Finding Christ: Fear

I am afraid. I am not afraid of being held accountable for my actions by a superior being. I am not afraid of having to be obedient. I am afraid of losing my ability to think rationally. I fear that once my mind starts letting blind faith creep in, a flood gate of irrational thoughts will come through. I fear that I will end up like these guys:




Perhaps worst of all, I fear that my fear will keep me away from you God. I am afraid that my unwillingness to think irrationally will close my mind and my "heart" off from you. God, I have tried reading your Bible, but in all honesty, I think my fear (coupled with other emotions I will touch on) is keeping me from understanding. So God, if you can hear me, please, help me overcome this fear. I'm afraid of what will happen if you can't.

Finding Christ: Things that I probably should do, and things I probably shouldn't

Reading the Bible last night was a calamitous failure. It was so painstakingly frustrating that recollecting the event is making it difficult for me to type this post out.

It would be naive, however, for me to say that no good came of it. I admit, I felt no guidance from the Holy Spirit while reading John. Undoubtedly this is the reason that many believers will point to as being the fault to the tremendous difficulty I had while reading, and since I am trying to become a believer, I am going to fault myself for lacking the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

So I ask myself, "how can I feel the guidance of the Holy Spirit?" Or "how can I feel the presence of God?"

Perhaps there I things that I am doing that are getting in the way of a personal connection with God. Perhaps there are things that I should be doing to improve my ability to personally connect with God. I've given it plenty of thought (read: a solid five minutes) and have compiled a list of these "things" that I probably should do, and should probably stop doing.


Things I should do
Pray
Read The Bible
Seek counsel from strong believers
Help people
Obey the Ten Commandments
Ask for forgiveness
Give thanks
Forgive past trespasses

Things I should try to stop doing
Looking at Pr0n
Breaking the Ten Commandments
Lying
Being prideful
Hating people
Judging people
Alienating people
Watching objectionable material
Listening to objectionable material
Doing anything to get my way
Swearing (definitely going to need help with that one)
Holding grudges
Seeking/starting confrontation
Satisfying myself at others' expense
Drinking (granted I haven't had a drink in awhile)
Sex (definitely won't need help with that one)


Will I be able to do (or not do) all of these things? Probably not. Are there more thing that should be listed? Probably so. However it can't hurt for me to try to change my ways for the time being, can it?

I suppose I can only pray that doing so will help show God that I truly want him in my heart.

Finding Christ: A lack of communication

I have an urge to be extremely sarcastic in this post God, please help me refrain and try to keep it as serious as possible.

I'm trying to read through the book of John with an open mind and an open heart, but every single verse I read, I question. I question it's validity as your inerrant word, I question it's meaning, I question my questions. Honestly it's quite troublesome. As I read it, it seems like it would do a wonderful job of reaffirming belief, but I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that it is your infallible word. It's agonizingly frustrating.

I find myself questioning my own commitment to finding you with every verse I read. I find myself questioning my own rationale every time I try to consider a verse as your word. I find myself questioning every answer that I may find.

God, I'm sure it's extremely too soon to say this, but I feel it must be said. We need to work on our communication. Many people say that the best way to feel you, see you, hear you, and communicate with you, is through scripture. But right now, it's not registering properly with my skeptical mind. So if there is anyway that you can guide me through my readings, or if there is anyway that I can feel the Spirit (which I suppose is you) guiding me , please help.

Finding Christ: Praying for guidance and forgiveness

Note: This is a transcript of a spoken prayer as best as I can remember it

Are you there God? It's me, Joshua. I don't know why, but I felt it would be best for me to start off with a pop culture reference. If I should be more serious God, I'm sorry. I know we've had a rocky past, seeing as how I haven't believed in you at all. Please forgive me for that. I really wish to let you into my heart, and into my life. I'm just no entirely sure how.

I know that by your standards, I'm a terrible person. I've done many things I regret doing, I've wronged many people, and I've caused a lot of strife in my life. I'm a prideful person, I can be manipulative, I lie a lot, and I'm sorry for all this God.

I really don't now what I am expecting from this to be honest. I'm not sure if it will be a sudden revelation, or a gradual shift towards you, or what. In all honesty, I'm a bit scared. I still feel extremely skeptical and cynical towards your existence, and I really want you to help me with this. Even right now, I feel silly praying to you. In all honesty, this cynicism is making me feel a bit guilty. Maybe the guilt is your way of being subtle God? I don't know.

I am about to start reading The Bible. Well, I've read The Bible before, but mostly it was to criticize it, and prove that it probably wasn't written by some supreme being. I'm sincerely sorry for any of the people I have lead astray by doing so, which I suppose includes myself. I just want you to help guide me through the readings of your book. I really wish to understand what you are trying to say in it. Please help me with this.

My first journey: Finding Christ

I have never labeled myself in regards to religious belief (or lack thereof). While I've never really felt like something is out there, I have always hoped that there was. My hope has come close to being faith, but a lack of credible evidence, and the irrationality of it all has lead me to accept that more than likely, there isn't anything out there.

I have to admit though, I have met some rational minded people of faith. I see these people, and have a hard time rationalizing to myself that several billion people around the world believe that something greater is out there, and that they can experience it.

There has to be something to it right? Surely the majority of the world isn't crazy, right?

It is because of these rational minded people of faith (RMPoF from here-on-out) that I have decided to seek out this "something." After discussing the fact that I wish to find this "something" with several RMPoF, I have decided to devote myself entirely to finding Christ.

To all the Christians out there I assure you this is not meant as a ploy so that I can say "HA, I told you you guys were wrong!" I am genuinely going to try to forge the spiritual relationship that Christians claim can exist for everybody so long as they truly want it.

I am assuming that it will be all but impossible for me to prove that I "truly" want a relationship with Christ, but for the time being I do.

Say a prayer for me.

Allow me to re-introduce myself

What will I learn from this?

It's a question I ask myself very rarely. To put it mildly, I lack foresight. I live in the moment, and try not to trouble myself with the unavoidable hassles that the future holds for me. I like to think that my lack of foresight is more than compensated for by my superior hindsight. So while I often come up stumped when asked, "what do you (I) expect to learn from this?" I almost always have an answer when asked, "what did you (I) learn from this?"

Unfortunately, the thing I have learned the most is that there are lots of things that I shouldn't have done. Fortunately, I quickly learn not to do these things again. Unfortunately, I have a short memory when it comes to these lessons, and may commit the same error a multitude of times before my lesson is finally (if ever) learned. Personally, I blame the liberal media and video games for a solid 90% of these mistakes, the other 10% being split between alcohol, impressionable co-eds, and my good looks.

However, I hope to shift paradigms from hindsight, to foresight, and since the purpose of this blog is for me to share my journeys in gaining knowledge, I find myself finally asking the question...


What will I learn from this?