Our faith and spirit gain strength like the analogy of a "Good Dog" and a "Bad Dog". The one you feed the most gets the strongest. The one you don't feed will become weaker. We need to take an inventory of our own life and decide honestly for ourselves which Dog we are feeding? Is it the Good one or the Bad one?
"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak ~ Matthew 26:41. We are all spiritual beings. There are 2 forces that are at war within each of us. The first is the spirit of good (from God), and the second the spirit of evil (from Satan). Our free will allows us to choose.
Are you feeding your spirit with things that please God such as a personal relationship and honoring Him. If your life is not where you want it to be, I encourage you to go to God first and ask God for His help. It says in Psalm 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
I grew up with truly faithful parents and attended parochial schools for grade school, high school and college. Around the time I was 14, I realized that all the rituals of religion didn't seem to be indicative of anything that was real, and I stopped thinking any of it was true or interesting.
In college, I took a lot of philosophy courses where we grappled with evil, death, God, faith, etc. Coming out of that learning experience, I thought that people were basically afraid to die (rightly so) and thus they invented an afterlife that would mean they didn't have to die forever. It made sense, but only as a human invention to forgo a nasty ending. That was my conclusion regarding life and God for the next five years or so.
My own life continued to be great-fun and full-and I had everything I wanted. I enjoyed my life, friends and family. I was in grad school, doing well, popular, funny and smart. There were no problems to prompt me to faith. I wasn't struggling with anything, except I had a vague idea that I still had to make a firm decision regarding whether I was going to believe in a God, or be an agnostic (doubter), which was the other option for me.
I never considered being an atheist because I wasn't stupid enough to think that I could know everything. That is, I knew I was not smart enough to know for certain that there is no higher order.
A Decision to Make
One summer day, I was at a great all-day party with lots of friends, lots of music, drinking, etc. All of a sudden I saw an absolutely adorable guy across the room. Our eyes connected and I was electrically charged. Later, I ran into him, and we began talking. I don't think he spoke to me about Jesus at that party, but he came to visit me later where I was living and we spoke about the Lord at length.
He was a committed and authentic Christian, utterly adorable, and as he spoke I realized I had to accept or reject the message. The decision sat there hugely in front of me, and I knew that making it would be the most important move in my life. He said things I had heard all of my life, but this time they were infused with meaning and import.
I was fine before I believed. My belief did not come from personal struggles or difficulties. When I heard the message, though, I knew that it was up to me to accept it or reject it. I started reading the Bible and wow, the words leapt off the page! Before, I could hardly read a verse without extreme boredom, but now I tore through the whole Bible like it was the best book ever.
It was unbelievable. Of course, later, I found that this is a gift. Even now when I catch a glimpse of a Bible verse on a billboard, t-shirt or whatever, a little bubble of joy leaps into my heart. I still read it every day, and I taught myself Koine Greek so I could read the New Testament in its original version.
The most amazing thing, something I will never understand is a personal revelation that was so convincing and so mind-blowing that it left me no option of ever turning away from God. I was reading the story of Paul's conversion and also the story of Pentecost one night. I thought, Well, Paul had it easy. If someone knocked me off my bike, blinded me and spoke to me, of course it would be a no-brainer to believe. But, we have no visible evidence these days, so it's harder. Paul had it easy.
I went to sleep and then abruptly woke up. I felt as if something was about to happen. All of a sudden, these incredibly hot waves of energy were pouring over the top of my head, making my ears ring loudly with each wave, and making my body boiling hot. I touched my arm, thinking I must be about 110 degrees, but my skin was cool. It was only on the inside that I was burning up.
Then I had a very quick "dream" in which my brother Paul (I do have a sibling named Paul) was sitting on my bed laughing at me. Also, a whole load of people (at the time I had the impression they were my brothers and sisters) were milling about in my bedroom. I woke up again and was
still very hot and feeling blown away. My ears continued to ring.
A Pentecost Experience
At the time, I didn't understand the "dream" because I didn't know how my brother Paul and my family were related to the hot energy feeling of this experience. Later, I realized the guy looked nothing like my real brother, but instead had sort of a bowl haircut and was a lot shorter. His laughter had seemed to say "you asked for it, you got it."
I guess somehow I got Paul's attention by saying he had it easy. I also realized that it wasn't my real brothers and sisters milling about the room. I didn't recognize them as my real family members, so they must have been "brothers and sisters" in Christ. Anyway, that was it for me. It was a real
Pentecost experience <http://christianity.about.com/od/biblefeastsandholidays/p/pentecostfeast.htm> a baptism of fire and one I could never have imagined on my own. I mean, I've certainly seen those pictures with little tongues of flames on everybody's heads, but these hot, incredibly intense waves of energy that poured over the top of my head were nothing like that at all.
God teaches us, and that is what has been happening to me since. As believers, our lives change immediately because we interpret events differently, have new priorities and see things through a different schema. I am constantly amazed at how similar my thoughts are to other believers. Of course, some of this is certainly prompted by Bible reading and sermons, but there is an eerie similarity that is so deeply shared it suggests another source.
I am also amazed at my capacity for praising God. That is something I had never done before, nor had I wanted or known how to do prior to this. Currently, it's one of my greatest joys. The idea of praising God for eternity seems totally fantastic to me now.
It is almost impossible to believe that I feel this way, knowing myself and the way I was before. How could I change this much without even really wanting to? That is, I did not set out on a mission to know and love God, even after I believed. These things seemed to just happen by themselves.
Now I know that there is definitely a God, and that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
