Jamie Gigliotti
New member
Or is it trust in Him and a humble love relationship with the Father through Jesus and the Holy Spirit?
Is your faith belief in an idea about Christ?
- Thread starter Jamie Gigliotti
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PureX
Well-known member
I think you might be conflating several different experiences, here.
I believe that faith IS trusting in an idea that we can't be certain is true, but that we hope is true. For me, faith is trust turned to action. I trust in the ideal of Christ: that God's love and forgiveness acting in us and through us to others, will heal us and save us from ourselves. And I try to act on that idea as best I can in my life.
But as for the "humble love relationship with the Father through Jesus and the Holy Spirit", I have and do experience it, but I also try not to let myself get carried away by this sort of imaginary anthropomorphizing of "God". Instead, I prefer to try to see and relate to God as God expressed in the people and the world around me. I want to keep my conception of God 'real', and outwardly interactive, rather than imaginary and personal.
But I understand and recognize that others may not choose to do things as I do. And that's fine. I'm not disparaging their choices.
That's what personal faith and theology are all about.
Ideas about God or Jesus. We all have the New Testament and the Bible, and we all use that evidence to form our own conjectures.
Atheists do the same, but conclude it is nonsense.
It's only we Christians who are blessed to find the personal and spiritual meaning for ourselves.
elohiym
Well-known member
That's an idea about Christ, isn't it?
Jamie Gigliotti
New member
Is your faith conceptual or spiritual?
elohiym
Well-known member
Both.
I can only speculate about what a 2,000-year-old historical figure intended or thought. I can only go by the New Testament. And reading it gives me ideas about reality. It does not or even cannot talk about true, authentic "reality" in a way that can be read by folks on paper.
God and Jesus are BIGGER than the Word used to explain them.
I also have faith because for me history informs faith. Christianity is a historical religion, about which many things happened to it in ancient times.
So I use both history and faith--and go back and forth--to deepen and enrich my own relationship with Jesus and the God I see as disclosed in his life among us.
Wick Stick
Well-known member
Faith is believing something because someone credible told you so. "Faith comes by hearing."
So, then... WHAT you believe is unimportant compared to WHO you believe.
Jarrod
So, then... WHAT you believe is unimportant compared to WHO you believe.
Jarrod
Bradley D
Well-known member
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Combining substance and hope is assurance in Christ. Evidence of that not seen is proof. I believe Christian faith is much more positive than just hoping something will happen. I believe it is knowing that what scripture tells one is true and will happen.
That works fine for me until I start to believe the credible person is actually pretty unbelievable. That switch has happened a lot of times during my life.
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Jamie Gigliotti
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So I guess a better question could be does our belief in Christ, our faith in Christ materialize in a real cognizant way of the reality of the Spiritual World that we can not see, but with the trust and faith that we have; have we come to experience it in the person of Jesus Christ? His love for us, not just intellectual but heartfelt in the soul, realized in removal of shame from past sins, freedom from desire of being loved knowing in your heart of hearts you are loved and actually experiencing the glorious presence of the Lord, a feeling that can not be adequately expressed in words, peace that passes understanding, joy that is not just a fleeting moment of happiness. Knowing undoubtedly and unequivvically He is real and He is with you and inside of you?
I have found this only comes in my times of humility, worship, prayer, mediation, desire to do His will, honor Him.
The Lord is my shepherd, He is my salvation, He is everything!
If you think you want more of Him, seek to lose more of yourself to Him. What a glorious place to be. Lord may we all desire more of you, in Jesus name, Amen!
PureX
Well-known member
The "person of Jesus Christ" is something that you are imagining. And that's your choice, but for me, I think it's unhealthy to allow this imagined persona to become an object of love and worship. Because it would distract me from the reality of Christ in the people and in the world around me.
When Jesus used familial terms to refer to his relationship with God, he did so because he was living in a time when the family-clan was the organizing concept of social interaction among the Jews. The son of the clan patriarch was considered a binding proxy; a physical 'stand-in' for the clan patriarch, for example. Any agreement made with the son of a clan patriarch was considered to be an agreement made with the patriarch, himself. And likewise, verbal statements and written documents were viewed in the same way. (The same concept applied to Rabbis and their understudies, who would ascribe their Rabbi's name to any ideas discussed, written, or presented to others. The students were viewed as intellectual representations of the mind and spirit of their teachers.)
So when Jesus referred to himself as the "son of man", or the "son of God", in his culture, the term carried a specific meaning. It meant that he should be taken as the proxy for, and the lifelong servant of both God and mankind.
Familial relationships in Jesus' time were based on allegiance, and on duty, and on one's place in the familial hierarchy. But today's familial relationships are based mostly on love and on dependency. So that people today think Jesus was talking about treating God as though God were our human father; a relationship based on love and dependancy. But love and dependance had very little to do with such a relationship in Jesus' time. So that we are misunderstanding Jesus' meaning in his using those terms, and we are way over-emphasizing the child/parent dependency in our relationship with God, today, as a result. So I avoid letting myself get all 'gooey-hearted' and infantile in my love and worship of "God the father", because I don't think it's appropriate, nor is it healthy. And the same goes for my imagined idea of Jesus as a person. Because Jesus was not presenting himself to us as a person: as our 'buddy'. Just the opposite. He was presenting himself to us as a human proxy for God, and as a servant of all mankind. He wanted us to be each other's 'buddies'.
That's my take on it, anyway.
Jamie Gigliotti
New member
This view seems to deny the even more realness of the Spiritual World. A world where Jesus's disciples testified seeing Him disappear into with supernatural Angels present.
It also seems to deny fellowship, an close intimacy with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Is that a fair assessment of what you said?
My experience with Him, I can explain in no other way other than the supernatural and intimacy with Him. I experienced this before I read the Bible and found that it agreed with what I experienced with Him.
Jamie Gigliotti
New member
Does your faith include trust of His Lordship and humble need of Him?
PureX
Well-known member
Of course not.
From my perspective, you are confusing the "spirit world" with supernatural feats. The spirit world simply refers to the divine spirit that exists within us all because we are the creations (offspring) of The Divine Spirit. It is this spirit within us that moves us to "fellowship" with each other. That invites us to love and forgive each other. No supernatural feats are required, unless you consider love, itself, to be a supernatural feat. All I'm saying is that I want to try and focus on the divine spirit within me and within those around me, and not on imaginary angels and holy personalities and miraculous feats.
You don't have to explain it; I know the experience. I just choose not to pursue it, and instead, to try and develop that spiritual spark in the real world and people around me, instead of within my own internal "reality". That's all I'm saying.
Jamie Gigliotti
New member
"And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of there sight. And while they were gazing into Heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into Heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into Heaven, will come in the same way as you saw Him go into Heaven."" Acts 1:9-11
The disciples died for the testimony of what they saw with own eyes. What could possibly inhibit a supernatural power beyond what we can see?
I trust in his finished work and know that is the only works the Father in heaven will accept. I will do absolutely nothing to "improve" or maintain what he did. Nothing.
Jamie Gigliotti
New member
Does His finished work in you include you being filled with His love and pouring it out to the world?