Originally posted by bbarr
A Mona Lisa? You flatterer...🙂
Honestly, I don't know whether He refused. What I do know is that, as per your request, I prayed that God reveal Himself to me that day. I spent the day in quiet reflection, writing a paper on Spinoza and the interpretation of Scripture (turned out very well, thanks). I set aside that day in the hope that something would ...[text shortened]... life, then all He needs to do is reveal Himself. Until then, I'll keep on keeping on.ask
One possibility here is that you are either being consciously or unconsciously disingenuous with your request to God. This seems quite likely because it would be out of step with your other statements for you to say you hoped that something might happen. I would also speculate that your motivation for asking the question was inspired by your desire to further your argument for Atheism. If any of the above are true then it would not be surprising that not much happened in your eyes since that would be what you were expecting anyway. If God was a divine fruit machine who had no interest in things like motivation and sincerity then you could manipulate him in this way then , but no-one said he was. It's a good job he's not a fruit machine otherwise you might have asked God to blow up the world and we'd all be dead.
However , the other possibility is that at least part of you was being absolutely genuine (and the apparent disguised glee with which you responded to nothing happening was my imagination). In this case it would be entirely God's style to respond not with something dramatic but with something simple and down to earth. My experience is that often the answers are right there at your feet, you just don't realise it at the time. It sounded if you had a heightened awareness of the love that was in your life. It's possible that God is drawing your attention subtlely to the things that are already there in your life , things that he wouldn't want to change anyway. He might be saying something like " Ok barr , I'm going to reveal myself in the things you take for granted first because I know they are things you value , and love is a good place to start because I value that tremendously , but how about reaching out to me more genuinely next time , don't forget I can see right through you and I'm not going to let you play games with me ..that wouldn't be good for you in the long term". Anyway , what did you expect , a burning bush on your first day?
There are lots of reasons why you might not want him in your life. Loss of control of your life. God might ask you to make sacrifices. You might not like to have your self righteousness challenged. He might ask you to love someone you don't want to love , or turn your world view on it's head etc etc
So which is it? Genuine sincerity or sophisticated mind games? Fruit machines or real Spirituality? You might fool me but you won't fool God.