Trying to accept Christ

Besides obvious advice like reading the Bible, just find a church where you can believe the message and start attending. This was the advice of Pascal and William James. Faith involves some level of commitment, and if you don't know how to do that, it helps to have other people show you how to do that.

Ruien said:

Hello all. Here's my introduction: I was raised without religion. In my early teens I became interested in the idea of God, and I began attending an evangelical church with one of my friends. I enjoyed it because it felt purposeful, but even there I never felt that I had any direct or true connection to God. My family moved to a different state not long after that, and I lost my fleeting connection to religion, and my interest in it as anything other than an anthropological curiosity.

Long story short: I'm now--twenty five years later, and married with two kids--seeking to cultivate a Christian life. I don't know if I'm trying to "become" a Christian, but I am trying to cultivate faith. I want to believe. I find it incredibly hard to believe, I guess because I have no idea how to even start. I know how to study, and I know how to work, but I don't know how to just "believe." But I have a desire, and I think it's an honest desire, so I will attend church services and see if I can get myself on a path to real faith.

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You are, quite frankly, very fortunate to have been raised without religion. As bad religion does so much damage to folks.

To believe: read the Gospels. Throw out all preconceptions.

The fact is in many nations today, it is good for a social life to go to a church.

I think few would have the personal honesty to be concerned about that, as you are expressing here.

Is God real -- is the whole book for real?

Yes.

I promise you and guarantee it.

(Does that mean all which is popularly believed is real? 'Wide is the road which is named Destruction, and many who take it'.)


But, the basic nuts and bolts? Immortality. Heavenly joy. Jesus and angels and Heaven? Yes.

Main thing to know: stick with Scriptures and set to have a personal relationship with Christ. Be forgiving and merciful enough in judgment to overlook unnecessary stupidity one sees propagated by one's church. But try and find a reasonable church.

To the original poster:
What do you believe right now? I mean, I assume that you do have some belief of some kind in something. For example, what are your thoughts about Jesus?

Ruien said:

I apologize for the lateness of my reply. Anyhow, your question David is a very interesting one. What do I do with my guilt? I guess my first response is, my guilt about what? I do not feel guilty for not (yet, I hope) having achieved a meaningful understanding of God, or a relationship with God, or with Jesus Christ. To use an apt metaphor, I don't feel like I've failed any exam. I feel like I haven't taken the exam yet. I feel like I don't even know if an exam exists.

I guess I have wasted opportunities in my life. Why didn't I seek out God/Jesus earlier? Why did I turn away from God/Jesus in my teenage years? Well, I know where my political and philosophical predilections led me to, and I know how and why I have changed. I don't really see what guilt has to do with it, though.

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Hi Ruien, I never have a problem with any delays in replying because we all have lives apart from this place, I hope

That said, if you don't feel guilty about anything, about the sins you've committed (the times that you know you've done things that God didn't want you to do, for instance, the times you've lied/deceived, hurt or cheated others, etc.), I suppose my next question would be, why do you feel like you need a "Savior"? What would you want Him to forgive and save you from?

Thanks!

In Christ,
David
p.s. - when I said that you seemed to be missing the proverbial, "elephant in the room", a few posts back ~here~, this is the "elephant" that I was actually referring to.

Ruien, I have to tell you that you are one of a handful of the most respectful and polite non-Christians/seekers in here.

Ruien said:

Hello all. Here's my introduction: I was raised without religion. In my early teens I became interested in the idea of God, and I began attending an evangelical church with one of my friends. I enjoyed it because it felt purposeful, but even there I never felt that I had any direct or true connection to God. My family moved to a different state not long after that, and I lost my fleeting connection to religion, and my interest in it as anything other than an anthropological curiosity.

Long story short: I'm now--twenty five years later, and married with two kids--seeking to cultivate a Christian life. I don't know if I'm trying to "become" a Christian, but I am trying to cultivate faith. I want to believe. I find it incredibly hard to believe, I guess because I have no idea how to even start. I know how to study, and I know how to work, but I don't know how to just "believe." But I have a desire, and I think it's an honest desire, so I will attend church services and see if I can get myself on a path to real faith.

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It sounds like the seed has been planted. I believe faith will grow because the desire indicates a sprouting seed. Just remember that it takes time and nourshment. The seed isn't magical like in Jack and the beanstalk. Keep going to church and hopefully to a small Bible study.

Ruien said:

This is a really hard question to answer. I didn't think it would be but I've started and erased my response to this question a few times and I haven't got further toward an answer. So here's a fumbling sort of reply: I *want* to believe in God. I think I do believe in God. I know that I have spent parts of my life angrily denying the existence of God, and as I look back I think I was at war with myself more than anything. For some reason I wanted to force myself to confront some ultimate truth. And now, years later, I feel like I have my arms wide open to God, but I'm waiting for an embrace. That is so selfish, I know.

