Stop meeting the creed and meet God
As I have browsed this site and read the 'testimonies' of the uncoverting people here...I notice several things. Most here believe Christianity is a set of rules or guidelines that you live by. Every group of people gathered has expectations of those within the gathering and to not adhere to those expectations means you are somewhat ousted from the group....except in "your" churches where you expected these people to accept you no matter how you presented yourself...people are people and they fail each other.
So here is what the truth really is about. Stop meeting the creed and meet God. It's about trusting IN JESUS not about what you can do for God.
Stop following people or churches and their dogma's. Jesus said take up your cross and follow me...not Tom, Dick, and Harry.
The Bible says you will be presented with the trial of your faith in order to prove to you, not God whether you really have trusted him and have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Sadly, most of you here know the answer to this question. You were never saved. That is why you didn't last. That is why you got offended and quit...a person who truly has the Spirit of God in them cannot quit....What is in him will not be overcome by anything in this world. Those who do not overcome the trials or at least get through them with there faith in god either stronger or more resolute...never had true faith in the first place.....because of the reason I stated before.
Here is the deal. 10 commandment show you and I are all guilty...everyone has lied, everyone has stolen, everyone has at some time lusted after that girl or guy that we wanted so bad. All have sinned. What churches are not teaching is that going to church, being baptised..it's all useless. You cannot fill a hole that goes on for eternity and that is the penalty for your sin. You have offended a pure, holy, infinite God. yeah, I know he is a God of love....but he is thrice HOLY....so his holiness outweighs his love 3 times. That's something else churches neglect. If I gave you a glass of water with a drop of sewage in it, it would turn your stomache and you'd be offended at me for even suggesting you drink it...yet you ask God to accept you with all your death from sin, into his holy eternity of life. Since the wages of sin is death, what can you do...you're dead. Dead men do not do anything...all that you do is null, void, vanity....God says even your works of righteousness are as filthy rags.
You are left with a question. You have tried church. You have tried putting Jesus on for this life and he failed you because things got tough, people didn't love you like they should have and life is just plain unfair. Join the club. Don't think I say this without my fair share of trials. In the last 6 years I have went through things that I couldn't imagine and are far worse than anything I've read on this site yet. But I am still a Christian because I didn't put Jesus on like suit for this life...I put Jesus on as a parachute for eternity...big difference in perspective.
Forget all this stuff about Jesus helping you with your marriage or your finances or whatever.....none of that applies to you until Jesus saves your soul from Hell.
The little banner over there talks about everyone being God's beloved creations and how could a good God send his beloved creations to Hell. Because he is HOLY and you are a rebel in the infinite presence of a holy God....his grace is on you now as you read this...because you should be in hell as you read this. You are a rebel. You believe yourself to be higher than God, more important than God. This life isn't about you. God made you for his pleasure, not for yours. While that may offend you, the fact is and will remain...one day you will die, you will not be received blameless before a HOLY God, you will be guilty of lying, you will be guilty of stealing, guilty of Lust...and in all those you will be guilty of setting yourself up over God making yourself as God. The fact is Jesus said do not be afraid of him who can destroy your body...but be very afraid of him who can destroy your body and soul.
There is only one thing and one thing only that changes a person so that no matter what happens, they are always a Christian...and that is truly believing in Jesus Christ for their payment of their guilt of their sins and accepting him as a Holy God and repenting from your sinful ways...it may sound cliche, and it may nauseate you.....but I've been through worse than most of the spoiled brats in here for the cause of Christ and I've had my fair share of temper tantrums with God, but when you belong to HIM, you ever let go because HE SAID...I will NEVER LEAVE YOU, NOR FORSAKE YOU....a true believer can't escape from God and become an unbeliever because God has sealed that promise with his own blood covenant. Only someone who never believed can escape and become an unbeliever because they never had that promise from God and so therefore are perfectly able to run away from God. You are not his, you are of your father the devil....Good Daddies never disown there blood children....I know, mine is still with me and we've been through Hell on earth.
