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You are here: Experts > Religion/Spirituality > Christian Teens > Christianity -- Christian Living > If I am saved or have the Holy Spirit
Expert: John Zalewski - 11/8/2009
Question
I am 29 years old and wonder if I have the Holy Spirit or if I am saved or ever was? I accepted Jesus as my Savior when I was a teen but didn't really know what that meant. So, as usual I partied in school and did the typical in college.
In 2006 I began to attend church but didn't really like church, but went anyway. That year I began to sense what I think was God calling me. It was strange because I didn't know what was going on.
Well, the church that I attended began to teach me about God and I learned so much. I was so excited, it was like a light came on. I was so happy to learn about God as I never knew Him before. Well, I began studying about Him, writing poems to Him, praying and fasting, thinking about Him all the time. I even wanted to hear an aubible voice, and got that opportunity three time, either by an angel or the Holy Spirit. I rededicated my life to Him.
I use to meditate and spend time with God. I even noticed that He would communicate with me in my dreams.
But now nothing. I never really heard God that clealy before, but now it seems like I don't hear Him at all or I am not recognizing Him. It seems like my life is going to a waste. I said yes to Gods will, but honestly don't know what that is, so I began to shrink back from God. I don't feel close to Him anymore, and don't really feel a connection. I feel nothing now, and don't know whats going on.
I want to be close to God, but it seems that I don't have what it takes to be that close to Him. So, I am wondering if I will just be a lost cause, or have to accept and just be a person that may never be able to experience God is extraodinary ways.
I am in a wonderful church under a mighty man of God, but I just don't feel like I belong there. I just feel that I shouldn't be there. I have to many flaws and don't want to attend church anymore.
It bothers me that I am unable to make myself do what I desire to have, and that is being close to God. I just don't have the ability to maintain a close relationship with God.
I wonder if I even belong to God, I keep thinking that I was never saved, or never had the Holy Spirit in the first place.
I don't understand, in the past I experienced God in ways, in my dreams, aubible voice, encounters, seeing signs. I had a very hard time during a period of my life with believing that God loved me. This may be strange, but one day, I looked up at the sky and saw a cloud in the shape of a heart, and I thought maybe I am trying to make that cloud look like a heart, but it was.
Then on my ankle I felt a sore spot and I looked down and saw a heart in my skin. I don't know if I hit my ankle or not. I let everyone see it, and they saw a heart. A perfectly shaped heart. I think God was trying to ensure to me that He truely did love me. But that was not the last time. I was cleaning halos cage and I hit my hand on the corner and my finger started bleeding. Well, a couple of days later, it started to heal but the scare was in the form of a heart.
So, I have what I would say encounters with God, but now I don't sense or feel Him.
I wonder if I was ever saved and wonder if I have the Holy Spirit. Thank you for your time.
Answer
Hello, Shunda.
Actually, the Bible teaches clearly that we cannot do anything to get ourselves saved. God is 100% in charge of salvation, and He saves those whom He desires to save (Romans 9:15-16).
When you say that you accepted Christ, you actually are trusting that that activity brought about your salvation. It helped to guarantee that you are one of God's people. And the Bible will not allow such a conclusion.
Ephesians 2:8-10: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Not of works, lest any man should boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
We are not saved by works, but by grace. Accepting Christ, inviting Christ into one's heart, repenting, and even believing, are works. It is not our faith which saves us, but the faith of Christ (Galatians 2:16).
The church you belong to (like all churches) hasn't the slighest idea what salvation truly is. Salvation is not earned. And that is what you and billions of others are trying to do. You're trying to earn salvation by accepting Christ. And so the churches are teaching a lie.
The Bible teaches that we're at the end of the church age and into the Great Tribulation, that final period before the end of the world. God is finished with the churches due to their lack of faithfulness to the Bible.
God commands the believers to leave the churches in this time (Matthew 24:15; Revelation 18:4). More information on this broad subject can be found at familyradio.com or from the book, "The End
of the Church Age and After," available free-of-charge from Family Radio.
Also, there is no new communication from God. That is an impossibility. God is not speaking to us through dreams, voices, encounters, or visions. That's not possible, because God's supernatural revelation to man is complete.
The Bible, and only the Bible, is God's entire revelation to man. All that God wants us to know about is in the pages of that Book. So you can rest assured that it is not God, but Satan, who is supplying the supernatural voices, visions, etc., if indeed they are of supernatural origin.
If someone truly has been given the Holy Spirit (salvation), then they will have a new love in their life for God and the Bible. They will want to study the Bible, learn from it, and will want to avoid sin as much as possible. They will want to do it God's way more and more (Psalm 119).
In addition, salvation will bring about the realization in a person that God has done 100% of the work required to save them, not 99.9999%. He will rest from his labours, resting entirely in the mercy and work of Christ His Saviour (Hebrews 4:9-10). If that rest is not found in a person (they are trying to become saved by believing, accepting Christ, etc.), then that is the evidence that they are working for their salvation, and are still unsaved.
The environment for salvation is the Bible (Romans 10:17). God does apply the Holy Spirit to those who read the Bible, if it is God's will to do so. But we have to wait entirely on God. He alone can save us from our sins.
May God bless you,
John
Daniel 9:16: O Lord, according to all Thy righteousness, I beseech Thee, let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned away from Thy city Jerusalem, Thy holy mountain: because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Thy people are become a reproach to all that are about us.
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