Christians, what is it like to have a personal relationship with Jesus?

[Joods]

It's not the people I hate... it's their stupid ideologies and religious thinking. It causes them to do some really fucked up things.  I have plenty of friends who are christian. If I hated christians so much, I wouldn't have those people as friends.

Can you give one example from your life, where religion caused harm?

Sure I can but that's not what we're talking about here and that's not relevant to what I was replying to. You are trying to go in a different direction than the point I was making.

[purplepurpose]

Can you give one example from your life, where religion caused harm?

A pastor told my mother to divorce my father because he wasn't a Christian. She divorced my dad - life was fucked after that.

What do you mean by fucked? Did it really get that bad?

[Spirian]

A pastor told my mother to divorce my father because he wasn't a Christian. She divorced my dad - life was fucked after that.

What do you mean by fucked? Did it really get that bad?

My mother is a Christian and my dad is an atheist. It's always been so. She started going to a new church when I was 14 years old, and the pastor there began immediately showing my mother all of the scriptures about why she shouldn't be married to a non-believer. After about a year of this she left my dad. I was torn between two homes and a horribly heartbroken father and a brainwashed mother - it continues to this day. That's what I mean by "fucked".

Our home was sober, well kept, and non-violent. My dad never berated my mother for her faith. There was no reason for our family to be dismantled because some old-fashioned myth says so.

[Joods]

Seems like a perfect example of religion doing harm.

Sorry you had to go through that Spirian. It's a shame how the brainwashed are so ready to make stupid errors in life all for the sake of religion.

[GrandizerII]

What is your relationship to Truth? What is your relationship with what is Good? Are these real to you or just convenient fictions? As for me, I believe they are real and that belief affects my life in a very deep and personal way. And so it follows that since Jesus Christ is the full actualization of what is Good and True, I have a personal relationship with Him. Does that make sense to you?

(FWIW I consider the this way of stating it as just a more philosophical way and without the "churchspeak" manner that Drich used above.)

It makes sense only superficially. There is a major problem of vagueness in your answer. So it's still not clear to me what your relationship with Jesus really is like. How is your relationship with Jesus different from the relationship former Christians claim they had with him? Perhaps some examples may help?

[GrandizerII]

Ok, since I keep noticing that Christians (Evangelical Christians, particularly) tend to doubt that a former Christian was truly a Christian, arguing that the former Christian never truly knew Jesus and never truly had a relationship with him, then what does it mean for someone to have a true relationship with Jesus?

Detail for us all what your relationship with Jesus is like, and what makes you know that you are in such a relationship? Be as specific as can be. Avoid vagueness. Thank you.

...The Holy Spirit actually..

Jesus, is in Heaven. He went back so the Father would sent us the Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus said we should A/S/K for. In that the Holy Spirit of God is what we have been offered/have access to.

The Holy Spirit if first manifest in us through Spiritual fruit. (As a grape vine can not produce figs, nor a weed produce olives, we each produce 'fruit' after our own nature. If we have the gift of the Holy Spirit then we will produce fruit that is consistant with the Holy Spirit.)

Gal5:22
22 But the fruit that the Spirit produces in a person’s life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.

Then if we follow the Spirit (Are faith to these fruit we have been given) we may receive a spiritual gift. Everyone in the Spirit receives Spiritual fruit, but Spiritual gift are often different and unique.

1 cor 12 is a whole chapter dedicated to the different gifts and how we should use and view them.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?se...ersion=ERV

Personally speaking I have been given either wisdom or just a direct line to the Spirit, in that I have all of my questions answered. It's kinda like having access to a Godly version of google. I wouldn't call someone who knows how to use google wise.. just fortunate. I was given this gift some time ago and sought out to answer other people's questions as all of mine were answered. In short I was faithful to what god has given me, and He has blessed me by allowing this gift to spill over into all other aspects of my life.

This is both a blessing and a curse. as sometimes people who have spent most of their lives trying to serve God in a way that comes naturally to me tend to over look the simplicity but solid answers I've been given. At the same time I also find myself struggling to remind myself it is not me that produces these answers but the access I've been given to God's "google."

Despite my abrasive nature and low tolerance for people mocking what they do not fully understand I think I have found an acceptable balance, and I seek to share what God has given me.

Other ways this gift has affected me, is I have traded my 'faith' for understanding and belief. I planted my mustard seed and it grew into a large 'tree' of belief. In other words I do not have to have faith to know God's word is true I've seen it play out via promises kept. This translates into an iron clad system of belief.

Can you give some more specified details of how God provides you with answers? What are the exact dynamics that go on? And how do you really know it's God giving you true answers rather than just you having some epiphany and attributing it to God?

