The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Do Christians have personal contact with Jesus?

The disparity is between what you say you know intellectually and what you claim to experience because the biblical teaching prohibits anyone from actually experiencing what you say you do. So, either the Bible is teaching falsehood or your experience, though real to you, is not of God. I'll let you decide. You say your "belief" is not born out of experience, yet on the one hand you profess to know the OBJECTIVE truth concerning the Godhead, the incarnation, Christ as the embodiment of true truth, etc., yet on the other hand you stated that you have no need of Christ, etc. How do YOU reconcile these two statements? If Christ is truly Who He says He is, then upon what basis do you find no need of Him and even more, why would you choose to hold on to your experience, which is totally antithetical to what Jesus taught and even seek for the same type of experience with Him, which again He clearly says you will not and cannot have? No wonder you have consternation.

1) Personally, I find to basis upon which to believe that you do know Christ, going on what you have written in these few posts. 2) I believe you have spoken truth here, that you do not know either God or the Holy Spirit.

You are left with what you began with.... God's inspired, inerrant, infallible Word which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Finding God "potentially false" is indicative of unbelief. No one has ever found consolation in God without trusting in His word; His promise that all who come to Him, believing in Christ and repenting of their sins. Further, no one has ever come to Christ unless they have a need of Him. Do you have a genuine sense of your guiltiness before God? Do you possess a genuine need and deep desire to be forgiven for your sins and to be reconciled to God, Who at this moment is at enmity with you? Do you despise your very life and thirst for righteousness which is only found in Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit Who the Lord Christ promised will dwell within all who believe in Him? The Lord Jesus gives this infallible promise:

Matthew 11:28-30 (ASV) "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

You say you have no conviction of sin? You lament that you cannot conjure up faith to believe? You fail in all your attempts to find consolation in your life's quest? Then what you need to do is to get on your knees and pray without ceasing that God will grant you a new heart, confess that you are wits end and that you have sought answers in all the wrong places, and that you are helpless in and of yourself to find Him, believing that He will grant your request. For it is the Father's will to do so. (Jh 6:37, 40, 45) You must come to God in Christ with the faith of a little child and cry out, "I believe! help thou mine unbelief!". This you must do until such time as you know that a change has taken over you and you can say with some measure of confidence, God is mine and I am God's for Christ's sake. What more can you do? Well, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. (Rom 10:17) Thus, you should by all means seek out a church where the doctrines of grace are being preached and taught faithfully. You will say, well where is such a church? I answer, submit your request in our "Church Locator" forum, and include your location. Most have found that there are some good choices to choose from in the replies that result.

If you haven't done so already, I would also commend to you these gems of wisdom to read and ponder:

Thoughts on Unbelief by Ebenezer Erskine

The Plan of God by J.I. Packer

May God grant you His infinite mercy and draw you to Himself so that you may experience that true joy, peace and satisfaction that is only found in Christ.

In His Grace,

I am horrified by the thought of this, Savin.

Remember the prophet Isaiah who said, "Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, 'What are you making?' or 'Your work has no handles'?"

If you know anything about God, you should be down on your knees begging for Him to develop a relationship with you, NOT you blithering on about His lack of a "personal contact" with you.

Who do you think you are, man?!?

As God answered Job (in the 38th chapter of the book of Job), "1Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
2"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3Dress for action[a] like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.
4"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5Who determined its measurements--surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
7when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8"Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
9when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
11and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed'?
12"Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
13that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?
14It is changed like clay under the seal,
and its features stand out like a garment.
15From the wicked their light is withheld,
and their uplifted arm is broken.
16"Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.
19"Where is the way to the dwelling of light,
and where is the place of darkness,
20that you may take it to its territory
and that you may discern the paths to its home?
21You know, for you were born then,
and the number of your days is great!
22"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow,
or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,
23which I have reserved for the time of trouble,
for the day of battle and war?
24What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?
25"Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain
and a way for the thunderbolt,
26to bring rain on a land where no man is,
on the desert in which there is no man,
27to satisfy the waste and desolate land,
and to make the ground sprout with grass?
28"Has the rain a father,
or who has begotten the drops of dew?
29From whose womb did the ice come forth,
and who has given birth to the frost of heaven?
30The waters become hard like stone,
and the face of the deep is frozen.
31"Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
32Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
33Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?
34"Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
that a flood of waters may cover you?
35Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go
and say to you, 'Here we are'?
36Who has put wisdom in the inward parts[c]
or given understanding to the mind?[d]
37Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
38when the dust runs into a mass
and the clods stick fast together?
39"Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
40when they crouch in their dens
or lie in wait in their thicket?
41Who provides for the raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God for help,
and wander about for lack of food?"

My suggestion, Savin? Get on your knees, right now, and PLEAD with the Lord of Lords to forgive you for those thoughts and to bring you close to Himself.

With your best interests at heart,
Ted

Well sir, if you have indeed been studying the bible for as long you say you have, and the Scriptures havn't been made plane to you, then I'm afraid you are deadly right, there is indeed nothing we can do for you. So you have been told what to do, kneel down and pray as you are commanded by the Lord our God, repent and follow Him. Do not ask why, do not pass go, do not collect $200.00. Just simply put your faith in the one that died for you..... FOR YOU! ON THE CROSS, FOR YOUR SINS and STOP this nonsense...... or deny Him, for you can only serve one master.

I believe that the problem you are having is that you are relying on your "feelings" for your spirituality. You are relying on an experiantial faith. This my friend is a very dangerous path. I started out as a free-willed, experiential Christian, racing along up and down in states of emotional distraught. One minute I was High on the mountain top the next minute as low as low can be. I thought about resorting to mistisism, joining a monistary, being caught up in this modern, extistential, post modern, pop culture, experiential, relitive, subjective way at Christianity. Let me tell you, it didn't work! That was ME trying to EARN MY salvation. But the Master has laid it out simply for us my friend. Justification through Faith Alone. Believe in Him who is the Alpha and Omega, believe in Christ and take refuge in His Word.

