Have you ever encoutered a problem that seemed impossible. And every turn you made, every step you took seemed to make the situation worse. Nothing ever seemed to go right. You just didn't understand. Everything was worked out, it was going great, and then you just couldn't seem to catch a break. You felt aggrievated, stressed, confused, and unsure. You want to give it to God because you know that is what you are supposed to do. And you say that, you pray the prayer "God, I need your help, I can't do this on my own," but then you go on and continue to worry, to stress. And every night anew, you go to bed, stay awake thinking about it. It begins to consume your thoughts and energy. You try to have total faith that God is there and will take care of it, but it would just be so much easier if it were in your hands. But do you really believe that God is bigger than your problems? When a situation pops up, are you able to immediately say, Hallelujah, thank you Lord, You are bigger than this! There is no stress, no fear, no worry. You thank God that it is already taken care of. Are you able to immediately give it up to God? Immediately have a knowledge and a peace that He is already gone before you. He cares about you, about every hair on your head. And He is bigger than it. He is bigger than any problem we could ever think of. He is bigger than it! It is so hard sometimes to really remember that God is bigger than our problems. He knows they are going to happen. He has forseen it since the beginning of time. It is no surprise to Him. When we are freaking out, omg, God how could this happen, it was all worked out, I just don;t understand. He isn't like, "omg, you are right, sorry about that, I don't know what happened either, well that sucks." He is not surprised. He knew already and He has already gone before us to deal with it, take care of it. He is not going to leave us to figure it out by ourselves. He is bigger than everything.
My family and I have been through the ringer a time or two. We have been tested with this lesson over and over again. It took us all a little while. It is a good thing that our God is a patient God. But, we have finally learned the lesson that God is bigger. I can firmly say that when adversity comes, we are all able to be at peace, smile, and say, "its okay, God has it taken care of, HE is bigger!" He is bigger then our daily problems, our debt, the military, the government, the IRS, our relationship problems, depression, heart ache, loneliness, pain, sickness, disappointment, grief. He is bigger then any problem, emotion, struggle, pain, and uncertainty that we are going through. Just trust in Him. He isn't going to take you so far, and then drop you off and say "you are on your own from here." He has gone before us, prepared a way, and then wants to lead us there. Sometimes He tests our faith so that we can recognize His voice when it counts. But He is there through it all, waiting for you to surrender it all and stop carrying the burden when He has already carried it, paved a path, and wants to take you down it. He is bigger then it all. Its a theory that can be tested a hundred times over, He is bigger, reliable, and there! Trust Him and praise Him in the midst of the storm, Thank you God for being Bigger!
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WOW. I comend you on this! I COMPLETELY 300% agree!
"WOW. I comend you on this! I COMPLETELY 300% agree!"
I'm not surprised you commend them on this. The fact that you seem to believe that you can agree with something 300% speaks volumes about how much your commendation is worth and hints toward the kind of candidate who would support such a ridiculous hypothesis.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™
Bigger and badder, too. Bigger isn't necessarily a good thing.
I am great at telling God I am giving him my problem, but not so great about letting it go. I have been getting better about it. It really is a learning process and I think one of the reasons it has been getting easier is I am now in a really supportive Ladies Only Sunday school class. I love it.
"A library is a hospital for the mind." Anonymous
see this is my trouble. when i was little most of us all. parents tell you there is Santa, and Santa is there but you must hope for the best to get. later in your years you figure out hes a fake. so when people tell me theres a god, why would i be leave them. I mean if they lied about Santa then how do i know if there is a god. do we have physical proof. or could it be some men long time ago made it up for people to be leave. i get up every day thinking if there is a god then none of this big bang and all this science stuff from universe forming is a fake. my life is very stressful even at age 15, but with many diff. theories how do we know there is a god or not. you can only hope. in my life everything is possible, but i say that because if there is a god then everything is possible. if there is something that is impossible then there is no god. but if you have proof not hope, not a bible, not be leafs,if you have physical evidence that there is a god then please share it with me.
How do I know there is a God? How can I share with you the real hard facts, not just bible stories? Because i have felt God. God is not something physical, you can't see Him. But you can't see the wind, you can't see the air you breath, yet you have faith that it is there, because you can feel it, you can see the reminants of it. It is the same with God. No you can't see Him, you have to have faith that he exists, but I can feel him, and i can see the reminants of Him. Scientifically, I can't imagen believing that the world wasn't created. When you look at all the wonders in the world, every intricate detail there is. From the complexity of the atom and cell, to the amazing awe and wonder of the beauty of the night sky and the solar system. When you look at how intricate and delicate everything is pieced together so it will run just so, I don't understand how someone could believe that it all happened by chance. That somehow you it just exploaded into what we have today or evolved into it. Someone who believes that has to have a lot more faith than i do.