Scott
So here is what the truth really is about. Stop meeting the creed and meet God. It's about trusting IN JESUS not about what you can do for God.
Stop following people or churches and their dogma's. Jesus said take up your cross and follow me...not Tom, Dick, and Harry.
The Bible says you will be presented with the trial of your faith in order to prove to you, not God whether you really have trusted him and have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Sadly, most of you here know the answer to this question. You were never saved. That is why you didn't last. That is why you got offended and quit...a person who truly has the Spirit of God in them cannot quit....What is in him will not be overcome by anything in this world. Those who do not overcome the trials or at least get through them with there faith in god either stronger or more resolute...never had true faith in the first place.....because of the reason I stated before.
Here is the deal. 10 commandment show you and I are all guilty...everyone has lied, everyone has stolen, everyone has at some time lusted after that girl or guy that we wanted so bad. All have sinned. What churches are not teaching is that going to church, being baptised..it's all useless. You cannot fill a hole that goes on for eternity and that is the penalty for your sin. You have offended a pure, holy, infinite God. yeah, I know he is a God of love....but he is thrice HOLY....so his holiness outweighs his love 3 times. That's something else churches neglect. If I gave you a glass of water with a drop of sewage in it, it would turn your stomache and you'd be offended at me for even suggesting you drink it...yet you ask God to accept you with all your death from sin, into his holy eternity of life. Since the wages of sin is death, what can you do...you're dead. Dead men do not do anything...all that you do is null, void, vanity....God says even your works of righteousness are as filthy rags.
You are left with a question. You have tried church. You have tried putting Jesus on for this life and he failed you because things got tough, people didn't love you like they should have and life is just plain unfair. Join the club. Don't think I say this without my fair share of trials. In the last 6 years I have went through things that I couldn't imagine and are far worse than anything I've read on this site yet. But I am still a Christian because I didn't put Jesus on like suit for this life...I put Jesus on as a parachute for eternity...big difference in perspective.
Forget all this stuff about Jesus helping you with your marriage or your finances or whatever.....none of that applies to you until Jesus saves your soul from Hell.
The little banner over there talks about everyone being God's beloved creations and how could a good God send his beloved creations to Hell. Because he is HOLY and you are a rebel in the infinite presence of a holy God....his grace is on you now as you read this...because you should be in hell as you read this. You are a rebel. You believe yourself to be higher than God, more important than God. This life isn't about you. God made you for his pleasure, not for yours. While that may offend you, the fact is and will remain...one day you will die, you will not be received blameless before a HOLY God, you will be guilty of lying, you will be guilty of stealing, guilty of Lust...and in all those you will be guilty of setting yourself up over God making yourself as God. The fact is Jesus said do not be afraid of him who can destroy your body...but be very afraid of him who can destroy your body and soul.
There is only one thing and one thing only that changes a person so that no matter what happens, they are always a Christian...and that is truly believing in Jesus Christ for their payment of their guilt of their sins and accepting him as a Holy God and repenting from your sinful ways...it may sound cliche, and it may nauseate you.....but I've been through worse than most of the spoiled brats in here for the cause of Christ and I've had my fair share of temper tantrums with God, but when you belong to HIM, you ever let go because HE SAID...I will NEVER LEAVE YOU, NOR FORSAKE YOU....a true believer can't escape from God and become an unbeliever because God has sealed that promise with his own blood covenant. Only someone who never believed can escape and become an unbeliever because they never had that promise from God and so therefore are perfectly able to run away from God. You are not his, you are of your father the devil....Good Daddies never disown there blood children....I know, mine is still with me and we've been through Hell on earth.
Scott
Comments
I believe Jesus, and he lives in me.... this by my subjective "unprovable" experiences, by personal relationship with him, and by the Word, which I believe is infallible and inerrant, and by his Holy Spirit.
