[Guest]

I'm new here so forgive me for being so brazen to just start posting on such huge topics like God, but I couldn't refrain from sharing my personal experience.

I grew up in a dysfunctional home to say the least. I was abused in many ways and watched as my father struggled off and on my entire childhood with a serious cocaine abuse ( plus being a pain killer adict and marijuana smoker). My mother was mentally ill to say the least and created a very negative, chaotic home environment as well.

There was really no stability in my life whatsoever.

Around age 15, I started wondering about God and His existence. I think most of it was out of complete desperation from my family situation but I just had such a desire to know for sure if He was there, and if He was, who was He?? Was He the God in the bible? The God of Islam? Joseph Smith? Buddha? Who in the world was He if He was indeed there.

I will never forget lying in my bed alone in the dark at around midnight at age 16. I prayed to the God that I wasn't even sure was there and I said, " God.. If you are real, please show me. I want to know for sure you are there and know who you are."

What happened after I said those words is very hard to explain even many, many years later. As I lye in the bed, I could visually see this:

" Jeremiah 29:11"

I had NO clue whatsoever what that was or meant but something inside me told me to find a bible. I looked around my house (actually got up out of the bed and dark to find one), and found one in the bottom of a drawer. I remember it even having dust all over it.

I opened it up having no clue what I was doing, and it opened up DIRECTLY to Jeremiah 29:11. This is what I read:

" For I know the plans I have you, declares the Lord, Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. And when you seek me with your whole heart, you will find me. And when you call upon me, I will answer you."

From that moment on, I have never, ever questioned the existence of God or which God He was. Even when I wasn't even sure He existed, He went out of His way to make Himself known to me.

I have since spent the rest of my life thus far getting to know Him and who He is.

I can say this with 100% certainity. God is the God of the Bible. Jesus Christ is indeed who He says He was, and He is a God that desires to know us and make Himself known to us.

I understand that in today's world " whatever you believe is Your truth" but even as a young teen, that made no sense to me.

If God was real, it made no sense to me that you could just conjure him up in your mind to become whatever you chose him to be. He either was or He wasn't. And if He was, than who was He?

I knew that there had to be some absolute truth, otherwise I could believe Whinnie the Pooh was God all day long, but my belief in whinnie the pooh as god, didn't suddenly make him god.

I kind of came to conclusion that I wanted it to believe it BECAUSE it was true, it didn't just become true because I believed it.

All I can say is this; suffering here lately with this dp/dr stuff has made me question a lot of things. There are days when I'm not even sure that * I *
am real but I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever, (even in the midst of my suffering!), that God is real.

I'm not here to prove Him to you. He is big enough to do that for Himself. But I do know this.. if you TRULY want to know Him all you need to do is seek Him with your whole heart.. and you will indeed find Him.

 

[falling_free]

Not to disrespect you in anyway but how could one being handle being able to read the minds and plan the fates of every living thing in the universe?

It would be like being a human and having millions of ants always asking you to do this for them or do that, and eventually god would be like, right screw this I can't be bothered with everyone complaing, do whatever you like I don't care

God is the universe and we are part of and born of the universe therefore we are god

Life is subjective

Or something like that

 

[Guest]

I know i'm an ass to bring this up, but those who need god to pervade their every moment will seek god out by whatever means possible. God will appear to the believer and will not appear to someone with doubts. This may seem like a stretch to you, but I think your subconcious manifested itself into the concious by showing you a bible verse. Coincidentally, this verse did seem to give insight into your situation. The bible is littered with similar verses...and I also believe that you have asked this question many times in the past, and have had nothing happen.

Now this is divine intervention: a kid I knew saw god while on acid and has since turned into a christ loving nazi. He SAW god. I asked what he looked like. He described him as an old white guy with a beard and white rob eminating a brilliant light :roll: .

Believers really have to force it these days, contructing huge piles of invalidities. An no, i'm not an atheist...

 

[Guest]

we are god

Its surprising how few people i've met will accept the possibility of this. I wouldn't jump to this conclusion though, because i'll still leave the door open that we actually are insubordinate somehow...but that seems less likely.

From a humanist standpoint, you are 100% correct...no buts you crazy believer scratends.

 

[Phill]

I Believe that God created the subconcious mind and has power over it to manipulate it any way He likes. So, in Spriggy's case, maybe He simply caused it to manifest itself into her concious mind. But more likely He spoke to her spirit, and then that information went to through her mind. And wallah...! Almighty God spoke to Spriggy! And Spriggy was found by Him.

I myself have looked up to the heavens and asked if God was there and got no answer. But at that time I wasn't searching with my whole heart. Although, when I was ready for Him He revealed himself to me.
God, being spirit, speaks to the human spirit in a language only the spirit understands. That is why the Bible is sometimes hard to understand, because one trys to understand it with one's natural carnal mind. And the carnal mind is emnity towards God.

