Mate, you are going through a crisis of faith. Whether or not you end up a Christian at the other end is not really the issue. The issue is whether or not you are honest with yourself.
Perhaps you need to ask yourself exactly what the core issues are here, and then let us know how we can help.
please help me....tormented :(
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Believer
- Advanced Senior Member
- Posts: 780
- Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2005 7:44 pm
- Christian: No
- Location: Oregon
Hey marcg, dude, I feel your pain, I have been through a bunch of lies and great deception in my life. Myself personally, I used to be in your position, maybe not intense, because I didn't actually really understand true atheism, but I went through it. If you take the time to study forums such as these (not atheist forums) which present atheists posing questions/debates to believers of any level, you will see that their worldview is corrupt although they believe it is not under their own "logic". Life is wonderful in the sense we have it, but you have to question things such as the Bible says, you have to do things it suggests, and without that, you will lose faith. If evolution is true, does that automatically mean there is no God? No. The problems are still there in tis world that we can't answer and that science is limited to. I suggest as I did, stay off websites that is pro-atheism in any shape or form and stick to a forum like this, because atheist forums have constructed their rules that are so illogical, there is no point. A great place would be the highly recommended http://www.tektonics.org. Nearly all debates I have read or listened to, the atheist comes in close to winning it, but doesn't. As I read in a statement by a large atheist organization, the president claimed they needed to start incorporating Christian "tactics", so they will be even better, shows how corrupt they are. Don't let satan destroy you, if you let him, you will be destroyed.
marcg wrote:In a way I really really wish I was born into christianity...I just see all these younf kids born into faith and they end up like my X...with all the faith in the world.... Me....I feel like I'm grasping at it constantly
I was born into Christianity, until my early teen years I believed completely. However, in later years I began to question certain things "Is God logical?", "Was Jesus really God?", and certain other questions. I found the answers to all of my questions at my local church, from my youth leader at the time. They were "yes, God is real, logical, rational, and plausible."
I'm not posting this to tell you the story of my life, but to show you that many Christians have doubts. Many go through times in their life where they lose that feeling, that tingle of the spine, I lost it, and many others have as well. God never says this is going to be easy, in fact he says it will be difficult.
One way I found that helps me in my faith is looking at God's creation. Look at the world around you, the ocean, the trees, the animals, and question "Could this have happened without God?", "Could pure luck have just assembled this?” Praying seems to help a lot with me, as does reading the bible. God says the bible is living word, almost any problem you have, there is an answer to it in there. Also, talking with other Christians helps, you'd be surprised how many have the same problem as you. God loves you and wants you in heaven with him, just keep at it, don't give up, it's hard and everyone has doubts, keep at it, God will win you over in the end.
marcg wrote:thanks for the extremely quick reply.....
ok firstly.... I don't really know why I'm losing my faith.... I think the problem is...well I don't know....for some reason something in my heart is telling me the jesus wasn't a god....I can't explain it...... when I used to pray.... I used to feel something, a connection...like chills down the back of my spine.....now I feel nothing...like i'm talking to myself
thank u for caring.
sounds to me like you are NOT losing your faith, you have just come down form the amazing moutin top euphoria of conversion and are starting back into reality. Jesus never said we will always be happand and never have depressed feelings. We just can't live at that always exicited totally turned on level we have in the begining. We would burn ourselves out. You also lost a relationship with a woman, I presume you cared about her, that has to be a source of sadness.
I think you are paying attention to feelings and not making use of the faith you have. You need to actively cultivate faith. You need to make spoken (out loud) affirmations of your faith daily and put yourself in a frame of mind to actively trust God and pray a lot. you must develop faith don't just be a passive recipient and done equate happy goosebump feelings with faith.
Faith is trusting God when we don't see the answre, it is not the up side of the roller coaster.
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kateliz
- Advanced Senior Member
- Posts: 811
- Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2005 2:07 am
- Christian: Yes
- Sex: Female
- Creation Position: Young-Earth Creationist
- Location: Minnetonka, Minnesota, US
YES!!! lol I was upset, (sorry,) by all of the responses and was getting all worked up by the lack of, (in my eyes,) correct advice... all except for Metacrock's! Thank you for bringing in the flat-out truth, Meta. lol Sorry if I offended anyone.
Feelings don't have anything to do with anything. In fact, God has been reteaching this lesson to me just these past few weeks, and only a few days ago did I get the revelation I needed to see what God was trying to teach me.
