I post this in "Struggles by Non-Christians" because it refers to my decades long struggle to know whether or not I am a Christian. I was still in doubt as of last Tuesday, so please don't say this is irrelevant to "Struggles by Non-Christians."
Through the months of July and August, I was much more often thinking I’m saved than doubting. On Tuesday, August 30, I made a decision. I said that from now on, 24/7, I’m going to start treating my uncertainty about salvation as the OCD thought that it is, according to the experts, and to stop reacting to it. A big part of my problem has been that I will sincerely surrender to Christ, then seconds later (usually only a couple seconds later), I will either take back the throne of my life for myself, and/or simply lose concentration on Jesus. This has been happening many times per day for many years. I have long been bothered by these two-second conversions: did I really get converted/saved if my commitment only lasted two seconds? In relatively recent times, I have often been praying to Jesus, “I may waiver but You do not.” I’ve come to decide that some of my conversions were sincere and real, but I have a wavering faith. Having a combination of religious OCD and wavering faith has kept me in “the perfect storm” for a long time. I now believe that on some occasion in the past, I sincerely trusted Christ, then my faith wavered away after a second or so, but that He saved me according to His promises. Since Tuesday, August 30, I have committed to treating my doubts as OCD intrusive thoughts which can be ignored.
My next concern is God’s will versus my will. One or more people in my Thursday morning Bible study often pray, “Your will be done, not mine.” I realize I have had a long distrust of God’s will. I am reasonably intelligent; can’t I figure out my path for myself? What are our brains for, anyway? But the more I read the Bible and the more I hang around Christians and hear preaching, the more verses like the following jump out at me: “Lean not unto your own understanding, but in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct they paths.” I have had a confusion in figuring out the line between my will and God’s will. Gospel tracts often say, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” But I’m reasonably intelligent and *I* have a wonderful plan for my life! I have come up with a number of ideas on my own for what I want to do, and these include ideas for helping to advance God’s Kingdom. I am now learning the hard way that because something seems to me a good idea does not mean it’s really going to work out if I try to carry it out.
Let me give two major examples of ideas that were intended to advance God’s Kingdom. One idea I have had was to get together with other Christians and found one or more “All Night Christian Clubs.” The idea would be to start a club that would be open all night for (especially young) night owls. There would be entertainment, but no drugs or alcohol. The entertainment would be musical bands that would play both popular Christian and popular, decent, secular music. The secular music would be intended to be an attraction to the non-believers. Every once in a while, between songs, someone would get up on stage and share the gospel. I got very excited about this idea and began thinking of some of the songs that might be played. I shared the idea with a few people. A couple people had positive responses but most had negative or no responses. One consideration is that everybody is distracted by COVID right now and this is not the time to start such a thing. And the economy is bad, meaning no one would be interested in investing in or donating to the project. I have finally shelved this idea, figuring God is not behind it.
Another idea was to start a Biblical Astrophysics Journal. I am not a scientist, but I can read and write and could act as a science journalist. I have come to be convinced, from my reading and thinking, that the Bible is literally the Word of God and that it means what it says as taken in the most straightforward manner, playing no interpretation games with it. I used to not take the idea that the Bible is the Word of God very seriously when I believed what the public schools and mainstream media teach. They teach that recent, man-generated ideas of origins and natural history are to be taken as fact. I, like many people and including most scientists, believed in what I was taught by the “system.” I heard claims about God and Jesus, including the claims that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, and considered there to be a possibility that these claims are true. But the claim that the Bible Is the Word of God I could not really believe because I thought science had disproved Genesis. Then, as a teen or as an adult, I got exposed to some counter-evolutionary literature (pun intended). Once I realized that there were knowledgeable people who disbelieved the theory of evolution and saw some of the evidence that they presented, I changed my mind and decided that the Bible is the Word of God. But for years after deciding this, I still believed what mainstream scientists assert about the origin and history of the universe. I tried, in my mind, to reconcile the Big Bang and old universe claim with Genesis. I eventually saw that the two histories are irreconcilable. I decided that since I have come to believe that the Bible Is the Word of God, then origin and history of the universe assertions by the mainstream scientific community must be wrong. Having been interested in science since childhood, I kept reading. I came to see major flaws in the Big Bang theory. Eventually, I wrote my own treatise called “Big Bang Busted.” This is available on my website www.cosministry.com. If you want to look at this website, please do so on a desktop PC or laptop, not on a mobile device. Also, the “Discussion” link is now inoperable because I am no longer maintaining the website. Because of things happening in the world of physics and astrophysics, I have decided the time is ripe for a Biblical Astrophysics Journal. The Big Bang theory is scientifically refutable. Mainstream scientists say that because their theories about how the universe operates do not match real observations and data, 95% of the universe is missing and cannot be detected by known means. They label this missing matter as “dark matter.” A recent experiment at Fermilab, a national particle physics laboratory, may indicate that the standard model of particle physics needs revamping. An article on MSN recently was entitled, “The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?” It said that because the latest observations by the new James Webb Telescope show that what are officially classified as “young” stars exist in what are distant galaxies that are classified as “old,” many astronomers are realizing that what they have long believed about the history of the cosmos might be all wrong. So, I came up with the idea of starting a Biblical Astrophysics Journal which would keep tabs on these kinds of things, and also print papers by young-universe, creationist scientists. I put up a website about this journal idea and advertised it. But I have gotten very few responses from interested individuals and have decided God is not behind this idea, either.
I also have my own career and marriage plans plotted out in front of me. But if God is not in agreement with those, either…
Oswald Chambers stated that the good is always the enemy of the best. Things that seem good to us are not necessarily God’s best will for us as individuals, and may distract us from doing God’s will. Today, I have started praying that to God: “I realize that the good can be the enemy of the best.”
