Still a lost sheep

[jesusfreak_2008]

You must be patient with the Lord. He will answer You in His timing! In the meantime, keep perservering in your prayer life. Just because God hasn't touched you yet doesn't mean He won't! He will! You need to keep chasing after God and keeping asking in prayer and in faith, for Him to move in your life. Just praying for God to touch you in two weeks time is not going to do it. Con't to perserve, study and mediate on the Word, and attend a good Holy Spirit driven church where other memebers can also pray for you.

Luke 11: 9,10
"And so I tell you keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."

This verse clearly explains that if you keep on chasing after the Lord and if you are persistent with your prayers, then the Lord is going to answer you. You must have patience and wait on Him to act. Psalm 37:7 "Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for Him to act."

If you are patient, humble, and persistent with the Lord then He is going to answer you when you least expect it!

I hoped that I've helped.

jesusfreak_2008

 

[nothingssomething]

I CONTEST TO THE FIRST POSTER GOD ALWAYS ANSWERS YES YO PRAYER THROUGH OUR FAITH IN HIM IT IS WHEN WE DON'T SEE THE MANAFESTATION WHEN WE WANT TO OR THINK IT SHOULD HAVE OCCURED THAT WE LOOSE FAITH AND OUR PRAYERS CANNOT MANAFEST IN THIS WORLD PRAYERS ARE ALWAYS ANSWERED IN THE SPIRITUAL REALM YOU SEE, IT IS OUR FAITH THAT HINDERS GOD OR PREHAPS A DEMONIC INFLUANCE. THERE ARE BIBLICAL INSTIANCES OF THIS EXPLAINED IN THIS TEACHING OF PASTOR ANDREW WOMMACK'S FREE AUDIO TAPES ON HIS WEB SITE MY FRIEND I BELIVE HE PREACHES THE TRUE GOSPLE IN A CHURCH WORLD THAT IS TRYING TO CONTROL IT'S FOLLOWERS IN A SCINCE, I BEG YOU TO LISTEN TO IT, I HAVE BEN GOING TO CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALL CREED AND COLOR 7TH DAY ADVENBTEST BABTEST NON DENOMINATIONAL I WAS DRUGAND CHURCHS INTO CHURCH WHEN I WAS A CHILD UP UNTIL I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO DRIVE AND TRAVELED CITIES TO CHURCHES WITH REPUTATION AND NONE OF THE MESSAGES QUITE FIT RIGHT IN MY SPIRIT , MY FRIEND I BEG YOU TO SPARE SOME TIME, THIS MAN CHANGED MY ENTIRE LIFE AND THE LIVES OF MANY THROUGH ME THROUGH AUDIO BOOK, AND I WAS ALREADY SAVED. THIS IS FREE, HE ASKS NO MONEY FOR IT AT ALL NO E-MAIL ADDRESS I NEVER EVEN HEARD HIM SPEAK OF OFFERING PLATES ONCE.. I BELIEVE THIS S YOUR ANSWER I WILL ENCLOSE A LINK.

GOD IS WITH YOU IF YOU ARE HERE AND ARE DESIRING RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM I SWEAR IT ON MY SALVATION I WILL GIVE YOU MINE.

http://www.awmi.net/extra/audio/k16

AND HERE IS THE DIRECT LINK TO CLICK ON YOU CAN ALSO DOWNLOAD THIS AND SAVE IT TO YOUR COMPUTER(RIGHT CLICK + SAVE AS)


http://downloads.awmi.net/teaching/awm_k16_security.mp3

 

[nothingssomething]

I Encourage Anyton To Follow This Link That Has Ever Be Able To Even Create A Seniro Where Someone Is Reprabate And Cannot Explain It ,

Bless Everyone To The Max

 

[united4Peace]

In February this year I posted a question in this forum, asking if anyone could help me to find hope and find God. I wrote of spending two years as a Christian in the 1970s, without ever receiving any kind of response from God. After two years of receiving nothing from God my hope and my faith died.

I seem to have no spiritual awareness at all and have never had anything that could be described as a spiritual experience. That means, for example, no conviction of sin through the work of the Holy Spirit, no heartfelt need for a saviour, no awareness of God working in my life, no awareness of God through creation.

Many people responded in this forum to my call for help. Many of you, I am sure, prayed for me. I thank you for those prayers.

Eventually a Christian that I have been in contact with for some years helped me to find a way to trust God once again. Half an hour before midnight on Monday April 23rd, I was on my knees in prayer. Praying and asking to be touched by the Spirit of God. Asking for forgiveness for going my own way instead of God’s way. Offering my life to God. In the name of Jesus. And trusting that God heard my prayer and would bless me.

I was trusting God, but at the same time I knew just how important it was that God should respond to me. Because of my experience in the 1970s I knew that, in my own strength, I would not be able to continue to trust God for very long. I posted a message on another Christian website, asking for prayer to support me. I know that at the end of April and into May, there were hundreds of people praying for me, locally and around the world. Praying that my faith would be strengthened, and that I would become aware of what God was doing with me.

I wish I could tell you that the prayers were answered. But I cannot do that. The prayers were not answered. For two weeks my faith continued, but it became a little weaker every day. I waited for God to respond to me in some way. Any way.

There was nothing. After two weeks my faith had disappeared. I woke up one morning and realised that my attempt to become a Christian had failed and that I would have to continue living my life without God.