I was raised in a cult... if you would like a narrow, legalistic, truly brainwashing experience, try one of those... it was a place where the actual gospel message was missing, and this was a group that used the Bible the way they wished to.... My personal experiences in mainstream Christian churches have, by and large, and certainly in comparison to the cult, been good... No brainwashing, no "preaching at you", no using the bible for one's own agenda.... I think about the Christian church and compare it to the false "church" in which I was raised.... what a breath of fresh air.
I have dealt with loneliness, depression, other issues while a member of a church body, but the church can't heal those issues, and people can't fix your problems, issues, etc.... those who believe can only point up and say "Jesus loves." And he does. And he does heal, though he isn't like a handyman mr. fixit. I welcome that reality not as a fanatic but as a child who loves her Father....
Life's not perfect because I have Jesus in it; he's perfect... life isn't.... i'm not, either. I'm glad to be redeemed, that's enough. And that brothers and sisters will join with me....I'm excited about that.... God is powerful enough that he doesn't need anybody to argue anybody into or out of belief. Those of you who feel deep down discouraged, desperately lonely, happy but like something's missing, intellectually on your own intellectual adrenaline just to debate someone who believes differently from you.... hungry and thirsty for something.... you're not finding it inside yourself and you won't. I think the intellectualism is itself a mask put on.... where is your heart? You can't shop for a religion to believe in like you're shopping for a pair of sneakers, to fit to your own specifications.... this is a cultural idea.... in another era this might not be the "in" cultural idea.
Jesus doesn't fit into that box even when the church tries to squeeze him into it... of course the church has failed in many ways.... but its failures don't disprove God or anything in Scripture....
In a secular humanist culture such as this one, where relativism rules the day, we have so much faith in the individual.... i don't even have control if someone creams me on the road while I'm driving home from work... I know when I pray I'm not praying to something I created.... C.S. Lewis said something incredible (in my opinion) about us satisfying ourselves with lesser passions when so much greater was offered us, like a child playing in the mud when he/she could go for a holiday at sea (I'm paraphrasing badly).... That is Christ... his body broken for me, and risen....
if you don't like what you found in churches, go in and change them.... I've prayed before about things I've noticed in churches that were out of line, such as gossip.... and I think any believer has the authority to be a mover and shaker in the kingdom, not a drone or a bench-warmer.... talk to people, such as the pastor or worship leader. Get involved yourself.... I've never been a pastor, a worship leader, anything but a "mere member" (wink)... but Jesus in me wants love to abound and grace and real compassion, and truth..... in the church... and in the body of Christ inside and outside the church.
I find often in me a tendency to complain about the church or those in it.... the church seems to be a fluid structure in that one can serve if one has a willing heart... WE ARE THE BODY.... not a few people in authority positions.... we are ALL ministers.... I like this very much. Those of us who are Christians, led by Christ, are the church..... each of us.
Before I accepted Christ, by His invitation, I couldn't see Him.... I couldn't see very much at all of anything... the vivid signs were there.... I kept getting the sense I was believing bunk but not knowing what the true answer was, relativism didn't work (just like communism it sounded nice but was miserable in experience), my life was absolutely hitting rock bottom and I was so sick with depression (and a very brutal case of mono that the doctors first told me was likely leukemia) I knew I couldn't do it anymore on my own, people randomly approached me who told me stuff about Jesus (and I do mean randomly, such as a stranger on a bus sort of thing), I kept being given books by acquaintances about Jesus and Christian principles, I started reading the Bible against all my objections to it academically, intellectually... was slowly being opened to the possibility of miracles, Jesus defeating death on the cross, being forgiven for what I know now as my sins, and the regenerated spirit alive with Christ....
I started asking, "What if all these nuts are right, Jesus was divine and man, and salvation by God's grace through faith in Jesus is REAL?" I thought there was no place for me because of the type of group I came from in the past... among a lot of other stuff.... a group that was wrong about doctrine, theology, made up things and controlled its members' private lives.....in the name of God, supposedly.... Was that true, that God was like that group portrayed him as being? Or was God who the bible was saying he was? Or some other religious belief, non Christian?