Our hearts are so incredibly deceptive, (all over the Bible,) that we must purposely disregard any feelings we have that disagree with what we know to be true. Faith is not feeling, and feeling is not faith. Faith is knowing the facts. If your feelings are contradicting what you've learned to be fact, then disregard them and hold fast to what you've learned. If you still believe on some level, outside of your heart, that Jesus was the Christ, then you still have faith. You would still believe the facts.
And you obviously do still believe, otherwise you wouldn't be asking for help to keep the belief you know is true!!! That's faith! Pretty good faith too, seeing as how lots of Christians would give in to their feelings and buy what their hearts told them lock, stock and barrel. You know there's something important to hang on to, and that if you lose it you'll have lost the truth. That means that you have all the faith you need to be a Christian, but that your heart is lying to you and confusing you, and that you have some intellectual doubts you want to dealt with.
No problem!
Look, there's more proof out there for God than what science can attest to. If you can't find what you're looking for there to appease your very valid and worthy intellectual doubts, then look at other stuff for the time being. I went through all that once. I wanted to be absolutely sure that I knew what was really going on with the existence of the universe and us complex humans. Afterall, that's a pretty darn important thing to figure out before you die! I had to look at everything I knew to be true, and work with what I had to work with. This includes looking at whatever spiritual experiences you've had yourself or have known others to have- ones that you know were honestly from God. I had demonic experiences to look back on as well as God communicating Himself to me. There are so many different things to look at for proof of God that can appease the doubts we Christians are so often plagued with. One thing that really boosted my faith was reading Josh McDowel's "Evidence that Demans a Verdict". The way God preserved the Bible just astounded me, and wow-ed me with how there could be actual, factual evidence of God and His Christ sitting right in front of me!
As for your ex, don't look to her for your faith. God may have been in her, and she may have had a close relationship with God, but you need to stand on your own two feet and find for yourself what she seemed to have had. Talk to God honestly about your doubts and concerns. Ask Him to strengthen your faith and to show you what you're looking for in terms of confirmation of your faith. Even if you feel like your words fall lifeless to the floor the second they leave your lips. God will hear you regardless- He's more a part of you than you are of yourself! Trust me. He's more real than everything in the room around you. He'll hear you. And He absolutely loves to take us up on our requests for more faith and to love Him more! I believe He might get giddy when we ask Him to do such things for us!
Let me tell you now a little about what God's done in my life recently that I mentioned earlier. For years I have been used to feeling like God was right there in front of me listening to whatever I said to Him. Then He took that feeling abruptly away. I got quite worried. I was worried I did something wrong to send Him away- like I was harbouring some sin in my heart so long He had to leave until I repented. I searched myself and repented as best I could of anything I could think of. It was fruitless. God also had things in my life go nutso at the same time so that I felt like if I couldn't get to God like I used to I'd end up way outside His will for my life and stuck floundering around in my useless "strength" failing miserably at everything.
Then, after about two or three weeks of that, I got the revelation I needed. It was inspired by a "Joan of Arcadia" episode, (TV show now canceled where God talks to Joan through different human bodies). In the episode God confused Joan on purpose and made her doubt whether any of His appearing to her was real or not. She had lyme's disease, and hallucinations were expected to have been happening for quite some time, leaving Joan thinking it was all the Lyme's Disease. The point was to make Joan have faith in God despite what things looked like. Faith that wasn't reliant on sight and sense.
God brought this episode to mind while I was driving, and I opened my mouth in awe. Duh! God was right there with me the whole time- He was even doing things in my life as He's always doing- He just took away that feeling of His presence to cause my faith to grow to the point of admitting that He was there and hearing me despite not having that feeling! I was so happy. God really did hear my prayers, He was really active in my life still, I was still inside His will, and He was as close to me as He's ever been! Acknowedging those facts was the building of my faith.
My faith in those facts was then able to take over, and despite my still not really feeling like He's there like I used to, my faith gives me so much of an assurance that He is in fact there like that that it in turn "feels" again like He's there. It's not faith relying on feelings anymore in regards to that, but feelings that are in response to faith. And if those feelings should disappear again, I'd be just fine, and have as much faith as ever.
I would dare to say that God's doing the same thing in you. Hold fast to the truth you know is true, disregard your feelings, and ask God to give you relief from your anxieties about Him. I believe you'll come out the other end of this a hundred-fold stronger the Christian!
Feelings don't have anything to do with anything. In fact, God has been reteaching this lesson to me just these past few weeks, and only a few days ago did I get the revelation I needed to see what God was trying to teach me.