I need to pray more sincerely. I need to mean it. Honestly I don't know why it's so hard.

As for Jesus, I tend to approach this as an exercise of philosophical identity rather than anything else. (I guess I don't know what other options there are for understanding Jesus.) Jesus is the son of God and God himself. Okay. I am accepting of this idea. For reasons I have stated elsewhere on CF, I am not only willing to believe this, but eager to believe this. The truth is though that I don't really know what it means. I don't know if it's helpful to think of this all as a sort of mysticism or... what.

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Thanks for the reply.

I think it's important to remember that true faith has nothing to do with feelings. Feelings change all the time, and it seems that a lot of people in society try to rate the truth of something by how they feel. Do they feel close to God? Do they feel distant from God? Do they feel like God loves them? Etc.

This is true about relationships as well. Do they feel loved by their spouse? Do they feel in love? Etc.

It can be very dangerous to evaluate these things based on feelings. Of course it is nice to feel these things -- it is nice to feel close to God. However, as hard as it might be, God's truthfulness is not based on those feelings. It can be a nice bonus, but it shouldn't be the guiding principal of our faith. Feelings will eventually let you down.

So, that being said -- have you told God through prayer what you are thinking and feeling? Have you asked Him to help you believe and have faith in Him? That's where I would start. It is okay to cry out to God and let Him know you want to know Him. I think He wants that from us humans. He wants us to be honest with Him. Tell God you want to believe in Him.

Then, don't look for feelings, but look for God's truth. Read your Bible (maybe starting with some of the Gospels and NT letters. Lots of people suggest starting with John. Then, pray about what you read. Maybe even pray before you read, asking for God to help you understand what you are about to read.

Attend church and a Bible study or small group. Get to know some of the people there. Ask them to pray for you and with you. Ask them questions.

Don't be too harsh on yourself for not trusting in God earlier in your life. It sounds like God is bringing you away from those times, and He is leading you to something else. God is willing to forgive your rebellion. That's the whole purpose of Jesus coming here as a human. Your past sins can be forgiven, if you would only place your trust in Him and accept His free gift.

I believe God will embrace you if you truly seek Him out. (Again, remember feelings should not be the judge of God's truthfulness. Trust in God for what He says about Himself in Scripture.)

Have you accepted what Jesus did for you on the cross? Do you believe that He died for your sins and rose again?

Ruien said:

Hello all. Here's my introduction: I was raised without religion. In my early teens I became interested in the idea of God, and I began attending an evangelical church with one of my friends. I enjoyed it because it felt purposeful, but even there I never felt that I had any direct or true connection to God. My family moved to a different state not long after that, and I lost my fleeting connection to religion, and my interest in it as anything other than an anthropological curiosity.

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If God is a Person, and if He is the Person revealed to us in the Bible, then you cannot have a "direct or true connection" to Him without knowing Him personally any more than you could have such a connection to any person you didn't actually know. God isn't just an interesting idea, a religious theory to help us deal with our existential angst. He can - and must - be known personally. You didn't know God (though, perhaps you heard some things about Him) as a teenager so it is no surprise that, in time, you shelved Him and Christianity as an "anthropological curiosity."

Ruien said:

Long story short: I'm now--twenty five years later, and married with two kids--seeking to cultivate a Christian life. I don't know if I'm trying to "become" a Christian, but I am trying to cultivate faith. I want to believe.

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Believe what, exactly? That God exists? That He can be known personally? If the Bible is true, and if He is as the Bible reveals Him to be, coming to genuinely believe that revelation will turn your world upside down. The cost to your present worldview and value system may be very high. God demands all of you. He demands that you take the lower position before Him and submit to His will and way. Are you willing to go all in? Or are you content to continue to treat God as just a philosophical/religious aid to living as you want to live? If this is your goal, the God revealed in Scripture will remain beyond you. God enters human lives as He is: the Ground of All Reality, the Supreme Being, the Maker and Sustainer of the Universe. There is no other place such a Being can have in your life but its very center. Are you willing to give up that place where you presently sit to Him? That's the deal.

Ruien said:

Aiki, you're right. The more I think and the more I develop the habit of sincere prayer, the more I am realizing this. I have had some moments of prayer that were so wonderful and beautiful that they brought tears to my eyes. I feel like I have caught glimpses of God, and through these glimpses as well as through following the logic of apologists like Ravi Zacharias, I have been developing my faith in God and I feel much more grounded in this faith than I did last fall when I first posted here.

