Finding God?

TeddyTedson

I'm not exactly a religious person. However I am interested in religion on a social level. Mostly how it affects people.

Anyway, can anyone explain what a person experiences when they say they've found god. Do you just wake up one day feeling different. I've known of one or two friends of my Dad who were a bit on the wild side in their younger days but claimed to have found god and calmed down and become very decent people. One was a gambling addict and the other was hooked on all sorts of drugs. Now they seem very content and happy though and are extremely decent people. One does so much work for the church now it's hard to imagine the man he was.

I was just hoping someone could give me their experiences of what they've gone through.

Tipsy McSwagger

Most people find God just before their parole hearing.

They go through some tough times, hit bottom, do some soul searching, find an inner resolve and decide to attribute it entirely to an external source

I've known of one or two friends of my Dad who were a bit on the wild side in their younger days but claimed to have found god and calmed down and become very decent people.

or they just got older and tired of being wild

One was a gambling addict and the other was hooked on all sorts of drugs. Now they seem very content and happy though and are extremely decent people. One does so much work for the church now it's hard to imagine the man he was.

they probably feel they've wasted so much of their time and lives they want to try making up for it or spending as much time and effort in the opposite direction

prinz

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Anyway, can anyone explain what a person experiences when they say they've found god. Do you just wake up one day feeling different..

More like waking up everyday feeling different. I think I could spend time everyday for the rest of my life reading up on religion and philosophy etc and only be a small step close to "finding God" as opposed to recognising that God exists.

homer911

I see the trolls have found this thread

Sorry you didnt get the responses you were looking fo OP, but you are asking for someone's testimony. I for one wouldn't post my testimony on an open forum with all the trolls about - a bit like casting pearls before swine really..

georgieporgy

I'm willing to give it a go.

Teddy, you will find God the moment you look for Him. He is always waiting for us to reach out. The first step is yours to make. His response will be unmistakable and personal.

Onesimus

Many conversions are different as God touches many souls in different ways. Some people experience ( what I would like to call ) flash conversions. In scriptures we see that St.Paul experienced The Lord in an instant. he was converted right there and then.

Other testimonies of flash conversion may include being healed of ones blindness or in the case of Medjugorje, the blessing of Fr.Jozo causes people to be slain in the Spirit and they experience a flash conversion.

Mine was gradual. But I am always converting everyday. Did it change me? well as you say about your dads two friends...yes it has changed my personality quite a bit actually.

My conversion didn't change who I am, it showed me who I actually was and what I was created for which is to know and love God. Not all of us know who we really really are until we meet Jesus and Mary.

philologos

OP: In short. The way I was living prompted me to think that there must be something bigger to life than the mere comings and goings that we go through on a daily basis. I was curious to find out why we were here and what was our purpose if any. I read a number of different books including some of the new-atheist critiques of religion such as Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchen's - God is not Great both of which I found thoroughly unconvincing. I looked at the Qur'an for a bit. (PM me if you want me to tell you why I found any of these unconvincing)

One night, I prayed to God, "If you are really there, please show me who you are". I read the Bible over the course of a year and God showed me who He was through the Bible, and as I kept praying. When I said that prayer, I didn't realise by half that God was going to actually answer it

As I read the Scriptures, I became clearly convicted that I was a sinner and that I had clearly rejected God's standards throughout my life. I had done what was evil rather than what is good. The obvious reality that there is a moral judge, and that morality isn't just based on what I want it to be took hold. I realised that as a sinner, of my own accord I would stand before God guilty and would deserve to be sent to hell. The problem is, this is true for everyone who walks on the earth including those who scoff at Christianity either on this forum or off this forum.

However, God so loved the world that He sent His only son so that we might not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16). The Son of Man did not come into the world to condemn but to save (3:17), however, the one who does not believe is condemned already (3:18). Jesus rescued us so that we can know the true and living God.

That's a short overview, I prayed to God He answered. I read His word and I thought about it and pored over its pages. I came to know Jesus, and there was no other logical option other than to repent and accept Him as Lord.

Splendour

TeddyTedson wrote: »

Do you just wake up one day feeling different.

I don't remember a time when I didn't believe so no experience of the 'feeling different' bit. However, I know of people who've been converted and at times I envy (oh dear-sinning in the Christian forum ;o) ) them as they seem to be much more enthusiastic about their faith. I also sometimes wonder if I'm a Christian at all as I seem to question the bible at times.

Tim Robbins

Question for the those who have found God who have found the god Delusion not convincing: Have you read 'The Selfish Gene' or the 'Ancestors Tale'?

Thanks.

antiskeptic

TeddyTedson wrote: »

I'm not exactly a religious person. However I am interested in religion on a social level. Mostly how it affects people.

