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I agree, Holy Spirit encounters aren't any more important than anything else in your Christian walk. But they're not less important! Why are there continual replies to other topics, and not to Holy Spirit Encounters?

I believe God is getting together all Christians to praise and work in one voice. It has to start somewhere, small things lead to great things. So how about it? What we have to say is still important, and shouldn't be ignored. Yes, there are replies to this topic, but none in relation to last nights there is none. I believe it's going to continue to happen.

What are you fearing? The only thing stopping you from having a truly awesome relationship with God is fear.

God Bless

There is an extremely fine line between normal happenings and divine influence. Many can argue convincingly that these lines overlap. What right have I to say that I can identify where the Spirit is working?

But I really shouldn't get talking about this issue...

You brought up a good subject holy spirit encounters is not talked about enough and it results in less of it happening it seems to me that the average church is to mellow for things of that nature to happen like my last church was but there are some great people the Lord is bringing up to lead us in such things so that we may experience what its like to be in the presence of the all mighty God himself.........just my 2 cents

uc pseudonym wrote:There is an extremely fine line between normal happenings and divine influence.

Actually I'd love for you to get into this topic...how else will we learn!?! But as to your statement above, the fine line? I'm not even sure how to take that, for it is my belief that God controls everything...meaning there are no "normal happenings" and everything is divine influenced. Now if you are saying that God is not almighty then I'd love to know what it is you believe and why so. (not being sarcastic, genuine interest here).

Hey guys, I'm back. I was at a youth retreat (flashback to Kenzo bound and gagged in the closet for the weekend), and we had lots of fun. We did all sorts of cool stuff, like worshipping till 1am, going into town and doing this "Outreach" thing which was asking these people questions then offering to pray for them. It was cool, and I really felt God move there, and not just with me, with our whole youth group, and the other ones as well.

But the reason I'm posting is that I agree with bluerose. I do not believe in coincidences, and that God controls everything that happens; after all, he did make the world, didn't he?

But that's just IMO, maybe I'm wrong.

Hey Kenzo,

You can just call me Rose ^_^ and don't doubt yourself. Your opinion counts and you should stand on it. This is what the Word tells us.

This is one of the more significant changes I've noticed in my life since accepting the Lord back into my life. For awhile I used to attribute everything to circumstance or coincidence. I never saw a divine plan in motion. But then God showed me some things that were very hard to attribute to coincidence, especially because of their timing--the way things happened right after prayers, even though I hadn't fully accepted God back into my heart. And now, since accepting Jesus back into my life, my perspective has slowly begun to shift, and has shifted drastically over the course of a couple years. I'm with all of you, I attribute happenings in my life to God. And yes, I believe God influences all things. Where I would draw the line (if one can be drawn--it's not exactly black and white), is between directly influenced or meaningful events in our life and normal or meaningless events in our lives.

For example, I could be walking down the street, glance across the street and see a blackbird fly by. I don't exactly stop and say, "Wow! God's plan is working in my life! That blackbird turned my day around!" That's a normal, everyday occurrence.

But what if I was running by a certain area where the time before a large hawk had been flying over my head and screeched at me, and I was a bit nervous about it and had just finished saying a little prayer to God to be with me on this particular run, and the blackbird I saw came out of nowhere and was chasing the (same?) hawk in the direction away from me...*

Now it has some significance. To me the difference between a normal everyday occurrence and one that is truly a God or Holy Spirit encounter is how it impacts our lives--or whether or not God directs it to help us grow or make a difference in our walk with Him.

The blackbird in the first case meant nothing. I see it almost every day. The one in the second case really made me think, and increased my faith in God's direct influence in our lives even with "little" things, and the way He is forever with us and always listening.

*This actually happened

Yikes, this could be a nasty issue. I'll try to stay on the level with this one. I think we can keep this safely as a discussion, not an argument. ^_^

Some of this has already been said by others:
1. It would be naive to think God is the only supernatural force working in this world. Satan is pretty active too.

2. Some things in the world happen because God set them up this way, not because He's making a message. I mean, the constant decay and death of your skin cells might be done by God (and hey, it's necessary), but that doesn't mean it has any cosmic significance.

3. It says in the Bible that God cannot tempt anyone. I doubt any of us can say that we have never been tempted. Yet if God does everything, we are in a major bind, aren't we?

4. True story, names changed. A man named Bill heard a voice in a dream telling him to "marry Susan," who he had met once. He talked to girl in question and said God told him to marry her and she actually agreed. They were miserable together and eventually divorced. I'd say his dream was a process of his subconscious (not that God didn't set all that up) and not a message of any sort.

I do believe God is soveriegn, and almighty. But though He's a master of working with everything in reality, I believe that some events happen purely to facilitate a normal world, not for a direct divine purpose.

Hey, if that answers questions, that's great. Because so far we've managed to avoid the issue I don't want to go into.

Okay, I'm being tempted right now, UC. You know what question I'm trying not to ask...

Amen to that bluerose
I got a story my family has been wanting to move for about a year now so one sunday we are at church and they have got a guest speaker there man the guy was so funny but he had a awesome message to on how to get God’s attention and get things done in our lives that we have been wanting done for awhile and taking back what the devil stole from us so at the end he ask us to pray to God and ask him for what we needed and wanted so my hole family is praying and it just so happens that all of prayed for a new house then we planted a seed by giving money to the church out of faith and the next day we decided to just ask a realtor what we could sell our house for if we decided to move so she told us what it was worth which was more than we thought and now we have a house being built and ours is almost soled and all this happened over the period of 2 days and we hadn’t even planed on moving for like another year now that was definitely the holy spirit at work

I'm sorry for being argumentative. That was never really my intention. I was just saying I don't feel any real need to try and figure out what the Spirit has done as opposed to what It is trying to do.

Personally, I'm very happy about the level this was conducted on. I wouldn't really call it a debate, just a discussion. In my mind, this is fine. We're believers who appear to have some differences, and we're dealing with them responsibly.

Spiritsword- this is brief, and I won't answer any questions about it, unless you're desperate and want to PM me. I have a view of God/faith that is pretty depressing. If one were to do a costs/benefits analysis of my faith, one would say I'm an idiot for being faithful. But I'd like to believe my faith isn't grounded in results. I just don't want to go around depressing other people.

*Claps for UC* ^_^

Thanks, UC--I understand a little better now. I was just curious about what you were referring to in your previous post. But I agree, I'm happy with how the discussion is going, and how it's not turning into a debate--that's why I didn't end up asking outright. Let's talk about the Holy Spirit!

Spiritsword