Spriggy, I admire your decision to follow the Lord Jesus. He totally changed my life too.

 

[Phill]

It's not my fault that 1+1=2, it just does.

 

[Guest]

1+1 = 2 is logic, the foundation of the non-believers standpoint. Ummmm...i just have a very hard time believing these kinds of situations...i can understand the need to make a leap of faith, like many of my friends have, but none have gone as far to say that god has intervened in their life so abjectly.

 

[lone wolf]

If God is only for Christians, why did HE (btw - why he, why not a combination of he and she, or more correctly, it?) create the free will for people who then started believing in other ways, like Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu etc? Are all those other religious people doomed to Hell like atheists? And why? If God is almighty, I'm pretty sure he'll understand that it may be quite impossible to become a devout Christian if all one can experience around oneself is about some other religion? Just my two cents.

 

[[rula]]

... if you TRULY want to know Him all you need to do is seek Him with your whole heart.. and you will indeed find Him.

no disrespect to your beleives, but that statement above is EXACTLY how a psychiatrist explained to me why DP is so difficult to cure; cuz we keep looking for it, and whatever we look for we will find! the mind is amazing that way.

-r

 

[CECIL]

I'm going with Ziggo on this one, but if it helps you it helps you, so go with it.

All I know is that I asked exactly the same question time and time again while praying to a god I didn't believe in and nothing came.

But then I didn't believe.

 

[Phill]

No disrespect at all to anyones beliefs but I couldn't agree more. Seek and you shall find...the words of God Himself. Not the words of a man. The human mind really is an amazing creation, made by an even more amazing creator.

 

[Phill]

I was just wondering if anybody could tell me honestly why they come to this spiritual God section of the forum anyway?

 

[Guest]

I come to this forum without the belief in a god, but i am comfortable without his precense. I hate to use the word spiritual, but I do not need a god in my life to have meaning in life, in fact...I think religion degrades humanity in general. This is a though pill to swallow for most because the world is full of poverty and many of us need god to lift us from the wreckage that is human civilization.

I really don't like the stigma present against those who aren't subject to god's will, because I still 'feel' an everpresent satisfaction with existance in general (even with dp) without once feeling like something is watching over me.

 

[[rula]]

I was just wondering if anybody could tell me honestly why they come to this spiritual God section of the forum anyway?

personally cuz i've always had a theory that people become more religious either as they get older, or cuz they have a life crisis such as being ill. either way it's fear of death that draws people closer to a "savior", the ultimate form of support. i saw it on another forum where people were much older, and i was curious what things were like here.

-ru

 

[Guest]

Well, it's like Martin Buber said, "God is ineffable." Not entirely sure what ths means, but I have a vague idea that it concerns the general mystery contained within such a being as God.
Anyway, there's a whole army of us that "don't know what to believe" and will spend our whole lives searching. Am I unbalanced? Yes. Intelligent? Yes. Spiritual? Yes. It's not like I can draw many conclusions about my beliefs from those premises.
I find myself attracted to the works of Vonnegut and Dostoevsky.
Count me along those that believes that not all human beings are truly capable of believing the same way. Some of us will feel quite honestly in our hearts of hearts that there is an Almighty God watching over us, and others cannot believe in God. Why this is I don't know, and unless the area of metaphysics and teleology and the like leaves the realm of philosophy and joins the natural sciences (which I doubt unless human understanding makes a great leap forward in the time we are allotted), it will remain this way.
The existence/non-existence of God is a debate I have grappled with for most of my life. I am capable of imagining God as merely a notion and as the repeating current that works repeatedly through the universe (if you have seen Pi then you have some idea of what I am talking about at least from a mathematical standpoint. It is something of an old idea.). The ability to question and to believe and disbelieve is torment, but it is also quite beautiful at the same time.
I'm sorry that I am ranting and that I am probably not expressing myself very well, but I believe and I practically know that there are few easy answers in the area of belief and religion, or Theist or humanist doctrine for that matter. Such matters are something of a pure reflection of the human condition itself, and the difficulty with which we arrive at our stations in life.

 

[enigma]

For centuries human beings labored on what was to be humanity's ultimate achievement: A supercomputer that would be omniscient and capable of answering any and all questions with 100% accuracy, including that most daunting question of all--is there a God?

Finally the day arrived when the computer was complete.

Millions of people awaited outside the building (and watched at home on television), and members of the media surrounded the computer at a distance as the technicians switched it on and allowed it to warm up.

Then the lead technician approached the computer and asked it the ultimate question: "Is there...a God?"

A brief moment passed, when suddenly the computer grinned and said "There is now!".

e

 

[Guest]

Wait...how did the computer grin? seriously, though. Good sci-fi.