I am disappointed, but there is no anger or bitterness. Those two weeks of faith have taught me a great deal. They have helped me to interpret my total lack of spiritual awareness and experience. In particular, I know that never again will I try to knock on God’s door. Maybe one day God will come and knock on my door, and I will open the door, and everything will change. Until then I can only watch and wait. In the parable it is the good shepherd who goes to find the lost sheep, not the lost sheep who tries to find the shepherd.

skipping all other posts...

Im answering in how I see God...
God is there, has been there all along...but God doesnt jump out and just do things magically so to speak...

Have you ever read the poem footprints?
Well...God is there with us the whole time...God is always beside us...sometimes walking beside us, othertimes carrying us(always loving us)....however God doesnt interfer in our personal lives, God leaves that up to us...just stays beside us though...

Don't close the door...(well I suppose if you do, it doesnt matter as God can get trhough any door, and does ).

 

[Teke]

Dear Christian, the word is nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart to do it.(Deut. 30:14, Rom. 10:8)
My advice is to go experience God in worship. I'd recommend an Eastern Orthodox church because it sounds as tho not only do you need the worship experience, but some spiritual guidance from a spiritual father.

In other words, you need the full mind, body and heart experience of God with His people. ie. worship
Your mother the Church will teach you as she teaches all children of God.

Mind, body and soul/heart ..................

 

[losthope]

Thank you for your responses (posts 16, 17 and 18). I am replying to both of you together because you seem to be more or less in agreement.

Thank you to both of you for your prayers.

The issue of sin, and being put right with God is important to my situation, you both agree. You could well be right. Having a conviction of sin and having a heartfelt need to be put right with God is certainly something that I have not experienced in any meaningful way. In particular, I have never experienced what is described as a conviction of sin through the action of the Holy Spirit. This means that I have never experienced the need for a saviour.

However, I do understand the concept of being separated from God by sin, and the necessity for obtaining forgiveness. For this reason in my prayers for salvation, both in 1974 and in April this year, I acknowledged my sin and asked for forgiveness through Jesus. I did these things because I knew that I should do them. I cannot say that I did them with as much enthusiasm as I put into other parts of the prayer such as asking forgiveness for living my life my way instead of God’s way and inviting God into my life. But doing things with enthusiasm in not something that is part of my nature, again because of my physiological condition.

I suppose what I am trying to say here is that I dealt with the issue of my sin and the need for a saviour in the best way that I could, given the limitations imposed by my physiological condition. I am very much aware that what I did was very much less than what most people do when they pray the sinner’s prayer. But as WashedClean says, God is aware of my physiological condition and is patient and long suffering.

When I think of the fact that I am unable to approach God with much “heart” and that my conviction of sin is more or less absent, I realise that to many Christians this would exclude me from salvation. I hope that they are wrong. I think of the widow who was only able to give two small coins as a temple offering, much less than other people were giving. Jesus commended her because she had given all that she had. In the same way I think that I gave all that I could in my prayers, recognising that what I am able to give in this respect is much less than most people are able to give. Therefore I consider that Jesus would accept my “very little” in the same way. If what I could give is not acceptable, but I am not able to give any more, I would have to consider myself excluded from salvation.

The only solution for me would be for God to act, for example by giving me a conviction of sin through the Holy Spirit. Perhaps God would do that if I ask God to show me how serious my sin is, you suggest. Well, given the zero response rate to my prayers so far, I have my doubts. I am sorry to be so sceptical, but there has been no response that I am aware of to any of my prayers, not even during the times when I was trusting God. Even my “sinner’s prayers” brought no response that I am aware of. Do you think it is likely that God will respond to me now that I am no longer able to trust God?

You also suggest that God must be drawing me, because I am using Christian forums and contacting many Christians. In that case, God must have been drawing me at least since I first started to contribute to Christian Forums at the beginning of 2005. Unfortunately I have no awareness of God drawing me. If God is drawing me, and I am not aware of it, is that just another example of my complete lack of spiritual awareness?

You are absolutely right when you tell me that there is something inside me that longs to know God. And I have tried to know God, believe me. Since I was first introduced to the gospel message in 1966. But so far the response rate from God is still zero. After 41 years of searching I have still failed to find God and do not know God.

When I wrote about letting the shepherd find me, rather than me trying to find the shepherd, I did not mean that I had given up wanting to know God. It is simply that after 41 years of searching for God without success, I think that it is time to try a different strategy, because the method I have tried so far has failed over and over again. It does at least have the merit that I will be sure that the time is right for God, if God comes to find me.

I mentioned the time being right for God, because I think there are four possible reasons why I have not yet found God.

1. It might not yet be the right time. This includes the possibility that God wants me to have many years of failing to find God, for some special reason.

2. It might be that God is desperately trying to reach me, but because of my lack of spiritual awareness I do not realise it. In this case I might be saved, or I might not yet be saved, depending where the “spiritual block” is. Your suggestion that my attitude to sin is a problem, is an example of this possibility.

3. It might be that God has not responded to me because I am predestined not to be saved.

4. It might be that the whole thing is the product of people’s imaginations and self-delusion. And the reason why I am not similarly “deluded” is related to my lack of emotions and spiritual awareness. You should be aware that there is a sound scientific basis for this possibility. I appreciate that you would insist that this alternative is wrong, but I have to consider it possible, especially as people have quoted Bible verses that go against all of the other three possibilities.

All these four possibilities are consistent with my experience over the years.

If anyone has any other suggested reasons for my failure to find God, I would love to hear them. Though I would have to eliminate any that are not consistent with my experience.

Finally a response to TexasGirl06 when you say that when a person accepts Jesus as saviour the Holy Spirit enters that person and never leaves, and so once a person is a Christian they must remain a Christian. You say that the Bible confirms this.

