Our Experience Is Meant for Us

The title of this blog entry seems obvious. But often, when we have a awesome experience of closeness to God, especially if we get healing or touched in some physical way, it's tempting to try and impose our experience on everyone else. In our zeal, we make a doctrine out of our experience. But God gave that experience to us and for us.

Yes, everyone needs to experience God, but everyone's experience will be different. The rest of the world doesn't need our experience; they need their own.

It's one of the enemy's favorite tricks. If he can't stop God from coming close by deceiving us into resisting, then he'll go to the other extreme and try to deceive us to worship the experience, instead of the One we're experiencing.

When he can do that, he can get us to turn our experience into a doctrine that everyone else needs. Then the experience that was meant to bring us closer to God becomes a club to bludgeon the rest of the body of Christ with.

So let's not be fooled. Tell the enemy to go pound sand – he's not pulling that one on us. We will respect and honor the experience of others just as much as our own.

Faith Isn't... Faith Is...

Faith isn't trusting God that nothing bad will happen to us. Faith is trusting God through everything that does happen to us – good and bad.

There's a false prosperity gospel floating around, that God wants us to be rich and anything bad in our lives is a result of our lack of faith. Not!

Yes, God wants us to be prosperous, but as defined in the Kingdom of God. It has nothing to do with our bank account's bottom line. It has everything to do with our degree of intimacy with the Father. That's real wealth in the Kingdom of God.

Through Trials, Not from Them

Sometimes it's tempting to think people deserve their problems. And sometimes we do. Some of us have turned doing stupid things that mess up our lives into an art form.

But sometimes, often even, bad things happen to good people. Like me. Like you. Like us. People who love God. It's actually God's kindness to us, to bring us closer to him.

We tend to think our closeness to God and our experience with him will keep the bad things away. But do you see how that thought-pattern leads to trusting our experience instead of God?

Our experience with God is not meant to protect us from trials, but to safeguard us through them.

Joy vs Happiness

Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus never promised us happiness. In fact, he promised us just the opposite: “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Happiness is situational. When things are going great, we're happy. When they're not, we aren't. Happiness is neither stable nor dependable. Nor is it within our control, because it relies on outside circumstances. That's why trying to be happy just leads to, ironically, a lot of anxiety instead!

Jesus promised us something so much better – Joy. Joy is not situational. It is a inner peace from God that outside circumstances can't touch.

As Christians, joy is totally within our control. We can choose to believe God about our situation and have his joy in the midst of trouble, or not. It's totally our choice. But choosing joy means trusting him – operating in surrender not in control. Simple to say, sometimes hard to do.

Incomplete Experience

Actual experience with God is very necessary, not for salvation, but to know the fullness of all he has for us. We don't know what we don't experience. The whole point of Christianity, which is a relationship not a religion, is to know God. We can't know him without experiencing him.

But as necessary as experience with God is, it's incomplete. It's not an end in itself.

Experience is not:

• The Goal of Church. That would be ministering to the Lord and to the lost.
• The Evidence of Salvation. That would be his Holy Spirit in us, not the Spirit's manifestations.
• The Anchor of our Faith. That would be the Word of God, not out experience.
• God's Stamp of Approval. God's only requirement for experiencing him is a willingness to receive, not the spiritual maturity to walk it out rightly. We need to be pastored through it.

So our experience, although wonderful and necessary, is never an end in itself; it's never the point. Jesus is always the point. God is doing something through the experience to bring us closer to him.

What God Uses

What does God use to change our life – to make us more like him?

Look at the woman at the well in John 4. She asked Jesus theological questions, like about where to worship – mostly because he was getting too close for comfort talking about her life. She was trying to change the subject. He answered her question, but steered the conversation back to himself and to her.

Her life was changed by that encounter on a hot afternoon, but not because he taught her such awesome theology about where to worship. Her life was changed because of her experience with him.

Good theology is important, but God changes our life through experience with Him, not through our theology.

Entering His Rest

Quiet confidence and peace in the midst of a tornado of stress – that's what resting in the Lord means. Hebrews 3 and 4 talk about entering into God's rest. The author makes the point that not entering into God's rest is tied to unbelief and disobedience, which he uses synonymously (see verses 3:18, 3:19, and 4:6).

Unbelief and disobedience (a.k.a. sin), go hand in hand. When we don't believe God, we do what we want. We try to fulfill ourselves and protect ourselves. Neither works – causing more stress and hardship than we tried to avoid by doing it our way in the first place. And trying to do it our way is anything but restful.

We can only enter his rest – that is, possess that quiet confidence and inner peace that displaces worry and anxiety in the midst of chaos – when we walk in both faith and obedience (a.k.a. holiness, a.k.a. integrity).

Both. It's not enough to just believe. We have to walk it out with obedience. That's the point of James 2. We can't enter his rest, or even say we believe in him, if we're sleeping with our girlfriend/boyfriend or fiancee, for example.

Truly believing in Jesus means having private intimacy with him. Out of that flows faith – we believe him. And out of that flows obedience because we want to please our lover whom we trust. And out that flows his rest – quiet confidence when the world is falling apart around us. It's a great way to live.

Rest Wins

One of the most effective weapons against stress and oppression from the enemy is rest. Not relaxing or sleeping or just chilling, although those are all good – no, I'm talking about God's rest here.

Resting in the confidence of who He says we are and what He says we're called to.

Resting in God's rest means resting in confidence. So with turmoil going on all around us, and with the enemy showering us with negativity through the voices of others and in our own thoughts, we can declare what God says – who we are and what we're for.

If you don't know, ask him. Spend intimacy time with him. He'll tell you. And then it's all about who you believe and what you declare. The negative voices, or who God says you are and what you're for, what you're called to.