Where did you meet god?

[one_raven]

What does this quote refer to btw?

The Ancient of Days

 

[Captain Kremmen]

If you want to meet god You dont even need to speak to anyone other than him. Ask him to present himself, be open minded and loving. He will show yo his love if you let him. Place your soul in his hands and ask him to do with it what he wills.
Among many things here are few i am experiencing since conversion.

1.Inner Peace
2.An infinite supply of love.
3.An amazing journey from this life to the next.
4.An understanding and acceptance of suffering.
5.The wisdom to allow humility to become part of your life.
6.The present becomes eternity.
7.The gift of many Graces.
8.A realization that satan right beside you.
9.But the power to laugh in his face.
10.A better understanding of your own life.
11.No religion/non-religion is correct or wrong its the way you lead your life through love that counts.
12.No love can surpass the love one can have with god.

Those that mock, mock less they understand.

*Meeting god doesn't mean like meeting bob next door. Its more like experiencing friendship for the first time but on an epic and completely individual level.

If every Christian's or every theist's God was like yours, and led to an experience and an attitude like yours, you would need churches ten times bigger than they are now.

Unfortunately many religious people are self righteous, violent, greedy and deluded. And it is not as if they were not praying.
You can be sure that some of them are on their knees right next to you when you are in church, thinking they are obeying God's will.

In fact, their religion makes them worse than if they had no religion.
They think that they have a divine sanction for their evil actions.

 

[nova900]

Those who say they can find God within are more likely that not new agers who believe that God is a force and we are all a part of that force so God is within us so we are God and the tree next to the road is God and the tyres your car is supported by are gods. This goes in hand with nature worshipers who think god is the universe the sun the stars and mother earth and all that stuff.

Luke 17:20-21 “Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.”

Ok, this confirms it...Jesus was a New-Ager.

 

[QuisUtDeus]

Yeah this is the thing, as i said earlier in my post. It could simply be fear holding me back from such an experience.
I'll be in bed or quietly resting just on the cusp of 'getting somewhere' that feels abit alien or out of my comfort zone, and i'll immediately snap myself out of it before it gets too weird.
Its not so much having faith in god that's the problem, i think its having faith that i can actually shift my consciousness abit left of centre without losing my 'self' in the process.
If God is just around the corner of those experiences then im continally caught in my own private game of hide and seek with him.

This is an amazing point. Most people are scared of losing something. But on the contrary when you find god it opens up new doors which you would think would lose you. But this is not the case, its hard to explain but you become closer to how you were when you were a child, not intellectually that can bloom into something amazing, but you adopt a childs innocence and become more like yourself than ever before. This probably doesnt make any sense but dont be scared of god. You are obviously on a journey towards him.

Keep working at it!

 

[QuisUtDeus]

If every Christian's or every theist's God was like yours, and led to an experience and an attitude like yours, you would need churches ten times bigger than they are now.

Unfortunately many religious people are self righteous, violent, greedy and deluded. And it is not as if they were not praying.
You can be sure that some of them are on their knees right next to you when you are in church, thinking they are obeying God's will.

In fact, their religion makes them worse than if they had no religion.
They think that they have a divine sanction for their evil actions.

Pride is the weapon satan uses to blind gods will. And will continue to do so till the end of time. Those that abuse religion ultimately ruin their soul in the process. Satan is the prince of this world.

 

[nietzschefan]

Satan is God's accuser, the role has changed with different primitive superstitions, translations and general Dogma direction.

 

[LiveInFaith]

Satan is simply bad desire. It is naturally implanted in human.

 

[Oli]

Satan is simply bad desire. It is naturally implanted in human.

Naturally implanted?
Bit of bad design on god's part then, surely?

 

[nova900]

Satan is simply bad desire. It is naturally implanted in human.

Yep, the ignorance of the ego ( the other side of the coin so to speak of a reality of living in a universe that operates on duality)
Set for instance in ancient egypt represented the excesses and negative aspects of the human ego..anger, excessive physical bodily desires, stupidity,
jealousy,etc

The devil is actually just a mythological being that represents these things( or is supposed to) but some do believe in him literally.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research23.html

 

[LiveInFaith]

Naturally implanted?
Bit of bad design on god's part then, surely?