I have also seen God work in my life. I am only 18, but I have been through and see God work in amazing ways. My dad has been laid off many times due to the economy. There are so many times when my family shouldn't have had food on the table or a roof over our head, yet somehow, everytime we need to go to the store, or just need to make that last bill, somehow, God provides, whether through a random check in the mail, to gift cards, to people like creditors wiping debts completely clean. I wanted to go on a trip with my youth group one time and I just didn't have the money. I prayed to God that He would provide and I told no one I needed it. One morning my sister came to me and said that she had found an envolope in her backpack with my name on it that someone had left in their from the day before. It was exactly the amount of cash i needed, and i just broke to tears because i knew that He had provided.
2 years ago I went on a missions trip to Colombia. A group of us went and we did things like skits and dramas and we passed out this book to the kids. As we were there, there was a lot of complications getting into some of the schools we were supposed to, so we all got together to worship God in a little back room in the middle of Colombia. It is so hard to explain what it feels like when you hear from God or when He touches you, but all I can say is that if brings you to tears, and i just broke down right there. So many times God has been there for me. I know I can trust and lean on Him whenever i need to. he is my source of strenght and I don't know how other people are able to walk without Him. I have a sense of freedom because I am not searching for anything. I found my purpose in God. Another reason I couldn't live life without God, is the fact that without a God there would be no purpose to life. No greater cause, we would all be living for a meaningless and void life. But with God, there is a reason to be here, something to live for. I don't know if that is proof enough for you, but once you experience God, there is no turning back, you just can't deny that he is real and alive and moving. And I guess you can't help but ramble on and on about his amazing love and grace, and want to share Him with everyone. It hurts me to watch other people walk in life without christ, because they aren't able to experience the love, and hope, and strength, and grace I have when I need it, and when I am hurting or confused. It is amazing to know that you aren't walking through life alone and that you don't have to go through everything on your own. It is amazing to be able to say God, this is too big and too hard for me, here i give it to you, and just know it is taken care of. God is that big, and that amazing that He wants to do that, And he is just waiting, with His arms wide open for us to run to him, and give him everything, and just hold us in His loving arms!
"the real hard facts"
Please stop misappropriating scientific language. You have no intention of discussing real hard facts, you are merely labeling wild-eyed subjective speculation with a misleading descriptive. What you are referring to is subjective, unsubstantiated personal experience, not objectively demonstrable hard fact. For something to be a hard fact it needs to be evidenced tangibly and beyond doubt.
"i have felt God."
I could place you in the hands of stage magicians like David Blain or James Randi for a few hours and you would feel anything they wanted you to feel. The difference between these ingenuous stage magicians and disingenuous religious grifters lies in their willingness to admit that they are illusionists who are exploiting human psychology to make people think, feel and experience things which seem real. In fact it is noteworthy that stage magicians like James Randi are some of the most proactive exposers of religious fraud.
"I don't understand how someone could believe that it all happened by chance."
Firstly that's not what the scientific community believe. Chance is the disingenuous or perhaps just ignorant label creationists place upon theories of evolution and infinite regression. I'm by no means an expert on evolutionary theory, but I do know that it is not just based upon 'chance'. I suggest you read a little less creationist propaganda and actually read what the scientific community has to say, instead of relying on bias interpretation and misinformation regarding their assertions dished out by people with Biblical, as opposed to factual, agendas.
Secondly, would your 'scientific' belief in creation encompass the belief that God created the world in 6 days and did so a mere 6,000 or so years ago? hoho.
"From the complexity of the atom and cell, to the amazing awe and wonder of the beauty of the night sky and the solar system."
You see all this and yet you still think that the entire cosmos isn't awe inspiring enough to exist infinitely without beginning or end? Rather, you believe that such complexity can be reduced to a single being who chucked the whole of it together in 6 days, yet is morbidly concerned with details like whether or not gay people should be allowed to have sex without being murdered? Personally, i think that it is insulting to think that any being that purportedly had a hand in the scribing of a violent and perverted book like the Bible had any hand in the creation of something as complex as the Cosmos.
"That somehow you it just exploaded into what we have today or evolved into it. Someone who believes that has to have a lot more faith than i do."
You seem to believe that it requires more faith to believe in infinite regression in regard to the cosmos, based off the back of arduous and intense scientific scrutiny and exploration , than it does to believe in the infinite regression of an angry judgemental character from a book written thousands of years ago when people still believed the Earth was flat. That's just silly.
"There are so many times when my family shouldn't have had food on the table or a roof over our head, yet somehow, everytime we need to go to the store, or just need to make that last bill, somehow, God provides"
So God loves you more than the millions dying of starvation, who are also devout believers in him? Despite the fact that they clearly needed his help more than you; I am assuming that none of your family was being simultaneously raped, tortured and murdered while your trials of life rolled on into God's loving, if seemingly selective arms. Why was God more interested in providing you, living in a first world economy like the US, with food and good fortune in times of bad, than scores of innocents suffering and dying in poorer regions? Did you stop for a second and think that maybe your country's economy and culture provides and that perhaps some of that comes down to science, industry, agriculture etc?
"2 years ago I went on a missions trip to Colombia."
