Foreword:

Ever wonder what God might have to say to YOU today? Here are things to ponder, and things to receive into your heart. If you have a question, put it in the comments. I respond as much as I can.

A note for all my readers: I've been experimenting with YouTube videos for Bible teaching, and now I'm working my way through the New Testament. I encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel for better coverage. I'm still writing, of course, and my written posts appear here.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Slapped by the Supernatural

Ever feel like you've been whacked right in the face?  OW! It really hurts.  It's an affront. It's almost always a surprise.
That's what happens when we really begin to read and understand the New Testament.  The supernatural just walks right up to us, and WHACK! Right in the face!
Healings. Resurrections.Supernatural knowledge.  Demons (weird, huh?). Deliverances. Miracles.  In fact, there is so much supernatural in the New Testament that removing it pretty much empties the New Testament of its content.  The preaching is left, of course, but removing the miraculous and supernatural also destroys the context of the preaching.
Yet it's the "theory" of some that the only way to truly see Jesus is to eliminate all the supernatural.
So let's understand this.  Jesus was a real person, and His disciples, realizing that people would never believe in Him if He was just a teacher, made up a pack of lies about Him to gain worshippers. On its face, that may be plausible, but the problem is that those supernatural events are part and parcel of every Christian's life.  They may not all be the same events, but they are supernatural. The true Christian knows this in his heart, because he's experienced the supernatural in his own life.  There's the immediate contact with God.  I don't know how many of the readers of this blog had my exact experience, but here's what it was like:
First, I KNEW.  When my friend presented Jesus Christ to me, I KNEW.  Second, I received what God had offered, and then, I experienced the presence of God.  It was real. I had never felt it before. His presence has never left me since. Thirdly, I felt-"light"-as in "floating." These experiences can all be explained away, but they were real.
See, psychologists often say, "Well, what you were experiencing was just subjective." Really.  Isn't ALL experience subjective? And does that make it less real?
The psychologist would reply, "Well, yes, since it occurs only in your mind." Problem is, it's like seeing the color blue (assuming you're not color blind). I may say, "I see blue," and someone else say, "I don't see anything," but then you have to account for all the other people who also see blue.  The psychologist then says, "Well, you are all having a common hallucination..." and so on.  But the problem with that is that it begs the question.  Making a series of statements which essentially say, "I don't believe you" is hardly answering the issue at hand, which is, "Is God real?"
I'd suggest you might want to try it yourself.
John 7:17:  "If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know whether my teaching is true or false, Whether or not what I speak comes from God."
So you can decide right now.  "Do I want to know??" And its corollary, "Am I willing to do what God wants, if He tells me?"
And if not now, I hope that the questions raised here will goad you into thought and action later.

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