The day I accepted christ, at a Christian event, not a church (hadn't been to one of those in ten years), I had someone share "a word" with me... Jeremiah 29:11 "for I know the thoughts I think toward you, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." I had presumed to say God would "discard" me based on a past I grew up with, a group that was not truly of Him, things I had done wrong in my life...or because I arrogantly had intellectually dismissed him and publicly slandered him to Christians I would argue and openly go after to argue with them and to attack them personally with insults.... the secret reason i attacked them was because I was envious that they had a luminous quality, a hope I didnt' have.... I was athiest, then agnostic, becasue i despaired for what they had.
I know I'm rambling a bit... at the event where I accepted Christ, I later experienced something unusual.... I had had an injury to my arm that doctors told me was a case of permament paralysis in terms of nerve damage.... I had trouble lifting things, moving it, and often it was numb and tingly.... this was six months after the injury... someone called for a prayer for those with arm injuries, someone prayed for me, and I dismissed it politely as religious mumbo jumbo (even having accepted Christ) and went on about my business.... about an hour later I felt my whole arm go crazy numb, weak as could be. And I was not a believer in things like this, not at all... highly skeptical of things like this.... and then my arm started feeling better.... a few months later I went to a doctor who said he had no idea why my arm was better and how I had such freedom of movement. He asked me what had happened, and I told him.
The healing of my arm didn't "prove to me" Jesus existed, and it sure wasn't my wishing my arm better psychologically (mind, heal me) that made it better, and my injury wasn't the type medicine could help, not really the type physical therapy could help.... my doctor had just told me to be careful not to bang my arm hard against anything the rest of my life in order not to make the condition worse!
Every intimate moment with Christ isn't healings like that.... you don't "fit God in" when you decide you're in the mood to study the bible or pray or whatever, and He wasn't something I chose because I was shopping... he chose me, then I chose him, too. I've been a Christian, and a spirit filled believer, five years now.... every breath I take is with him, not just when i go to church.... and I'm not some perfect little nicey-nice girl. I've got major issues, problems, a real temper, to boot. I was terrified when I was first a believer that I'd 1.) have to be a bible thumper (lord I hated that was I wasn't a believer and hated it with the cult when I was young. you know a cult when you're in one, and the christian church isn't one.... but there are individual churches that have got it wrong, we all know that) 2.) I'd lose personality, spirit, joy, and my mind and be a narrowminded bigot (If I am a bigot I'm just as much one now as I was before Christ, only now I answer to somebody higher than me for it.... i think being a bigot is a choice, not something you are just because you're in a group often called "bigoted." And my personality is definitely freer and my heart more joyous because I know I'm loved and was made by someone who loves me deeply and infiinitely, and I don't have to be perfect to be worthy of His love)
this was definitely an interesting page to look at, I pray encouragement for each of you....
Then your comments are essentially graffiti and not worth reading.
Rationale: If you do not intend to return, then you obviously have no intension of reading responses, which means you either have no interest in other people's opinions or do not wish to be challenged. This, in turn, implies that you are not in the habit of testing or defending your own ideas which, to my way of thinking, makes what you have to say completely worthless. Anybody can offer half-baked opinions; it's the kind that can withstand scrutiny that are worth sharing.
Yes, Jesus lives in you. In your head. Agreed.
Anon: I was raised in a cult... if you would like a narrow, legalistic, truly brainwashing experience, try one of those... it was a place where the actual gospel message was missing, and this was a group that used the Bible the way they wished to[bold added]
Um, everyone uses the bible, and other holy books like it, as they "wish". That's the point--there IS NO objective "Divinely" inspired universal "Truth" in any book. If it were not for the greedy desire to "live forever", the belief in a "Divine" anything would pretty near impossible.