Communicating with Him

[FallentoReason]

Thanks Undeceived for your post.

Do not take any of my words as absolute truth. I describe prayer as I see it, but the true purpose and meaning of the act is something we will never fully understand until we become like Christ in heaven. I know it's hard to accept Christians saying "you won't know unless you feel it" but that is the reality. In your position, I would probably search high and low for a natural explanation too--that Christians are all delirious. That it's all in their minds, or they're all lying and none of them feel God in prayer either. Pointing these possibilities out, however, achieves nothing. If you created this thread as a way to pad your own views on the subject, you're only driving yourself deeper into your fallible mind.

I'd like to begin my reply by saying that I made this thread so that I could stop talking and listen to you guys instead. As you said (but with a different meaning) God communicating with them is all in their minds. That's exactly the point. I can't know what that experience was like because I'm not the one that experienced it.

Being a free thinker, I'm interested in any sort of discussion whether I believe in it or not and lately I've been curious about this topic.

God is in us all the time. We don't necessarily need to ask him to learn what we should do. By "should" I mean what is best for His glory, and in turn, best for us as well. The more we do God's will the more content we are. The more time we spend in prayer, the closer we are to God. Prayer is about strengthening your relationship with Jesus. You are looking for new explanations on how He "answers" prayers, and are having trouble finding some because it is hard to put into words, and the words we use have deeper meaning than their dictionary definitions--"hearing" from God, for example, is not literal. When you connect with God through prayer, there is no physical reaction, like His mind touching ours, or cold sweats running down our arms. It's spiritual. As such, answers come in the form of inspiration. See the word root there- "in-spira-tion." It means to breath in. In Greek, breath is synonymous with spirit. When you are inspired to do something, or to see something in a certain way, it feels as if you yourself thought it up. It's your thought, not a voice or a radio signal. God made nature to do His work for Him; He doesn't need to break it to communicate with us--this includes the function of our brains. How do you know it's inspiration, and not your personal thought, then? Through careful evaluation. Ask yourself: Does it reflect what the Bible says? Did it seem to come out of nowhere, and help your situation in a way you never imagined?

I know exactly what you mean here. The thing is though, there's two sides to the story here (in my eyes anyways). Either those Christians that hear God in their head (like almost everyone at my church who claim God said this or that) have understood the Word properly and that's how God works OR like you're suggesting God is supposed to be 'present' in a much more organic way, like getting inspired as you say. Because of my views, I can't begin to understand those around me that hear God in their head. With your view, it seems as if two things could be happening; 1) that's how God communicates or 2) you've explained it in a way that fits with what I see as the 'absence' of God, or in other words, your understanding of the nature in which God communicates has been moulded around what you 'observe' per se.

I think non-believers don't experience this "draw" because their minds are walled up. That is not an accusation. To become a Christian, one needs to fully convict their self of sin and accept Jesus' sacrifice for all. That initiates a response and a drive in the converted individual. Because a non-believer is unwilling to admit their predisposition towards evil they feel no answer from God in the form of impulse or thought. If you want God to reveal himself you must first accept that He is there. Then you must put His wishes above your own. His wishes will become your own and you will be happier in a deeper, longer-lasting way.

I ticked all these boxes as a former Christian. The only new happiness that I felt in my life was that I finally trusted God with everything. Nowadays I'm just as happy minus that extra bit of happiness from sharing my life with God, which doesn't impact me negatively. It's like if someone said 'you can have this car for free' and then moments later they add 'actually, I can't do that'. That's my experience anyways.