I think I am becoming a little less anxious about my crisis of faith. I am beginning to accept that it is a journey that I am on and I don't have to hurry to the end just yet! I dont like things to be indetween, I like to know what things are. Part of me still really wants to know if there is a God.
I can see what people mean when they look in the Bible and see a God they don't like. Their reasoning is something I can follow. But my heart and my experience tell me that there is a God. The excperiences I have had tell me there is a God. But that is a very subjective way of working out if there is a God or not. I can't find another answer for why things happened to me.
One thing happened some time aga now. I was at a meeting at my church. We had a visiting preacher from USA with us. It came to a time of prayer. I stood up in line to receive prayer. A man from my congregation prayed for me and I fell over in the Spirit. This is not something that happened to me very often, I usually fought it, and stood rooted to the spot determined that no one was going to make me go over. The man praying for me didn't even touch me and I went over. As I lay there I started to wimper to myself. I was thinking in my head (witnesses confirm I was not saying anything outloud) 'don't leave me' over and over again. The visiting speaker apparently heard my wimper and immediately stopped what he was doing and came straight over to me. He ordered a 'spirit of abandonment' to leave me. Instantly I found myself screaming. The scream was so intense that I had pinpricks of blood around my eyes. He then left me with church members praying for me while he finished praying for the person he had been with. Once he had finished he came back to me and talked to me for a while.
If it was not God, what was it? I know I wasn't talking out loud when I kept saying to myself 'please don't leave me', outwardly I was wimpering. Eye witnesses confirm that it was my wimper that got the speaker's attention. I am not someone who automatically falls to the floor and starts screaming. It was out of character. I am the kind of person who is suspicsious of that behaviour. Was it just co-incidence that the speaker talked about a spirit of abandonment when that is what I was laying there fearing? Why did I scream? It wasn't a conscious thing at all. It felt out of my control.
Things like this make me think there is a God but then I think there must be a rational explanation for it. I think my anxiety about it all is becoming more curiosity. If there is a God I think he will guide me through my doubts.
I just wanted to comment on your first paragraph: I feel much the same way, that it is a journey. That is one of the main reasons that I am not bitter at my religious upbringing even though I no longer believe in what I was taught. My life has been a journey, a search for truth.
ReplyDeleteAs to the rest, concerning your experience, I have no insight there. I was not a part of a charismatic branch of Christianity when I was still a Christian and most of the people in the churches I was in would have looked upon such an incident with similar skepticism that I hold toward it.
This is not to say, however, that you did not experience it. I have no doubt that you experienced something. I couldn't begin to fathom what it was, but it had to be something. The problem is that our minds are so easily fooled by our senses that it can be hard to figure fact from reality. It is just as likely that you experienced some sort of hypnotism as it is that you experienced something supernatural. I'm not saying that you did, just that it is likely.
I hope that you continue to seek truth, and continue to examine the things you believe and are told critically. Also, enjoy your journey! :)