I know that many Christians believe as you do. That is why when they come across someone like me calling myself an ex-Christian, they insist that I can never have really been a Christian in the first place. Or (sometimes) they insist that I am now a non-practising Christian. However, there are also many Christians who believe that a person can lose their salvation, and who can quote Bible verses to back up this belief. I do not know the situation in Texas, but in my experience of Christians in this country, roughly half agree with you and half take the other view. Myself, I do not know. I sometimes describe myself as an ex-Christian, but that is simply for convenience. In reality I do not know if I have never been a Christian, or if I have been a Christian for many years and remain a Christian even though I am not aware of it, or if I was a Christian for a time but then became an ex-Christian.

 

[Floatingaxe]

Thank you for your responses (posts 16, 17 and 18). I am replying to both of you together because you seem to be more or less in agreement.

Thank you to both of you for your prayers.

The issue of sin, and being put right with God is important to my situation, you both agree. You could well be right. Having a conviction of sin and having a heartfelt need to be put right with God is certainly something that I have not experienced in any meaningful way. In particular, I have never experienced what is described as a conviction of sin through the action of the Holy Spirit. This means that I have never experienced the need for a saviour.

However, I do understand the concept of being separated from God by sin, and the necessity for obtaining forgiveness. For this reason in my prayers for salvation, both in 1974 and in April this year, I acknowledged my sin and asked for forgiveness through Jesus. I did these things because I knew that I should do them. I cannot say that I did them with as much enthusiasm as I put into other parts of the prayer such as asking forgiveness for living my life my way instead of God’s way and inviting God into my life. But doing things with enthusiasm in not something that is part of my nature, again because of my physiological condition.

I suppose what I am trying to say here is that I dealt with the issue of my sin and the need for a saviour in the best way that I could, given the limitations imposed by my physiological condition. I am very much aware that what I did was very much less than what most people do when they pray the sinner’s prayer. But as WashedClean says, God is aware of my physiological condition and is patient and long suffering.

When I think of the fact that I am unable to approach God with much “heart” and that my conviction of sin is more or less absent, I realise that to many Christians this would exclude me from salvation. I hope that they are wrong. I think of the widow who was only able to give two small coins as a temple offering, much less than other people were giving. Jesus commended her because she had given all that she had. In the same way I think that I gave all that I could in my prayers, recognising that what I am able to give in this respect is much less than most people are able to give. Therefore I consider that Jesus would accept my “very little” in the same way. If what I could give is not acceptable, but I am not able to give any more, I would have to consider myself excluded from salvation.

The only solution for me would be for God to act, for example by giving me a conviction of sin through the Holy Spirit. Perhaps God would do that if I ask God to show me how serious my sin is, you suggest. Well, given the zero response rate to my prayers so far, I have my doubts. I am sorry to be so sceptical, but there has been no response that I am aware of to any of my prayers, not even during the times when I was trusting God. Even my “sinner’s prayers” brought no response that I am aware of. Do you think it is likely that God will respond to me now that I am no longer able to trust God?

You also suggest that God must be drawing me, because I am using Christian forums and contacting many Christians. In that case, God must have been drawing me at least since I first started to contribute to Christian Forums at the beginning of 2005. Unfortunately I have no awareness of God drawing me. If God is drawing me, and I am not aware of it, is that just another example of my complete lack of spiritual awareness?

You are absolutely right when you tell me that there is something inside me that longs to know God. And I have tried to know God, believe me. Since I was first introduced to the gospel message in 1966. But so far the response rate from God is still zero. After 41 years of searching I have still failed to find God and do not know God.

When I wrote about letting the shepherd find me, rather than me trying to find the shepherd, I did not mean that I had given up wanting to know God. It is simply that after 41 years of searching for God without success, I think that it is time to try a different strategy, because the method I have tried so far has failed over and over again. It does at least have the merit that I will be sure that the time is right for God, if God comes to find me.

I mentioned the time being right for God, because I think there are four possible reasons why I have not yet found God.

1. It might not yet be the right time. This includes the possibility that God wants me to have many years of failing to find God, for some special reason.

2. It might be that God is desperately trying to reach me, but because of my lack of spiritual awareness I do not realise it. In this case I might be saved, or I might not yet be saved, depending where the “spiritual block” is. Your suggestion that my attitude to sin is a problem, is an example of this possibility.

3. It might be that God has not responded to me because I am predestined not to be saved.

4. It might be that the whole thing is the product of people’s imaginations and self-delusion. And the reason why I am not similarly “deluded” is related to my lack of emotions and spiritual awareness. You should be aware that there is a sound scientific basis for this possibility. I appreciate that you would insist that this alternative is wrong, but I have to consider it possible, especially as people have quoted Bible verses that go against all of the other three possibilities.

All these four possibilities are consistent with my experience over the years.

If anyone has any other suggested reasons for my failure to find God, I would love to hear them. Though I would have to eliminate any that are not consistent with my experience.

Finally a response to TexasGirl06 when you say that when a person accepts Jesus as saviour the Holy Spirit enters that person and never leaves, and so once a person is a Christian they must remain a Christian. You say that the Bible confirms this.

I know that many Christians believe as you do. That is why when they come across someone like me calling myself an ex-Christian, they insist that I can never have really been a Christian in the first place. Or (sometimes) they insist that I am now a non-practising Christian. However, there are also many Christians who believe that a person can lose their salvation, and who can quote Bible verses to back up this belief. I do not know the situation in Texas, but in my experience of Christians in this country, roughly half agree with you and half take the other view. Myself, I do not know. I sometimes describe myself as an ex-Christian, but that is simply for convenience. In reality I do not know if I have never been a Christian, or if I have been a Christian for many years and remain a Christian even though I am not aware of it, or if I was a Christian for a time but then became an ex-Christian.