[GrandizerII]

What's it like to have a personal relationship with Jesus?  Comforting, and loved in the knowledge that I have value to my Creator.  Depressing and terrified for knowing what may happen to friends and family that do not know Christ.  I shall not attempt to compare brainpans with the deep thinkers here in the forum but Christianity provided all of the answers that I was seeking;  meaning of life, what happens when we die, why are we here, etc.   I consider myself quite intellectual, well traveled and educated, so I readily admit that I did not like nor agree with everything that I have found, however I believe wholeheartedly that Christianity is where the true answers to my questions were found.  Science and other religions (I despise that word), could not provide this to my satisfaction.  Many people have personal objections or disagreements with what they find, for me I concluded that it was not about me, my personal objections, or hardships in life that I would like to lay the blame on God for letting happen.  A lot of people have endured horrible circumstances in their life, or are living a life that puts them in contradiction to His will for us, this can be very difficult to square with.    

You asked for specifics:

On a very specific and daily level I feel very different about death and as I get closer to the end of life since I have come to know Christ.  I do not lay awake at night worrying about not waking up, or not coming home from work.  Although I do not attend church, I have a Christian family and a relationship with Christ for support and fellowship.  I have the feeling that I have value and worth to someone; spouses, friends and family can let you down, I feel like I will always matter to Him.

Hope this helps my friend.

I appreciate your effort to respond to my OP. However, once again, it is not being made clear to me how this is an actual relationship with Jesus rather than a feelings-based relationship with a higher power that you have opted to believe in even though you have never seen him? I mean, by your descriptions, this is what a lot of former Christians claim they had felt when they were "walking with Jesus". How do you know the nature of your relationship with Jesus/God isn't any different from what they had? How do you know you're not just "feeling it"?

[Joods]

What is your relationship to Truth? What is your relationship with what is Good? Are these real to you or just convenient fictions? As for me, I believe they are real and that belief affects my life in a very deep and personal way. And so it follows that since Jesus Christ is the full actualization of what is Good and True, I have a personal relationship with Him. Does that make sense to you?

(FWIW I consider the this way of stating it as just a more philosophical way and without the "churchspeak" manner that Drich used above.)

It makes sense only superficially. There is a major problem of vagueness in your answer. So it's still not clear to me what your relationship with Jesus really is like. How is your relationship with Jesus different from the relationship former Christians claim they had with him? Perhaps some examples may help?

Oh! Oh! Oh! I got this.

The difference is that those who still follow an imaginary friend aren't smart enough to break it off while there's still time.

[Neo-Scholastic]

What is your relationship to Truth? What is your relationship with what is Good? Are these real to you or just convenient fictions? As for me, I believe they are real and that belief affects my life in a very deep and personal way. And so it follows that since Jesus Christ is the full actualization of what is Good and True, I have a personal relationship with Him. Does that make sense to you?
(FWIW I consider the this way of stating it as just a more philosophical way and without the "churchspeak" manner that Drich used above.)

It makes sense only superficially. There is a major problem of vagueness in your answer. So it's still not clear to me what your relationship with Jesus really is like. How is your relationship with Jesus different from the relationship former Christians claim they had with him? Perhaps some examples may help?

I don’t know enough about the experiences of former Christians. From what I gather those experiences vary from intellectual dissatisfaction to physical/emotional abuse. So I cannot really say how my current relationship compares with those who lost faith.

To me, it seems more like a shift of attention and categorization. As an oil painter I can attune myself to minor shifts in hue and tone and these get identified in terms of very specific and real pigment mixtures – low saturation Cerulean, high saturation Indian yellow with transparent oxide red, etc. as opposed to meaningless descriptions like “sky blue” or “salmon.” By training I have traded-in arbitrary terms for color with terms that directly relate to objective realities.

So by reading Holy Scripture and attending to the Holy Spirit, I feel like I now live and breathe in a world where some things are actually good and true, not because the majority says so based on a consensus perception, but because good things verily participate in and manifest a real transcendent Good, one that is intelligent, just, and purposeful.

[Nihilist Virus]

Ok, since I keep noticing that Christians (Evangelical Christians, particularly) tend to doubt that a former Christian was truly a Christian, arguing that the former Christian never truly knew Jesus and never truly had a relationship with him, then what does it mean for someone to have a true relationship with Jesus?

Detail for us all what your relationship with Jesus is like, and what makes you know that you are in such a relationship? Be as specific as can be. Avoid vagueness. Thank you.

Jesus was the sub when I was in a relationship with him. I've moved on because his asshole fell out and we didn't have the money for the surgery.