some more than others of course. What's important is that you're admitting to it rather than hiding from it and God.

(Btw, my drug abuse history is a hundred times more prolific than yours.)

It takes many, many years, "through reason of use" (KJV), to correctly discern the Voice of God on a consistent and reliable basis. There are no shortcuts.

The Voice of God is crowded out by the voices of the many idols that remain in--and/or re-enter--the heart of all believers, until they're delivered from them, usually one by one. It requires that you set yourself alone to God in a prayer "closet" for a period of time each day, seeking first a revelation as to the idol God wants next to reveal to you and deliver you from, then accepting from Him the Graces of repentance and godly remorse and said deliverance.

There is no other way (unless you just want to wait for some trageedy to befall you, hope that you do not as a result too greatly harden your heart any further, and that God then sovereignly gives you the above needed revelation, godly sorrow and remorse, repentance, and deliverance--kinda' like playing the lottery).

Blessings, brotherjim

 

[Stanfi]

The first and most important thing you need is daily bible reading. The best way to get to know God is to get deep in his word. So many times when spend hours trying to dicern is something in our head is God, and we have his word written down for us.