How does one goes about willingly believing in Christ and the Spirit&#

[Guest]

But on his death bed Buddha taught that there would be a future Messiah, "Lord of Mercies", who would be able to free men of their sins. Buddha said, "...He is the Lord of Mercies, His name shall be called the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He is all knowing, all wise. He knows all that is in the human heart....

 

 

Beloved

 

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:

 

for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?

 

and what communion hath light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14

 

Point To Christ Alone

 

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold,

 

from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

 

But with the precious blood of Christ,

 

as of a lamb without blemish

 

and without spot:

 

Who verily was foreordained

 

before the foundation of the world,

 

but was manifest in these last times for you, 1 Peter 1:18-20

 

And You Will Have Done

 

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self

 

with the glory which I had with thee

 

before the world was. John 17:5

 

The Needful Thing

 

Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel,

 

that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,

 

whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead,

 

 

even by him doth this man stand here before you whole.

 

 

This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders,

 

which is become the head of the corner.

 

 

Neither is there salvation in any other:

 

for there is none other name under heaven

 

given among men, whereby we must be saved. Acts 4:10-12

 

~

 

Merry Christmas Beloved~!

 

Love, Your Brother Joe

[john14:6]

Shane, I am responding to your questions about the truth of Christianity. I spent several hours writing this reply which is really a testimony of how I searched for answers to similar questions many years ago and how my search led me to a life changing discovery about true Christianity. My desire is that you will read this with an open mind and that the contents of it will help you to find the truth you are seeking in the same way I found the truth many years ago.0

First I want to say that you have made a wise decision to investigate the Holy Spirits’ role in bringing about belief to individuals. Also, your thinking that there must be a way to decide on a worldview without trusting man’s opinions, I assume you mean making a decision about the truth of Christianity, is a wise one.

I will try to keep my response to your question as short as I can, and I will begin by saying that your question reminds me of myself many years ago. I was also raised in a Christian home, and we regularly attended a Baptist church. At age 13 I was “saved” but by the time I reached my mid 20’s I wasn’t sure if I was a Christian or if God & Jesus were real, or if the bible was true. Like you said, the thought of spending eternity in hell scared the you know what out of me, and I wanted to know the truth about the bible, God, and believing in Jesus. I lived several miserable years in doubt & uncertainty about Christianity and my salvation. Actually those were years of living in a dreadful fear, because as you said, I had an intense fear of hell.

My friend, I hope you will stay with me as I attempt to explain how I did finally find the truth about the matter of Christianity which led me to a settled & lasting assurance & peace of spending eternity with the God of the bible. Mine was a very long journey during the late 1960’s into the early 1970’s. Back in those days computers were found mostly in colleges, some public schools, and industry. There was no internet available for me to do research or to participate on a forum such as this one. My research tools were magazine articles, books, bible tracts, listening to radio programs, etc. I made use of every available resource I could find including talking to friends who I thought were knowledgeable in science and religion.

My next attempt at finding the truth was to get back in church and try to become a good Christian. I made a re-commitment to Christ, confessed Him publicly, confessed my sin, began to tithe, taught Sunday school, became a church deacon, drove a church bus, and did many good works. I did all the things the preacher said Christians should do. I still had not peace, wasn’t sure about Christianity, and still wanted to find peace but for some reason it evaded me. I would pray to God, begging Him to save me while doubting that He would actually do that for me. I talked to my pastor about my fears, but he just quoted scripture to me and told me to trust in God’s word. I wanted to trust in God’s Word but I did not know how. I kept reading & hearing about “believe in God,“ “believe in Jesus,“ believe in the bible” but no one could explain to me how to believe. I read in the bible that the devil believes in Jesus and trembles, and that just added to my confusion about believing. Yes, my life was a mess. I was a miserably confused church member. The dreaded fear consumed my life.

Shane, I’m sorry that this is such a lengthy reply. I wanted to make it short & simple, but if I omit too much detail I will not make the point that I am hoping to get across to the you. Please stay with me.

You are right on target by stating that you wanted to decide without trusting man’s opinions. That was my conclusion because I found that no man could convince me of the truth of Christianity by his opinion, logic, or argument, etc. not even the pastor of my church could convince me of the absolute truth of Christianity. By this time in my miserable life I realized that I had failed in every way at my attempts to find truth, to find peace, to find anything that could convince me that Christianity was real, that the bible was true, or that Jesus was who the bible says he is. That conclusion was actually a step in the right direction for me, because it led me to make a decision that literally changed my life.

Even though I had doubts that the bible was true or that God was real I still had a deep down suspicion that maybe I was wrong about God and if I was wrong then I needed to find the truth or I would certainly spend eternity in hell. After exhausting all the sources where I thought I could find evidence to the truth about Christianity I just gave up and turned to the God I wasn’t sure existed as my last hope for finding the truth. I had no idea about what I would discover, but out of a sense of desperation & helplessness I asked God to show me the truth. I was ready to accept whatever it might be that he had for me, if anything at all. I had been in church enough to know that the Book of John, Gospel of John, told about who Jesus is and what he did, and of course Christianity is about Jesus Christ. So late one summer night I found a bible, opened it to the Gospel of John, and while sitting at my kitchen table I started reading. That was the first time I had ever read anything in the bible outside of church, and in church I read only when I thought I had to do so. By this time I was desperate to know the truth, but I did not know that my life was about to change as I started reading in the Gospel of John. I did not know that I was soon to discover the missing link; the connection that leads to the truth.

