Who was Jesus?
Basically, I thank Him, praise Him, and get to know Him
more every day!!!
I confess that my faith is sometimes unstable. I accepted
the reality of the deity and resurrection of Christ only
seven months ago (Praise God!), and so I've just begun the
journey of my lifetime. The initial joy and power I felt
as a result of being touched by the grace of God has given
way to an uncertainty about God's will for my life, and a
certain disgust for the blindness of humanity. I guess
all I'm saying is that I wish I could more strongly feel the
Lord's presence. I occasionally catch myself second-guessing
what exactly happened to me at my conversion experience, but
then I always remember some reason why the invisible divinity
really exists. However, the pattern later repeats itself
apparently without warning. It's like a recording in my
head that asks, "How could you be so deceived? Do you really
believe that? Isn't it just a nice story which sucks you in
at a moment of weakness to give you a deluded sense of
comfort and superiority?" I know there is something God wants
me to learn from these doubts (probably having to do with humility),
and I trust that the wisdom will be supplied in good time.
Sorry for the long-winded descriptions, but this is a process of thinking out loud which is helpful to the current stage of my faith journey. Before I was converted, my biggest problem was believing that Jesus was the son of God. I thought he was no more son of God than I. I thought he was an excellent teacher who made false claims about his divinity in order to start a new movement to overthrow and destroy the Roman Empire. So, I thought it was an intentional farce perpetrated by a small group of creative but discontent intellectuals. Further, I thought that all contemporary Christians knew this, and they were continuing the force in order to limit my freedom and impose order and objective morality on society. I didn't know that I was simply rebelling against the development of my own conscience (superego). I thought that I good live a good, virtuous life without accepting Christ--I overestimated my personal power. Another major problem I had was the belief that God had either removed Himself from Creation or was some way in the past tense. It wasn't until I heard Him whisper on the other side of the door to my heart, "I AM here, I have always been here" that I could open the channel to His grace and love and become a part of the resurrected body of Christ. Thank you for allowing me the chance to share this with you, glorifying the work of God and reliving His saving grace at the same time.
I hope you are working through the inevitable challenges that come in the
life of following the Lord...some intellectual doubts seem petty, some
horrid, some even comical...but they wax and wane over the years, esp as
you start to experience more and more of the patterns of His
interaction--as opposed to the 'spot' feelings of His presence...over
time His OBVIOUS presence in the history and details of your life so
completely dwarfs the epistemic/evidential value of inner feelings...and
then the feelings change character into those 'numinous' things
;>)...radical sense of His awesomeness in the middle of a worship song, a
5 second 'pulse' of insight into how UTTERLY He accepts you, a 2 minute
weeping session when it finally dawns on you that HE SOUGHT YOU OUT, to
make you His child! This will not be 'evidential' anymore--you will be
way beyond that--but they will flesh out the outline of Awesome God of
Glory and Grace!...
Anyway, I hope this finds you learning and growing and getting up when
you fall...let me know how it's going...
Thanks again for visiting the Tank, and for sharing with me,
warmly,
your brother forever and ever,
glenn
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