Actually, I think you suffer from a spiritual inferiority complex. When you live in pessimism, doubt, frustration and depression, God is precluded from flowing through you. You need to renounce your inferiority to Him. Give it to Him. Nail it to the cross!! Ask Jesus Christ to take that horrible burden from you. He will! But as long as you want to carry it, He will let you.

When you surrender all that junk to Him, He will give you confidence instead! Confidence that you are a King's Kid and you have Him living inside you! All the resources that God possesses to make things happen are within you! He has all things, so you can have all things! He is not a loser, so you can have success in life!

Leave your bag of burdens at the cross, leap for joy and enjoy a new life in Jesus! A life of joy and freedom!

 

[nothingssomething]

http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=35900126&postcount=22

AGAIN MY LINK THAT HAS THE LINK TO AW HE WILL ALLOW JESUS TO SET YOU FREE OF THIS DECPTION THIS, UGLY DECPTION.

I WOULD TRY TO TYPE WHAT IS SAID BUT I JUST CAN'T IT'S LIKE AN HOUR LONG AWESOME STUFF.

 

[nothingssomething]

Whole Heartedly Agree, I Also Don't Think Anyone Explained The Fellowshiping With Christ Completely When We Become Saved And We Do Not Fellowshup With Christ We Feel Empty, I Do Not Have The Time To Explain It I Wish I Could.

 

[TexasGirl06]

This means that I have never experienced the need for a saviour.

Hello losthope....
I am going to throw an opinion out here.
It is my opinion, that The Lord created you as a very intelligent/smart person.
This is what I see.

The thing that I have learned .... in regards to a relationship with The Lord, is that it is not about me.

My spiritual growth occurred when I understood that I am created by Him and for Him....
I was put here to Glorify Him.
It's all about Him.

He knows it all.
He is all knowing and wise.
He wants to give me wisdom.

Losthope,
Become like a little child.
Pretend that you know just about nothing about any religious thing.
Be a blank slate.

Jesus Christ loves you.
This I know.
The Bible tells me so.

Go and spend some time with Jesus.
Just you and Him.
Not with a brain filled with experiences and "stuff".

My precious Lord will speak to you.
He loves you and he wants to have a relationship with you.

Just go outside tonight.
Just you and Him.
Call out to Him.
He loves you so much.
He died for you. His blood came out of His body, for you.

Don't be so smart.
Sometimes smart can get in the way.

He loves you and he wants to heal your heart.
He wants you for all eternity.

Allow Him to show you what Holy means.

Allow Him into your heart.

Allow Him to get along side your pain.

He knows all things.

Be Blessed, my friend.
I am praying for you.

 

[losthope]

Thank you all for your contributions.

To Teke.
You wrote this:
My advice is to go experience God in worship. I'd recommend an Eastern Orthodox church because it sounds as tho not only do you need the worship experience, but some spiritual guidance from a spiritual father.
In other words, you need the full mind, body and heart experience of God with His people. ie. worship
Your mother the Church will teach you as she teaches all children of God.
Christian worship leaves me completely cold. During the time when I was trusting God in April and May I did my best to get involved in worship, but despite trying I just could not get involved. I think that I could relate to one or two lines of one of the pieces of Christian music, but that is all. The other people there might have said that they were having a full mind, body, soul and heart experience. Or maybe they were just enjoying the experience of worship in a way that I was not. All I know is that it did absolutely nothing for me.

I also asked for spiritual guidance from a spiritual leader who I had seen being effective at helping some other people. He prayed with me and it was completely the wrong prayer; no help at all.

To jesusfreak_2008
You wrote this:
You must be patient with the Lord. He will answer You in His timing! In the meantime, keep perservering in your prayer life. Just because God hasn't touched you yet doesn't mean He won't! He will! You need to keep chasing after God and keeping asking in prayer and in faith, for Him to move in your life. Just praying for God to touch you in two weeks time is not going to do it. Con't to perserve, study and mediate on the Word, and attend a good Holy Spirit driven church where other memebers can also pray for you.
Luke 11: 9,10
"And so I tell you keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."
This verse clearly explains that if you keep on chasing after the Lord and if you are persistent with your prayers, then the Lord is going to answer you. You must have patience and wait on Him to act. Psalm 37:7 "Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for Him to act."
If you are patient, humble, and persistent with the Lord then He is going to answer you when you least expect it!
In April and May this year I spent two weeks able to trust God, and during this time I did a lot of praying, Bible reading, meeting with people from a good Holy Spirit driven church and so on. I agree that two weeks is not long. But I also spent almost two years trusting God in the 1970s, also without God touching me. I know of someone who has spent over twenty years praying and trusting God and still has received absolutely nothing from God. I am sorry but going on praying just does not work. I know that the verses in Luke say if we keep on knocking and asking God will answer, but that is not the way that it happened for me. I now firmly believe that it is not of any value for me to keep chasing after God and to keep on trying to pray, especially as I no longer have any faith. That does not seem to be the way to get God to move in my life. Besides, Jesus also told his disciples not to use vain repetition.

Instead I am simply waiting for God to act, as in the second part of Psalm 37:7. The hard part is the first part of the verse, being in the presence of the Lord, because so far in my life I have been unable to find the Lord and to get into the presence of the Lord.

To nothingssomething.

