Seeing God ...perhaps for the first time - by David A. Nelmes

Truth cannot be threatened, but it can be hidden; and now the time for hiding has passed. Your loving and eternally patient Creator loves you and has provided a way for you to step away from any confusion and heaviness and walk towards experiencing a loving and peaceful life. This book is one of His answers.

I know where you are because I was at those same crossroads. I was raised with Evangelical Christian and Pentecostal beliefs, and this created a very firm and mighty depiction of who God was. Similar depictions of God are also shared by Mormon's (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), a Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventist's and other extreme or rigid belief systems. As I grew older, I often struggled with how the Bible depicted God’s unloving need to kill and destroy his enemies, and how his unforgiving nature could only be appeased by conforming to his demands and swearing obedience to his requirements … or else. These splinters in my beliefs eventually led me to see past what was written about God and that allowed me to embrace what I felt the real God was sharing with me, that He loved us beyond our capacity to fathom, and that forgiveness was totally unconditional, and already applied without request or demand.

But doesn't everyone already know God is a God of love? Well, yes and no. Many believe He loves, but only when certain conditions are met, or when certain beliefs are embraced.

What happens here is that when God's love is limited to a specific belief system, it can be easy to be deceived into believing a person has obtained some wonderful gift from God, in that God has chosen to love and help them, where those who don't share those beliefs, do not receive this love or help. This, of course, is what defines a religious belief, that God will Love and reward a person for believing a specific way, and that same God will then hate and punish a person who believes differently. This is only possible when assigning God duality, and that results in God being seen as both a God to Love and a God to Fear, and that is simply accepted as normal. As my writings will explain later, not only is this inaccurate, but it is simply not possible.

Many of the answers you are looking for may be found in my book which is based upon a core concept which is clearly illustrated in an excerpt from one of my articles —

By Being Willing to See, You Will Discover a God of Love

There is nothing God requires that you do. There is no payment or sacrifice he requires or desires. There is no path to discover by racking your brain in trying to figure out what it is that God would have you do. There is no physical thing in the entire universe that you need to give God or to those who claim they follow God. There is only one thing that God desires from you and that is for you to Be Willing.

• Be Willing to see clearly.
• Be Willing to choose differently.
• Be Willing to set aside what the world has taught you.
• Be Willing to be what he would have you be.

Your willingness creates an opening in your being that allows the Holy Spirit to Do things. It allows the Holy Spirit to heal you, teach you and guide you. Learn to Be willing and you'll truly see what God Can Do.

My articles showed a loving and peaceful God, and often pointed out the specific contradictions where he is shown otherwise in the Bible. Some of my earlier articles included a little Bible bashing or Christian bashing, however, this was simply due to unresolved anger at the time. For the most part, my goal was to both express the joy in what I was discovering, and to help those who were experiencing a similar desire to see their beliefs and God more truthfully.

My new perceptions in God were sometimes helped by performing an exercise where I learned to “Step Back” from my position or viewpoint and allowed myself to see the bigger picture and a new interpretation of what I believed were the facts. As you read this book, and something is hard to accept or understand, I suggest you try to “Step Back” and allow yourself to observe that it was inevitable that as a primitive people, we would be fearful of everything we did not understand — especially God. It was also inevitable that a day would come when we would begin to set aside our fears and misconceptions and begin to be more open to see things more truthfully — even if they seemed contrary to what we had been taught for centuries. It’s alright to release old ideas because changing our minds about what our ancestors believed, does not make our ancestors wrong, it just makes their perceptions and beliefs a required and natural step of growth, but not the end of growth.

So now, 20 years later, I have compiled all my writings here in this book in the order in which they were written. When put all together like this, they serve as a platform for experiencing a gradual change in seeing God from a different point of view as compared to what was often served to us from a religious perspective.

As I was editing and preparing the chapters for this book, I realized that during those many years of writing articles, my perception of God, and my concepts of love and forgiveness continued to grow and became even clearer. I could see where some of my earlier articles were out of sync to some degree with respect to how I saw God then and how I saw him now. I was elated to realize that, since it clearly illustrated my growth and evolution towards openness rather than a steadfast retention of assumed truths. But then the question arose as to whether I should update or even remove the older articles. I chose to not update the articles but to leave them as they were because they would be perfect for somebody who ends up where I was, and they might better relate to what I shared at that time.

I still liked that I could see my growth of thought as I reviewed the older articles, so to share these further changes in perception, I added a “Commentary” section after each article in order to provide extra insight and explain what brought upon those changes in perception. I also used this section to occasionally say a few more things that came to my mind during editing.

At the core of my being, I embrace growth, and my articles are both a witness of my growth and the result of my growth. My writings are words from God, for everyone and anyone open to hear them. Even though I have written these articles, I get inspired and experience new growth each time I read them again, and I encourage you to do the same. You can do this with ease because when a person’s heart is open for truth, the fear of change withdraws and is replaced with a peaceful spiritual desire for learning that stimulates new growth and creation.

So, for now, just open your mind to the ideas and concepts I share in this book because they are expressions of God’s love and forgiveness. Read through these articles and open your mind for Spirit to heal your thoughts and lead you to the passages that are best for you to absorb. Then allow yourself to step back from all that you had believed was true. Take a moment to just let it all go and allow yourself to become a blank slate. Take a deep breathe, exhale, and step forward into a loving and peaceful experience where you are totally safe to learn new things, and you may find that you are Seeing God ... perhaps for the first time.

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One of my favorite reviews:

 

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Here is an excerpt from the chapter called "Contradictions of Spirit":

If you can accept, embrace and run with the idea or perception that God is so much more than any belief system could even begin to fathom or describe, then apply this concept to anything you believe you know. Allow yourself to see ideas and beliefs as stepping stones to get to the next clearer perception, and not as concepts cemented in time that you hold onto for generations or even for thousands of years. Even when the disciples asked Jesus about spiritual or heavenly things, he basically said he wasn't going to try to explain such things to them because they didn't even understand most earthly things, so there would be no way they could even begin to comprehend anything he might have tried to share.

Namaste

Paperback, eBook and Kindle version of the book are available:

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