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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| The prayer that settled my identity crisis. |
I remember, in the infancy of my understanding, fretting over the absence of the miraculous in my early Christian walk.
I had heard other believers talking excitedly in church about what God had said to them that morning, or shown them in the week, and it was plain to me that God was not giving me the same, obvious messages to guide me through the minutia of my own days. Naturally I assumed the fault lay with me. Perhaps I wasn't really saved? Perhaps I wasn't being holy enough to allow God to manifest Himself to me in this way? Whatever the case, it seemed to me that I was, at the very least, a second class Christian, or more likely, that I just didn't understand "how" God was speaking to me.
Because I knew this much, that I had certainly repented of my sin and believed the promises that God made then and fulfilled un Christ, I was convinced that if God was real, I was really a Christian, for I could not believe any "harder" or "purer" than I already had. So all that remained to me was the thought that I must be doing something wrong, or perhaps I was so dense that I just wasn't paying attention to the "leading" of the Lord.
I began at that point to experiment with the notion that God spoke to Christians through their own imagination and intuition. If I was walking down the street, and looked at someone just getting onto a bus, and thought to myself that this person probably doesn't know the Lord, was that the Holy Spirit convicting me to go and witness to that person? If I failed to chase down the bus, and present the gospel to this person, was I willfully defying God?
In the same way, I remember trying to speak in tongues. Perhaps the reason I wasn't speaking in tongues was because I wasn't willing to speak in tongues. So I sat one day, and prayerfully began to speak gibberish, but in a very short while I felt genuine conviction - the kind that makes you stop and ask yourself what on earth you are doing.
I remember setting my heart before God in prayer and crying out in my confusion - knowing that really I was seeking after signs to prove I was a genuine believer - that is, I wanted God to provide me with more proof than His promises, and in doing so, I was saying that His promises weren't enough.
The moment I saw my lack of faith for what it was, I repented of seeking signs. In fact I prayed with all my heart that the Lord never, ever speak to me with an audible voice, or provide me with a burning bush to see - lest I learn to look to such signs as proof of God's good will, and abandon seeking God by and through faith. I prayed that I would learn to be satisfied with God's word, and I prayed that God might grant this by never allowing me to experience some supernatural thing.
That was the day that my faith began to grow in earnest. It was like a flushing out of a lot of folly, a flushing that left only a peace in the certainty that I am His, not because I have dreamed a dream, or heard a voice - but because God has said so, in scriptures that have remained unchanged and open to all, for millennia.
When I give counsel to newer Christians or perhaps older Christians who are still immature in their faith (because they have been coddled in some church that wasn't feeding them properly), I like to tell the story of how I stopped believing that God was speaking to me through my intuition and imagination. It is good for a young believer to hear that God hasn't left us with something as airy-fairy as our own imagination to guide us. We have the sure and certain word of God, words that when we trust, we are really trusting in the one who spoke them.
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posted by Daniel @
11:20 AM
 
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| 2 Comments: |
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Super encouraging Daniel. I'm grateful that you shared this.
I remember as a young born anew Christian, or perhaps I was a Cornelius, I fell into the Pat Robertson crowd, and read the CBN way to be baptized in the Holy Ghost. Pat said to simply pray to God, and they begin to speak in a baby kind of talk, and God would put the syllables together to give you your prayer language etc.
I thought how silly, but the people guiding me are established Christians, so take it for what it's worth.
Over the years I was able to separate myself from this make believe crowd, and trust the Scriptures for truth of who my Lord is, and who I am in Him.
Have a Spirit-filled week my good friend. I long for the day when you and I look upon our Lord's nail scarred hands together, and bow down as we rejoice in His great love for us. That Day is certain. or at least being with Christ our Savior and Friend in complete awe and adoration in His majesty and purity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqsWUxNUSAs
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Don,
Great video. Reminded me of this past Sunday, our previous pastor returned to preach a message while our current pastor was on a week off. His three children sang a version of this little light of mine that was so God honoring, I was edified by just being there to hear it.
Great, great stuff.
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Super encouraging Daniel. I'm grateful that you shared this.
I remember as a young born anew Christian, or perhaps I was a Cornelius, I fell into the Pat Robertson crowd, and read the CBN way to be baptized in the Holy Ghost. Pat said to simply pray to God, and they begin to speak in a baby kind of talk, and God would put the syllables together to give you your prayer language etc.
I thought how silly, but the people guiding me are established Christians, so take it for what it's worth.
Over the years I was able to separate myself from this make believe crowd, and trust the Scriptures for truth of who my Lord is, and who I am in Him.
Have a Spirit-filled week my good friend. I long for the day when you and I look upon our Lord's nail scarred hands together, and bow down as we rejoice in His great love for us. That Day is certain. or at least being with Christ our Savior and Friend in complete awe and adoration in His majesty and purity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqsWUxNUSAs