I'll freepmail you.
I treat people well, but others have a hard time doing the same in return.
I don't rely on God to grant me a "tomorrow". Prayers and hope do nothing for me anymore.
My guess is that there are millions of stories like this one. The only thing I can say is that God continually shows himself in my life. I struggle just like the next person but God never fails to accept me.
...what's a primitive baptist?
...and no, I've never had a supernatural experience of any sort.
BTW, your story great :) All the best to you and Happy Thanksgiving.
My story is this. I was sitting on the couch in the living room with a purring cat on my lap. My boyfriend at the time was sitting next to me. He was a Morman. He asked me if I would like for him to pray to the holy spirit. I said, "Yes."
He started praying. My first inclination that something was happening was the cat stopped purring. A glorious light filled my eyes. My face broke into the widest smile I've ever felt, before or since, and I felt a complete love, joy, happiness, fill me. I think I was looking into the face of the Christ.
This is the best I can write this experience. There was much, much more to it.
As an aside, the boyfriend turned out to be a complete nutter, I'm talking looney bin-type crazy. But the experience was real so ............. who knows?
Was this the kind of experience you were asking about?
My story is a long one, but I'll try to give the short version.
After graduating from college (all the while drinking, some drugs), I moved to Los Angeles. While there met some people in new age and occult teachings and generally I sank lower and lower.
Finally reached a point and called out to God one day (hadn't prayed in years)...a cry for help, a real plea.
God heard my prayer. Over the next few months, I ended up going through some experiences that made me realize this-- the only thing that REALLY matters in life is do you know the Lord? Are you ready to meet Him?
I realized I wasn't. I picked up a Bible that was at my parent's house and began reading.
I was reading one day in the New Testament when all of the sudden the scripture verse practically "jumped" off the page. The truth of that verse became alive...in that moment of time I was made to realize that the Bible is the true word of God, and that Jesus truly is the Saviour of the world.
I became aware of the wrong things in my life and realized they were actually wrong...sinful. But at the same time it was given to me to see that was why Jesus had come and given His life...He died for my sins, so that I could be forgiven. That was the price paid for the sins of the world..His life was given so that we could have mercy and everlasting life.
I prayed then and there asking for God's mercy and forgiveness for every wrong thing I had ever done in my life. And I asked Jesus to come live in my heart by His Spirit, I opened my heart to Him.
And as I prayed, after a while a peace came over my heart and mind--the most wonderful peace I've ever experienced. I knew I was forgiven of my sins. I knew God had heard my prayer. I knew I finally had peace with God.
I slept like a baby that night, and ever since then, now years later, the Lord has had me continuing to study the Bible and pray.
And the amazing thing too was after that night I no longer had any desire to do drugs, no desire to drink (I liked to party, liked to keep drinking and drinking). I even lost the desire to smoke cigarettes.
And, of course, there was no longer any need to search for "truth" -- It (or rather He) had found me. So, I began studying God's word, the Bible.
If you really want to get closer to God, do start reading the New Testament...and also praying, asking the Lord for your own personal experience--but mostly just to be closer to Him.
Hope this helps. And this actually is the short version!
Thank you very much for sharing your story.
I had sort of a "second hand" experience with God, but it was sufficient for me. When I was in college, my grandfather (who had been ill with Alzheimer's for several years) passed away, and appeared to me that night in a dream to tell me goodbye. I did not have any word beforehand that he had died, and the news did not reach my family until about 10 am the next day. I asked around later, and none of the rest of my family had any similar experience -- I was the only one. I was not particularly close to my grandfather, but I have always felt this was the most loving thing he had ever done for me. Since that night, I have never doubted in the existence of an afterlife, and therefore, I have also never doubted the existence of God. It has made a big difference in my life.
I was raised in a Baptist Church. I didn't become a Christian until I was 41. The Holy Spirit can touch you in a place you didn't know you had a place. A supernatural experience convinces you of a body of supernatural truth. You can't do what Romans 10:9 says without the touch and help of the Holy Spirit of the Living God.
Life has been good to me, but I admit there have been things I wish could have changed.
I wish my heart hadn't been broken so badly by a long-term girlfriend.
I wish I had taken a different career path, since I know I am more capable than I am able to be in my work.
I wish I hadn't got married to my first wife (ex-wife).