You say you have read the scriptures for 24 years? I'm sorry but, it does not sound to me like the Holy Spirit then has allowed you to understand their clear message of salvation, repentance and sanctification.

You say you want to SEE Jesus? So do I my friend, so do I, but there is only one way reveiled to us that we may do so. That is either by our death or His second comming and I pray everyday that when that time comes, that the Lord grant me and my family eternal peace in the Presence of His Glory.

SOLI DEO GLORIA!

May His Peace and Grace be with you,

Dave.

You are looking for Jesus where He can not be found in the glory of your own experience. You can know Christ only in His humiliation, shame, and sufferings as He bears your sins on the cross.

There is no missing key despite what your experience tells you. Scripture is clear. I suspect you will continue to look for some imaginary key that will confirm your interpretation of your experiences. Let me ask, what help do you look for?


God bless,

william

Well, thank you all. Those answers are certainly comprehensive... and sound. I sense it may be correct that I am looking for something amiss, something that simply cannot be found - for God's own reasons.

I realize this may sound stupidly obvious to some, but believe it or not, it has just occurred to me (with your help). I DO believe in Jesus, as the Son of God, the redeemer, whom God raised from the dead, and the only Name given under heaven by which we must be saved. And I also have been baptised in the name of The Father, and of The Son, and of The Holy Spirit. This is all the Holy Scriptures say is required to be saved. So perhaps the reason that I feel no need of Christ when in God's presence is simply because I have successfully attained the goal... I just expected Jesus to be there, to meet Him, and have in fact been demanding that He be there. This may simply be a wrong assumption on my part, and something which God is, for his own reasons, unwilling to grant. Be assured however, that I'm not investing anything in this answer just yet, although at the moment it has the "ring" of truth.

Please let me contemplate these things for awhile, and take it all to prayer.

Thank you all again,

Savin

Savin,you said this
I just expected Jesus to be there, to meet Him, and have in fact been demanding that He be there.

I had ask before about your control issues,and now I have an answer, thankyou.

neicey

Thanks Niecey,

I don't understand "control issues", which is probably the give-away that I have them. I'll do some research into the topic.

Savin

Savin

Like Pilgrim, I highly recommend you read JI Packer's book 'Knowing God'. But I would add that you get the 'Knowing God Journal' that is also available.
The book has a lot of meat and some people choke on it and put it aside. But, if you persevere through it being sure to chew each morsel sufficiently, I am quite certain you will come away from it a changed person.

Tom

Hello again everybody,

I'm still pondering the things we've discussed so far, and based on the numerous recommendations I've been given here, I've ordered Mr. Packer's book online. It should arrive within a few days.

Reading over all of the posts to date, I'm profoundly grateful for the support and good council I've been given. Thank you all again. I also see that there are a couple of points I should clarify in the meantime for everyone's benefit.

First, at least two people apparently misunderstood what I was saying about "distrusting God" because I failed to edit my post well. The sentences in question should have read: "Whom shall I ask? Certainly not God, who I now must distrust as potentially false." However I omitted the word "must" in my post. What I was saying was not that I presently distrust God - very much the contrary. I meant simply that if I accept the proposition that the God that I know personally is not truly the God of the Bible, then I can no longer ask my God for help, but must instead distrust Him. Aside from the surface ridiculousness of this idea (how can a person raised in the mainstream Christian church, who trusts Biblical God and only Biblical God from childhood, and who prays to God the Father of Jesus Christ, possibly be not knowing the correct God??) I can also report to you honestly that I have very painfully tested this proposition in the past.

In 1985, thinking that I must have somewhere made a wrong turn because of my inability to have any contact with Jesus, despite my easy ability to commune with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, I confided the whole matter to my teachers at the Christian Discipleship school I was attending at the time. After hearing the whole story, the very sincere (but I think misguided) teachers at the school essentially declared my whole Christian experience invalid, and succeeded in convincing me that I must not really be saved or in contact with God or the Holy Spirit at all, but that I instead must be profoundly deceived, or worse. Based on their recommendations, I then actually rejected the ones I knew (and loved and trusted deeply) as God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and accepted that I was indeed deceived, and that there must instead be something and someone else.

The short story is that the result of that decision was a sudden and torturous spiritual death truly beyond all description, and from which I have not yet fully recovered. Allow me to skip the gory details, and just say that today, nearly twenty years later, I have still never succeeded in finding any true god except God the Father of the Bible, whom I knew before. And neither is there any other holy spirit than THE Holy Spirit of the Bible, whom I knew before. Real God is simply the ONLY God - there is only HIM to find! And I had sinned greatly by rejecting Him. So I have now, after nearly twenty years, finally come back to openly acknowledging Real God as my God, and Real God is God the Father of the Bible, the One and only. So you see, I'm perhaps a little sensitive about the suggestion that I do not really know God.

I would like to clarify certain other points as well, about "seeing God", etc., but so that this exposition does not become too long, I'll wait awhile and take it up again later. Perhaps the book will arrive in the meantime.

Blessings to all,

Savin

Savin. We are saved by grace.When a person is saved they must then live theie life by faith. Romans 1 :17 the just shall live by faith. May I say this no matter what religion you believe you must have some kind of faith. Though the only true religion is Christianity. I must say one more thing with you Savin, the fact that you know about Biblical truth you are burning heaping hot coals on your head. REPENT I plead with you.