Churches provide a place of gathering for people who share common beliefs, support and encouragement for each other in faith, a place to find insight into and teaching about God's Word, and they provide a time and place where people can leave the world behind and focus only on their spiritual relationship with God.

They care for, protect, and guide God's people, frequently intervening or bring messages to people from God.

Even when we are frustrated by our inability to understand a circumstance or event, there are unseen angels bringing comfort and protection as directed by the wisdom of God.

I then carefully searched through the pages until I was able to find the verse that was crystal clear... It read: "Rejoice always."

What I find more remarkable, however, is how readily many people in our society believe outlandish and unsubstantiated urban myths and conspiracies (Pop Rocks and Coke, JFK assassination, AIDS is man-made, etc.), yet disregard thousands of personal and consistent testimonies of miracles and near-death experiences from people throughout all cultures and religions.

I feel as though I am trying to describe a three-dimensional experience while living in a two-dimension world. The appropriate words, descriptions, and concepts don't even exist in our current language. I have subsequently read the accounts of other people's near-death experiences and their portrayals of heaven and I am able to see the same limitations in their descriptions and vocabulary that I see in my own.

God doesn't need verbal language for communication.