I don't
know if anyone else has noticed, but there seems to be a huge influx of books discrediting the Christian faith. I believe that a lot of this has to do with the huge success of The Da Vinci Code, but in the last few weeks I have heard of at least four other books that question the accuracy of the gospels on everything from who Jesus' father was, to how Jesus didn't actually die on the cross. And so, like the good post-modern Christian that I am, I wan to share just one of my personal experiences and how I know Jesus lives! On Monday I was struggling with what I was going to preach about on Sunday... Niki had to work from 12-5 so I stayed in the office all day and around 12:30 I
decided I needed to spend some serious time in prayer. So what I did is I turned on my itunes, set it on my "meditation" play list, and set Tim' Hughes' song Everything on repeat and meditated on the words, and how God is there in my eating, sleeping, waking, working, and He really is my everything. Well after letting the song play for a few times I began to feel that it was time to set the player on random and allow God to speak to me through the music. So I went changed the settings and got back down on my knees and, as I reflected on how God is my everything, I realized that there are things in my life that I don't want to give over to Him... mostly because I am afraid that if I truly trust God to take everything He will try and ruin my nice comfortable life. So as I am wrestling with my fears, a song written by my good friend Betty called Fear Not begins to play. The gist of the song is, Fear not for the Lord your God is with you and he is my close friend with whom I walk.... talk about a comfort! All of a sudden my fears are put to rest because, "duh!! of course God is my close friend and I don't need to be scared because he is my friend and He loves me and will always do what is best." Well of course this leads me to praise God all the more! The next song was Matt Dyck's (sorry Matt I don't have your blog address yet) rendition of God Himself Is With Us, which was incredible....Anyway, this is getting long, so lets just say that Kutless and Copeland, also spoke to me VERY deeply, and I could tell that Jesus was speaking TO ME!
Sometimes we wonder if God still speaks like he did to Paul/Saul on the Damascus road, but to me on Monday afternoon God was speaking to me as clearly as He did to Paul that day. I hope that this could be some sort of encouragement to you today. God speaks, and in a way that we can hear and understand!
2 comments:
That's a very inspirational story Nate.
I think that your story answers the problem facing society, in argument against Jesus and his story in the gospels. People still want evidence to prove or disprove God/Jesus. So, they look at the historical facts about Jesus, his life, the Jesus tradition (the Jesus Seminar and of course the DeVinci Code). Everything has to be clear cut and dry and people don't expect to find God any other way. They try to disprove Jesus as to make their own doubts seem more truthful. The fact is that they are looking in the wrong places. They may actually encounter God, but might not acknowledge Him because they are looking for documental/physical evidence. God shows Himself in many other different ways. Indeed, God is mysterious.
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