I met some missionaries while traveling in Asia. They were bragging to each other about how some missionaries they worked with in South America found that their message wasn't being listened to by the locals and about how they got them to listen. They figured out that these people were really poor and thus hungry, so they set up food stalls to attract locals who they then preached to as a captive audience. That is sick and cruelly exploitative of human weakness. It is morally bankrupt to exploit a starving human being's need for food to force them to listen to your message, especially if without the food they would choose not to. I have many friends who work for various NGOs and who dedicate their lives to helping others and doing aid work and every one of them I've recounted this tale to has had the same disgusted response as I had. If I told you to look at how some fringe cult was doing this to the poor, I have no doubt you would share our disgust too.
"I know I can trust and lean on Him whenever i need to. he is my source of strenght and I don't know how other people are able to walk without Him."
Plenty of other people will tell you the same thing about their Gods. Did you ever stop to think that maybe there is a psychological issue at play here? No doubt, you as with many Christians, can easily identify when another has been psychologically compromised to such a degree that they are left prey to indoctrination into all manner of cult or competing religion, but fail to see the same mechanics in your own religion.
It is no coincidence that religions furiously and aggressively condition children into their faith from as young an age as possible; children's minds are clean, they are easily programmed because all they know is what they are taught. It is no small coincidence either that most adult converts to religion do so at times of great psychological discord or crisis. Religions exploit people at their weakest to indoctrinate them. That's why God is attached to the 12-steps programs favoured by AA. That's why Scientology is so interested in drug addicts and their Narcanon program. That's why all these religions are down in places like Africa amongst the poor indoctrinating them and exploiting their suffering to gain converts.
"But with God, there is a reason to be here, something to live for."
If this is how you feel and what you believe, it saddens me. You wax lyrical about the wonder of the night sky and the solar system and the wonder of life, then you show the true emptiness of your worlds by rendering all of that to the scrapheap without a belief in God. In this entire cosmos of ours, which you claim to be so amazing yourself, you claim that you can't find something to live for beyond God. Somebody somewhere in your life has created an artificial void within you so devastating that you have learned to view the wondrous world around you as empty without the beliefs they've handed to you. You've been conditioned to believe that without their religion that you are nothing, that you have no strength. You've been conditioned to believe that without them, you are nothing and life has no purpose. You have been conditioned to believe that without them life is nothing. It's not true.
"And he is just waiting, with His arms wide open for us to run to him, and give him everything, and just hold us in His loving arms!"
Again, I'll refer you to the countless millions who ran to those 'loving arms' only to find hollow promises, suffering and death.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™
you know all i hear come out of my grandpas mouth is about god. for some reason i just cant be leave in god. I've tried every time to pray for his help yet nothing as interesting has happened to me like what you say happens to you. Every time i hear people talking about god making the planets. how come i never hear them talking about all the stars he has made or all the other solar systems. i don't know once something is stuck in my mind its in forever.
"He isn't going to take you so far, and then drop you off and say "you are on your own from here."
So the 13 million innocents wiped out through mass genocide in the Congo, the 6 million murdered in the holocaust, the 60 million exterminated in Russia and the countless other millions who were slaughtered in cold blood weren't just dropped off and left to fend for themselves? God already knew what would happen to them? Well, I'm no saint, but if I was bigger than those problems, I think I might have lifted a finger to help. But alas, my sainthood and omnipotence is about as realistic as your perceived notion of God's.
I've walked around the S21 torture facility and the Killing Fields in Cambodia and I can tell you that I did not get the feeling that the poor people who were brutally tortured and murdered there were anything but forsaken. I did not see the merciful and compassionate hand of God reflected in the photos of the people who died there, nor did I see it reflected from the eye-sockets of the skulls of the dead or represented in the mounded mass graves in Cambodia's capital.
What i do see however is movie stars and pop stars thanking God for his merciful intervention in allowing them to win awards and make a few extra million dollars annually, because their faith deserves so much more reward than that of a child born into abject poverty who will die painfully and in isolation before they even know what an award or a dollar is.
I also have issue with the notion that God wills the birth of babies with AIDS and various cancers, with excruciatingly painful deformity and innate mental impairments.
This blog entry is merely the latest entry in a line of unreason which advocates the surrender of all reason to superstition. Your God is another person's lucky penny, both exploit human psychology to provide a false sense of comfort, yet advocates of both would purport that psychology is a mere human triviality which pales to nothing compared to the magic they believe in. Fortunately, there are still people who realise that 'magic' is merely the disingenuous exploitation of science employed to exploit the ignorant and naive.
It is no surprise that modern day advertising and propaganda, when analyzed, use the same persuasive psychological trickery as major religions. Science provides a greater understanding of the human mind and how it works, it is no surprise that certain unscrupulous institutions and churches utilize this scientific understanding to manipulate and control people by distancing them from the very source of their control mechanism. Why do you think the Wizard of Oz didn't want anybody to look behind his curtain? Because once you do that, you see the science behind the 'magic'.
There is a reason why books like the Bible outsell books on psychology and other sciences, the same way there is a reason that a movie like American Pie will outsell a documentary on Belgium's extermination of 13 million people in the Congo; people like comfort and will often seek it in delusion and willful ignorance.
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I am the people my mother warned me about.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/tuffgong
TUFFGONG
Senior Executive Administrator™