I wish I'd studied harder in school, since I know I was capable of much better.
BUT.........
Everytime I interact with my 4-year-old daughter, I realize that there is nothing about my life I would change, if it would mean I wouldn't have her. I now know that my life is the way it is because of her.
While I admit, this doesn't go hand-in-hand with your original question, it is important (for me) to know that I am thoroughly convinced of the presence and importance if God in my life.
My personal viewpoint is that God is the stage master. He directs the circumstances by which the world works. Rarely, if ever, does he get involved directly, but his influence is ever present, even if it is subtle.
I wrote the following back in 2003:
Well, since you asked . . . I was brought up in the reform Jewish tradition, Bar Mitzvah’d in 1963 and confirmed in 1964. During high school, I began dabbling in Hinduism (studying the Bagavhad Gita, reading SIddhartha and learning to play the sitar). After discovering Ayn Rand in my early twenties, I subsequently became a confirmed atheist, and remained so for almost two decades.
During the 1980s, my layman’s interest in physics, particularly my efforts to understand the theories of Albert Einstein, led me to contemplate the implications of the unified field theory -- a single mathematical equation that describes every process in the universe. Einstein spent the last years of his life trying unsuccessfully to discover that formula, and although modern physics has yet to establish this Holy Grail of everything, I believe that it will one day be found. Stephen Hawkings has said that the discovery of this formula would be equivalent to “reading the mind of God.”
I also found an interesting book on “Financial Success though Creative Thought,” which began by stating a position of “Monism” -- the realization that everything that exists is all one thing. The author, whose name was not given (the book was written around 1905 or so), referred to the universe as being a manifestation of “the Universal Thought Substance.”
Through such readings, and through my study of acoustics in connection with my earlier pursuit of a music degree, I eventually came to realize that the entire universe, which at the subatomic level is not solid, is nothing more than one incredible concept. We experience it physically because our brain interprets its sensory input that way, as a way of making order our of the stimulus. But just as there are only vibrations of air molecules, which we perceive as music, the actual music has no reality. Neither does what comes to us through the other senses – touch, taste, smell and so forth.
To me this fact implies a single, universal mind at the core of creation. Once I had that insight, I felt I could no longer scientifically justify my atheism – especially since at about the same time, while I was training for my black belt in Korean Zen Sword, I began to notice that when modern physicists try to put their mathematical formulas into English, they end up sounding a lot like Zen Buddhists.
Of course, try as I might, I really couldn’t grasp the implications of all this intellectually since it really can’t be done. But in the early ‘90s, reeling a catastrophic business failure and a simultaneous great personal disaster, the only way I could find comfort was by spending hours alone in the chapel at Boston’s famous Mt. Auburn Cemetery, where day after day I would walk among the tombstones or sit in the chapel sobbing and praying out loud for relief from my great pain. I experienced the healing that I felt there as finding my connection to God on a heart level.
To this day, when I feel the need for spiritual renewal, I head to the nearest cemetery by myself and pray to God for strength, wisdom, courage and guidance.
So when asked today what my religion is, I tell people that I am a “Cemeterian.”
I was fading in and out of conciousness when I saw a man dressed in robes standing in clouds who looked an awful lot like Jesus as portrayed in most images.
I realized I had been praying, and continued, saying "If this is your will, I can only comply. If not, there is much I have left to do here."
He said to me, " Go Back. It is not yet your time."
From there I started coughing up gobs of crud which even amazed the RTs, and within a day I was released.
Someday I will see him again, and it will be my time.
Until then, there is much to do...
I have never heard the voice of God, even in my head or in my dreams. But I have prayed to God in difficult times, prayed quietly and privately in ways that I deemed right for me. Since I have survived those difficult times, I am not one to discount prayer. I am not a religious man, but I like to think that I am a spiritual man.
Best to just listen.
But what was really interesting was that when I went in the church, and saw all the people standing around in concern, I got this feeling. It is hard to describe. It was like an inner warmth and a feeling of absolute peace.
Anyway, as she woke up she for some reason fixated on me and looked puzzled (like "who is this guy?"). I am just a First Responder, and there was a Paramedic and EMT there and I figured I was just in the way, so I left the building. I've never been back there, but I've always wondered if I went back would it feel the same way.
Yes. "In Him we live and move and have our being."
ping for later.