Communication with God.

Originally posted by vistesd
I did not read your experiential sharing, sonship—deliberately, in order to remain neutral and impersonal (I started to, but stopped myself). I do understand your point about sharing such things though—and, in fact, have been subject to a “bait-and-switch” game more often by fundamentalist Christians on here than anyone, when it comes to apparently sincere ...[text shortened]... willy-nilly.

EDIT: Though I responded to sonship here, I really mean this as a general post.

The subject of the thread asks for our personal experiences. So I gave one.
You do not have to either read it or believe it.

He wrote:

How do you communicate with God and in turn how does he communicate with you?

Condensing your comment down a bit ---

We can be fooled by beauty

Of course that is true vistesd. We can be fooled by many things.
We can be fooled by an excessive self trust expressed in overboard philosophical and analytical introspection as well.

As for "bait-and switch" the thread asked for an experience. I reserve the right not to divulge all experiences. If that is a switch after baiting, so be it.

Originally posted by sonship
The subject of the thread asks for our personal experiences. So I gave one.
You do not have to either read it or believe it.

He wrote:

How do you communicate with God and in turn how does he communicate with you?

Condensing your comment down a bit ---

We can be fooled by beauty

Of course that is true vist reserve the right not to divulge all experiences. If that is a switch after baiting, so be it.

My points, in brief (since you seem not to have read very carefully, and want brevity) are:

1. Experiences cannot be taken as self-validating of their own content without reasoned, objective examination.

2. Experiences whose content and effect are beautiful and/or powerfully evocative can (note that I didn't say anything like "necessarily do" ) seduce our assent to their content (e.g., with respect to a transcendant source) just as well as any other--and so must also be examined rationally.

3. "Bait and switch" refers to someone baiting you and then switching on you, not you switching anything. (Maybe you never heard the phrase before.)

4. I think I made it perfectly clear that the only reason I chose not to read your shared experience is so that you could not possibly take anything that I wrote as reflecting on that particular experience.

Originally posted by Suzianne
c'mon, let's hear one.

This one is not really biblical, but too awesome to leave out.

Yo mama so fat, she bought stilts and came home with flats.

But not to stray too far off-topic...

Yo' mama so wretched, Jesus demanded that John baptize him upstream from her.

yo' momma so fat, she refuses to believe in the Last Supper.

Yo momma got one eye talking about let's go see a double feature......

Yo momma is soooo fat she sat on a quarter and a bugger came out of George Washington's nose

Yo momma got one leg talking about lets kick it

Yo momma got wooden legs instead of shaving them she sand them

Yo momma is so fat she has her own solar system

Yo momma is so fat she has her own zipcode

Yo momma gots one leg so we call her kick stand

yo momma's glasses are so thick she can see three weeks into the future

yo momma is so dumb it took her 3 hours to watch 60 minutes

Yo momma is so dumb she sat on the T.V. and watched the couch

Manny

Originally posted by menace71
Yo momma got one eye talking about let's go see a double feature......

Yo momma is soooo fat she sat on a quarter and a bugger came out of George Washington's nose

Yo momma got one leg talking about lets kick it

Yo momma got wooden legs instead of shaving them she sand them

Yo momma is so fat she has her own solar system

Yo momma is so fat ...[text shortened]... watch 60 minutes

Yo momma is so dumb she sat on the T.V. and watched the couch

Manny

yo momma (to use the american vernacular)....is so fat greenpeace follow her everywhere to protect her from japanese trawlers.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Last I heard from Him, He was mumbling something about "A fool's errand."

Sorry.

So the task of convincing me that god exists is beyond gods power....

This does not bode well for your god.

I realize that my posts on here were off-topic, since the OP assumes the facticity of communication with god. Apologies to Gal if I derailed his thread.

This may be off topic a little, but it may be of interest to some. I just got it as an e-mail devotional today..

HEARING GOD'S VOICE

John 10:2-3 "But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out."

JOHN 10:1-21

This verse promises all who are God's sheep that they not only can, but that they do, hear His voice. Many born-again people doubt the truth of this statement based on their experience. They don't think they can hear God's voice. However, the Word of God is true - not our experience.