Sorry but my computer would not let me download or listen to whatever may be available on that link.

To united4Peace

I am familiar with the poem footprints. It sounds great but my life is not like that poem.

There are some people who are quite happy to have a God who walks along beside them but does not interfere in their personal lives and does not do anything special for them. I am not interested in such a God. I want to serve God, and for that I need personal guidance about how God wants me to serve. That implies a God who acts, a God that I have a personal relationship with. Anything less than that is, for me, not worth having.

 

[Johnnz]

Did you have a happy or unhappy childhood?

Do things like beauty, or great music affect you in any way. If not, what does?

John
NZ

 

[Catherineanne]

You also suggest that I was relying on my feelings. What are feelings? Once again, feelings are something that I do not experience, because of my physiological condition. You say that feelings can be deceptive. Well, they may well be, but I cannot either confirm it or deny it for myself, because I do not have those things that you call feelings. I wish I did, but unfortunately I do not.

It is not possible that you have no feelings whatever.

You may well have a condition which numbs your emotional responses, such as PTSD, but unless you are dead, you have feelings. Otherwise how can you be so disappointed about not finding God? That is a feeling.

Assuming you have emotional numbing, why do you expect God to overcome this damage in one fell swoop? You are again treating your conversion to Christianity as a transaction at an ATM machine. That is not the way it works. A person with heart disease who becomes a Christian does not all of a sudden find their heart disease gone. Many fundamentalists might claim this happens, but the simple truth is that it doesn't. Very devout, Godfearing Christians fall ill every day, and some of them die, to this world at least. That is part of life.

I too have PTSD. I too have emotional numbing. I can only feel the strongest negative feelings, and the rest are gone. I do not experience God through my feelings, therefore, but through my intellect and reason, and through my compassion for other people. I do not 'feel' that compassion, but I remember what it felt like, once, and I act as if it is still there; what else is there to do? Start from where you are, rather than where you want to be, and take God as you find him. You are like a blind man saying, "I want to see God" and making your seeing a precondition of your belief. Part of our faith is accepting the cross that we have been given, and learning to bow to it. Much of what you say is still emotional blackmail. You want God to heal your pain, and in return you offer your belief. It has to be the other way round.

You also suggested that my comment that God speaks through other Christians is 'twisting our faith'. Again, this is not the case. It is a commonplace of our faith that God not only can, but often does, speak through Christians. It is also a sad fact that this voice of God is ignored more often than it is listened to, because it is not what the listener wants to hear.

 

[united4Peace]

It is not possible that you have no feelings whatever.

You may well have a condition which numbs your emotional responses, such as PTSD, but unless you are dead, you have feelings. Otherwise how can you be so disappointed about not finding God? That is a feeling.

Assuming you have emotional numbing, why do you expect God to overcome this damage in one fell swoop? You are again treating your conversion to Christianity as a transaction at an ATM machine. That is not the way it works. A person with heart disease who becomes a Christian does not all of a sudden find their heart disease gone. Many fundamentalists might claim this happens, but the simple truth is that it doesn't. Very devout, Godfearing Christians fall ill every day, and some of them die, to this world at least. That is part of life.

I too have PTSD. I too have emotional numbing. I can only feel the strongest negative feelings, and the rest are gone. I do not experience God through my feelings, therefore, but through my intellect and reason, and through my compassion for other people. I do not 'feel' that compassion, but I remember what it felt like, once, and I act as if it is still there; what else is there to do? Start from where you are, rather than where you want to be, and take God as you find him. You are like a blind man saying, "I want to see God" and making your seeing a precondition of your belief. Part of our faith is accepting the cross that we have been given, and learning to bow to it. Much of what you say is still emotional blackmail. You want God to heal your pain, and in return you offer your belief. It has to be the other way round.

You also suggested that my comment that God speaks through other Christians is 'twisting our faith'. Again, this is not the case. It is a commonplace of our faith that God not only can, but often does, speak through Christians. It is also a sad fact that this voice of God is ignored more often than it is listened to, because it is not what the listener wants to hear.

 

[Catherineanne]

The hard part is the first part of the verse, being in the presence of the Lord, because so far in my life I have been unable to find the Lord and to get into the presence of the Lord.

There is nowhere on earth, nowhere in the whole Universe, which is not in the presence of the Lord.

What you lack is only the feeling about the reality, but the reality is there, whether you feel it or not.

I would say, stop worrying about what you do not have, and obey the command of Christ. He said, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.

You are constrained in the first part. I would recommend turning to the second part, and loving those around you as Christ loves you, and see whether you can find God there instead. I personally see God whenever I look into another person's eyes, and see them looking back at me with love. Christ became man so that whenever we serve anyone at all, we are serving him. So find God around you.

 

[losthope]

Thank you all for your comments, posts 27 to 30.

To Floatingaxe.
You wrote this:
Actually, I think you suffer from a spiritual inferiority complex. When you live in pessimism, doubt, frustration and depression, God is precluded from flowing through you. You need to renounce your inferiority to Him. Give it to Him. Nail it to the cross!! Ask Jesus Christ to take that horrible burden from you. He will! But as long as you want to carry it, He will let you.
When you surrender all that junk to Him, He will give you confidence instead! Confidence that you are a King's Kid and you have Him living inside you! All the resources that God possesses to make things happen are within you! He has all things, so you can have all things! He is not a loser, so you can have success in life!
Leave your bag of burdens at the cross, leap for joy and enjoy a new life in Jesus! A life of joy and freedom!
I think you are right when you suggest that people who are pessimistic, doubting, frustrated and depressed do often find that God seems far away from them. However, it could be that they feel that way because God is far from them, rather than that God is far from them because they feel that way.