Through the months of July and August, I was much more often thinking I’m saved than doubting. On Tuesday, August 30, I made a decision. I said that from now on, 24/7, I’m going to start treating my uncertainty about salvation as the OCD thought that it is, according to the experts, and to stop reacting to it. A big part of my problem has been that I will sincerely surrender to Christ, then seconds later (usually only a couple seconds later), I will either take back the throne of my life for myself, and/or simply lose concentration on Jesus. This has been happening many times per day for many years. I have long been bothered by these two-second conversions: did I really get converted/saved if my commitment only lasted two seconds? In relatively recent times, I have often been praying to Jesus, “I may waiver but You do not.” I’ve come to decide that some of my conversions were sincere and real, but I have a wavering faith. Having a combination of religious OCD and wavering faith has kept me in “the perfect storm” for a long time. I now believe that on some occasion in the past, I sincerely trusted Christ, then my faith wavered away after a second or so, but that He saved me according to His promises. Since Tuesday, August 30, I have committed to treating my doubts as OCD intrusive thoughts which can be ignored.
My next concern is God’s will versus my will. One or more people in my Thursday morning Bible study often pray, “Your will be done, not mine.” I realize I have had a long distrust of God’s will. I am reasonably intelligent; can’t I figure out my path for myself? What are our brains for, anyway? But the more I read the Bible and the more I hang around Christians and hear preaching, the more verses like the following jump out at me: “Lean not unto your own understanding, but in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct they paths.” I have had a confusion in figuring out the line between my will and God’s will. Gospel tracts often say, “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” But I’m reasonably intelligent and *I* have a wonderful plan for my life! I have come up with a number of ideas on my own for what I want to do, and these include ideas for helping to advance God’s Kingdom. I am now learning the hard way that because something seems to me a good idea does not mean it’s really going to work out if I try to carry it out.
Let me give two major examples of ideas that were intended to advance God’s Kingdom. One idea I have had was to get together with other Christians and found one or more “All Night Christian Clubs.” The idea would be to start a club that would be open all night for (especially young) night owls. There would be entertainment, but no drugs or alcohol. The entertainment would be musical bands that would play both popular Christian and popular, decent, secular music. The secular music would be intended to be an attraction to the non-believers. Every once in a while, between songs, someone would get up on stage and share the gospel. I got very excited about this idea and began thinking of some of the songs that might be played. I shared the idea with a few people. A couple people had positive responses but most had negative or no responses. One consideration is that everybody is distracted by COVID right now and this is not the time to start such a thing. And the economy is bad, meaning no one would be interested in investing in or donating to the project. I have finally shelved this idea, figuring God is not behind it.
Another idea was to start a Biblical Astrophysics Journal. I am not a scientist, but I can read and write and could act as a science journalist. I have come to be convinced, from my reading and thinking, that the Bible is literally the Word of God and that it means what it says as taken in the most straightforward manner, playing no interpretation games with it. I used to not take the idea that the Bible is the Word of God very seriously when I believed what the public schools and mainstream media teach. They teach that recent, man-generated ideas of origins and natural history are to be taken as fact. I, like many people and including most scientists, believed in what I was taught by the “system.” I heard claims about God and Jesus, including the claims that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead, and considered there to be a possibility that these claims are true. But the claim that the Bible Is the Word of God I could not really believe because I thought science had disproved Genesis. Then, as a teen or as an adult, I got exposed to some counter-evolutionary literature (pun intended). Once I realized that there were knowledgeable people who disbelieved the theory of evolution and saw some of the evidence that they presented, I changed my mind and decided that the Bible is the Word of God. But for years after deciding this, I still believed what mainstream scientists assert about the origin and history of the universe. I tried, in my mind, to reconcile the Big Bang and old universe claim with Genesis. I eventually saw that the two histories are irreconcilable. I decided that since I have come to believe that the Bible Is the Word of God, then origin and history of the universe assertions by the mainstream scientific community must be wrong. Having been interested in science since childhood, I kept reading. I came to see major flaws in the Big Bang theory. Eventually, I wrote my own treatise called “Big Bang Busted.” This is available on my website www.cosministry.com. If you want to look at this website, please do so on a desktop PC or laptop, not on a mobile device. Also, the “Discussion” link is now inoperable because I am no longer maintaining the website. Because of things happening in the world of physics and astrophysics, I have decided the time is ripe for a Biblical Astrophysics Journal. The Big Bang theory is scientifically refutable. Mainstream scientists say that because their theories about how the universe operates do not match real observations and data, 95% of the universe is missing and cannot be detected by known means. They label this missing matter as “dark matter.” A recent experiment at Fermilab, a national particle physics laboratory, may indicate that the standard model of particle physics needs revamping. An article on MSN recently was entitled, “The Big Bang Theory Has Been Debunked?” It said that because the latest observations by the new James Webb Telescope show that what are officially classified as “young” stars exist in what are distant galaxies that are classified as “old,” many astronomers are realizing that what they have long believed about the history of the cosmos might be all wrong. So, I came up with the idea of starting a Biblical Astrophysics Journal which would keep tabs on these kinds of things, and also print papers by young-universe, creationist scientists. I put up a website about this journal idea and advertised it. But I have gotten very few responses from interested individuals and have decided God is not behind this idea, either.
I also have my own career and marriage plans plotted out in front of me. But if God is not in agreement with those, either…
Oswald Chambers stated that the good is always the enemy of the best. Things that seem good to us are not necessarily God’s best will for us as individuals, and may distract us from doing God’s will. Today, I have started praying that to God: “I realize that the good can be the enemy of the best.”
