Thanks for the question. It’s taken me a while to get to it partly because it is worth pondering and took some pondering.

What is a Christian? The quick answers is from Romans 10:9 – “…if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” I can infer from your question that you are still confessing with your mouth, and you have not, in a rational belief sense, denied him.

But I think the crux of your problem is that you “don’t feel” your faith or “experience” God. It would relate to Romans 10:9 at the phrase “believe in your heart.”

I think my push-back to you here would then be – “Well, what does being a Christian feel like?” Or, more specifically, “What does faith feel like?”

Sure, sometimes it feels like joy, gladness – even euphoria at times. I assume you are not feeling these things.

Sometimes faith feels likes determination, or pain, or burden (for me, personally, occasionally to the point of nausea). Faith is to trust in God which means trusting him as you face everything from temptation, sadness, hurt, betrayal, and guilt.

The path of faith is when God calls you, “come and die.” He will take you to the place where you are not yet Jesus-shaped, or to an area that is crucial to how he has called you – and to follow him will literally hurt. Many of us stall here, go into denial, go “around the mountain” until we have to face it again, for he won’t let us go.

It is often in these places that we don’t “feel” our faith – because our faith is being tested. And it is often in these places that we don’t respond in faith but try to cover up the hurt with the false comfort (that is no comfort at all) of sin.

So I guess my advice to you is a mixture of determination and abandonment. Be determined to be fully reliant on God. No matter the cost, no matter the pain, no matter how much it _feels_ like a path or difficulty – determinedly choose to abandon yourself to his purposes.

Put that into action. Put aside any idols you have. Be honest about what he is calling you to face, and face it.

God bless you.

Originally: http://www.formspring.me/briggswill/q/741629010

I’m an online pastor?

Depends what you mean about “online” – their are plenty who are socially networked (and plenty who were before my time).

If you mean Tasmanian pastors that blog: I was probably pretty early in the piece but I’m sure not the first. And there’s quite a few now. Just some that I know of (sorry if I’ve got things wrong or missing).

Bp. John Harrower: http://imaginarydiocese.org/bishopjohn/
Luke Isham: http://post-apocalyptictheology.blogspot.com/
Joshua Skeat: http://skeatnet.net/
Mikey Lynch: http://www.thegenevapush.com/christian-reflections/
Chris Bowditch (formerly Tasmanian): http://www.youthministryandme.com/
Staff at Wellspring Church (hardly used though): http://wellspring.org.au/blog/
Alan Reader: http://www.readeral.com/blog/
Alistair Bain: http://paradoxspeak.blogspot.com/

Online/offline is getting to be a false dichotomy. I am a pastor. I bring that to my interactions with people – and that happens online, IRL and in a fuzzy overlap between the two.

Originally: http://www.formspring.me/briggswill/q/853282008

Not sure. Somewhere quiet. With my family. And I would teach my heart out.

Originally: http://www.formspring.me/briggswill/q/846505371

I looked for lobster but could not find it. Scuba diving wasn’t on the list but it should have been. Now “become a certified diver” is on the list.

Originally: http://www.formspring.me/briggswill/q/924803484