In the book and movie, Conversations With God, the author, indiviudal who lived the moments says that the most devastating line from God was this. “I’m not what you think“! The implications of such a statement if true, is devastating to say the least. Jesus asks the apostles, “Who do men say that I am and Who do you say I am”. I think the church needs to revisit that question. I am and I AM!
Much of our God comes with the label “made in America” and “made in “Western thinking countries”, and so on. Paul begged this question in a parallel qtopic when he said that we’d be the most miserable people if there really was no resurrection. I’d add to that statment that many ARE MISERABLE but not because they don’t believe in the resurrection but because they believe in too many things about God that simply are not true!
Who do I think I AM to say such profound questions?
First of all I’m accountable to me for my relationship with God. I can’t blame sister Suzi or brother Bill for leading me astray. I have God IN ME. The same God that is IN YOU! Most of the church may give intellectual affirmation to that (how could they not when Jesus says it over and over again), but they deny the REALITY of such.
Second, I am responsible for leading a couple hundred people. Call me pastor, minister, priest, spiritual guide, or elder, it all boils down to the fact that God will hold ME accountable for how I lead. He put me in this position. I didn’t choose it, and I can’t choose to believe what’s convenient or popular either- not without consequences.
Beyond Theism, the theme of this site is basically all about leaving home, the comforts of what we THINK we KNOW, for the unknowns of the Spirit, where God waits to be more rightly known!
Who are you sharing this web site with? 
For what I am about to say. I could be hung by the church I grew up in, but oh well. I will be in good company. “In pursuit of God, I found me.” Over the years I have worshipped on this mountain or that, but it has never been truly satisfying, just led to more hunger, more thirst, more, more…there has to be more.
Where I am today is a very scary place and I am not a person even mildly acquainted with fear (that another story for another time) but I find myself wondering how can there be more than this but that I leave this place and return to ???? Because I understand that the Father and I are one, we always have been and everything I was looking so far out in space for I have had all along. Before the foundation of the earth I was and that has never changed, my conscienceness of it has changed tremendously. If you have seen the movie Matrix, I have been disconnected from the matrix and now I must learn to function here. I say I with new meaning, I use to try not to speak of me because that is not showing humility. Sometime the very thing we need to find our true self will lead you far, far down the rabbit trail. So you spend your life trying to be smaller so as not to make others feel insecure, when all the while you just want to be free. I love me and I am humbled by the fact that the spirit has not overwhelmed me but slowly as I was able to recieve it continued to reveal God to me. When I say I love you Lord, I am saying I love me because we are inseperable. Moving mountains is a light thing. I can do anything that he can do. I can do all things. I am conquering, overcoming the world and not condemning it. I am reconciling the world to the Father that loves it so much that he gave… I think that what I will call the book because i have got write this. In pursuit of God I found Me.
Hung? The church’s weapon of chouice was “burning at the stake.”
Excellent post, from one who seems to me to be “getting THERE”.
Use of the word “I” isn’t bad because He is the “I”, the “I AM” of ME- us! It’s a difficult “language” though. People are afraid of words they don’t know or words that their minds associate with past bad stuff, but if we’re to “go forward” we can’t without those new words.
PS. Sounds like a good title for a book too.
Bingo! Your Both saying in a beautiful way what I belive is TRUE.
Yeah. I’ve been burned but don’t think I even smell of smoke.
Hopefully.