To joey down under,
You wrote this:
I am sorry that I read too much into what you typed. Typed words can only communicate so much. Seeing your facial expressions and hearing voice tone when you said that would probably have given me a different impression.
Agreed. Typed words cannot communicate everything.
I think that is you "thinking" fear there as well as you thinking "but surely there must be some feeling or sign at times that genuine Christians receive if they do have the Holy Spirit. I have never felt that so I therefore must not have been a real Christian."
I was not aware of thinking fear. As for feeling the Holy Spirit, it was not a feeling that I was interested in, but the work of the Holy Spirit in a person. If the Holy Spirit does not have an effect on a person, then I would have some concern about whether they were truly saved. I realise that the person themselves may not recognise the work of the Holy Spirit in them, but I think it is the reality, not the perception, that is important.
My concern, when I was a believer, was not specifically that I had no awareness of the Holy Spirit working in me, but that I also had no other sign of Gods response answered prayer, guidance, spiritual insight, and so on. Any one of them can be argued away. But taken together they show that God was not responding, perhaps because although I believed I was not truly saved.
Where it comes to fatalism Christians can struggle with just as much as every other person out there. Whether thats from not enough faith/knowledge/prayer or from extreme difficulties that any normal person would have difficulties with thats not for us to decide.
Yes, sometimes what appears to be strange behaviour is simply a natural response to unnatural pressures.
Being improved and made stronger (in whatever way) still can happen to you but it wont happen outside of faith. God looks after His children are you willing to become a child of God?
Of course I am willing to be a child of God. But first I have to ask some questions. Is God willing to accept me as a child? Do I know how to become a child of God (for me personally, that is, given my history etc)? I am willing, but I am not yet ready, because I cannot see even the first step towards God. I have tried some things and they have been failures. It is no use repeating the mistakes of the past. This time it has to be right; I cannot just step out in faith and hope, because I know from experience that it will not work. It may have worked for many other people, but I also know that it has failed for many people, and I am one of them.
From my understanding you have consistently suggested that you do not experience anything spiritual (as in the feeling/intuition department), therefore Satan cannot influence you because he is a spiritual being. If you are capable of thinking you are capable of being misled by Satan but ALSO (and much more importantly) capable of being led by God. Oh yes, God is infinitely stronger than the devil. God is the creator of everything.
In theory a spiritual being could influence me. However, my experience tells me that they cannot influence me through my emotions. That is all that I meant. My apologies if I misunderstood you, but I gained the impression that you were suggesting that the devil could influence me in ways that God could not influence me, and I was questioning this.
I cannot remember the reference, but Jesus implies that angels are neither male nor female. They have no need to be male or female, because they do not make baby angels.
Recognizing the world and the flesh is a very important part of spiritual knowledge where it comes to knowing how to please God. Rule-of-thumb:- thumbs up by flesh and world, then thumbs down by God.
Is that spiritual knowledge? I am amazed. I did not think that I was able to do anything spiritual. (And no, I do not have my tongue in my cheek.)
God has given you something very influential! God has given us the Bible, also described as the sword of the Spirit. hebrews 4:12/ It is the one active weapon mentioned in ephesians 6:10-20/
I have written before that many Christians assume that whenever the expression word of God appears in the Bible, it inevitably is referring to scripture. Not so. In most cases it means, literally, what God says. The implication being that if God says something, it will definitely happen. It means that the weapon of the Christian is that if God has said something, it is going to happen. In other words, fight for what God wants to happen.
You have already demonstrated that you are capable of using the Bible effectively IF you decide to become a Christian. Believe me there are many Christians out there who cant do what you already can, seeing links between different passages and underlying similarities and purposes of those passages. It is a thinking weapon and therefore one you are definitely able to use.
Many years of speaking with Christians and reading the Bible and other Christian books, plus my two years as an active believer, mean that I have learned much about Christian ideas. Of course, there is much more to learn. And from a Christian point of view, what I really need is the help of the Holy Spirit to guide me what to study and what to say, so that the knowledge could be used for the glory of God.
The current Scientism/Materialism viewpoint of the world makes it very difficult especially when the 5 senses dont ever give any hint of a spiritual world. Christians have to trust what Jesus said and yes that requires faith and trust He is telling the truth.
Yet many people do recognise a spiritual world. Perhaps through some sixth sense that I am lacking.
You say that Christians have to trust what Jesus says. That was exactly what I did for two years. But the evidence of my experience (possibly correct, possibly misguided) is that the promises did not happen for me. I trusted and it did not happen. That is serious. It is something that I cannot forget, and it is still strongly influencing what I can do and what I cannot do with regard to becoming a believer once again. I trusted and it did not work out for me. Regaining trust, when lost, is a very long term task. However, if I can find out what went wrong, and discover that there is something that can be changed to remedy the situation, that would be great, because then I would be able to trust again.
1. You must mix with no-one but genuine Christians then [in order to find God].
2. Fake religion is just as unspiritual as atheism/agnosticism and will keep people just as far away from God.
3. This spiritual awareness you are looking for sounds a lot like wishing for spiritual feelings again.
1. Mixing with no-one but genuine Christians is an impossibility. I mix with many people in many situations. However, if you mean me to talk about spiritual matters only with genuine Christians, then I understand. Even so, it is rare for me to talk about spiritual matters with anyone, genuine Christian or not.
2. There are different kinds of spiritual experience. For some people spiritual experiences involve God. For other people there is no religious content as such, but more a feeling (or thinking) of the oneness of all creation. Others have a mystical experience. And some who belong to different faith communities have spiritual experiences of God that might be different from those of Christians. You could argue that some types of spiritual experience do not take a person towards Christianity. Whether or not they could take a person towards God or away from God is a matter for a whole different thread.
3. I can only imagine what it is like to have spiritual awareness or a spiritual experience. I do know that I am missing out on an important aspect of human life by not having spiritual awareness of any kind. As I am not familiar with spiritual matters, I cannot say if it always involves spiritual feelings, or only sometimes.
You then gave me a link to Standing firm in the faith. Unfortunately the link did not work and I was not able to access the book. Would you please give me some additional information to help me find it on the internet.
With regard to the people in the other link, the people arriving at the door of heaven, I think I wrote in a previous posting that there is a little of me in several of the people portrayed, but no obvious candidate that I particularly related to.