I would not have described myself as having a spiritual inferiority complex. What I do say about myself is that I seem to be spiritually blind, deaf and maybe dead. I suppose you could interpret that by saying that my spiritual state is inferior, but I have never thought of it in that way. And I never saw it as a burden. A problem, yes. A problem that perhaps only God can solve. But not a burden.

So I have not given my so-called spiritual inferiority to God, but I have certainly brought my spiritual emptiness and my lack of spiritual awareness to God, and other people have prayed for me in the same way. It has not given me spiritual confidence, however.

On April 23rd I found a way for at least part of me to trust God again, after many years of being completely unable to trust God. The help that allowed me to trust again was a suggestion quite similar to yours, that I should put all of my “spiritual baggage” aside and come to God without it. That is what I did, and it allowed me to trust again. Yet none of those blessings that you mention came to me. There was no new life in Jesus, no joy and no freedom.

Of course, after the failure of my second attempt to be a Christian in April and May, my “spiritual baggage” is not quite the same as it used to be. In a sense my recent experience has made things clearer to me. It has certainly eliminated a lot of possible explanations for my failure to find God, and that should prevent me exploring too many dead ends. Unfortunately the suggestion that I should leave my spiritual baggage at the cross seems to be one of those eliminated dead ends. Sorry.

To nothingssomething.

I have still not been able to download anything from the link you give.

If as you say it lasts for an hour, then I would probably not be able to download it and hear it anyway. You need broadband to deal with files of that kind of size.

To TexasGirl06.

Looking at it from your point of view, I would agree with you that God created me as a very intelligent person. But God also apparently created me a person who is unable to feel emotions except very weakly, and therefore a person without a “heart”. I say this because I was probably born with the physiological condition that robs me of emotions and feelings. In other words, God created me to be a person with a massive imbalance between my intellect (mind) and my emotions (heart). So there is no point telling me to use my mind less, or to use my heart more, because clearly that would be the opposite of what God intends for me.

You suggest that I should become like a little child, pretend that I know just about nothing about any religious thing, and be a blank slate. Will I do that? No, definitely not. I believe that it would be deceitful and sinful to pretend in such a way. It would be bad enough pretending to anyone. But pretending to God? Are you serious?

You then tell me that sometimes being smart can get in the way. Yes, I have been told that before. But I do not believe a word of it. I suspect that it is simply people trying to find a reason why I have not managed to find God, and they blame it on my intelligence. Are you really telling me that an intelligent person is going to have problems getting to know God? There are many extremely intelligent people in the church, and there have been from the beginning. Paul, for example.

You tell me to allow the Lord into my heart. It sounds good advice, but how do I do it? Back in April and May this year when I was trusting God, was I in some way preventing the Lord from entering my heart? I am sorry, but I do not understand what you are trying to tell me here. The words sound great, but to me they do not make sense.

You also wrote that the Lord loves me and that he wants to heal my heart. Now that would be wonderful. This where I am in total agreement with you. As I wrote above, there is a massive imbalance between my mind and my heart. The solution is not to put aside my mind, but to heal my heart.

I do not believe that being smart is getting in the way of finding God. I do believe that my lack of emotions and therefore the lack of a “heart” is much more significant. Christians sometimes tell me not to rely on my feelings. I think they are wrong. It seems to me that it must be essential to rely on feelings, and my problem is that because I do not have feelings, I am missing out on the things of God.

So yes, please do pray for my physiological condition to be cured so that I can have emotions just like everyone else. Of course it may take me a while to get used to dealing with them, because I was not able to learn to deal with emotions as a child, but at least I would be able to say that at last I had a “heart”.

 

[united4Peace]

Thank you all for your contributions.

To Teke.
You wrote this:
My advice is to go experience God in worship. I'd recommend an Eastern Orthodox church because it sounds as tho not only do you need the worship experience, but some spiritual guidance from a spiritual father.
In other words, you need the full mind, body and heart experience of God with His people. ie. worship
Your mother the Church will teach you as she teaches all children of God.
Christian worship leaves me completely cold. During the time when I was trusting God in April and May I did my best to get involved in worship, but despite trying I just could not get involved. I think that I could relate to one or two lines of one of the pieces of Christian music, but that is all. The other people there might have said that they were having a full mind, body, soul and heart experience. Or maybe they were just enjoying the experience of worship in a way that I was not. All I know is that it did absolutely nothing for me.

I also asked for spiritual guidance from a spiritual leader who I had seen being effective at helping some other people. He prayed with me and it was completely the wrong prayer; no help at all.

To jesusfreak_2008
You wrote this:
You must be patient with the Lord. He will answer You in His timing! In the meantime, keep perservering in your prayer life. Just because God hasn't touched you yet doesn't mean He won't! He will! You need to keep chasing after God and keeping asking in prayer and in faith, for Him to move in your life. Just praying for God to touch you in two weeks time is not going to do it. Con't to perserve, study and mediate on the Word, and attend a good Holy Spirit driven church where other memebers can also pray for you.
Luke 11: 9,10
"And so I tell you keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."
This verse clearly explains that if you keep on chasing after the Lord and if you are persistent with your prayers, then the Lord is going to answer you. You must have patience and wait on Him to act. Psalm 37:7 "Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for Him to act."
If you are patient, humble, and persistent with the Lord then He is going to answer you when you least expect it!
In April and May this year I spent two weeks able to trust God, and during this time I did a lot of praying, Bible reading, meeting with people from a good Holy Spirit driven church and so on. I agree that two weeks is not long. But I also spent almost two years trusting God in the 1970s, also without God touching me. I know of someone who has spent over twenty years praying and trusting God and still has received absolutely nothing from God. I am sorry but going on praying just does not work. I know that the verses in Luke say if we keep on knocking and asking God will answer, but that is not the way that it happened for me. I now firmly believe that it is not of any value for me to keep chasing after God and to keep on trying to pray, especially as I no longer have any faith. That does not seem to be the way to get God to move in my life. Besides, Jesus also told his disciples not to use vain repetition.