Anyway, can anyone explain what a person experiences when they say they've found god. Do you just wake up one day feeling different. I've known of one or two friends of my Dad who were a bit on the wild side in their younger days but claimed to have found god and calmed down and become very decent people. One was a gambling addict and the other was hooked on all sorts of drugs. Now they seem very content and happy though and are extremely decent people. One does so much work for the church now it's hard to imagine the man he was.

I was just hoping someone could give me their experiences of what they've gone through.

I'd have a similar wild background pre-conversion - at least for the early part of my life. I exchanged juvenile delinquency for what the world might consider a respectable and successful life. But it didn't alter the core problem.

This is something I wrote a few years after the event.

There's probably a label that can be attached to the views I held before conversion to Christianity... but I'm not sure what it would be. I didn't think about God, didn't think about where the world or all the things in it came from, didn't think about my nominal Roman Catholic 'faith'. Neither did I care. Iano was Iano and lived his life as he saw fit. The prime thing that concerned me, was me. And that was, by and large, the view that seemed to be shared by people I came in contact with - so there was no reason to think there was anything inappropriate/invalid about it.

A constant throughout my life had been a tendency to live it intensely. As a kid it was the string of hobbies; entered into with relish, then developed to deep levels. Not for me, the casual picking up and discarding of interests once the initial novelty had worn off. Additional to a strong drive to seek fulfillment and enjoyment however, was a parallel companion called boredom. Whatever it was that gave initial satisfaction would eventually (even if it took years) loose it's lustre and I'd start to see the activity as being...well, a bit pointless really. There was always a void behind the surface satisfaction and pleasure. Something that remained untouched - no matter what I tried to fill it with: childhood hobbies, juvenile delinquency, drugs, sex and then when I came to my senses a little, university, work, success-seeking, housebuilding.

Satisfaction-seeking had, for me, the characteristic that I needed more as I went along. Yet for all the new thrills I could access, they never even approached the peaks of childhood ones. The shiny new motorcycle I could now easily afford, not a patch on the beat up old Suzuki I scraped my pennies together for. Neither did anything ever seem to pan out as expected. The promise always had a downside. The bosses, to think of one example, I had so respected for their confidence/abilities/power, were the same folk who had non-marriages/70 hour weeks /no relationship with their kids - once I had climbed high enough to get a view of things myself.
I couldn't have vocalised it so at the time but to me, life had to be about something and everything I looked at for meaning was transparent. They weren't substance - just beautifully packaged illusions.

Mild disillusionment with it all set in at 30. By the time I passed my 38th birthday that disillusionment had cranked up to despair. I was trapped. I had tried innumerable things to fill the void and although there were things as yet untried, logic told me that the results could only be the same. The itch was getting worse, the attempts to scratch it more desperate and damaging. I was an object moving in a straight line and no exterior force was having any effect. And the only direction I could go in was down.
It was at that point I turned to an unseen, unbelieved and unknown God and cried for help.

He did...and I haven't looked back since.

Anyway, can anyone explain what a person experiences when they say they've found god.

I didn't believe in God's existence when I prayed (what amounted to a surrender of my rebellion) the prayer I did to him. I wasn't spiritual in the least and hadn't any interest at all in existential questions. Like philologos above, the prayer was a 'if you're there, here it is from the heart' kind of prayer. Sincere but prayed out of unbelief. Which is only kind of reasonable, seeing as I had no reason to believe in God's existence at that point.


The next morning, I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs wriggling into my bike gear for the commute into work and the thought/feeling/knowledge strikes me:


'EVERYTHING is going to be okay'


Doesn't sound like a lot but it was a loaded statement since it wasn't mere words but certain knowledge. I knew that everything was going to be okay. And it wasn't just that the troubles that had driven me to my knees the night before were going to be okay (I understood that they might not be resolve for a long time), it was that the situation was under new management. That I wasn't on my own.


Even more significantly, there was a whole raft of problems I didn't even know I had that were also going to be okay. It was as if I had been walking around with shoelaces tied up too tightly but wasn't aware of it. Now that the laces had been relaxed I felt as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders.



The power of the thought passed and I headed off to work without giving it more thought. But inside something had changed. Unwound. Relaxed.



In the months and years after that I got to know that this was a God encounter and got to know much more about what being a child of his entails (for that is what occurred the night I prayed that prayer: adoption into God's family)


It's the best thing that has ever happened to me - even though life is anything but a bed of roses. I hope it happens for you too at some point. Suffice to say, the caricature's painted by New Atheism are just that and bear no resemblance to a living, active God who has no problem reaching for anyone that would yearn in their hearts to be free of the snares that entangle them.

You've only got to ask. From the heart.

PDN

Moderating Instruction
Can we keep this broadly on topic please? Like, discussing conversion stories?

If posters want to discuss atheism then we have a thread for that purpose. Yes, philologos and Tim Robbins, I'm looking at you.