What I have experienced, and experienced repeatedly, is the silence of God. For many years, this was a distressing matter for me. I did not consider it an experience, but the absence of an experience.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've never heard God speak out loud to me. That's not an experience I have had.
I began to realize that when people experience the love of God, it casts out their fear and frees them from guilt.
A lot of times when you go through a very traumatic situation and it's emotionally difficult to deal with you come back spiritually stronger. It changes you in a way.
The amount of things I have been through and the remarkable ways in which the body has reacted is just phenomenal. No wonder I became religious, because you don't know why something's happening to you and you don't know how you bounced back.
'Presence of God' is really that understanding that sometimes when you step out of your own shoes and just open your ears and listen to what's going on around you, you get answers to the questions you were asking.
It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck.
I've had a couple of odd experiences - unexplainable anxiety that came my way through a belief in something... I mean, it sounds cryptic, but... anything for me that turns myself against myself, I stay away from.
I do think there's a spiritual element in the world, yes. Have I experienced a ghost firsthand, per se? No. I guess I've experienced feelings or some kind of a presence. But I certainly haven't seen any kind of transparent entity running around.
A couple of times, I felt like I was cracking and I couldn't go on, and God would put another person in my place to help me.
I know it's an experience that I need to have if God's putting me through it.