Our hearts are so incredibly deceptive, (all over the Bible,) that we must purposely disregard any feelings we have that disagree with what we know to be true. Faith is not feeling, and feeling is not faith. Faith is knowing the facts. If your feelings are contradicting what you've learned to be fact, then disregard them and hold fast to what you've learned. If you still believe on some level, outside of your heart, that Jesus was the Christ, then you still have faith. You would still believe the facts.
And you obviously do still believe, otherwise you wouldn't be asking for help to keep the belief you know is true!!! That's faith! Pretty good faith too, seeing as how lots of Christians would give in to their feelings and buy what their hearts told them lock, stock and barrel. You know there's something important to hang on to, and that if you lose it you'll have lost the truth. That means that you have all the faith you need to be a Christian, but that your heart is lying to you and confusing you, and that you have some intellectual doubts you want to dealt with.
No problem!
Look, there's more proof out there for God than what science can attest to. If you can't find what you're looking for there to appease your very valid and worthy intellectual doubts, then look at other stuff for the time being. I went through all that once. I wanted to be absolutely sure that I knew what was really going on with the existence of the universe and us complex humans. Afterall, that's a pretty darn important thing to figure out before you die! I had to look at everything I knew to be true, and work with what I had to work with. This includes looking at whatever spiritual experiences you've had yourself or have known others to have- ones that you know were honestly from God. I had demonic experiences to look back on as well as God communicating Himself to me. There are so many different things to look at for proof of God that can appease the doubts we Christians are so often plagued with. One thing that really boosted my faith was reading Josh McDowel's "Evidence that Demans a Verdict". The way God preserved the Bible just astounded me, and wow-ed me with how there could be actual, factual evidence of God and His Christ sitting right in front of me!
As for your ex, don't look to her for your faith. God may have been in her, and she may have had a close relationship with God, but you need to stand on your own two feet and find for yourself what she seemed to have had. Talk to God honestly about your doubts and concerns. Ask Him to strengthen your faith and to show you what you're looking for in terms of confirmation of your faith. Even if you feel like your words fall lifeless to the floor the second they leave your lips. God will hear you regardless- He's more a part of you than you are of yourself! Trust me. He's more real than everything in the room around you. He'll hear you. And He absolutely loves to take us up on our requests for more faith and to love Him more! I believe He might get giddy when we ask Him to do such things for us!
Let me tell you now a little about what God's done in my life recently that I mentioned earlier. For years I have been used to feeling like God was right there in front of me listening to whatever I said to Him. Then He took that feeling abruptly away. I got quite worried. I was worried I did something wrong to send Him away- like I was harbouring some sin in my heart so long He had to leave until I repented. I searched myself and repented as best I could of anything I could think of. It was fruitless. God also had things in my life go nutso at the same time so that I felt like if I couldn't get to God like I used to I'd end up way outside His will for my life and stuck floundering around in my useless "strength" failing miserably at everything.
Then, after about two or three weeks of that, I got the revelation I needed. It was inspired by a "Joan of Arcadia" episode, (TV show now canceled where God talks to Joan through different human bodies). In the episode God confused Joan on purpose and made her doubt whether any of His appearing to her was real or not. She had lyme's disease, and hallucinations were expected to have been happening for quite some time, leaving Joan thinking it was all the Lyme's Disease. The point was to make Joan have faith in God despite what things looked like. Faith that wasn't reliant on sight and sense.
God brought this episode to mind while I was driving, and I opened my mouth in awe. Duh! God was right there with me the whole time- He was even doing things in my life as He's always doing- He just took away that feeling of His presence to cause my faith to grow to the point of admitting that He was there and hearing me despite not having that feeling! I was so happy. God really did hear my prayers, He was really active in my life still, I was still inside His will, and He was as close to me as He's ever been! Acknowedging those facts was the building of my faith.
My faith in those facts was then able to take over, and despite my still not really feeling like He's there like I used to, my faith gives me so much of an assurance that He is in fact there like that that it in turn "feels" again like He's there. It's not faith relying on feelings anymore in regards to that, but feelings that are in response to faith. And if those feelings should disappear again, I'd be just fine, and have as much faith as ever.
I would dare to say that God's doing the same thing in you. Hold fast to the truth you know is true, disregard your feelings, and ask God to give you relief from your anxieties about Him. I believe you'll come out the other end of this a hundred-fold stronger the Christian!