Can you not only know God exists, but have a personal relationship with Him?
Perhaps these snapshots have given you some insight into God and how one’s perspective on life can be touched by a force that can only be explained as His presence. Perhaps they have only given you the realization God’s presence is something that we each must experience for ourselves in order for it to have true meaning. I hope you can see that wherever you are in your belief and understanding of God, there are many ways that He touches lives and many places to see Him, but that we each must go on our own journey in order to know what it’s really like to have found Him, to have our own snapshots to share with others and to know that this view of life is definitely worth the trip.
So where do you go from here? In some respects the answer is as unique as each of us are as individuals, and each of our experiences in coming to God will be different. But there is a common thread experienced by all, and that is one of letting go of your pride enough to really see your own failings and to recognize that there is a higher standard and source of wisdom than what you have learned in your short years in this life. This wisdom has been given to us by God in the words and life of Jesus Christ. In Him you will find the best “Snapshots of God” there is.
You can experience God and receive Him in your life right now by faith through simple prayer. Prayer is no more than talking in faith to God. God knows your heart and is not concerned with your words but rather the attitude of your heart. There are no magic words, but if words like the following express the cry of your heart, you won’t be far off the mark:
“Lord, I see now that I need You in my life to show me the way life is meant to be lived and to be the person I am supposed to be. I see that I have fallen short of Your commands for us. I thank You for coming to us in Christ, teaching us Your ways and dying on the cross for my sins. I open my heart and my life to You and receive You as my Lord and Savior. Thank You for loving and forgiving me and for giving me eternal life with You and in You. Please take control of my life and make me the kind of person You want me to be, one that seeks after You and Your Truth.”
If this expresses the desire of your heart, I invite you to pray this prayer right now. God will indeed come into your life, just as He promises in scripture and has done in the lives of so many others. His presence may bring you to your knees today with a life-changing impact, or He may touch your life slowly, letting you know Him in subtle ways that let you gradually come to understand His love, counsel and presence.
My first real prayer to God was far less eloquent than that above, and perhaps wasn’t expressed even in words as much as it was in a simple yearning in my heart as I pondered over the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Chapters 5-7. Something changed in me that day, but it took months of subsequent reading in the Bible and prayer to understand life from God’s view, to begin to understand what it really means to be a “Christian” and to experience His changes within me. It all started though with a simple change of heart towards Him.
If this still seems hard to accept, know that even the Bible says that “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14) The experience of knowing the presence of God’s spirit is not something you do yourself, but something that He gives you when your heart is open to Him. If you still need to open that door, ask God for His help in knowing Him. Perhaps reading some of the words of Christ may be the key to unlock that door. Click here for more.
Wherever you are now, read God’s word, talk to Him in prayer and seek out others who have made the same commitment, for in them you will grow and be strengthened and find your faith bolstered by the accounts they can share of God touching their lives through Christ in the very same way.
May the Lord bless you and guide you.
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Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, {21} nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
Words of Jesus Christ in Luke 17:20-21So “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 7:7-8“I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Words of Jesus Christ in John 3:5-8“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
Words of Jesus Christ in John 3:16-17“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.”
2 Corinthians 5:17-18a“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Words of Jesus Christ in John 13:34-35Note: If you just completed at quick tour of this site, you can view another set of randomly generated pages by clicking on the quick tour button below.