Believing in God means …

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… it means that you are convinced that there is a physical and a spiritual world. The physical world is what we can grasp with our 5 senses, see, hear, smell, taste and touch or feel. But the spiritual world or sphere cannot be experienced with these 5 senses. Nor can it be grasped with our intellect. Because God is spirit. He is the fundamental power and the guiding light of the universe – the omnipotent, omniscient spirit that permeates everything – omnipresent. (Too much for our minds to totally grasp, absorb and understand, isn’t it?)

God simply does not fit into any box. He himself tells us through the prophet Isaiah:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.“ – Isaiah 55:8-9

What is a prophet? A prophet is a link between man, i.e. the physical world, and God, the spiritual sphere. Prophets are special people who have the gift of lifting their heads into the spiritual sphere, so to speak, in order to receive a message or vision from there. In Old Testament times, God only gave this gift to certain people, and spiritual realities were physically represented – Temple, altar, candles, incense, priests in festive clothing, etc.

But with Jesus a NEW time began in which God wants people who desire to worship him to put aside the physical and only seek, understand and worship him „in spirit and in truth“ as Jesus taught us – see John 4. To do this requires faith – to trust that what you cannot grasp with your five senses not only exists, but that you can come into contact with God himself through prayer. You can compare it to electricity. You see the power cable, see the light that when turned on goes on or you see and hear a machine that runs on electricity. You get the evidence of the electricity through what the electricity does. Religions try to show you spiritual realities with „things“. But, as I said, in these NEW times, God wants you to dare to put your fingers in the socket yourself to feel the „electricity“ – God’s power.

What now is the change, the difference from the physical to the spiritual?

Muslims, for example, wash themselves before beginning prayer. A physical action. If you do it spiritually, it means you are attuning yourself to God, „washing“ your thoughts in order to come before God in a pure, clean state. Going to churches, temples or mosques means you leave your everyday life behind in order to become inwardly still. Facing Mecca means that you focus your thoughts on God and concentrate completely on him. A carpet on which you kneel means you are entering the holy realm of God.

Men of God like Noah and Abraham (Ibrahim) did not need physical illustrations of the spiritual. They were able to simply believe and trust God completely. No washing of the body before prayer, just washing to get clean from the dust of the day. No carpet, no specific building (temple, church, mosque). No candles or incense either. They had faith and reverence for God and trusted the voice they heard within themselves as that of God. Abraham’s son Isaac was also able to believe in this way. But his son Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, could not believe so easily. He first had to become a liar and a deceiver, then had to run for his life and, while fleeing, had this dream of a ladder that reached up to heaven, which made him pray:

If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear … then the Lord shall be my God. So being born into a religion does not give you automatically true faith and trust in God. You have to build this faith and trust for yourself, decide for yourself that you WANT to believe, to decide in your own heart as Jacob had to.

Jacob had to go through many trials, battles and tests over the next few years, wrestled with God himself at one point and was then given the name Israel by God. He wrestled with God and insisted that God bless him, that he receive a blessing that was not obtained by lies and deceit, but this time an in honesty acquired blessing. He had become a new man and therefore God also gave him a new name, the name Israel, after which his descendants were also named. An interesting story. Read it for yourself in Genesis 27-32; about his birth you can read in chapter 25.

Jacob/Israel later moves with his family to Egypt during a drought and famine and his descendants remained there for the next 400 years. There, many forgot the God of their ancestors and they eventually became slaves to the Egyptians and God had to raise up Moses to bring them out of slavery into the land he had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God had to perform many miracles to set them free and clear the way for them and supernaturaly provide them with food. But despite all the miracles, most of the Israelites found it difficult to believe in this invisible God of their fathers and to trust him completely. They were used from Egypt to giving a god a form, usually an animal or half animal half man in order to be able to see him in worship in a certain building that was full of things that represented spiritual realities.

When Moses, who was their connection to God, went up a mountain and apparently never came back, they pressed Moses‘ brother Aaron to make them a god they could see as usual. They all contributed the gold they had “borrowed” from the Egyptians and Aaron cast them a golden calf, which angered God so much that he wanted to wipe them all out. But through Moses‘ desperate plea of intercession for them, he spared them and allowed them to represent his presence and character through physical, i.e. visible things, and gave them instruction on how to do so.

And so it came about that God was worshipped in a temple, with an altar on which sacrifices were offered to God for the forgiveness of their sins. With a candlestick whose light symbolized the truth, wisdom and knowledge of God. Incense rising upwards to God like fragrant perfume, just as our prayers do or should do. And a priest, in richly decorated clothing, became the mediator, the spokesperson between God and the people. Jews still worship God in this way today, only without the burnt offering as they don’t have their temple aymore.

