I grew up attending a Baptist and Presbyterian church until I went to college. There I learned the basis of the faith and learned a lot of biblical stories.
But I always wondered why I did not see reflected in people’s lives the God of the Bible. That is all powerful and involved in His people’s lives. I often saw people going through hard situations like infertility, marriage problems, addictions, alcoholism, drug abuse, family issues, gluttony, etc. These things can happen in one’s life, however, I often saw people helpless, anxious and with NO POWER. Which I find contradictory when we have scriptures like James 1:5, Luke 21:19, Isaiah 54:17… And when there was prayer it felt like we were begging for God to help us and not like children asking their GOOD Father for His help. Like God was against us or something.
There seems to be a cognitive dissonance between what is preached/believed vs what the word says about God. I believe part of the problem is seeing the Bible as a mythological book rather than the breathed word of God. It is often only reduced to parables and metaphors rather than for what it actually says. When you view the word of God that way you are left with a book and no power, a god with no action and a people with no authority. Even some of the replies on this sub show what I am just describing.
I am not here to talk bad about the church. I talk about this because I have been harmed by this type of thinking and if not for God’s Grace I would not be here today. Cessationism (belief that miraculous "sign gifts" of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and miraculous healing—ceased after the Apostolic Age) is an extremely harmful train of thought today in the Church as Christians are left powerless because they think God does not speak today and they have no authority over the enemy. Meanwhile the spirit guides still talk and give knowledge to those in new age, familiar spirits still talk to and give insight to those who practice divination and demons still talk and give power to witches.
God is no different, He still talks and moves today in our lives we just need to expect that from Him and listen. Jesus when He left, He left us the Holy Spirit, we are not orphans (John 14:18). Now we have direct access to God the Father through Jesus and the Holy Spirit guides us and is the seal for our salvation.
Since what we read in Revelation is true, the Church needs to reevaluate how the Bible is read because there are a lot of “unbelievable“ things in that book that are supposed to happen soon and we are not ready.