Some perspective from you not so serious Christians

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See I identify as an agnostic/atheist. I was having a talk with my friend whos a very serious Christian and like usual she was making references to god. She was trying to tell me to try to pray and explaining to me the messages in which god gives and how he communicates in different ways. Being skeptical, Im conviced that if you really believe in god and that he'll communicate with you, you will get a so called message. You will be convinced that say, that bird flying by is a message from god. So I was wondering about the people that are Christian but arent terribly serious about it. Does it seem like you get messages from god to? What kinda messages?

Nope. My grandfather was a preacher and even though he died before I was born, my mother and grandmother were very insistent that I become a devout Christian. At this point, they call me a "heathen" because I told them that I already have one father who does nothing for me, what good is another absent "Father" going to do. So no, God doesn't send me messages. Unless they're hidden messages that I wouldn't be able to tell that it was from him or not. :/

When I used to be a bit more devout, my grandfather's spirit/angel would talk to me on occasion. That was probably the closest I got to what you're talking about. D:

I'm probably one of the more vocal Christians here, but I wouldn't say I'm "hardcore" or "fundamentalist." To put it simply, I love God, have done so most of my life, and have recently rediscovered the Bible by carefully studying it. I'm only a "fundamentalist" in the sense that the "fundamentals" of Christianity come from the Bible and I believe that is sufficient to developing one's own personal theology and relationship with God. I don't have to be all serious all the time about what I believe, but on a basic level all the answers will always be the same.

Here's what I think: I think God communicates with each believer in ways the individual will understand. If a bird flying by does it for you, great. But I used to read all kinds of things into natural "signs" only to be disappointed that those "signs" were nothing more than just wishful thinking.

The clearest messages I've gotten from God more often had to do with my most conflicted moments. At one point in my life I was deeply in love with a young woman and wanted to go to work so I could marry her fairly soon. But I felt some kind of pull to go back to school for my master's degree, which basically meant I wouldn't see her for 2 years other than summer and winter break. I applied for three different schools, but only one I really cared about enough to finish my application process. The particular program I was trying to get into was something I had no formal study in, so I didn't really have much faith that I'd be accepted. Now, I didn't believe I'd actually get in, but at the same time I felt strongly that I should go (which meant leaving behind someone I loved and who loved me). It was a tough situation. So I simply prayed that if going was God's will, I'd be accepted. If not, God wouldn't allow me in any way to go. I still didn't believe it until I parked my car in the dorm parking lot and then made it through my first semester.

Now, I COULD attribute what happened to my own intellectual and artistic brilliance, but that's simply untrue. I'm not very sophisticated or smart, intellectual or bright. The only way I can explain it was through total reliance on God's ability to predetermine my life's path. As long as I've lived my life that way, much of what I've ever dreamed up or wanted pretty much came to me as I needed it. Even when I have real-life kinds of troubles, I always find that God provides some kind of end to it. So for me, the messages don't really come in words. It's like God says, "I'm not going to TELL you, but I'll SHOW you."

I probably shouldn't say it here, but I wanted to quote this:

"If you talk to God you're religious. If God talks to you, you're psychotic" - Gregory House

When I got married to my first wife, an unexpected emergency at work the night before our wedding almost delayed it, but we went ahead anyway (with her half-asleep). As we were leaving town on our honeymoon, my car's radiator hose broke. We bounced off a guardrail in New Mexico (driving from Omaha to San Diego) because I wasn't handling the heat well. I got mono while we were in California. On the way back, as we were coming down the east side of Raton Pass (across a range of the Rocky Mountains), the left front brake disc shattered.

Had I heeded those signs, I could have saved myself ten years of increasing unpleasantness...

(Which tale, when I regaled my second wife with it, led her to observe, "Sometimes if you don't listen to God, He shouts at you.")