Experiencing God

Experiencing God-Chap Two-God Works According to His Nature

Question 1. Describe the experience that most permanently settled your belief in God’s love for you. What questions did you ask during your experience? Did God provide answers for your questions? How? And why not? Did you ever doubt God’s love during this experience? How can you be sure God loves you today?

I can probably name many experiences and write a book about it, but I will write about when I first became a Christian. I grew up in a God-fearing community. So all my life I knew that God was a loving God. However, I was also brought up thinking that God was also an unforgiving God. This meant that if I sinned, I would go to Hell. Now I was a pretty good kid-most people would call me a teacher’s pet or a momma’s girl. However, after a few slips of the tongue and other small infractions, at the age of sixteen I was convinced that I was going to go to Hell. I could not live a truly happy life, because I was sure that I would be suffering eternally.

That all changed in my first year in college when I met a guy who taught me the Roman’s Road to Salvation. It was then that I realized that there was hope for my soul and became a Christian.

I asked many questio0ns but cannot really remember exactly what they were since this was nearly thirty years ago. Some of the ones I remember were about confession, going to church and purgatory.

God provided the answers through the person who talked to me. He told me that he did not know all the answers-since he was not perfect himself-and told me that the bible would have the answers. Before I became a Christian, I did doubt God’s love. As soon as the person started talking to me, my doubt disappeared. Even today I know God loves me. God is love.

Question 2. When God has asked you to do something, what has your response typically been? If you struggled to obey, what hindered you? Did you lack trust in God’s love? His wisdom? His power?

My problem is I am too self-willed. I am not sure if I do something if it is God who is telling me to do something or if it is me who wants to do it. Usually I get a strong urge inside me, even if I never gave it a thought previously. For example, in my junior year in college, I was a transfer student, getting acquainted with the campus. I was looking for the ice arena in the gym campus and found myself in the (ROTC) Reserve Officer Training Corps) wing. All of a sudden, I had a strong urge to join the Army, something I never thought about before. God may have been telling me to join, because that is where I met my future husband a few years later.

While I am reading Experiencing God, I am also reading “Battlefield of the Mind” by Joyce Meyer. Both of these books go hand-in-hand. In one part of the book, Joyce talks about a dress she bought but never wore. One day God inspires her to give the dress to a co-worker. However, Joyce hesitated a few times because she had bought the dress for herself. In the long-run, she finally gives the dress to the co-worker.

I am like that also. I sometimes have an urge to do something or give something. However, I hesitate and end up not doing it. Whenever I get these urges, I have to determine if they are from God. If the urges are positive or good, I will have to assume that they are from God. Even if a task seems impossible, I have to trust in God. He will provide me the wisdom and power to complete the task. When I hesitate, I am telling God that I do not trust him.

Question 3. Has God ever asked you to do something that did not make sense to you? If so, what happened? What did you learn about God and yourself through that experience?

Since I am new with experiencing God, what I am currently doing may be a self-motivated task. There are countless times when I have tried to read the Bible completely. While there are many times where I have read Genesis and a part of Exodus, I never did read the Bible in its entirety. I used the Bible to look up verses or refer to specific chapters during Bible Study.

Well in 2007, I had a strong urge to type out the books of the Bible. I had a slow start since I was working on my Master’s Degree and working full-time. However, down the line-when I had more free time-I became more committed. As of today, I have up to 2 Samuel, Psalms and most of the Minor Prophets completed in the Old Testament. I have also started Matthew and want to finish that before I start 1 Kings. I had the sudden urge to start on the Gospels before continuing with the Old Testament books. As I am working on this, I am learning new things each day.