Instead I am simply waiting for God to act, as in the second part of Psalm 37:7. The hard part is the first part of the verse, being in the presence of the Lord, because so far in my life I have been unable to find the Lord and to get into the presence of the Lord.

To nothingssomething.

Sorry but my computer would not let me download or listen to whatever may be available on that link.

To united4Peace

I am familiar with the poem footprints. It sounds great but my life is not like that poem.

There are some people who are quite happy to have a God who walks along beside them but does not interfere in their personal lives and does not do anything special for them. I am not interested in such a God. I want to serve God, and for that I need personal guidance about how God wants me to serve. That implies a God who acts, a God that I have a personal relationship with. Anything less than that is, for me, not worth having.

Losthope

The God that I refer to...I do have a personal relationship with...
She/He is a God I can talk to, yell at, cry with, etc...
and Im not afraid that He/She is going to damn me to Hell...but instead wrap his/her loving arms around me and let me have that long hard cry or laugh...
God walk beside me...lets me learn on my own...
Life is a Journey eh...Good and Bad come with it

That's all I can give to you...your choice whether to take the advice...

I will say God is there...whether you choose to believe it or not...
You may not believe in God...but God believes in you

 

[tsubasa]

If thinking with your head rather than your heart is how you are, then that is how God made you, and I think that it is the key to forging a relationship with Him. Have you tried, rather than worship through music and other traditional approaches, worship through study? Read the Bible, read the study guides, communicate with God on an intellectual level.

A relationship with Him doesn't have to be all singing, all dancing. It's about belief, respect and trust. If you believe in God, if you respect His judgements and trust in Him then you have a relationship with Him.

Just my opinion.

 

[losthope]

Thank you for your contributions.

To Johnnz.
You wrote this;
Did you have a happy or unhappy childhood?
Do things like beauty, or great music affect you in any way. If not, what does?

I would not regard my childhood as particularly happy or particularly unhappy.

I appreciate things like beauty and great music, but I would not say that they affect me as such. Not in the way that some people have described it to me. Is there anything that affects me greatly? Nothing positive, that I can think of. Sometimes things like cruelty and injustice affect me briefly, but any feelings that may occur last only for a few seconds.

To Catherineanne (and united4Peace).
You wrote this:
It is not possible that you have no feelings whatever.
You may well have a condition which numbs your emotional responses, such as PTSD, but unless you are dead, you have feelings. Otherwise how can you be so disappointed about not finding God? That is a feeling.

Sorry about the PTSD and emotional numbing. I know that it can affect people for a very long time. I hope that you are receiving the help that you need.

I do not have PTSD and emotional numbing. I have a brain tumour that is not life-threatening but it affects many of my hormones. In particular I do not produce the hormones that are needed to cause the bodily feelings that are part of emotions. That means that I can “think” emotions but not “feel” them. I was probably born with this condition, and sometimes I say to Christians that if I was born with it, then presumably God put it there in me for a reason. That was how God created me, without feelings. The only feelings that I can get occasionally are quite weak, and they are produced by the replacement hormones that I have to take every day. But those replacement hormones seem to be used up within a few seconds, and so the feelings disappear rapidly.

I describe myself as disappointed about not finding God. But straightaway after accepting a few weeks ago that I had not found God I just carried on with my life as before, with no emotional effects on me as far as I am aware. Was my disappointment a feeling? I thought of it more as an intellectual situation. If there were any feelings, they were rather weak.

You also wrote this:
Assuming you have emotional numbing, why do you expect God to overcome this damage in one fell swoop?

You are like a blind man saying, "I want to see God" and making your seeing a precondition of your belief. Part of our faith is accepting the cross that we have been given, and learning to bow to it. Much of what you say is still emotional blackmail. You want God to heal your pain, and in return you offer your belief. It has to be the other way round.

You seem to imply that I have made being cured as a precondition of my faith. A type of emotional blackmail. If so, then I apologise for giving you that impression. My faith is most definitely not tied to any healing of my lack of feelings. Indeed, in April and May this year I was trusting God and not even asking for my lack of emotions to be dealt with.

In April and May I and others did pray for my spiritual eyes and ears to be opened, so that I could become aware of what God was doing for me. But once again, I started to trust God first, and it was only later that I started to pray for spiritual awareness. There is no question of my trust depending on first receiving healing.

I was able to trust for about two weeks in April and May, but I could not continue to trust for longer than that. The reason was that my faith was weak because my faith had come from within myself. As far as I am aware my faith was not a gift from God. But my own strength is limited. I needed something from God to sustain and strengthen my faith. That is a simple statement of fact, that my faith was weak. It is nothing to do with emotional blackmail.

