Tim-

"I think that God intends for us to have a much richer experience than simple adherence to the rules."

"It's hard for me to comprehend that there are other aspects of a healthy spiritual life, but it's time to start looking and discovering."

I know that it might not feel like it right now... but you're headed for a REALLY good place, man. We've all done ourselves a grand disservice, and missed the full point of the Gospel, by putting so much emphasis for so long on the eradication of our personal sins.

We've preached a shallow Gospel of "Jesus came to die for your sins, so that you won't go to Hell and so that you can spend eternity in Heaven with Him when you die", which puts SO MUCH emphasis on, like you said, "one (small?) facet of the spiritual journey".

The Gospel message was always supposed to encompass SO MUCH MORE and to span the breadth of everything that the Bible tells us about, namely: God created something beautiful, people made in His image, but we botched it up, and He's been pursuing us ever since... and in Jesus (His whole story: birth, life, death AND resurrection) the story has come to a climax in that now the Kingdom of God is HERE AND NOW and we have been invited to take part in it, in God's amazing work of the Restoration of all things back to the way it was always supposed to be...

There's supposed to be a whole lot more to life than, like you said, "simple adherence to the rules"...

Sorry if I got preachy or something... I'm just really psyched for you cause this exact topic has been something that's been COMSUMING me lately. Hang in there man.

i love the revelling in God facet of Christianity... like that he gave us the ability to taste, and that sound isn't flat to our ear, that we have music and rhythm at our disposal for pleasure. life didn't have to be rich, it could have been flat...

it's that whole "taste, and see that the Lord is good" thing.

Preach it brothas and sistas!