I’ve been having trouble with really knowing God. I feel like I’m just perceiving God as a thought, and not a living, powerful, and most of all, loving being. I know that one way I can know Him is by praying, but for me, it usually just gives me a fleeting feeling of recognizing who He is. I also know that charity and acts of love can also help to know who He is, but I’m afraid that will also give me that fleeting feeling (but of course I won’t only be doing those charitable acts for my own purposes). I don’t want God to be just a feeling to me. I want Him to be my actual God. It would be great if you guys could help me get some answers. Thank you so much and may God bless!
When I first became Christian in 1982, I did so as the result of a sort of spiritual push, and also it was the tail end of the worst four years of my life. But a year later, things were again not so good - I had just gone through a divorce, I’d been chewed out at work, not much money, I’d had to sell the house I had due to the divorce etc.
I was also supposed to be “leading” at a Scripture Union Beach Mission. Scripture Union is a protestant based non-denominational group which has various outreaches, but one is what they call “Beach Mission”. They’ll set up a marquis (large tent) at a camping ground or caravan park during the school holidays over Christmas, and run programs for the kids of local campers, with a view to children’s evangelisation.
Of course the parents are happy to get the kids off their hands for a few hours.
This was a new culture to me, and I was feeling out of my depth to boot.
I was in a cynical frame of mind, and asking myself “How do I know this is all true, and not just a psychological prop?”
Each day we would have a Bible Study for “leaders” without the kids present, usually around 2 or 3pm or thereabouts, which was led by the overall camp leader.
Now I was sitting on one of the chairs or bench seats, half dozing off, but in a cynical frame of mind. The leader was reading from Samuel or Kings, regarding David. But when he got to the words “… man after my own heart…”, this “double whammy” hit me out of nowhere. It was like a breath going through me in waves from head to foot. I nearly fell off the chair I got such a shock.
After the camp was over, I related the incident to my own pastor. His comment was “I think the Lord was just giving you some encouragement. He knew you’d been through a tough time.”
Now that happened twice more, and there have been other spiritual incidents of other sorts. So I know God’s there from personal experience. But even so, the way He works can be very hard to accept sometimes. He can be pretty unfair and somewhat humiliating.
I think it was Saint Theresa, and if anyone knew God, she did, who when she was knocked off her horse and her brand new cloak ended up in the mud, protested about it. She seemed to get the reply “This is how I treat all my friends”.
She snarled back, “Then it’s no wonder you’ve got so few of them!”
So you may sometime get a direct sense of God’s presence. But don’t think that means that from that time on, Christian life will be one long litany of beer and skittles.