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I'm glad to hear you're moving toward God as you consider the logic of the Christian faith and institute certain spiritual practices like prayer. But the logic and spiritual practices of the faith are not God Himself. It is He who is the Center, the Bottom Line, the Point, of the Christian life. You will miss entirely what Christianity is if you fail to meet directly with Him. I say all this to warn you that it is very easy to get the cart before the horse and substitute - quite innocently - the doctrines, practices and traditions of the faith for the Person all these things point to. At bottom it is not a faith into which you should ground yourself but, rather, the One who made you and loves you with a love that surpasses understanding.

Revelation 3:20
20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

Ruien said:

And I'm realizing, as you pointed out, that faith in God means a lot more than a simple belief to be added to one's personal identity like supporting a political party or following a sports team. It's changing my entire perspective, my focus, my way of thinking and my way of seeing the world. So far the changes are inconsistent and they do not feel permanent. I'm realizing that it takes effort to sustain the change, or to develop it so thoroughly in my soul that I'm immune to the temptations of the selfish, lazy, and destructive habits I've indulged in.

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See, God does not intend that you should make the changes in yourself that He wants to make. Like begets like. Dogs beget dogs, cats beget cats, and you beget more of you. God's desire is not that you would be more like yourself but more like Christ: holy, faithful, righteous, just, loving, truthful, etc. But God is the only One who can beget godliness, who can beget the character of Christ, in you. So long as you try to do for yourself what only God can do, inconsistency and impermanency will dog your steps. When God changes you, the change is natural and often so subtle and deep that you don't recognize that the changes He's making are happening. It's only looking back that you realize you are no longer who you once were. When the transformation God wants to see in us is torturous, and fraught with failure and frustration, and exhausting, it is because we are trying to do for God rather than allowing Him to do for us; we are trying to live a godly life in our own strength which is - as we come to realize sooner or later - impossible.

Ruien said:

I feel like learning to develop a relationship with God is a journey, and I'm happy and grateful to be on it. I'm also grateful that my wife, whom I met when I was a (deeply confused) atheist and who herself either ignores or dismisses faith and religion generally, is accepting of the changes I am trying to make in myself.

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Let God make the changes He wants to make in you. Your "job," if you like, is to get out of His way, to submit, surrender, yield, follow, receive and reflect. As He enables you to do so, to die that you might truly live, the bright, shining light of Christ will blaze from you like the Sun and your life will have fulfillment and joy that nothing else can give you.

John 12:24-26
24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.
25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.

Romans 12:1-2
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
2 And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

John 10:9-10
9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Ruien said:

However, the point that you make, that if God enters our lives he is either at its center or he is not there at all--this is one that I feel is going to be a difficult issue for us when it comes to our children. I am reading a children's bible with them and talking to them about God and how we can communicate with God through prayer. I don't know how far I can go on this path before she starts getting uncomfortable. ...I do need to have a candid talk with her about this, and try to invite her on this journey too.

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When sinners (and we are all sinners, young and old alike) meet their holy God, it is always uncomfortable. But it doesn't have to stay that way. We can move from the condemnation, guilt and shame of our sin to joyful communion with our Heavenly Father. The way is through Christ and his atoning work on the cross of Calvary. So, let me encourage you to endure the discomfort of talking about God and the demands He places upon us all with your children. On the far side of those discussions stands the Saviour and life.

John 17:3
3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Ruien,

Before I became a Christian I struggled with the meaning of “believe in Jesus.” Many times I tried to “believe” by building up within myself a sense of having strong faith in Jesus, and then I would say a prayer confessing my sin and asking God to forgive my sin and to save me “in Jesus' name.” Saying that prayer would give me some peace & assurance for a day or two, but soon the peace would be replaced with doubts & fear. I said that prayer many times, but could never find a lasting peace & assurance that God heard my prayer & saved me.

For several years I talked to Christians, preachers, teachers, and read salvation tracts & books, but found nothing that convinced me of the truth of God's Way of salvation. I could not make myself believe. I thought I would NEVER know how to believe in Jesus so that God would save me. My life was miserable until I gave up on myself and turned to God for help. I did find my answer one night as I read the Gospel of John, for the first time. The difference in that night and all the other things I had been doing was that I turned from myself to God, and that's what God wants us to do. God wants us to turn to Him & to rely on Him, and when I did that God's Holy Spirit literally opened my blind spiritual eyes and allowed me to see the truth found in His Word.

Please don't be offended if I say that I don't know if you are a believer or not, and I say that because explaining to an unbeliever how to believe in Jesus is difficult. The best way I know to explain it is to just describe my “experience” that night as I read through the Gospel of John and God's Spirit turned on the light for me and “I got it.” I saw that Jesus had already done everything that God required for my sins to be forgiven. I was convinced, I knew that when Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood there that my sins were nailed to that cross with Him and He paid the penalty for my sins “in full.” He paid my “sin debt” to God that I could never pay, and He also proved He is God by coming out of that grave and He is alive. God made a believer out of me; He gave me the saving faith I needed so that faith in myself, where I was trying to believe & saying prayers, was replaced with faith in Jesus' finished work on the cross. The best way I know to describe the kind of “believe” I found there is that I “believed” that message I read in the Gospel of John in the same way that whenever I look in a mirror I believe or I know that I am looking at myself.

