Hi Paperspirit,
I am new here too. In fact,... I registered in here specifically to talk to you.
I had been lurking on this forum for a couple of days when I noticed your first post.
When I read: ("I'm a non believer but enjoy reading and exploring for answers to questions.") , I wondered what I might say to you if I had the chance. I had dismissed the thought until couple of days later, when I was in here again, and the Lord brought you back to my memory, and asked me "Ok...so what are you going to say to him"? I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.... I said I didn't know.
The truth is, I don't know anything about you, your background, life experiences, etc. , so I elected to tell you a little bit about mine.
I was raised in North Dakota, in a very small town. That little town had an equal number of taverns and churches. It was a tight knit community where everybody knew each others secrets, so nobody even questioned the fact that the same rumps that filled the barstools on Saturday nights, likewise,... filled the church pews on Sunday mornings.
My hometown, sadly, reflected the diluted state of 'cultural christianity' that had crept across much of America.
They were decent folks in many ways, but unfortunately they didn't really know whether or not God was real,.. if the Bible was true, or just where they'd end up when they passed on.
As for myself,.. growing up in a culture like that, I had taken the path of becoming more and more desensitized, and hardened against even entertaining the notion of knowing about God,...and remained that way up til' my thirties.
When I look back now, I can clearly see other factors from my childhood days that conditioned me to be suspicious of everything, and left me unable to trust anything, or anyone completely.
If there is a truly unique oddity in American culture, I believe that it is in the custom of the foisting of known lies, and fables such as Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, and dozens of other falsehoods onto small children. The adults of our culture seem to get an almost perverse pleasure out of watching their own kids fall for these things one by one,.. hook, line, and sinker...then watch again as the kids become disappointed with them all,...one by one, as their ability to reason matures.
I too, had experienced the same systematic disintegration of trust, and it most certainly contributed to my habitual rejection of the gospel throughout my teens, and twenties.
I was convinced that if I ever took that step, and believed,.. that God would vanish like a mirage, and onlookers would erupt in laughter at my foolishness; and I simply could not allow that possibility.
In 1990, while in Phoenix, I met up with a childhood friend that I hadn't seen in two decades. He had become a born again believer.
When we were children, we spent every possible moment with each other for about ten years. We knew each other so well we could finish each others sentences, and I knew every nook and cranny of his character better than his own mother.
That is why, in that spring of 90', I knew that there was something very different about him. We visited for a few hours that evening before I mustered up the nerve to ask him a few questions.
He had an advantage too. He knew me just as well as I knew Him.
The details of what we discussed are fuzzy now, but I did know that he truly believed what he said,.. and it had definitely changed him.
Later that night, alone in my motel room, I prayed and asked God... that if he was real,.. that He'd show me. And He did.
It didn't happen that very night, but He did honor my prayer and revealed His truth to me over the course of time.
So now, nearing the end of this rather long posting, I know what to tell you. God is real. Jesus is real. His salvation is real. The Bible is true, and He will show you, if you ask sincerely, and without imposing your conditions.
Jeremiah 29:11-13
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find [Me], when you search for Me with all your heart."
I had no knowledge of the above passage in 1990. Luckily for me,...God did.
Jesus changes lives. Proof of that fact lies right here in front of you.
Left to my own devices, I'm far too selfish to take the time to register on a new forum, and write this to someone that I don't know, and will most likely never meet.
I'll be around. Drop me a line if you'd like to 'chew the fat'.
Your pal, Dale