Why is it bad design?
If it weren't there, you will never have the term 'bad' I guess.

 

[s0meguy]

God doesn't hide from them who want to know him or believe in him. Those that do know where God is and seem to be able to communicate with him at any given moment through prayer.

And he does hide from people that don't believe in him? That doesn't make any sense.

 

[Oli]

Why is it bad design?

Since god supposedly wants us to worship him then surely (speaking as a designer myself) it's a bad idea to put in at the start the capacity for "bad desires" - sorta defeats the object y'know.
If I design something and I want it to do A, B and C I make sure that it doesn't have the capacity to do X, Y and Z if I consider them to be faults that would invalidate the product.

 

[LiveInFaith]

The very basic in design process (specially for dynamic motion objects, like us) is achieving equilibrium, every force necessitates pairs / opposites.
You value something "bad" because you have definition of "good" as benchmark.
Now imagine, what good really is when there is no "bad"? Is there any "good" then? And what will be the value which govern us human to live our lives, if we cannot define what "good" is?

Asking "good", implying the necessity of "bad" existence.

 

[Adstar]

Im reasonably well-read on my theology, im really just asking people to share their experiences.
As in - what were you doing when you 'found' god? what state of mind were you in prior to and after this spiritual awakening?

Well i had just completed my apprenticeship and had secured a full time position with my employer so i was in a fairly secure and happy frame of mind. A friend of mine at work was religious and we started to talk religion. I came from a catholic background but by that time i was more like a cultural catholic rather than a religious catholic, We talked about God and he gave me a bible to read. Well i read the bible for the first time and the rest is history. After i had "found God" as you put it, my outlook on the world completely changed, it is hard to explain it but what i once though was solid i now knew to be transitory and i perceived a far larger existence than just me and the world.

was it a visceral experience, or was it more of an intellectual position you developed over the years? perhaps you found god via reason and rational analysis?

It was not a visceral experience. And the process is not one that takes years. The point of acceptance of the Messiah Jesus takes a moment, the process of understanding the Will of God takes time that time can vary form a week to a lifetime. Reason and analysis always goes into any decision.

Do you not hold with pantheism?

I take this question to be asking if i believe in pantheism. Short answer No i do not believe in pantheism. Pantheism is the worship of what has been created, I believe the Creator should be worshipped not the created.

Ok gotcha, so your view is that god is not so much a 'universal enity', or gross sum of the cosmos, but an entity devoid of proportion, mass, or spacial location.

Proportion, mass and spatial location are all measurements used in relation to our universe. As i believe that God created the universe then of course He is separate from the universe because the Creator is not what He created. Although He is connected to the universe and can interact with it as His will sees fit. So all these measurements you mention cannot be used in relation to God.

Im not really interested in getting some kind of 'god-fix' is that's what you mean. If anything this is more about my own personal quest for some sort of meaning external to myself.

Cool, thinking beyond oneself and ones surrounding existence is a great start to being open to wisdom that is beyond this form of existence.

In that sense i guess you could say god is more of a middle-man for me to attain some sort of 'meaningfulness' beyond the confines of my own head.
Then again in some highly abstracted sense 'meaning' and 'god' could amount to the same thing, so if i find one i find the other

Well middleman is not the words i would use but yes God is a source of wisdom beyond anything that can be obtained from measuring and studying the physical universe.

What does this quote refer to btw?

The Ancient of Days is a title used for God in the OT scriptures.

Daniel 7
9 “ I watched till thrones were put in place,
And the Ancient of Days was seated;
His garment was white as snow,
And the hair of His head was like pure wool.
His throne was a fiery flame,
Its wheels a burning fire;
10 A fiery stream issued
And came forth from before Him.
A thousand thousands ministered to Him;
Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him.
The court was seated,
And the books were opened.



All Praise The Ancient Of Days