And although Jesus came and taught his followers to worship God in spirit and in truth, without all these symbolic things, about 300 years later, his followers went back to all these physical illustrations, back when the Roman Empire was declared the Holy Roman Empire – without truly converting the individual people. Christianity became the state religion and was compulsory, so no wonder they needed physical illustrations of this new God again to help people believe. So churches with all their things and priests is something for people who lack the faith, as Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had, to worship God only in faith in spirit and truth. They are standing on things rather than on the Word of God alone.

And as far as the word Israel is concerned, this means that it also takes on a new meaning for our new age. It no longer refers to the descendants of „Israel“, the grandson of Abraham, but only to those who choose God through Jesus to be their God and become a new creature in Christ.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. – John 1:11-13

Furthermore, it says in John 1 that Jesus is the Word of God. Because the Bible is the written Word of God and Jesus is this Word, every time we read this Word we receive Jesus and God’s Spirit within us and our faith grows as we read.

The Islamic religion has also gone back to this Old Testament way of worship, based on these physical things, as we saw above.

– Do you understand? To really get close to God, you have to leave all the physical, exemplary things behind and be willing to enter into God’s spiritual realm.

A creator wants to be close to his creation, not far away, unapproachable and unreachable. As close as he was when he created each and every one of us, with all our different abilities, characters, gifts and also flaws and weaknesses – another thing that is difficult for us to comprehend.

But although we cannot grasp him with our intellect, our logic, nevertheless he wants us to know and understand him, to get to know his will and even to know about events that are still in the future so that we can prepare ourselves for them – prophecies about the end times. God therefore told Moses to write down everything that had been memorized about the past for future generations. And since then, faithful people devoted to God have written down the history of what happened at that time, as well as the words to us humans from God himself. These records-scrolls-were finally bound together into a book called the Bible, which means book of books, many books from different periods of time. And because there is an OLD and a NEW part, the Bible is also divided into an Old and a New Testament. Testament means a contract between God and man. The Old Contract is between God and Abraham and later confirmed with the Israelites and the New Contract is between God and all people, all his humans that his hand have created – each and every one of us just has to sign the contract personally.

So everything physical is done with the NEW Testament, it is now only up to us humans personally to do the same, to become aware that God wants to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. – 2.Corinther 3:17

So how can you put your fingers in the socket to experience God? Read it here in the following article:

How much do you know about electricity?

Not even scientists understand it completely. But does that stop you from using electricity? You use it even though you don’t understand it, right?

You flip the switch and make the connection, and it works. You benefit from electricity, even though you don’t understand it fully. All you know is, it works. You make contact with the power of electricity, and it does the work for you. And that’s how it is with God. We don’t know where He came from or how He got here, we simply know He does exist and He is here, ever-present, all-knowing and all-powerful—omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. God exists, you may be sure, just like electricity exists, and both of these great powers can do us a great deal of good, even if we don’t fully comprehend them. We can benefit from “turning on the switch” and making contact with God.

And you don’t need to rely on others either. Test God yourself! Flick the switch of decision to be connected to him through Jesus. Once you have experienced God for yourself, there will be no doubt in your mind that He is who He claims to be – our ever-present, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving Creator.

You can contact His power through prayer, a spiritual seeking of contact with His Spirit. Just as you flip the switch of your radio and tune in to a certain frequency, so you can make contact with God. And if you do, He will speak to you, both through His written Word and directly to your heart and mind when you pray.

We only have to make the connection that lets God’s power into our daily lives. All we have to do is reach out our hand of faith and flip the switch of decision which makes contact and starts the flow of God’s power into our lives to light, guide, warm, feed, provide, protect, work for us, and most of all give us inner peace and happiness. Just try Him! You don’t have to know where He came from, just open your heart to him!

If you are not yet connected to the power of God, you can do so now by inviting Jesus, the mediator between God and men, into your heart and life.

Just pray this little prayer:

„Dear Jesus, thank you for coming to earth and dying for me so that I can be reconnected with God. I want to get to know you better and open the door of my heart to you now and ask you to come in. Help me to read your words in the Bible so that my faith can be strengthened and built up. Amen!“ (Amen means: so be it)

If you have said this prayer sincerely, then Jesus did come into your heart and will stay with you forever, He will never leave you again and He will one day take you to Himself, into His kingdom of love.

I will never send away anyone who comes to me. – John 6:37

… when you become quiet and imagine that Jesus is very close to you, you enter his heavenly realm in spirit and partake of the peace and rewards of his spirit. There is complete peace, complete tranquillity, complete love and rest…

Jesus still talks today to people dedicated to God, here is one such message he gave. And if you let it speak to your heart then this message is just for you personally: