BrainOut!
The mumblings of a Christian autistic husband, dad, IT guy and amateur radio operator - Will Brokenbourgh / AF7EC
Channel changing
Have you ever wondered why some people have a super-powerful and mind-boggling life-changing event with and from God while others don't? I wondered about this too after watching a video yesterday.
In yesterday's video, a man described how he went from being a drug-abusing atheist who
thought churches were only for funerals to an on-fire servent of Jesus Christ! Yay for
him and yay for God! He described that while he was holding on for dear life in a
hospital bed, Jesus visited him with a life-changing and powerful display of His glory
and a dramatic healing. That is pretty cool! After this, many miraculous and
wonderous things also happened to him that could only have come from our loving and
mighty God!
After watching the video, I wondered why some people have these fantastic encounters with God while others don't. I mean, I wasn't questioning God, I simply was wondering what set some people apart for such things. I strongly sensed that Holy Spirit gave me some understanding about it...
If you're old enough, you'll remember how old TV sets used to have at least one dial that
changed the channel. On many of those older TV sets, there was an outer ring around the
channel-changing knob. When you'd change the channel, sometimes the picture or sound
was slightly distorted and needed fine-tuning -- that's where that outer ring came into
play -- you'd rotate that outer ring to fine-tune the sound or picture until it was clear
and less staticky.
How does this relate to my wondering about why some people have fantastic encounters while others don't? If I'm understanding him correctly, Holy Spirit seemed to be telling me the following:
Some people have been living a life so far away from God that a major encounter is necessary to reach them and deliver them from that kind of life -- a complete channel change -- sometimes clear across the dial!
Some other people are at a point in their walk with Jesus where they don't need some mind-blowing fantastical encounter with the living God -- they are already drawing closer and closer to him every day and they trust that he's real and that what he says is true. God instead deals with people like this in more subtle ways -- the fine-tuning ring around the channel changer.
No matter who we are, I'm grateful that God shows an abundance of love and patience to us, otherwise we'd all be a pile of smoldering ash somewhere, if the devil had his way. God is so loving and so merciful that Jesus came from Heaven to this earth in a human body, taught us, warned us, trained us, served us and ultimately took our place, dying a horrible and painful death nailed to a cross! If God did not love us, why would he bother doing that?
I hope that every person who reads this post is in a close relationship with Jesus! If you're not, and you want to be, why not stop right now, realize that you need Jesus as your Savior, make a real and firm commitment that you will turn your back on all the junk, bad and unloving behavior and sincerely tell God you are sorry for sinning against him. Tell him, sincerely, that you need him, that you want Jesus to be a part of you, and you want to be a part of him. Tell God that you want Jesus to be master of you and your life.
Once you've done this, get a Bible translation that's as close as possible to the original ancient texts and that you easily understand (ie: not in old English), pray and talk to God about what you're going through, what you're feeling and ask for strength and encouragement, seek out a local church that serves God and not man, truly and sincerely follows Jesus and teaches and believes the Bible and not any weird new-age unbiblical stuff. After you've found the right group of believers, let the leaders know that you've made a decision to follow Jesus! Prayefully they will help you grow and learn more, help you get baptized and encourage you to grow closer to Jesus and equip you for the daily fight against the devil.
If it's a complete channel change or just some fine-tuning, a close and intimate relationship with God will strengthen you, heal you, encourage you and draw others to God by seeing his love shining through you!
God bless you, and thank you for reading!
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