The weakest faith is saving faith if the object of that faith is the Gospel message of the Cross.

The Holy Spirit will show you whatever it is you need to find your way to believing in Christ if you will only give up on "self" and seek Him. This scripture, Jeremiah 29:13, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” says that if you earnestly search after God you will find Him

Below are links to 2 articles that might help you with “believing.” They are sermons by the late Dr. John R Rice, and I consider them to the best source of information about believing, of course except for God's Word. I can give you more resources if you are interested. Again, God's Word is the best place to search for your answers.

1. How to Come to Jesus, by Dr. John R Rice

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=10522


2. What Must I do to be Saved, by Dr. John R Rice

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=10572


John

Ruien, I noticed you mentioned reading a children's' bible to your children. That's good, real good! Good for you, too!

Hey, don't know if you would be interested in a story "Do You See the Nails?" It's a story of a little boy's journey to finding genuine faith in Jesus as his savior. It's a short story you might read to your children. Just in case you might want to check it out I've listed the link below here at CF.

https://www.christianforums.com/threads/do-you-see-the-nails-revised.8046219/

John

Faith is a gift that God gives. The more we walk in faith, the more it grows.

Ruien said:

Hello all. Here's my introduction: I was raised without religion. In my early teens I became interested in the idea of God, and I began attending an evangelical church with one of my friends. I enjoyed it because it felt purposeful, but even there I never felt that I had any direct or true connection to God. My family moved to a different state not long after that, and I lost my fleeting connection to religion, and my interest in it as anything other than an anthropological curiosity.

Long story short: I'm now--twenty five years later, and married with two kids--seeking to cultivate a Christian life. I don't know if I'm trying to "become" a Christian, but I am trying to cultivate faith. I want to believe. I find it incredibly hard to believe, I guess because I have no idea how to even start. I know how to study, and I know how to work, but I don't know how to just "believe." But I have a desire, and I think it's an honest desire, so I will attend church services and see if I can get myself on a path to real faith.

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The most revolutionary aspect that will help is to take no thought about what the outward man thinks about God, the world is the same place with the same beliefs portrayed in Christ's walk through them, HE was called a heritick ect...buy the religious minded who were influenced by the observational teaching from tradition and rituals that have a temporal place until the revelation comes that you are the temple/church of the living God, which is why the temple made with hands was torn down because it had become an idol to the people instead of an outward sign portraying a inward truth 2 Corinthians 3:6. Once that light goes on the intent of scripture will show its spiritual truths about you being a Son of the living God asleep/prodigal in this world partaking of good and evil, two sides of the same coin.

Christ in you is the mystery since time began, cultures have labeled him as their own but He becomes all things to all people regardless of religious tradition that puts him in a secular time capsule. all men move and have our being in the unknown God hid in them Galatians 4:1, Romans 7:24 is called the state of death/sleep in ignorance that man is the only dwelling place of God in this world Acts 17:24, 1 Corinthians 3:16.

For a better understanding of Bible symbology watch Bill Donahue's videos on the biblical temple is the brain just like Paul and Jesus tells you you are the Kingdom Luke 17:20-21 and temple 1 Corinthians 3:16. He will make you think a little deeper than traditional thinking will allow, if its taboo to tradition you better check into it because it has some truth they can't hear, all things are in Christ yet how many know and believe He is in them! that's the where perfect Love cast out all fear imputed by religions dogmas judging by appearance that keeps their version of Christ separated from others which is impossible, The Father judges no man and seeks those who worship him in spirit, blessing as you walk through the valley of the "shadows of death" we all have to until we know who we are.

Ruien said:

Hello all. Here's my introduction: I was raised without religion. In my early teens I became interested in the idea of God, and I began attending an evangelical church with one of my friends. I enjoyed it because it felt purposeful, but even there I never felt that I had any direct or true connection to God. My family moved to a different state not long after that, and I lost my fleeting connection to religion, and my interest in it as anything other than an anthropological curiosity.

Long story short: I'm now--twenty five years later, and married with two kids--seeking to cultivate a Christian life. I don't know if I'm trying to "become" a Christian, but I am trying to cultivate faith. I want to believe. I find it incredibly hard to believe, I guess because I have no idea how to even start. I know how to study, and I know how to work, but I don't know how to just "believe." But I have a desire, and I think it's an honest desire, so I will attend church services and see if I can get myself on a path to real faith.

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Read Psalm 51 and make that your prayer. That is your starting point to true repentance and saving faith.