The harmony between what this verse says and what our experiences say is that it is our new born-again spirit that hears God's voice. Although God has spoken and still does speak in an audible voice at times, very few people experience this. God speaks to our inner person (spirit) and our inner person hears Him. The problem comes when we aren't sensitive to, or controlled by, our spirit but are walking in the vanity of our mind. The Bible calls this walking in the flesh instead of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16-18).

Man is a spirit, soul, and body. Our spirits are as perfect as they will ever be in heaven. If we will change our thinking so that we believe what God says in His Word about who we are and what we have, then this agreement between our spirit and soul forms a majority and our flesh will experience the life of God that has been deposited in our spirits.

Prayer, Bible study, fasting, fellowship, etc. are ways of refocusing our mind's attention away from the voice of this world and back to the voice of our Shepherd who is constantly communicating with our spirit. If we fail to renew our minds, we can live our entire time on this earth without experiencing the abundant life that Jesus provided for us. Listen, and you will hear His voice speak to you through His Word today.

Originally posted by checkbaiter
This may be off topic a little, but it may be of interest to some. I just got it as an e-mail devotional today..

HEARING GOD'S VOICE

John 10:2-3 "But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out."

JOHN 10:1-21

T ovided for us. Listen, and you will hear His voice speak to you through His Word today.

And the self-delusion of modern Christianity continues. It does not take much Bible knowledge to see that that message is 90% Fabricated. What does Christ actually say?

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. .... If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:21-23 KJV)

Does it say that Christ will manifest himself to BORN AGAIN CHRISTIANS ? Hell NO.

Christ said He will manifest Himself to, and make His abode with, THOSE WHO LOVE HIM. And who are these people who love Christ? THOSE WHO KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS The chief of Christ commandments is to love God and love your neighbour as yourself.

Again .. you love God and keep his commandments and THEN AND ONLY THEN you have the TRUTH in you otherwise you are a liar.

And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.
(1 John 2:3-5 KJV)

Christ is with, and speaks to, those who follow His commandments, but not all hear Christ because they are not of the Truth.

Joh 18:37 .. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Originally posted by Rajk999
And the self-delusion of modern Christianity continues. It does not take much Bible knowledge to see that that message is 90% Fabricated. What does Christ actually say?

[i] He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. ... ...[text shortened]... are not of the Truth.

[b]Joh 18:37 .. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. [/b]

Would you say that you have to keep the ten commandments to be among those who "Keep his commandments"?

Originally posted by googlefudge
So the task of convincing me that god exists is beyond gods power....

This does not bode well for your god.

My intent was merely to state that I don't care if God Himself came to your house and whisked you away to Oz, you still would find some way to rationalize it and not believe.

And that's not God's failing, but yours.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Would you say that you have to keep the ten commandments to be among those who "Keep his commandments"?

No.

Originally posted by Rajk999
And the self-delusion of modern Christianity continues. It does not take much Bible knowledge to see that that message is 90% Fabricated. What does Christ actually say?

[i] He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. ... ...[text shortened]... are not of the Truth.

[b]Joh 18:37 .. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. [/b]

You call his quoting of John self-delusion, yet apparently other verses in John are okay, presumably because YOU said so.

I don't see exactly what is the source of your beef with his post. Except you using it as a vehicle to SHOUT YOUR OPINION IN BOLD AND IN CAPS. Yeah, that clearly makes it true.

Will we be seeing any verses from you highlighting how vanity is a sin? No, I didn't think so.

Perhaps you can start obeying the commandments of Christ yourself by showing love for your Christian brothers. What's that? Too easy? Apparently not.

Originally posted by Suzianne
My intent was merely to state that I don't care if God Himself came to your house and whisked you away to Oz, you still would find some way to rationalize it and not believe.

If your god existed and you communicated with it you would know that wasn't true.

So you fail the communicating with god test...

Next!

Originally posted by Rajk999
No.

Really. Fascinating.

Which commandments do you need to keep if not the ten?