The link that connects us to the truth of Christianity was the subject of your investigation, and that is the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing about belief to individuals. You asked how is the Holy Spirit instrumental to intellectual belief and does the Spirit give us something other than faith to convince us of the truth of Christianity. Then you said that natural theology is never going to convince you of anything, and again, you are right on track in that statement. Shane, please stay with me here, because I am going to answer your question about the Holy Spirit’s role in bringing belief to individuals. He will do for anyone the same thing He did for me. You stated that God is essentially hidden, and that was true for me. I could not see God because I was spiritually blind . The bible describes my spiritual condition at that time in 1 Corinthians 2:14 “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The truth of God & the bible were hidden from me because I did not have the Holy Spirit in my life, but as I began to read in the Gospel of John the Holy Spirit began to remove the blindness from my spiritually blind eyes and I started to see the truth that I had been looking for all those years. As I read through John chapter 6, the Holy Spirit literally turned on the light for me and “I got it.” At that moment the Holy Spirit gave me saving believing faith that is difficult to explain. All I can say is that the faith he gave me was focused on Jesus and what He did for me. I lost all faith in myself as I cast myself at the foot of His cross. He took my sin, gave me peace, and changed my life forever.

I will list some bible verses that explain the work of the Holy Spirit like John 15:26, “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceeded from the Father, he shall testify of me:” And John 6:63, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” In other word, we cannot understand truth unless the Holy Spirit reveals truth to us as we read or hear God’s Word, the Bible. The answer to your question does the Holy spirit give us anything other than faith to convince us of the truth of Christianity is yes, He does, He give us light so we can see truth. In other words He gives us the ability to understand or to see that we are reading the truth as we read the bible. That is the meaning of the verse above, in John 15:26. The Spirit is truth, he actually convinces you that you are reading the truth. That’s what I meant in the preceding paragraph that “He turned on the light for me” and “I got it.“ I realize that you don’t understand that yet, that’s because it hasn’t happened to you yet, but it can happen for you just like it did for me if you search for the truth in the right way. See Jeremiah 29:13 reference in the next paragraph were I explain more about how I came to see the truth.

My experience taught me that the Holy Spirit can work in us only if we are earnestly seeking after that truth. In other words, we must mean business with God if we want to find whatever it He has for us; and remember, the truth we seek will be found only in His Word, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit will reveal that truth as we earnestly search/study scripture. Jeremiah 29:13, “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” He knew I meant business with Him because I looked to Him out of a sense of hopeless desperation; I had failed on every attempt of my own to find the truth about God & about having faith in Him, but when I gave up on everything I was doing and turned to Him, and reading His word then He allowed the Holy Spirit to give me spiritual light so I could see the truth about the God who I wasn’t sure existed.

That day, actually at night, as I started reading the bible to hopefully find an answer to my fear & uncertainty, I had come to the false conclusion that there was no hope for me and that I would never know where I would spend eternity after my death. I believed that I would find the answer to that question only after I was dead. But, I found the truth that day. I found God’s Way to save me from going to hell. I found God’s way to change me from a spiritually blind & dead lost soul into a new person with a new life that would spend all of eternity with the God of the Bible. You have probably heard this before, this new life that I found is because God didn’t want me or you or anyone to go to hell so He stepped out of heaven and became a man. His name was and still is Jesus. He died on a cruel cross to pay the penalty for my sin and for your sin. He said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.”

Shane, I believe if you really mean business about finding the truth of Christianity and will approach God in the same way I approached Him that you can find the truth just as I did. My life changed that day and today, 40 years later, I still have the peace I found that day. I know without any doubt that my eternity is secure in the Gospel message of Christ Jesus. Yes, the Holy Spirit convinced me of the truth that day. No, I didn’t have any faith, except what little faith it took for me to open a bible and to start reading it. The Holy Spirit showed me such overwhelming undeniable evidence of the truth of Christianity that the only outcome for me was that I became totally completely convinced that I had found the absolute truth of God’s Way to save me from going to hell. Another benefit to becoming a born-again Christian that the new Christian is changed to a new life in Christ, and the Holy Spirit does the changing. Everything in the Christian life is the result of the Holy Spirit bringing us to the truth and changing our lives.

The born-again experience of becoming a Christian cannot be understood nor can it be possessed by anyone without the work of the Holy Spirit as He reveals the truth of the Gospel message that is presented in the Word of God, the Bible. Faith, believing, understanding, knowing, & the evidence is impossible to explain to anyone who has never experienced it for themselves. Again, God said “And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13. Ask God, even if you are not sure He is real, ask him anyway to show you the truth. Then open a bible to the Gospel of John and start reading. If you will read 1 chapter a day you will read the entire book of John in 3 weeks. The Book of John explains the Gospel of Christ. If you mean business with God about finding the truth He will show it to you, but you must approach God like I did. I was desperate to know the truth and He showed it to me after I read through chapter 6. You might have to read the whole book of John, maybe more than once. You might read Romans also. The important thing is to mean business with God and don’t stop reading His Word until you find whatever it is that you need to be able to know the truth. When He shows you the truth He will then give you real faith to believe in Him.

Scripture in the Book of John that convinced me were John 5:39-40, John 6:29, John 6:44-45,37.

Shane, I pray that your investigation will lead you to search for the truth in the same way I did. If it does and you are really looking for truth you can find it. Please, please do not give up on God. Please allow him to show you the Truth as the Holy Spirit leads you through His Word, the Bible. You will not find any convincing evidence of the truth to Christianity anywhere other than that which has been described here.

Sorry this is so lengthy, and I hope it makes sense. ldonjohn (john14:6)

Edited January 9, 2018 by john14:6