I was just making you aware of my background and that I'm not completely ignorant of what Christianity is about.Sorry if you thought that but it seemed to me as if that was what you were saying about yourself.
How does that work? Does Jesus make major life decisions for you? How does Jesus convey those decisions to you?Control of their own lives by handing it over to Jesus.
How does that work? Does the Holy Spirit actually speak?Well it won't until the Holy Spirit give you insight.
Okay, so you don't think they're lying about their experiences. Do you think they're deluding themselves?I think they sincerely believe.
You actually hear God's voice? What does He sound like?Lots of Christians have similar experiences; times of trying to reach God and feeling that God isn't answering or that he isn't around any more, But in our hearts we know he is there even when he seems to be absent and he always shows up again once we have learned whatever it was he was teaching us. He speaks to us and he teaches us things.
It's never made sense to me.What seems to be your stumbling block to believing? Is it anything specific? Or just as you say it doesn't make sense.
Try and see this from my POV. Here's a religious belief that doesn't make sense to me. Part of that belief is this thing called "the Holy Spirit" that apparently God uses to relay messages to people. Why a God would work in such a convoluted way is part of what doesn't make sense.It doesn't have to make sense though to somebody who has not received the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Once a person receives that it all makes complete sense. So that is what you are lacking and what you need in order to 'see' God.
Then believers in this religion tell me that I need to just go ahead and believe in God and the Holy Spirit, and then God...through the Holy Spirit...will provide me guidance that will make sense of it all.
Can you appreciate how bizarre and circular that seems?
If you can't, can you at least put it in the context of a non-Christian religion? IOW, would you accept the same sort of reasoning from a Hindu? If a Hindu told you to just go ahead and believe in Vishnu and once you truly believed, Vishnu would reveal the truth to you in a way that made Hinduism make sense?
Like I said, it's been 40 years. Would you keep asking Vishnu for 4 decades even though you'd not received a single thing?Keep asking.