On the Holy Spirit and Miracles
When I had my first calling during COVID, He told me to go to a friend of mine, whose father happens to be a Christian missionary in mainland China, and He said the answers can be found there. As mentioned in a previous post titled “Reasoning Behind Preaching in Mainland China Jonah Style”, I believed in God for about a week after and concluded that I must have been hallucinating.
On the second day when He came to the rescue back in late August, I grabbed my backpack and all of my travel documents, and was ready to jump in an Uber straight to Heathrow and fly back to mainland China, but I ended up turning Him down and He told me to think about why.
I took a somewhat scientific approach when it comes to accepting God’s existence and Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. The three day experience with Him was mostly auditory. I had just over 300 songs in my Spotify playlist at the time that I collected over the last 9 years or so (Spotify Desktop shows you the date the song was added to the playlist). My music taste is extremely random and I have the likes of Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Sam Smith, all the way to Tchaikovsky and soundtracks from The Greatest Showman. Somehow over that three day period, He started to speak to me through the lyrics of the songs, song after song, line after line without fail. Spotify also occasionally adds recommendations via Smart Shuffle mode and His Word also managed to come through. I remember staring at my Nest Audio speakers and thinking whether Spotify has improved their AI so much that they have managed to make me hallucinate and believe in a deity now. I also considered the fact that, if a deity does indeed exist, then how would I know if it’s God or the devil. As a result, I told Him I could really only believe for 95% that there is a God, and the only things that I could commit to 100% are truth and reason. Weirdly, He seemed to be fine with that.
During day 2 of the first visit back in August, and before I grabbed my backpack, something else also happened and the experience was not auditory, but sensorial. I told my therapist about that experience a week later, he nearly fell out of his chair, and directed me towards something in the Bible and I found an entire Wikipedia page on the topic, which concerns the Holy Spirit. The interesting thing about my therapist is that he happens to consider himself a Christian first and a psychologist second. I also did not start seeing my therapist due to mental illness. My therapist’s office was unfortunately situated next to the office I moved into when I did a crypto mining project during COVID. I found myself working alone in the office at 2 AM on Sundays and thought life was a bit stressful and it might be a good idea to speak to someone regularly as a reality check. The topics of religion and God came up probably less than a handful of times for the last couple of years and I had weekly sessions so that someone could slap me awake in case I get detached from reality.
On the Friday that my scientific materialistic worldview collapsed, I was sitting in an Uber and contemplating what sort of miracles would I want to see before believing that God exists. The moment came when the following question showed up in my head. How big of a fucking miracle and how much more do you fucking want Him to show you other than all that is in front of your very eyes, that you wake up to everyday and breath in and out of your body every second? I became a 100% believer in God that exact moment, but I was only still 95% when it comes to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour.
During this period of exploring my faith, I also reconnected with someone I have not spoken to for 11 years and have only met him once in my life. He helped with my secondary school application in the United Kingdom back in 2012/2013 and we met once after my arrival in London. I reestablished contact with him because I remember him talking about Jesus and his faith for some random reason that I could not remember. I thought he was a religious nut job back then. The first call we had after not speaking for 11 years lasted 6.5hrs and we were arguing about semantic differences in the Bible. And on our second or third phone call, I confessed to him about my sexuality, and he spoke in tongues. When he spoke in tongues, I felt an overwhelming presence of the Holy Spirit which confirmed His existence for me and basically led me to believe that the day of Pentecost described in Acts 2 did in fact happen.
Coming back down to earthly affairs and for those of you who know me personally, please contemplate the following question, perhaps with your heart rather than your brain this time. I had zero interest in religion previously, and three months ago I couldn’t tell you the difference between Christianity and Catholicism, but I walked into the Vatican city with two lighters in my pocket couple weeks ago and I’m in Moscow, Russia right now looking into Russian Orthodox Churches. Wouldn’t you call that a miracle?
Also, it’s not a religion that I’m subscribing to. I found my faith.