You do not know me, and so perhaps you cannot appreciate just how huge a change in me it was for me to be able to trust God at all. After 31 years of not being able to trust, it was absolutely amazing to trust God. Even though I knew that I still had massive doubts. Even though I still remembered those two years in the 1970s of struggling to maintain my faith despite receiving nothing from God. Despite this, I was able to trust again. I realised of course just how vulnerable my faith was. In the 1970s my faith had collapsed after two years because I never received anything from God that I was aware of. In 2007 my faith was much weaker than in the 1970s, and it lasted only for two weeks. Once again I received nothing from God that I was aware of. Of course during my two weeks of faith my prayers included praying to God to respond to me. I knew just how important it was that my faith should be strengthened. Those prayers were not answered, and eventually my faith faded away. But please, there is no suggestion that I was demanding something from God in exchange for having faith. If my own strength had been greater, perhaps I would still be clinging on to faith now. But my faith was weak, and it gradually left me.

You wrote this:
I do not experience God through my feelings, therefore, but through my intellect and reason, and through my compassion for other people.

I wish it was the same for me. I would be only too happy to experience God through my intellect and reason, and through compassion for other people. But I do not experience God. So far God has not touched my intellect and reason, as far as I am aware. As for compassion, I spend a great deal of my time working as a volunteer helping people in need, but it has not helped me to know God.

You wrote this:
You also suggested that my comment that God speaks through other Christians is 'twisting our faith'. Again, this is not the case. It is a commonplace of our faith that God not only can, but often does, speak through Christians. It is also a sad fact that this voice of God is ignored more often than it is listened to, because it is not what the listener wants to hear.

These words of yours worried me. Had I really written that your comment was “twisting our faith”? I checked, and no, I had not written that. The phrase I used was “twisting the use of language”.

I am sorry that I seem to be confusing you. I agree with you that God can speak through Christians. In fact, if I did not think that, I would not be contributing to “Christian Forums”. I contribute because I hope that God will in some way speak to me through a Christian on the forum, by giving them wisdom or a word of knowledge as gifts of the Holy Spirit.

What I meant, but perhaps did not explain very well, in my earlier posting was that I was not aware of anything coming from God in the messages from Christians. From Christians close to God, perhaps, but from Christians nevertheless. That is why I said that they were from Christians, not from God.

In post #35 you wrote this:
There is nowhere on earth, nowhere in the whole Universe, which is not in the presence of the Lord.
What you lack is only the feeling about the reality, but the reality is there, whether you feel it or not.

I would not say that I lack a feeling about the reality of the presence of the Lord. What I lack is any awareness of the presence of the Lord.

You also wrote this:
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.
You are constrained in the first part. I would recommend turning to the second part, and loving those around you as Christ loves you, and see whether you can find God there instead. I personally see God whenever I look into another person's eyes, and see them looking back at me with love. Christ became man so that whenever we serve anyone at all, we are serving him. So find God around you.
It is a great idea, but unfortunately it has not worked for me. As I wrote above, I do serve people in need. I would not say that I love the people that I serve as Christ loves me, but I do have compassion for them. Though unlike you I do not see God in other people’s eyes. And I do not think of it as serving God.

 

[losthope]

Thank you to both of you for your words about having a relationship with God. In a sense the relationships that you describe are very different from one another. But so what? You are very different people, and so it is no surprise to me that you relate to God in different ways. As tsubasa writes, it doesn’t have to be all singing, all dancing. It can be at any level: intellectual, emotional, conversational, musical, praising, or whatever is needed at the time and is appropriate to the person and to God.

Of course there are some areas where you are in complete agreement. In particular, the importance of believing in God and of communicating with God.

united4Peace describes some ways of behaving towards God: talking to God, yelling at God, crying and laughing. And how God might respond: loving arms around you, walking beside you, letting you learn on your own. It sounds to me something like having God as a special friend, and that’s great.

tsubasa suggests some different ways of behaving towards God: reading the Bible, using study guides, respecting God’s judgements, trusting in God, communicating with God on an intellectual level.

Effective communication has to be two-way. In other words, it is not just about how a person communicates with God, but also about how God communicates with the person. I appreciate that Christians say that God communicates with everyone in a general way, for example by revealing to them the wonder of creation or through the words of the Bible. However, if we are talking about a personal relationship with God, that means God communicating on a personal basis.

united4Peace, you write of God’s arms around you and of God walking alongside. I have to ask, are you aware of God acting in these and other ways? Or are you not aware of them but you trust that they are happening? Or are they a way of describing some kind of spiritual experience?

tsubasa, you say nothing about how God communicates on a personal basis. You say that if I have belief in God, respect for God’s judgements and trust in God, then I have a relationship with God. I have to say that is sounds rather one-sided unless God responds in some way. I would not call it a relationship unless it was two sided, and that implies God responding.

I know that there are lots of different ways in which I could communicate with God. But to me, none of them are of any use at all unless God responds and communicates with me in some way – and I recognise that there are many ways in which God could communicate with me. My problem is, that so far despite 41 years of prayers and twice having a time when I was believing and trusting God, I am not aware of any response of any kind from God.

To give an analogy, a teenager might speak or talk to a picture of their favourite singer, yell at them, cry and laugh, study them, respect their judgements and trust them. Would you describe that as a relationship? The teenager might, but I certainly would not, because it is all one-sided.

There are many Christians who tell me that most people do not really have a personal relationship or fellowship with God, that it is just a way of speaking. That only a very few people really get a personal response from God, and that the rest of us just have to believe and trust and hope, and that we will know God in the next life. I know this because they have replied to me in this kind of way in previous threads in Christian Forums.

If being a Christian was like that, I would not be interested. I have no interest in life after death. For me, the more abundant life has to start here in this life, involving a two-way personal relationship with God. Tell me, is that too much to ask of God?

But how can I find that abundant life?