| OoSnap said: @ Jay To answer your question God has used people to communicate His thoughts to me. For example I was at a bus station and I thought to myself I miss God. At the time I backslid and sin separates you from God. Right after I had that thought a random woman came up to me out of all the people and said don't worry God is still with you. I was totally shocked. It was only fleeting thought I had too. I also had a woman pray over me at church and she told me a lot of things she couldn't have known. It was my first time at the church. I was going through a lot of hard times and I was seeking God for answers. It was so very comforting what God said through her. I have had many prayers answered. Some of them miraculously answered at the moment. God's goodness is beyond what a person can imagine. I can't really describe His goodness. I really don't deserve to know Him with all the bad things I have done. But most people are separated from God because of their sins. God wants people to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ and what He did for the world on the cross. He wants people to come to Him with faith and humbly like little child. Jesus Christ really loves everybody but things such as unbelief, pride, and the preoccupations with the things of the world which are passing away hinders people to really come to Him. Many people are really missing out on the awesomeness of God by not seeking Him. What He gives is better than all the gold and silver in the world. |
I will reply from a general Christian angle, and in general. Several things:
* If you are a Christian, are you not supposed to have the Spirit of God within you? If you do, then how can you "miss God"? I once missed a pager I had one week which I returned. But the Spirit of God is supposed to be in someone. So, how the heck do you end up missing God? Jesus also said "I will never leave you or foresake you", so how does that happen, unless you decide to look away?
* In regards to more general, how do you actually know you are dealing with God and not some sort of idol you made up you project your feelings upon? It is very easy to get duped. Some people flat out get lucky in life. This does happen. You have guru types who end up doing things and get certain percentage of the audience have positive happen. This is by the laws of probability. Not saying you don't, but how do you know?
* And it may be appropriate to wack you with the Book of Job. Maybe you personally have stuff work for you, but there are numbers for whom it doesn't. There are people who come to the Christian faith with expectations and hopes. They don't come off as they expect and their hopes get deferred. People also oversell things. And there is this obsession with getting manifestations of God being real and so on. I found it a vain pursuit actually. What I see in all this, with the hellish stuff I need to deal with, for example, is that it doesn't pan out as one would expect. An maybe the motivation of this thread is to do a sales pitch for the Christian religion, focused on concerns over hell, either possible genuine on the part of the original poster for others, or out of their own because now they feel they MUST evangelize and warn others or else God is going to look at them sternly over things.
* Exactly how does one seek God? Where does one go to find God? One of my many projects I have kicked around to do is to take a road trip and trying to find the Kingdom of God in America. Idea would be to ask people and go find it and see what people have to say. Things have not aligned right with me to do that.
