[timeforsleep]

Do you ever feel like there is no God?

[nowheretorun]

in answer, not to riddle time, God never forgets about us...

yes i often wonder. I was watching a film last night where the star screamed to someone like, " The universe doesnt give a *(#&(# about you and if you hurt or if you survive. There is nothing out there"

I'm also reading this spirtual book that my T suggested that says that we are the proof that God exists and that our pain is divine like our joy is divine.

I find it all very difficult to figure out.

[nowheretorun]

God has been described as the 'quiet, still voice within' Esther.... hope that will help...

[SeptemberMorn]

Never!

[nita1103]

never ever there is a God and always will be!

[Abby]

I think this question is very similar to esthers post about who God is.
Personally i would love to live a life without any doubts whatsoever about God existance but i'm human, i'm flawed and at times i do question. I also think questioning God's existance is natural and also an intelligent thing to do because it calls upon you to gain more knowledge and through this i believe each person will become closer to God. I think questioning will always be there, because afterall where would faith come in to play if we were 100% sure all of the time??

I was reading a very interesting article in the TIME magazine a few weeks ago about Mother Thereasa - it said in the article that papers and diary entries had been found from her questioning God and having a crisis of faith.

"""The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever """"

""""She compares the experience to hell and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God. She is acutely aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanor. "The smile," she writes, is "a mask" or "a cloak that covers everything." Similarly, she wonders whether she is engaged in verbal deception. "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God — tender, personal love," she remarks to an adviser. "If you were [there], you would have said, 'What hypocrisy.'"""""

Some the things written in her letters to various bishops really touched me and allowed me to relate to her pain. I'll write the refs to this article below as people may find it interesting too. The thing that touched me the most in this article, and i think makes her one of the most awe inspiring modern women is the fact that throughout all these doubts she remained in prayer, she remained doing the good that she did. I cannot even imagine having that strength and that faith.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1655415,00.html

[Oceanlilly]

this is a good post.....i know i have felt like there is no god b-4---but ya know i look at all the wonderful things we have ....and there definitely has to be a higher being.....i believe he knows our hearts and is listening at all times.....we all should be thankful and always have faith in him, i have always been told that god would never let us go through something we cannot bear.....so in a sense when i am havin hard times i think of that.....maybe we are alot stronger than we think we are???

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nowheretorun said:
God has been described as the 'quiet, still voice within' Esther.... hope that will help...

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god is sometimes very quiet like a breeze
you have to listen and feel for it

[Perna]

I have at times in the past believed He wasn't but He showed up in ways for me to see He Is.

I have never once doubted......thats how i got threw life.......
i hope that helps

[ziggy1]

I don't know how to weigh in on this one? I feel discouraged a lot lately. I was raised catholic, you know first communion, confirmation.

The catholic churches are all closing up around here. There getting a bad rap. There going broke slowly. I feel sorry for
the church and the law suits, but my heart goes out to the
many children who were abused there! Makes you really think?

I was never a big church goer anyway. I have tried other churches
but never really found any type of comfort personally. Maybe it's
just me? My Therapist is of native american Indian decent and is very spirtual though, her spirtuality actually caught my
interest. Its kind of like a universal spirtuality involving the
universe and a higher power and guardian angels or spirits.

The only time I loose touch with God is when people get in the way. When organizations box God into a particular mold. When God and spiritual teaching is humanized. That's when I loose touch with my Creator.

I was drawn to Creator out of a need to know love. I found devine love in creation and it drew me to the source. I now live knowing in my heart that I am a spiritual being having a human experience. As a spiritual being I am an expression of Love. My journey is to walk in love, walk in beauty, walk in balance and harmony.... in peaceful allignment with the universe. I can do that because I am one with God in my spirit. The truth of who God is for me transcends my mind when I'm stuck in the darkness of the physical world. My spirit knows its source.

Blessings.........

[ziggy1]

Yes chocolate, I can relate with what you said, she speaks of it that way too being in peace and harmony with the universe and walking in harmony........

I should clarify that I don't always walk in alignment. I'm still a student of the universe. I can forget my source sometimes and struggle for periods of inbalance. Have many times doubted my version of God. Conflicted many times about the many versions opened up to me once I'd considered the possibility of a God.... of a spiritual consciousness. I'd been raised without religion so I was a clean slate.

For several years I emersed myself in mainstream Christianity and for some years after that explored other spiritual teachings.... observed who God -- the Source of Life is for people from different cultures and life experiences... and for me.... what was God to me... and me to God.

From my own experiences God has become a constant for me in that as a spiritual being God is the Great Spirit to whom I have a spiritual connection. My source of life energy.... physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

When I get caught up in things on the physcial level I can loose balance and seperate from the mindfullness of my spirit. I will feel the aloneness in conditions I can't control. I see, think about, and react to life around me stuggling off-balance to know my place or to feel worthy of my space. I can react without listening and get lost in displaced emotions. I can be blinded and panicked with fear and my thoughts can cycle into ideas and reactions totally dis-associated from my spiritual understandings.

I ended up as sick as I did because I was living disconnected and totally off-balance for a time. I stayed sick because I wasn't seeing beyond what I could control to get better. It wasn't until I aligned myself again to my spiritual understandings that I began to make better choices for my life. When my rituals became heart-felt and heart-lead again... from the spirit within me... then I got stronger and the re-connect began the healing process again.

While at my worst times of struggle... when I feel alone with what might be fantasy.... I remember to think only of God as Love. No more. No less. Perfect Love. A love I am connected to because I crave it at my core. It seems planted at my core. No more. No less. It brings me back to mindfully practice walking in love.

I may loose a step, mess up my footing... get caught in moments of time.... get taken down by symptoms of my inbalance.... but thoughts of Love's intentions seem to give me the will to re-align my focus and be lead once again by my spirit.

Each and every day....

[coralproper]

to be honest.... I have tried to not believe ... I have wished there was no God ... I have at times for short periods been able to not believe, but the harder I have tried to not believe, the more he revealed to me, I believe, I have seen so much now, I might be crazy......to most

but yes, to me God is real, but the picture he has painted for me,does not go along with most peoples cookie cutter views of him, IMO

[AAAAA]

I’ve had a crisis of faith a couple of times, although my question wasn’t exactly if there is a God, but rather why things are the way they are. I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs. The downs have been really low with no apparent solution, but each and every time a miracle (and I do not use the term loosely) has appeared to show me the way out.

I look around and see people much more deserving than myself suffering so much and I wonder why I was shown the path. Why has he saved me so many times? Even when I’ve given up on him, he hasn’t held a grudge and was waiting right there for me when I came to my senses.

[nowheretorun]

i've often imagined God out in the heavens... in the sky ... filling the sky.... and beaming down into and becoming part od everything there is...

today i felt Spirit of God High Holy beneath me and pushing me upwards and then the Ghost carried me with an arm around my waist and the robe of soft gray wool and sash of gold blew lightly in the draft as we climbed between clouds and continued ascending up to the very very edges of everything i could imagine and still i believe there is much much more to be shown there.....

((((Spirit Most High))))))

[mandazzle]

No, absolutely not. I mean, of course I probably did when I was younger, and wasn't into my religion as much as I am now. My one friend said when he was going through an incredibly tough time in his life, he doubted God, and said some things I don't have the heart to say here, but then when he started looking to God for help things started looking up for him.
If God had a wallet, he would have a picture of you in it.